Back afloat!
Bamboozle
Jamie and Lucy Telfer
Fri 1 May 2009 22:25
After a wonderful winter in the Alps we are back on
the water. Bamboozle seems in great condition after her slightly
less exciting winter on the hard in Annapolis and after a quick touch up job on
the anti-fouling (in my smart new JCB overalls, part of the new global
advertising campaign by my brother Dick and his business Watling JCB!)
we had her back afloat just a few days after our return to the US.
While I checked everything on board was in good working order Lucy headed off to
make an individual attempt at kick starting US consumer spending
while shopping for much of our year's food and drink.
Bamboozle's winter
home Touching
up the paintwork
We have decided to head south this season which
means we need to get moving as soon as we sensibly can as we want to be right
down on the southern side of the Caribbean by the time the hurricane season gets
into full swing in July. After just five days of frantic checking, fixing,
shopping and packing away involving lots of lists, we left the marina at Bert
Jabin's and headed out to anchor in Clements Creek, off the home of our dear
local friends Dick and Donna Littlefield. With a favorable forecast the
next morning (spring can't quite decide if it has arrived here yet) we waved an
emotional farewell to the Littlefields and took off down the Chesapeake Bay
heading towards the ocean again. "The Bay" is however a very big bay and
it took us three long day sails to get down the 140 nautical miles to Norfolk,
Virginia and the entrance to the Chesapeake.
Many of the smaller yachts travelling south
towards the Caribbean head down the intra-coastal waterway to Florida but our
mast is a bit too tall for some of the bridges and our keel a little to deep for
some of the channels so the best route for us to get south
is actually to swing out across the Gulf Stream which flows
strongly north-east along the coast. This will take us right out into
the Atlantic so we have decided to push just a little further and visit Bermuda
about 650 miles out from here. By doing this we will
avoid trying to sail straight into several knots of current and hopefully
pick up more favorable winds for some of the trip but first we need a
decent forecast to set off with, so I am writing this while we sit in Hampton
Roads, a small colonial town, just across the channel from the massive
naval dockyards that dominate Norfolk. We are hoping to clear customs and
get away sometime early next week but now is when it pays not to be
impatient and we will wait until the cold front due this weekend has moved away
before we haul our anchor out of the sticky American mud for the last
time.
Waving farewell to the Littlefields in Clements Creek,
Annapolis.