We’ve Moved

Posted on 22 February 2007 by Park

As you may have guessed from the picture, we’re not in Brunswick anymore. In fact, we’re not anywhere near it. We’ve settled in a small town called Ashland in southern Oregon. Generally the weather here is lovely, with mild winters punctuated by a little snow here and there, a wonderful spring, then long hot, dry summers followed by a delicious autumn. But this winter has been as interesting here as it has elsewhere. Last weekend we were enjoying the 60 degree weather; today we are cleaning up after over 6 inches of snow. This is the second major snow storm this winter, in a place that hardly ever gets enough snow to get excited about.

In addition to the picture here, there are a few more of the valley in the archives. Take a look if you have a few minutes. For those of you planning on visiting us in the next couple of weeks, we really hope that this all melts – at least here in the valley – before you get here.

We still have Om and are planning on getting back to here for a visit this spring. Her long term fate is still up in the air and we do not have any long range cruising planned at this point. The house has been a major project for the past few months and Park has been working non-stop, but things are starting to come together now. We’ll have some pictures posted real soon now, really.

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Spring

Posted on 15 April 2006 by Park

We’ve been enjoying the wonderful weather here in southern Georgia. Everything is blooming and the weather is consistently warm and dry. Almost makes us forget what it will be like in a couple of months.

We have recovered from our 7000 mile road trip to the west coast this winter and Marina has a fresh coat of varnish on the railings. She’s starting on the doors and we should be looking pretty good by the time we leave the dock. I’ve been slaving away trying to build up the kitty so that we can take off for the summer.

We’ve been watching our friends leave over the past couple of weeks and it’s getting pretty quiet around the marina. Most are heading north but a few have taken off for the Bahamas or southern Florida for a couple of months. While we had planned on heading north before now Nick’s decision to get married has altered our plans a bit. We’re still looking forward to catching up with some of them later this year.

We’re flying out to Oregon April 25th for the festivities. The ceremony is on May 1 outside Cave Junction, OR at the Out ‘n About Treesort. We’re looking forward to spending a couple of nights in a treehouse as well as meeting Tilke’s family. We’ve been keeping an eye on the weather there as it has been a particularly wet and cool winter. It looks like it’s going to warm up a bit just in time for our arrival.

Once we return to Om I’ll will be finishing up some income-producing projects before starting in on a couple of minor boat improvements. We are hoping to set off northward before the middle of May. Our first stop will be in the Chesepeake for a little poking around, but the goal is still to head much further north for the summer. We still haven’t decided which way we’ll head once we get to NYC, but all the talk of a possible New England hurricane has us leaning towards the Hudson River and Great Lakes.

If you’ve peeked at the picture gallery recently you have noticed that it’s way out of date. I’m hoping to get some of our pictures from the Nova Scotia trip online in the next few days, but I need to get some real work done first.

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Not Bahamas Bound

Posted on 22 December 2005 by Park

Our New Year’s resolution is not to disclose our plans more than 24 hours in advance. While we do plan ahead, it seems that something always comes along to modify our plans. In this case it was a decision to head north next spring. It’s complicated.

There is a fundamental problem in going to the Bahamas: the Gulf Stream. It tends to be very unforgiving in the winter. Had we been able to get away right after Thanksgiving (or, better yet, at the beginning of November) we would have had a chance of getting over to the Bahamas in a reasonable amount of time. Last we heard (12/16), nobody had made the crossing in the last three weeks. I think there was a window earlier this week, but I’m not sure. In the winter, it can take weeks just to be able to get from Florida to the Bahamas in a small (under 60 feet) boat. And it can take weeks to get back. We want to be able to leave Georgia and head north in mid to late March. It takes us a week to get from the crossing point to Brunswick. That means we do not want to be in the Bahamas more than seven weeks at this point. Given that it could take a few weeks to get there and a few weeks to get back, it didn’t seem to make much sense to even try at this point.

Plan B is to head south into Florida and head over to the west coast: better weather, less wind, fewer people, and no problem getting there. We will head back north at the beginning of March, spend a couple of weeks in Brunswick, and then head north for the summer. How far north? Well, a long way. We plan on spending a few weeks in the Chesepeake Bay and then heading to NYC. From there it’s either up the Hudson to the Great Lakes or east to Maine.

We’ll announce that decision the day before we head out of New York. We’ve learned our lesson.

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Bahamas Bound

Posted on 12 November 2005 by Park

After a wonderful five weeks, we finally left Nova Scotia toward the end of September. We spent a few days in Maine to catch up on a few things, made a three day stop in Great Barrington, MA to help Nick celebrate his 21st birthday and then headed back to the boat. Since we’ve been back Park has been working seven days a week on consulting projects. Things are finally starting to settle down a bit on that front and we have decided to head south for the winter. The wireless coverage in the Abacos, where we were two years ago, is excellent and will provide an opportunity to enjoy the better weather and lovely surroundings while still allowing Park to keep up with client commitments. We are looking forward to getting away from Brunswick and out into the world again.

We’ll be headed out to California over Thanksgiving week, hopefully with a side trip to Utah. After we get back there will be a busy couple of weeks getting the boat ready for a prolonged journey and then we should be off. We hope to get over to the Abacos before Christmas and stay until the spring, splitting our time between Manjack Cay and Hope Town on Elbow Cay.

With Nick’s departure from Simon’s Rock we lost our web site hosting so the site has been moved to a commercial hosting service. Along with that move came an update in some of the software that we use to manage the site, most noticeably the photo gallery software. There were a few glitches in the conversion process but it looks like most everything is stable now. If you notice anything which is not working please let Park or Marina know.

Now that the new software is in place we need to find some time to get the pictures of the Nova Scotia trip up!

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