Sailing Baby Blue

Since Penny is thoroughly enjoying her new life in Galway, NY, you will have to settle for an Ashley-Cam tour of our vessel. Here for your entertainment are three and a half minutes of appropriately wobbly footage of our new boat and some awesome narration.

  Ship's Log?? 7/16/14 2:10am   We were awakened by a sprinkling of rain increasing by the second into a downpour, accompanied by the loud crash of thunder and flash of lightning.   Unlike when we were at home, I can't imagine ever sleeping through an electrical storm. It seemed to have flown up on us so suddenly, and to be hovering directly above   as if God were about to smite us. The thunder sounded like it was coming from just above our mast and the lightning flashes were bright enough to hurt my eyes.     I wondered aloud what would happen if we were hit by lightning, which would seem quite likely had we not been surrounded by fifty other lightning rods on the water. I asked Jon if he had noticed whether or not we had some sort of grounding mechanism installed, and in typical Jon fashion he just smiled and said, "hopefully." I thought about the likelihood that someday we will be all alone on the water in the middle of a storm like this, a...

After two lessons and some practice picking up a mooring ball and docking the boat under power, we felt brave enough yesterday to raise the sails and take this beast out of its burrow. It went quite well. Only four things in the cabin went flying from their perches, and only one to its doom.   We didn't hit any rocks, lobster pots, or other potential hazards, and we both felt pretty comfortable. I guess it would be more accurate to say, Jon felt very comfortable sailing the boat. I felt mostly comfortable with my few practiced tasks but not so much steering under sail; that triumphant day has not yet arrived. But that is why we're getting joyous, wonderful, worth-every-penny lessons. We haven't been sleeping remarkably well because of the aforementioned rock and roll harbor. As a result I've been feeling a little bit like a zombie most days, but last night we both slept soundly through the night. In addition to the near constant side-to-side motion, the othe...

It doesn't seem as though only five days have passed since we moved onto the boat. The first two days were a little rough for both of us getting used to the rock and roll motion that prevails in our harbor, but now we're seasickness-free and it's the land that seems to move when we're walking around town. With the exception of my sewing machine and a pair of shoes or two, all of our belongings are now on board, and a few bags and boxes of odds and ends that came with the boat have been removed to make more room. We went through every nook and cranny to figure out where spare parts and tools were hiding, and then put most everything back along with our own additions. We're still working on making the best use of our limited space to make sure the important things we'll need regularly are within reach, and that everything stays put when we want to move the boat. It looked impossible at first but slowly our pile of stuff is disappearing into lockers and oth...

  It's 4:45am and I am awake watching the sunrise from aboard Reprise in Rockport Harbor, ME, which is a testament to just how excited I am to be here. Some first impressions of our first night on the boat: This is just as amazing as I hoped it would be. It is also just as daunting as I feared. Did I just volunteer to ride on the spinning teacups for a length of time not measured in minutes? I wouldn't say that I was gently rocked to sleep by the waves last night. There are at least two mosquitos here. There are also only about two things on this boat that I know how to work, out of infinity. Yep, it can get very foggy here indeed. Despite the relatively ample space on our boat, I may spend the next few months (years?) covered in bruises from running into things. We might have brought too much stuff. We did already manage to bring three baby boat loads of it onto the mothership without getting ourselves or anything...