Day 361, Year 7: The Time Has Come…
Date: Saturday, November 3, 2012
Weather: Beautiful Day, Temp in the 50’s, Windy
Location: Great Harbor, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
The time has come to sail south. We spent the day with Heather, Jed, Sam, Jonah, and Oliver, completed our shopping, and are prepared to leave around 7 am or sooner. Tonight Daylight Time ends and we get to set our clocks back and get an extra hour of sleep. Once we leave, we will go as fast as we can to beat the ugly weather the next low pressure system will be sending up the east coast. It takes 48 hours to get to Cape May, New Jersey, where we will duck into the Delaware Bay and travel through the C&D Canal to Chesapeake City. Ideally we would like to get there by Tuesday night, spend the night, and then travel on to the Annapolis area the next day. Chesapeake City is expecting snow, yes, I said snow, on Wednesday. Can’t wait for that!
Today was such a beautiful day and we enjoyed going to see Sam play soccer early. We then went out to lunch with Heather and gang before going back to her house to finish cleaning up some of our things in the basement. When we left, we took Sam with us (Jonah was napping), did our grocery shopping, and got back to the boat in time for a 4:30 radio connection with Herb on South Bound II. We told him we were planning to leave in the AM and he agreed that we should have two good days to get to Cape May, New Jersey where we will head into the Delaware Bay and on the Chesapeake. We should be there on Tuesday morning if all goes well. Then on Tuesday night and Wednesday, the weather goes bonkers with high winds and cold temperatures all along the eastern seaboard. By ducking inland, we will miss the high winds, but we will still get the cold weather. Burr!
Heather, Jed, Jonah, and Oliver joined Sam, Mark and I on Windbird tonight for dinner. It was a bit chilly as we have no heat out here on the mooring and the wind was blowing strong. Yet it was a good to have them on Windbird for the final farewell. Mark and I have been with the boys almost every day for the past 16 months and it is going to be hard on all of us to be separated. I fixed their favorite meal, salmon cakes, which is a tradition in my family. And we had strawberry shortcake with whipped cream for dessert. That is a Sam and Jonah tradition. Sam doesn’t eat the strawberries, but he loves the shortcake and whipped cream. He got very sad when we talked about leaving in the morning as he is old enough to understand what it means. But we will be flying back here at the end of December and Heather and Jed and thinking about coming to the Bahamas in February. Then we’ll be back here in April. We will miss seeing Ollie take his first steps and speak his first words, but we’ll use Skype video to fill in the gaps and keep connected. I think the time will pass quickly for all of us. We are looking forward to a warmer winter than New England provides, but we are certainly looking forward to returning here to be with the kids in early spring. Heather and Jed, we want to thank you for allowing us move in and out of your lives. We love you so much and are going to miss those three beautiful little boys.
When we talked with Herb on the radio this afternoon he told us that propagation has been really terrible. That means that it might be difficult to send and receive email via the HAM radio. So if there is no log for the next two days, don’t panic. If we can’t get out, we’ll send something as soon as we get close enough to land to have a cell signal on our phone. It is our internet hotspot so we don’t have to wait until we are plugged in on land. There are many of you who read our logs and we want you to know how much your friendship ‘through the air’ means to us. Thank you for being there. This will be the last log of Year 7 of the Voyage (and beyond) of Windbird. Sailing south tomorrow is the beginning of a new year of adventures.
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| 121103 Cape Cod 165 – Saying Goodbye to HJJS&O |
