Catching up on the past few years

 It's been a while....

so let's re-cap the past 6 years!

So in 2017 a lot happened.  We sold my house, moved to the Northern Neck of Virginia, Carol's daughter got married, my son graduated from College, I (and we) did the Bermuda 1-2 race, I retired, we bought a piece of land to build on...  Pheww, I'm tired just writing all this.

Anyway, over Christmas of 2017, longtime sailing friends that had been paid Captain/Crew on yachts called from New Zealand and said they bought their own boat and wanted us to come sail with them.  Oh, and by the way, this guy we had been crewing for in the Oyster World Rally now has no crew and we recommended you to take our place!  While you can read the entire blog about those 10 months HERE, I'll post a few pics from that trip below.  

So, off to NZ we went.  Spent 7 weeks sailing around with them, took a 10 day Vacay to the South Island, then got on the Oyster 54.  After a short break-in period around the Bay of Islands, it was off to Vanuatu. There we spent 3.5 weeks and even visited Mount Yasur, the active volcano on the island of Tanna.

Then it was off to Australia... we sailed to Mackay and then up the coast and over to Darwin.  We even took a week to tour/campout in the Outback at Ayers Rock/Uluru. 

Next up was Indonesia. There we did some diving and even experienced the aftershocks of an earthquake from 250 miles away.  Little did we know that a few weeks later we would be very near ground zero for more aftershocks!

Carol's 90 y.o. father was in the hospital, so we decided to go home.  After giving notice to our Skipper, her Dad got a pacemaker and said he felt great, and for us to not bother coming home.  We then joined another boat that needed crew, this time, an Oyster 66.  Leaving Indonesia we set sail for Cocos/Keeling island, an atoll that Australia owns in the Indian Ocean.

A lovely place with stunning beaches...until you walk around to the other side where all the trash and plastic washes up. Still, I'd go back in a heartbeat!

Now we had a 14 day/2200+ mile passage to make to Mauritius.  

A week later we had the worst sail of the year; 20 hours/135 miles to the island of Reunion, which is an Overseas Department of France.  Which means, IT'S FRANCE!   Gorgeous beaches, beautiful mountains, even a volcano, but most of all, French food and pastries!

Our week in Reunion, turned into 11 days as our weather window took it's time showing up.  Off to Durban, S. Africa we went, making it into port, just before the offshore weather turned totally crappy.

A week there, then a stunning 96 hour non-stop sail to CapeTown. This was very unusual, in that only about 25% of the time can you make the 850nm in one shot.  There we did some sightseeing that we missed out on in 2011 on our honeymoon, and then took an 8 day safari in Namibia/Botswana/Zimbabwe/Zambia.  

Then it was back to CapeTown and heading for home.

2019: We finished designing our new house and started building.

While it was being built we framed up Dave's 900 sq.ft. shop.

Of course, then COVID hit in Spring of 2020.  Fortunately for us, we had purchased most of the furnishings for the house on Black Friday of 2019 and ordered the rest of the appliances in February. 

Finally in July of 2020 the house was finished. Here are a few pics of the front and back of the house, as well as a view across the water out back.

Then in 2021 it was back to doing the Bermuda 1-2....  or at least attempting to.  We were on our way, and headed down the Delaware Bay, when I noticed the Tachometer didn't reset to ZERO after turning off the engine.  Curious, I bumped the starter, and NOTHING happened.  The engine would not start. Long story short, we got towed back through the C & D canal, sailed back to Baltimore to our old marina, (literally sailing into our old slip) and eventually got the engine fixed.  That led to me being pissed off enough that in October I decided to get a new engine.

That fall I bought two Chesapeake Light Craft kayak kits and spent a few months building kayaks for both of us. Good thing I had plenty of clamps!

For 2022 I had big plans.  HAD being the operative word. I was going to race my boat in the Annapolis/Bermuda Race, fly to Newport, crew in the Newport/Bermuda Race, then race my boat up to Newport in the new single/doublehanded race back. Well...I went skiing in Utah with some sailing buddies and fell and broke my hip.

So much for plans...

Notice the Max Speed in the pic below.  Yeah, that was me...

While I didn't race in the A2B, I did crew for a friend in the N2B. The rest of 2022, was somewhat painful as my hip did not heal completely, necessitating a total hip replacement in December.  Sailing, IE racing was good though. We won the Gov Cup in our class, getting the gun and first place, we won the Stingray Pt regatta in our class, and then I won my class in the Turkey Shoot and came in 3rd overall out of 51 boats!

2023 was a mixed bag. With the new engine in Dianthus we headed to Newport for the Bermuda 1-2. A rough first leg had me finish just out of third in fourth place in class, having been edged out by a boat that finished 9 hours after me.  I was 5th overall though in the final standings of 18 finishers (from the 23 starters). 

Two days into the race, one of my competitors passed me (he should have been way in front of me by then...) and we took pictures of each other.  BLUR, a J111 from Sweden skippered by Peter Gustafsson.

On the double handed leg back, we were soaked by a squall two hours after the start. This leg was even rougher and marked by lots of reefing and shaking out of said reefs. We got our usual good start, hitting the line about 10 seconds after the gun. (For those of you who think that was a lousy start, you have to remember, if you're over early you get hit with a serious time penalty.  It IS a 600+ mile/5 day race)

Here we lead the rest of our class out the "Cut" leaving St. George's.

This video was shot about 2 hours after our start in Bermuda. The forecasted squalls came in as promised!

Carol on the helm already soaked.

The next 3 days were pretty rough, I must have reefed/un-reefed seven or eight times, and that was before we got to the Gulf Stream!  There, we were double reefed, with just a scrap of jib out. By then we had received word that our chief competitor, CORDELIA was 40 miles in front of us.  They had been ahle to sail a better angle right from the start and kept more sail up. There was however,  a dead spot of no wind about a 100 miles from the finish that boats were sailing into and just parking.  We hit it Sunday night and just sorta twirled around with almost no wind.  Around 3 or 4am we were barely moving, as in the boat speed wasn't even registering on the knotmeter.  The only way I could tell we were moving was by the change in our L/L position! 

Around 0530 we were starting to sail and by 0700 we were over 5 knots! Eventually the wind speed and angle allowed me to put up BIG RED and by 1000 we were doing 7-8 knots plus.  I spent most of the next eight hours trimming the kite in effort to get a little extra speed.  We knew that GRYPHON, one of the boats in our class was 20 miles behind us and could catch us. 

We finished at 2052, almost three hours ahead of GRYPHON, but alas, they corrected over us to take second place in class. We were third for the double handed leg and in the combined scores for both legs we were third in class.

We spent the next week and a half sailing around Narragansett Bay and Block Island.  Met up with a couple of friends and then motored all the way back to Chesapeake Bay where we met up with more friends and saw the July 4th fireworks in Annapolis. 

August saw us racing in then Governor's Cup again, this time with John and Wendy Clarke as crew. Like last year we took the GUN in our class, but corrected to 2nd this time...

September was a very good month. We started off by winning our class in the Stingray Pt. Regatta. we won the distance race on Fri, took the one race on Saturday, and both races on Sunday. We also won the  Southern Bay Cruising Class trophy for the year.

The next week I was back in Annapolis for the NASS Oxford Race doublehanding with John Clarke. We started in very light air that gradually filled in, and ended with a great spinnaker sail.... until the wind shifted, and hit with 32 knots on the beam!  Fortunately, I had doused the chute about 90 seconds prior!

Next weekend we were back racing at FBYC.  The first half of the race was a spinnaker run down to Wolftrap lighthouse.  I was blanketed by another boat and just couldn't pass him. By the time we finally did pass and then rounded the lighthouse, our two main competitors were way out in front. Instead of playing follow the leader with them, we opted to stay out in the bay and work our way back up just concentrating on sailing fast.  When I tacked inshore I couldn't figure out where the other boats were.  Looking at AIS I realized we had completely passed them, and were well out in front!  Then we sailed into the dying breeze.  Mad Hatter did eventually catch up and just barely pass us, but we corrected over them by a lot.

The latest big news is that the end of November 2023 we bought a J42!  It, and Dianthus 36 are both at the yard in Maryland awaiting spring.  Dianthus will be put up for sale, and the 42 will become the new Dianthus and gradually prepped for racing as well as cruising.

Come on 2024!