Day 236, Year 6 Leaving Tomorrow Noon

Day 236, Year 6 Leaving Tomorrow Noon
Date: Friday, June 17, 2011
Weather: Beautiful Blue Sky Day, Upper 80’s
Location: Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, South Carolina

It is hard for us to believe that we arrived here over a month ago. The time has gone so quickly, but ready or not, tomorrow morning we take off on the final passage in Windbird’s voyage around the world. Our current location is about five miles up the Intracoastal Waterway from the Little River inlet. We will wait for high tide and flow out to sea with the outgoing current. Sometime just after noon, we should be outside the inlet and on our way east to find the Gulfstream and then north to Cape Cod. The trip is less than 700 miles and we are hoping to be in Woods Hole by next Thursday. My nephew Rex is going with us as crew. He has never done off-shore sailing, and in fact, I’m not sure he has ever been on a sailboat, so it will be fun to break in new crew. We’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

Day 235, Year 6 Windbird Welcomes the Steinkerchners

Day 235, Year 6 Windbird Welcomes the Steinkerchners
Date: Thursday, June 16, 2011
Weather: Rain Early, Cloudy Clearing in Afternoon, Upper 80’s
Location: Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, South Carolina

We started our morning early by driving my niece Janet to the airport in Wilmington. We had quite a rain storm on the way north and then again on the way home, but by the time we got back to Calabash the rain had cleared but not the clouds. Mark and I went to Best Buy with my brother-in-law Joe to buy new hard drives, one for us and one for him. The hard drive I use for my photos has started having problems. Sometimes when I plug it in it is recognized, and sometimes not. So now I will have another back-up copy of all edited photos. Mark’s power pack for his Acer computer arrived today (ordered yesterday with overnight delivery) and that solved one of his computer problems. So we are making some progress on the technical difficulties.

Mark spent part of the afternoon doing fuel runs to fill Windbird’s tanks and that job will be completed in the morning. I defrosted the freezer this afternoon and will transfer items from my sister’s freezer to Windbird tomorrow. So little by little we are getting ready for take-off on Saturday morning. Then late in the afternoon the Steinkerchner’s came to see Windbird. Ed Steinkerchner and his wife Roberta lived across the street from my sister and brother-in-law for all of the years when their children were growing up. I haven’t seen Ed for years, so it was such a delight to find that he and his family who are here in Myrtle Beach vacationing wanted to come to see Windbird. Ed, his two daughters and their husbands and children, plus his son’s college-aged twins all came to visit. It was great to meet the grandchildren and answer their questions about our trip around the world. So Ed, Nancy, Erica, Nicole, Jackie, Joan and Bill, Beth, Doug, Lauren, and Dan-thanks for brightening our day with your visit to Windbird

110616 Day 235, The Carolinas–Steinkerchners Visit Windbird

Day 233, Year 6 Technical Difficulties

Day 233, Year 6 Technical Difficulties
Date: Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Weather: Rain Overnight, Partly Cloudy Day, Upper 80’s
Location: Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, South Carolina

Things don’t always go as planned. The “younger” generation of my family, meaning the 40 and 50 year-old nieces and nephews, had a bit too much fun on the beach last night and weren’t able to get up this morning to go deep sea fishing or to come to Windbird. So this was the first “technical” difficulty and as a result, Mark and I spent the morning doing some much needed chores on the boat. We then went to my sister’s house and cooked for five straight hours for tonight’s dinner. I made 40 salmon cakes, layer upon layer of fried green tomatoes and dozens of chocolate brownies for tonight’s dinner. My sister made three huge hash brown potato casseroles and my sister-in-law cooked pinto beans and creasy greens. The result was a good old southern West Virginia feast ending in a make-your-own fudge brownie sundae. The bummer was our inability to share the slide show of the Voyage of Windbird due to the second technical difficulty of the day. We were using our old Sony Vaio computer with it’s multi-media docking station and something has gone haywire inside the docking station that is not allowing the computer to charge when it is plugged into the station. So we had to start the slide show at the beginning of Year 3 and still only made it as far as Malaysia when the battery power ran out. So we took a break, cleaned up the clubhouse we were using for tonight’s gathering, and then got to watch only the South African piece of Year 6. After spending every day for a week and a half doing nothing but putting the program together, it was so very disappointing to not be able to share it. But we have had even more equipment failures this week, telling us that our computers are not going to make it much longer. My faithful IBM ThinkPad is having more and more difficulty booting each day and Mark’s Acer wouldn’t boot at all this morning. He thinks his problem is the cable coming out of the power supply and we think my IBM is just getting too old. Hopefully between the three computers, one will work long enough to get us back to Cape Cod where we will have to try piecing them back together.

Since today didn’t go as planned, who knows what will happen tomorrow, but the plan is for everyone to spend time together on the beach tomorrow and then have a full-moon dinner party on the beach in the evening. A number of family members leave tomorrow, but we will still have at least 24 people feed. By Thursday the number dwindles to 21 and everyone is on their own for dinner. I have to stop cooking and start preparing for our passage north on Saturday morning. The wind has been from the north which is a real no-no for heading north in northbound Gulf Stream. But today it switched to the south which is good. It looks like we could be doing a fair bit of motoring on the latter half of the five to six day passage. But one way of another, we should be home on the Cape by Thursday or Friday of next week-just in time for our grandson Jonah’s second birthday.

110614 Day 233 The Carolinas, USA–Family Vacation, Day 4

Day 232, Year 6 Happy Birthday, Ashlyn

Day 232, Year 6 Happy Birthday, Ashlyn
Date: Monday, June 13, 2011
Weather: Rain Overnight, Sunny Day, Upper 80’s
Location: Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, South Carolina

We started our day on the beach with a four-mile walk with those who weren’t off playing golf. Mark and I then took off to find a craft store to buy small wooden boxes. Our end-of-the-day activity was a family gathering where we were celebrating the birthday a nephew’s little girl, Ashlyn. She was six today and we thought letting all of the little ones decorate wooden “treasure boxes” with shells from around the world would be fun, and it was. The wooden boxes we bought had hinges, so the kids glued shells on the tops of the boxes and then filled them with a treasure-trove of shells. We had a nice barbecue together and then headed back to the condo on the beach where the younger generation spent the evening. We are back on Windbird tonight and will be hosting an open house for a few family members tomorrow morning while others are out deep-sea fishing. Tomorrow night we have a Celebration of Life gathering for my brother who died in February of 2010. We were not able to fly home from India for his funeral, so we are dedicating tomorrow night to him and showing the slide show of our trip around the world to the family in his honor.

110613 Day 232 The Carolinas, USA–Family Vacation, Day 3

Day 230, Year 6 Power Squadron Presentation

Day 230, Year 6 Power Squadron Presentation
Date: Saturday, June 11, 2011
Weather: Beautiful Blue Sky Day, Upper 80’s
Location: Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, South Carolina

Tonight we gave the shortened version of our Around the World presentation at a local Power Squadron meeting. Most of the members are motor boaters with a few being sailors, but all seemed to enjoy our presentation. We did ten minutes of narration accompanying still photos outlining the places we visited each year, followed by a twenty-minute video montage of some of the highlights. It was great fun to present and meet the people. The next presentation will be for family on Tuesday night. And speaking of family, they did start arriving today. Tomorrow morning we’ll meet on the beach for an early morning walk and then let the fun begin.

110611 Day 230 The Carolinas, USA–Family Vacation, Day 1

Day 229, Year 6 Back to Windbird

Day 229, Year 6 Back to Windbird
Date: Friday, June 10, 2011
Weather: Sunny, Upper 80’s
Location: Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, South Carolina

Today Mark worked on putting together a 15-minute video montage of some of the highlights of the Voyage of Windbird-huge waves in the Atlantic at the start of our voyage, Kuna Indians in Panama dancing to pan pipe music, going through the Panama Canal, sailing with dolphins playing in our bow wake, Galapagos tortoises, dancing through the South Pacific, snorkeling in Chagos, and on and on. We have a very short time to present on Saturday evening at the Power Squadron meeting, so the theme will be highlights rather than the place by place travelogue that we presented last night. Unfortunately, Mark is really not feeling up to par, so working on the presentation is more of a chore than normal. Mark’s temperature is still over 101 degrees and as a result he has very little energy. The antibiotics for the bladder infection don’t seem to be doing the job-at least not yet. We’re hoping for an overnight miracle. I spent my day working a little with Mark but mostly cooking dinner for tonight and getting our things packed to move out of my sister’s house. My sister’s daughter Jennifer and her daughter Jessica and a friend arrived this morning and have reclaimed their guest rooms. So tonight, after having a “make your own” pizza and “make your own” salad dinner, Mark and I headed back to Windbird with a ton of stuff. We are now back aboard and settling in. In only one week, we will be heading north to Cape Cod, so it feels good to be back home so we can start the passage preparations.

Family arrives tomorrow and the fun begins. So we had pretty quickly get the presentation work completed so we can join in the fun.