Home again, home again! Giggity gig!
Tuesday, June 21, 2021
Overall Reflections
(Mike) We won’t move back into our house in Sudbury until the 1st of August but we are back in our homeport of East Greenwich and that effectively marks the end of this particular adventure. It didn’t work out the way we initially envisaged, but we had a good time nonetheless. Our desire to travel to multiple countries in the Caribbean just became too daunting with the Covid Pandemic. In 2017-8 we visited twelve different countries and found that under normal conditions you have to clear in and out of immigration, customs and port authority at almost every island. However, during the Covid pandemic the prospect of different sets of rules, restrictions and testing for each country, with the real possibility that it could all change at a moments notice, was too much for us to contemplate. We heard a few stories of boaters having good experiences travelling abroad during the pandemic, but also many stories of cruisers trapped on their boats unable to go ashore or denied access and asked to leave the country regardless of impending bad weather. Overall, it still feels like the right decision that we chose to stay in the USA and we do appreciate that our experience of living through the pandemic was so much easier than for the vast majority of people. We still had a lot of fun, travelled about 4000 nautical miles and experienced some real adventures, but the sense of accomplishment seems somewhat lacking compared to our previous trips.
(Gloria) Overall, I would have to say that it was a different trip from previous years. Avoiding eating in restaurants made some difference. Keeping our distance from other boaters made a big difference. Even a true introvert, such as myself, does find that meeting new people and sharing tales of boating experiences is part of the fun. We feel delighted that we managed to avoid getting Covid-19. Initially, we believed that we would have to return to Massachusetts to get the vaccine, so we were thrilled to be able to get vaccinated in Florida. We have Tasha to thank for pushing us to explore that option and as it turned out we found the system in Florida to be very well organized and helpful.
What we liked best
(Gloria) We really enjoyed visiting Cumberland Island. An undeveloped portion of the coastline is a pretty rare thing and a real gem. Key West, by contrast is well developed, but we had a wonderful time there. It was a great idea to make an advanced booking for a slip at the town marina for the month of February. It was an excellent location at a very good rate. I do think that we sought out the quieter places there—the state park, the botanical garden, the beaches and even the cemetery. But it was fun to walk around looking at the houses and the gorgeous gardens. The Butterfly garden was so special we had to go twice! One of the impacts of the pandemic was the absence of cruise ships in Key West, greatly reducing the number of people in town and enhancing the experience. In an effort to stay positive (not my natural inclination), I will just say that Miami was a real low point.
(Mike) Meeting up with family and friends is always one of the most enjoyable aspects of cruising and this seemed all the more precious because of the challenges of Covid isolation. It was terrific that some of our family and friends were able to join us for sections of our journey and that we were able to catch up with others along the way. We went to so many beautiful places, some of which we had been to before and were keen to revisit, but others that were completely new to us. Perhaps the single most exciting place we visited was the Dry Tortugas, a target destination for many years. What a wild and wonderful place this is. On the way south we skipped Georgia altogether and spent more time in South Carolina, which was fun. On the way back we reversed that and spent a couple of weeks in Georgia that I really enjoyed. I thought Cumberland Island, St Catherine’s Island and Daufuskie Island were the highlights here. I agree with Gloria’s comments about Key West. That was a very relaxing and enjoyable part of our trip, with Tasha and MacKenzie’s visit being the best part. The offshore passages are often memorable, but not always in a good way! I personally thought the passage off the coast of South Carolina when we saw the SpaceX rocket was exceptional, never to be forgotten. To build on Gloria’s comments about Miami I would say it has a great skyline, but in all our years of sailing we have never been anywhere we felt less welcome. It was really difficult to find any way to get ashore for more than half an hour.
Things that went well (Gloria and Mike)
*Docking maneuvers mostly went pretty smoothly (Although we can’t say we ever feel calm as we approach a dock). We did end up donating our gas grill to the seabed in Key West harbor during a docking snafu that we may not have mentioned previously! We messed up the reversing into the slip and decided to pull forward for another go, but struggled to free one of the lines we had managed to attach to a piling and got blown towards the neighboring boat. Our gas grill, mounted in a fishing rod holder near the stern, clipped the bow roller of the powerboat and flipped out into the harbor and sank!
*With a few exceptions discussed below, we had very few issues with the boat. Fuel flow to the engine was only a problem on one occasion when we were crossing the shipping lanes coming into Norfolk. Overall, we feel we have gotten on top of the fuel contamination issues that caused us so much grief on our previous trip. Let’s hope having written that is not a jinx.
*Water, propane, and provisioning seemed to work out really well, perhaps because we stayed in the US.
Things that might have gone better (Gloria and Mike)
*The functioning of the heads and the holding tank monitor! (We’ve already said WAY too much about that.)
*The dinghy! (Another topic that has been extensively covered.) At least the Dumb Dog lasted the trip, although we might be shopping for a replacement next year.
*We still have some concerns about the “haloing” (loss of anti-fouling paint) near metal fittings on the hull, although we hope this was a one-off problem caused by electrical problems on a dock. We also have some anti-fouling blistering that we will need to resolve over the winter.
*We had two uncomfortable passages – the sail south from York, Maine to Gloucester, MA was one of the roughest we have encountered. We are still trying to understand how the conditions we experienced matched up to those that were predicted when we have been out in weather that was forecast to be almost as fierce and turned out to be relatively benign. We also had a difficult passage from New York to the Delaware River on the way south when the winds turned against us a little earlier than anticipated and we ended up with a long and unpleasant motor sail into the wind and waves.
*Fishing! We are the worst fishermen in the world. This was very disappointing!
Future Plans
For the next few days we will stay on Cotinga in East Greenwich, then on the first of July we fly out to visit Tasha in Wyoming for three weeks. Shortly after we return we will be moving back into our house in Sudbury.
(Mike) I consider myself retired now, so I am not going to be looking for full time work, but I might be interested in some part time teaching if that were available. It takes some time to get adjusted to living on the boat and similarly I think it will take some time to re-adjust to being back home. I hope to try and get fit again for climbing and squash and I’m contemplating taking up road biking a bit more seriously so that I might be able to join my friends in the UK who are very keen cyclists. I also have ambitions to do some hydroponic gardening! We don’t envisage making any long sailing trips next year, but after that who knows! I like the idea of sailing north up to Nova Scotia and haven’t ruled out the possibility of going back to the Bahamas and the Caribbean. As for taking Cotinga to Europe … I’m not so sure that’s ever going to happen. For me, the offshore passages are a means to an end rather than a delight in themselves. But, never say never …
(Gloria) I would echo Mike’s sentiments about needing to get back to some level of fitness. Hopefully, I will be getting back to swimming either in town or at another location. As a result of sewing projects undertaken on the boat, I have “finishing” to do on a few items. That should re-introduce me to the sewing room—once we manage to move everything back into its normal place. I’d like to get back to some gardening, it’s a bit late to get started in August, so that might have to wait for spring of 2022!
So at this point we will finish our blog, at least for now, until we set out on our next sailing adventure. Writing the blog can take some effort but we are well aware that we are the ones who get most benefit from it and we enjoy going back and revisiting our past adventures. Thanks for reading and for posting your comments, thanks to our guest bloggers and most of all, thanks for all of your support. Be safe, have fun!
“Cotinga Out”
41 39.393 N, 71 26.684 W
One of the things that I will be doing in the coming weeks is reviewing the many photos that I’ve taken. Whilst I have tried to post the best of each day as they were taken there are always some shots that didn’t jump out at the time but are still worth looking at. Hopefully some gems that were missed! Similarly, some photos would benefit from more careful work-up. Here are a few of shots from earlier in our trip that you haven’t seen.
