Getting Close

UPDATE:  – Ginny and I made a car trip to Annapolis Thursday to purchase a new secondary anchor and rode for Wind Dust.  We were advised to check out Bacon Sails in Annapolis and boy we hit the jackpot. Bacon has just about everything cruising sailors need both new and used. We purchased a new Lewmar 66 lb claw anchor with 150 ft of chain along with several other needed items. We highly recommend checking these guys out before you spend the big bucks elsewhere. Anyway, we are now carrying four anchors, 400 ft of chain and 300 ft of rope rode. 

While in Annapolis we went downtown to the water front, did a little shopping and had a nice lunch. What a beautiful town. Max Prop came in Friday so we should be in the water next week. Yeeehaaa! We are planning to move aboard next week and start the process of getting to know Wind Dust from the live aboard point of view. Once we get underway we plan on activating our SPOT to keep track of our progress and it will be added as a link to this page. 

Update: October 10, 2009

Regards from the North:

We closed on “Wind Dust” (Nauticat 44) September 22 and we have been busy getting her ready to go south. As with all boats, there’s always unexpected issues and maintenance items to deal with. From the looks of things, we hope to be underway from Rock Hall, Maryland (across the bay from Baltimore) by the end of first week of November (Burrrrrrr). This will give us a few weeks living aboard and getting used to “Wind Dust” before moving south at a quick leisurely pace. There’s just something wrong with that terminology, isn’t there? Well, considering what happened to us in August, we will take it all day long and be damned happy we are making progress.  We are posting a few new pictures of “Wind Dust” sporting her new bottom job.  Some of the work we are having done before we leave:  new heavy duty paint job on the bottom; new AGM batteries throughout; additional refrigeration added; Max Prop reconditioned; cutlass bearing replaced; stuffing box replaced; generator serviced with the raw water pump, heat exchanger and belts; same drill for the main engine; propane system tested and solenoid replaced; canvas work re-stitched; ground tackle inspected and additional anchors added to the arsenal. Bottom line, a big sucking sound coming from our bank account. Oh well, our friends tell us it’s just money, but to us, it may be back to work sooner than we planned or getting by with little less creature comforts and that’s ok. “The main thing, is to keep the main thing, the main thing”. My dad told me that saying many years ago and as silly as it sounds, there’s a lot of truth to the saying, especially when your to-do list is longer and bigger than the old brain can handle.