Brunelle is ready to head to Florida - - - all the way around to the west coast - - - to hang out in Ft. Myers we hope.

It's that time AGAIN!  We're ready to head off on another Brunelle adventure.  Quick update... we're up to 8 grandchildren now.  Danny and Natasha had a beautiful little girl in August.  We flew out to San Diego in September to meet her. Everyone out there is doing great.  We had recent visits with all the girl grandkids. Julie, Michael and their three girls, Alice, Grace and Clare sailed with us two weekends ago, then last weekend Kath and Ryan dropped Zoe and Kinsey off with us while they flew to Florida for Ryan's grandmother's funeral.  We haven't been able to connect with Sam and Jess and their sons Ben and Oliver...as "O" has been too busy with trips to the ER.  First for swallowing a quarter and then for 6 stitches in his chin.  Boys will be boys!!  Everyone is fine now but Jess is sure she is going to find a gray hair any day now.

We are sitting here in our slip at Lippincott Marina, Grasonville, MD loaded and ready to go. We've spent the last couple of weeks preparing, which included retro-fitting an enclosure for our cockpit generously donated by Andiamo's crew, John and Betty McElderry.  Dan built an ingenious framework system to make it work for our boat and I've been doing a bit of sewing to do the rest of the fitting.  It looks GREAT and we aren't worried about the forecast that predicts a big cold front arriving tomorrow...just as we head off.

This is what the enclosure looks like from the outside.

This is the view from the inside, facing aft.

As I headed off this evening for one last trip for....what....but of course,  last minute PROVISIONING!  I took this shot out the car window.   Fall sunsets are the greatest....even if they seem to show the edge of the cold front headed our way.  

Tomorrow we head SOUTH.  ~~~_/)~~~M&D

June cruise on the Chesapeake

 “Cruise North” June 1-9, 2013

       The 2013 Cruise North started SOUTH of the Bay Bridge but north of Drum Point on the Wye River! Eight boats gathered on Saturday, June 1^st in the lee of Wye Island for an evening of feasting and fables. There were two rafts of three boats and two singletons. Raft #1: Resolve, Mike Vaccaro and Debbie Smith; Brunelle, Dan and Martha Bliss; Escapade, Jon and Marilyn Van Tassell. Raft#2: Andiamo, John and Betty McElderry; Prego, Mike and Marie Yates; Bay Wind, George and Lisa Thuman. Ragtime, Gerry and Jeanne Helldorfer, and Valinor, Jim Mosher anchored by themselves.

      Everyone gathered on Brunelle for a feast of heavy hors d'oeuvres and eventually spread across the three rafted boats as serious discussions developed. The weather was delightful in spite of earlier forecasts to the contrary.

Drum Point Raft-up, June 1st

   Belle, John and Betty's dog, shows Dory, Dan and Martha's new crewmate, what a beach is for.

      Bay Wind and Escapade were planning to leave late morning and opted not to go on a dinghy exploration adventure. Andiamo also had to head home but opted to join the dinghies from Brunelle and Resolve in a trip to Wye Landing. Marie and Mike Yates joined us too. Mike and Debbie turned around at the bridge that crosses over to Wye Island(their 6 horse couldn't keep up) and the other two dinghies continued on to give the two dogs a chance to run at Wye Landing. The dinghies didn't get back until 10:30 and found Bay Wind and Escapade ready to leave. Weather and the tide had George a bit worried. Andiamo joined them---leaving before Bloody Mary's on Brunelle. The remaining 5 boats relaxed and watched the storms brewing to the west, wondering if they would it while we all were aboard Ragtime for a sumptuous feast prepared by Jeanne. Sure enough the storm blew in 10 minutes before dinner, but with 4 guys working, they put Ragtime's enclosure on in record time and the diners stayed dry! All was quiet and clear when we headed back to our own boats (no rafting tonight.)

      Monday meant Ragtime had to leave us---grandchild's graduation. The four remaining boats headed out the Wye River and into the Miles River. We didn't have enough wind to sail, so we motored past St. Michael's and around the bend in the river to anchor in Hunting Creek. The weather reports were benign so all four, Brunelle, Resolve, Prego and Valinor rafted. Tonight was Marie's turn to cook. (We realized there would be four nights at anchor and four boats along for all or part of the week, so we assigned each boat one dinner, Valinor had the assignment to provide desserts. Everyone agreed it was a great plan---and very easy on the cooks!) It goes without saying that Marie's dinner was fabulous... and so were Jim's desserts!

Hunting Creek, off the Miles River was a lovely quiet anchorage.

     We had arranged to take two slips at the CBMM in St. Michael's because we wanted to attend the free concert given by the Naval Academy's Commandant's Quartet. We had heavy snacks aboard Brunelle before taking our lawn chairs and cushions to join the crowd on the Museum lawn for the jazz concert. The St. Michael's Fire Department was selling food and Rosie's bar supplied drinks. It was a beautiful evening and we all enjoyed the music. Valinor was up and gone before 6 am the next morning.

 Clockwise from the top: Mike, Marie, Jim, Mike, Debbie, Martha(w/ Dory) and Dan.; Dory was the belle of the ball, two anchored out, two dockside, Dan's shot from the top of the lighthouse 

and the Quartet in the center.

     Our longest day was Wednesday. As we headed across the bay in a flat calm, we realized we couldn't keep up with Resolve and Prego. We stopped mid-bay and Dan dove down to check the prop. It was covered with “bumpy stuff” which he proceeded to scrape off in successive dives. After about twenty minutes, we were up and running again, making 2 more knots than before! We all missed our old hangout for the Icebreaker, so we anchored in Harness Creek for the night. Prego called ou Commodoress and invited Diane and Richard out for cocktails. It was great to catch up with them.  Debbie's turn to cook tonight and she wasn't to be outdone by the previous dinners, so we had another delicious meal.

Resolve hosted everyone in Harness Creek.  Girls chatted: Martha, Diane, Debbie & Marie, while the guys BSed: Mike Y., Richard, Mike V. and Dan

     FINALLY on Thursday, we got a chance to sail. We knew the weather was forecast to turn ugly late in the day and tropical storm“Andrea” was going to bring even worse stuff on Friday, so we headed for Brunelle's home marina, Lippincott. Dan arranged for Resolve and Prego to have a slip and Brunelle slipped into her own slip. The original plan had been to be up the Chester at Lankford Bay Marina with a chance for dinner ashore, but instead we headed to one of Grasonville's best---The Jetty for our dinner ashore.

     Friday was as predicted---rain, rain and more rain, accompanied by wind. The girls headed to the Queenstown Outlet Mall while the guys regrouped and relaxed. The girls returned in time to let the guys hit West Marine for their “fix”. Dinner was aboard Brunelle, and not bad if I do say so myself.

Weather forecasts were lousy for Saturday, but CCYC sailors are not to be discouraged and several still planned to join the end of our adventure in Shaw Bay: Raft #1: Brunelle, Dan & Martha Bliss; Rhiannon, Al & Vicky Lohman; Resolve, Mike Vaccaro & Debbie Smith; Raft#2: Prego, Mike & Marie Yates; Sea Cara, Mario Taisch & Lori Burkhart; Refuse, Lewis & Cindy Diana.

Andiamo, John and Betty McElderry and Southern Pilot, Ed & Connie Dooley anchored by themselves.

Luckily the weathermen were wrong and it was a beautiful evening. We gathered aboard Brunelle again for more luscious fare. All in all a great week on the Bay.

We called this the Italian Raft: Prego, Sea Cara and Refuge.

Martha blew her conch horn as the sun set on a wonderful week on the Bay.

~~~_/)~~~Martha & Dan and CCYC

The Dooleys took a picture of us as we were anchored off of Mermaid Reef just outside of Marsh Harbor.

    HOME AGAIN, but I thought I'd do a brief wrap-up.  Thursday was blustery----big surprise!  We had to vacate the boat by 10 am. We had bags packed, linens gathered for the staff, extra food stuffs arranged for easy pick-up by 8:30.  Dan decided to email Ed and Connie to let them know we had to leave the boat by 10, that we had food left over and they were welcome to any of it.  ....WELL, we have two emails "labelled" Ed, and Dan picked the wrong one.   Instead of writing Ed and Connie, he wrote to our next door neighbors back in Spring Grove, Ed and Karen Smith.  Ed (Smith) responded with  a slightly confused tone that he and Karen had to work today and probably couldn't get over this morning---were we going away for a while??  We didn't realize the erroneous addressee until we got home Thursday night. We all had a good laugh about it.

Dan, in street clothes shifting bags ashore (again taken by Dooleys)

      Ed and Connie showed up at our dock at 10:00 while we in the middle of our debriefing by one of the Moorings staff.  As soon as the debriefing was over, they came aboard and did find a few things they felt were worth retrieving.  After all the luggage was off the boat, Ed and Connie joined us at Curly Tails for a departure Bloody Mary (thanks, Ed!).  As we chatted, they mentioned their friends who had departed the day before we arrived had the same  trouble getting through the Nassau airport with 2+ hours between flights and had the same return schedule we had...with only 1 hour and 10 minutes to make the change (including immigration and customs) in Nassau.  They chickened out and switched their Bahamas Air flight to 7:25am and had plenty of time in Nassau. ,,,a little late for us to do likewise, so we hoped for the best.
     Wouldn't you know it, the Bahamas Air flight to Nassau was late!  That cut our transfer time to less than 40 minutes.  But with the great help from both Bahamas Air and AirTran ground staff we made the transfer with 3 minutes to spare!!  They rushed us through check-in, immigration, customs and security like we were VIPs.  Easy flight home and luckily all the snow we had heard about on Wednesday was nonexistent by the time we arrived in BWI.  Our final thoughts---if you have to charted, the Moorings is the way to go, but having your own boat is WAY better.  Next year......  ~~~_/)~~~ M&D, K&P

To see all (and too many) of our pictures go to http://sailbrunelle.smugmug.com/Sailbrunelle-Blog-Photos/2013-Bahamas-Charter.

     We awoke to clear skies, and calm seas and wondered why we had come back to base early, but here we were.  We had a leisurely breakfast and grabbed a cab to the ferry dock to catch the 10:30 ferry from Marsh Harbour to Hope Town on Elbow Cay.  The Albury Ferry, Donnie VII (all their  boats are named Donnie --- from #I to #XIII) headed out in a slightly stronger wind than we had experienced in the early morning.

Upper left is the view as we left the ferry dock in Marsh Harour, clockwise, the Hope Town Sailing Club launch had nice lines; ferry trip home was a lot rougher, crowded mooring field in Hope Town Harbour, including a lovely classic Abaco catboat that seemed to be hogging a cruising boat's mooring!; Cap't. Jacks restaurant (all "buttoned up" as we headed out the harbor, one of the Donnie ferry boats; and center the fearsome foursome having a lovely lunch on the deck/dock at Captain Jacks.

      We walked around town both before and after lunch and we were VERY aware of how the wind continued to build. We kept commenting that we were very happy to let "Donnie" to do the driving --- not us. Hopetown is a quaint and charming as it gets. The wind may have been strong, but so was the sunlight and we enjoyed marveling at the riot of color that abounds in the flora and also the architecture.

Several of these places are either commercial or private homes, but a joy to photograph.  I was puzzled by the bottom right that is a dive shop, someone must be dyslexic because the Dive Shop has code flags that say D-E-V-I!

Most of these homes are rentals, and each has a name and character all it's own.

No trip to Hope Town would be compete without a few shots of their famous lighthouse.  It is one of the few remaining manually operated lighthouses left in the world.  We captured its charm from many angles, but my favorite is the one (lower right) that Dan took as we were heading back to Marsh Harour,  The spray from the speedy ferry gives it an impressionistic air.  Zoomed in you can see the spray flying, causing it to look a bit like rain.

     One whimsical home had a wonderful Lizard Lodge in their front yard.  It came complete with a VW bug, seaplane, basketball hoop, sailboat, pirate cannon  wrought iron glider, lighthouse, bird house and much more.  We managed to get a few pictures of  "Old Mr. Curly Tail" but he better watch out---the neighborhood is going to the crabs!

      Last but not least, just a few miscellaneous artsy shots.

Upper left shows the spot we found last trip, but from the water --- we didn't realize it was the range for coming into the harbor (note the two red triangles).  The beach is on the Atlantic side, facing north.   With a west wind, we saw people snorkeling along the reefs in the calm(ish) waters.  

 What a wonderful day! We caught the 3 o'clock ferry and pounded our way back to Marsh Harbour to work on cleaning out our larder with our last dinner aboard. It turned out to be just as good as all the meals we had aboard! Tomorrow we will attempt to head to Nassau and then BWI, but the current weather reports have us working on contingency plans in case we get "stuck" in Nassau due to stormy weather back home. We'll see. ~~~_/)~~~M&D, K&P

        Sailing in Bahamas wouldn't be complete for us without a picture of a shadow of the main reflected off the bottom (through clear water.)  Here it is.  AND....if you look really closely, you can see the faint shadow of the headstay!

Actually I can't see the headstay at this point, but I can see a grassy bottom.  Hooray for a beautiful sunny calm day.

    It was, as predicted, a beautiful day today. However, we went from too much wind to next to none. We left Man-O-Way Cay at 9:30 am and headed out into the Sea of Abaco. We raised the main, but not our hopes, in an attempt to sail. After about half an hour of drifting we decided to make our own wind and motorsailed across to Mermaid Reef, which is right outside the bight at Marsh Harbour. We dropped the hook at 11:00 and prepared for our first venture underwater this trip. The gear, provided by the Moorings was really quite good. Masks didn't leak and the flippers were comfortable and efficient. We were close enough to the reef to swim, but opted to take the dinghy closer. Kate is not a fan of cold water, so she remained aboard Second Treasure Just as we were about to head off, the crew of a catamaran, Felix the Cat, came by to ask if we knew where to go. They had just finished snorkeling and had a baggie of crackers left over from their adventure and offered them to us. They turned out to be quite a hit with the Sergeant Majors. Dan is almost as colorful as they are!

Mermaids Reef was just a colorful as the last time we were there even with the water being a little murky after all the high winds for the last 5 days.  Several different types of Parrot Fish, the skinny Ballyho and the everpresent grunts and sergeant majors.

         We had two different visitors right after we got out of the water. First a pair of porpoises passed right by us on their way into the harbor. We were treated to another visit from them while we took a sunset cruise once we had returned to the dock at the Moorings. The second visitors were Ed and Connie Dooley on their fast trawler. They were out for a ride with dock neighbors and we chatted and took pictures of their new boat. Dan also got a great shot of them as they returned from their trip to Hope Town. They also joined us for our sunset cruise this evening.

Dan caught two porpoises as they passed us out by the reef(upper left) and I had my smaller camera and got a few shots as we cruised around the harbor in our dinghy. The one, upper right, had a chunk missing from his dorsal fin.

Southern Pilot is an Island Pilot 435 and quite sleek and quite fast.  The sunset across the harbor was lovely and was greeted by a chorus of conch horns. Sadly mine is home --- too heavy to fly with!

Tomorrow brings another front with winds up to 30 knots, so we may opt to take an island ferry over to Hope Town for a visit. ~~~_/)~~~M&D, K&P

Phil hemming while we were hawing!  Note the dainty thread cutter on the table.

Less talk and more pix.  First off, I forgot to post the above picture yesterday.  Phil didn't think he'd be wearing long pants, but when he put them on they were too long.  A man of many talents!

     Today dawned clear and bright, but still mighty cool.  We decided to stay here a Man-O-War Marina for another day rather that fight with the problems entering either Hope Town or Little Harbor (has to be done - both entering and leaving - on a rising tide or at high tide).  We took an early dinghy ride to check out both the north and south harbors here.  It was necessary to have at least three layers on, but the sights were worth it.  Wind was less than yesterday, but still brisk.

Scenes from the morning ride. Upper right shows our stern (with the yellow horseshoe) nestled between two behemoths.

This being a dry island, we made Bloody Mary's and headed up the the "Dock & Dine" at the head of our dock for a leisurely lunch. Once back aboard we couldn't decide between napping or taking a golf cart tour. Luckily the Cruise Dictator decided for us and we rented a "buggy" for three hours. I didn't think we could find enough to see for three hours, but was pleasantly wrong. We took the Queen's Highway (which is just two golf carts wide at it's widest and often was just a sandy track) all the way to the north end of the island and were so glad of sun and scenery that three cameras were clicking A LOT.

 

Sea scenes from our travels.  Upper right show the narrowest point on the island. It looks like a very high tide might wash right over the "highway".  The middle shot is from the southern end - looking out toward Elbow Cay.  The beaches and waters were beautiful. 

The scenery shoreside was also interesting. We liked the developments and proposed developments of the northern end of the island best.

The whimsical fish gates were fun and the drive through a hedgerow picturesque.

      Tomorrow promises to be a short reprieve between two large and fast moving cold fronts, so we hope to sail about in the Sea of Abaco and maybe even snorkel on Mermaids Reef before heading back to Marsh Harbour before the next blast hits. ~~~_/)~~~M&D, K&P

Sunday...a day of rest...NOT.  We woke up ---no we got up, I'm not sure anyone slept much after a VERY WINDY, VERY ROLLY night.  The first sight was someone less fortunate than we.

This Gulfstar had opted to save the $20 mooring fee and anchored.....not a good idea.  Luckily as we left around 9:45 (half tide) he was almost vertical and had a strong long anchor line to windward.  We hope he got off!

The seven mile ride from Great Guana Cay to Man-O-War Cay was dead downwind and we opted to go with "bare poles" and made good time through windy but not too rough seas. There were no moorings available in the harbor, so we took a berth at the Marina. Thank goodness the slip was an upwind one, I wasn't interested in testing the strength of our reverse to try to stop on a dime downwind in 25+ knots of wind! We are neatly tucked in between two very "tall" vessels and glad of it. The wind if anything is stronger tonight. We tend to heel over (here in the slip) when a puff comes along!. We found that everything shuts down on Sunday on Man-O-War Cay, so we had lunch aboard and took a walk around the town. What a change from our last two trips which had coincided with "Sojer Days", a heritage celebration which brought out all sorts of arts, crafts and foods along with lots of people. This time as we walked the deserted streets the few people we saw puttered by in their golf carts...almost everyone of them had small dogs with them---all wearing sweaters!

One thing we were very excited about (notice the SHADOW of Dan's thumbs up) on our walk around town, the sun came out!  Not that we were able to shed any of our 4 layers, but we enjoyed our walk, especially one home with a clever artistic occupant.  We loved all their sculptures.

A yummy dinner aboard---The Moorings did a good job of provisioning us---and we're ready for a slightly quieter, or at least less rolly night. ~~~_/)~~~M&D, K&P