For us, 2019 was the “Year of the Canal”. We spent much of the year cruising the Baltic Sea, and passed through an incredible 98 locks while transiting several major and minor canal systems, including the Kiel Canal across Germany, the Saimaa Canal through Russia to Finland’s Great Lake Saimaa system, and the Gota and…
Tag Archives | trawler
Looking Back at 2019
“My best memories are the ones we make together.” ―Margaret Atwood
The highlight of January was taking our second trip to Costa Rica to enjoy a little relaxation and adventure. We spent two weeks on the west coast exploring Quepos, Dominical and Uvita.
February and March were slow months…mostly cold and wet, but we enjoyed hanging out with our Texas grands and visiting with friends.
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Return to US
Following METS, we spent a relatively quiet week in Amsterdam, completing a few boat projects and hosting some visitors. In early December, we returned to the US for a couple of weeks where James spent a week at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas and a couple of days at the AWS data centers…
Christmas in Petersburg
Our Christmas this year is spent in Petersburg. Also known as “Little Norway” this is a a wonderful place for some holiday cheer. Getting here was not so great. We spent over an hour on the tarmac in Seattle while Alaska Air struggled to get one of the plane’s engines started. Not something that instills […]
Merry Christmas!
Once again Santa got his naughty and nice lists mixed up and brought the kids presents.
Dylan, Dee Dee, and Dora got gingerbread treats.
They love treats!
There was a toy Santa.
Dylan and Dora enjoyed a good tug-of-war. Dylan can still hold his own against a young pup.
But the most popular toy was the new Nylabone.
Everyone wanted to play with it.
Dora was not happy when Dee Dee stole it from her. How early does Santa start next year’s naughty and nice list?
The Red Head crew wishes everyone a very Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas – Happy Holidays
Nordhavn 57-26 Istaboa
Merry Christmas
“the best keeps getting better all the time” -Allan Jackson
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the crew of The Pearl…2019 was wonderful, busy year. We really enjoy the life we have at the moment. This was our third season in Ithaca, New York. We miss cruising, but we really love this part of NY. It gives us a chance to be close to our Pennsylvania family half the year and home in Texas the other six months. In both places we get to enjoy being on the water and the company of our family.
Highlights of our year…a second trip to Costa Rica, spending a week in Eleuthera with our whole family, entertaining cruising friends in Ithaca, finding new places and wineries around us to explore, a road trip to Nova Scotia…that turned into a wonderful trip to New Brunswick and the arrival of a new granddaughter in PA.
But the true highlight of our year is the time we spend with our family and especially the time we spend playing with our four (now five) wonderful grandchildren. They’re each growing into such special, amazing little people, they bring a lot of joy and love to our life and we feel fortunate for the time we get to spend with them
We wish all our friends and family a very Merry Christmas and a healthy happy New Year. We look forward to more adventures in the coming year.
[Kensblog] Construction Update and more
Greetings all! All is going fine with the construction of our new boat. Surprises can still happen, but we’re on track to take delivery of the boat sometime before this coming summer. Our cruising plans We now know our cruising plans! Or, at least w…
DOMINO 20 2019-12-12 11:52:00
A NEPTUNIAN WELCOME
Neptune must love us. He welcomed us back in the water with wide open arms, blowing kisses and slapping our backs, with tears of joy and an all-nighter to remember!
November 26, 2019
San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico
It was a quiet afternoon, we had just anchored in San Carlos Bay, waiting for morning to fuel up and start our Mexican Riviera cruise. True to our habit, we shunned the marina, its noise and forest of masts, much happier in the bay, looking at the stunning “Tetas de Cabra” (Goat Teats) twin peaks, San Carlos’ postcard signature. Our first night on the water in a year was perfect, until we took the weather report. Ooops! Another Thanksgiving weather bomb was coming: a storm from the Pacific NW coast was swamping California and another storm SE of Mexico was churning up the Mexican coats. Soon, we heard gale advisories for the Gulf of California. We stayed put, anchored in 10’ of water over sand bottom.
By afternoon, the SE wind was ramping up into the 30’s. San Carlos Bay is quite well protected from the swells and although it started getting sloppy-choppy, we weren’t worried. Still, I kept an eye on our position, that’s my job on board… until I noticed that DOMINO was lying at 90 degrees from the other boats. That’s a sure sign we were dragging anchor.
Time for another Chinese Fire Drill! JP fired up our twin John Deere 300 and I rushed to the foredeck, kissed by 35 knots of wind and buckets of driving rain. It took some maneuvering to get us out of the jam: in these shallows, the chain had jumped over the bow roller and twisted all around it. Maneuvering any boat at low speed in high winds is a difficult task. It took all of JP’s fine touch at the controls and his patience trying to understand the frantic hand signals that I invented on the spur of the moments to communicate a never-before encountered situation! But team works always gets us through and we managed to disentangle that half-inch chain from the bow roller without ripping out my shoulder or cutting off my fingers (my absolute worst fear when working on deck) … and off we were to find a better anchorage.
NAVIGATION NOTE for San Carlos Bay.
– Anchorage in the shallows at the north end of the bay: not good holding, lots of grass (on which we slipped, we found out)
– Anchorage at Tomate (west end): not recommended, lots of abandoned moorings, poor-holding soft mud with junk scattered at the bottom: cement blocks, old chains…
– Better anchorage in the middle of the bay 27*56.802N – 111*03.682W in 20-25’ of water, sand bottom… but can be patchy. Test your anchor thoroughly, back down on it strongly.
Re-anchoring in a storm is never fun, even in warm weather. JP found a new spot in the center of the bay, and we dropped anchor again, bridle again (that must be a quick maneuver, before the cat goes sideways!). But upon backing up and applying tension on the anchor and chain, we started backing up… no go! Up-anchor again, find a new spot, down-anchor again, bridle again, tension again: still blowing 35 knots, raining buckets, but we are holding. Time for a hot shower, a gallon of hot tea, deep breaths, and more anchor watch.
As night fell, the weather reports were damning. Expect the conditions to worsen overnight! So, we set up all our on-board anchor watch devices: Furuno, i-Sailor for iPad, Drag Queen app, and took turns. JP can sleep through a storm, I can’t. But we were holding pretty well, until the wind jumped to 45 knots and we backed up 15 yards! I was biting the last of my remaining nails. The boat anchored behind us started to look a bit close, but everything looks closer at night. That boat was horsing wildly, fore and aft, right and left, so wild that it was hard to determine our relative positions. But our on-board instruments showed that we were stable, hooked again.
Panic call on the radio: “ALL SHIPS! ALL SHIPS! I’ve just been hit by a dragging boat… 50’ blue-hulled Gulf Star.” Time to keep our eyes open.
I was livid. Never had I encountered such high winds for so long. All night at 35-45 knots had me in a panic. JP was checking on me every so often, not showing any worry —he never doe— but I kept asking, “How are we to re-anchor at night in such conditions.” Thankfully, many of my Captain friends stood vigil with me, from all over the world. Holly Scott from her boat in Tahiti, Philip Duss from his digs in South Africa, Steve Wedi from his trawler in Baja California, and more friends from Oregon, Paraguay, Florida… Holly shouted her FB command, “DON’T MOVE!” as she was reviewing the i-Sailor track we were recording… We stayed put, and finally, by 5 AM, the wind abated a bit, in the low 30’s, and I went to bed, reeling from another party night with Neptune. I never thought that Facebook Friends would keep me going through hell night… time to get rid of that old SSB?
In the morning, the rain stopped and the wind dropped below 30 and we were treated to a splendid, fresh-scrubbed view of the bay.
Fresh-scrubbed also was DOMINO, power-washed from her grime accumulated during a year on the hard, ready to take on some more! But we would have to wait two more days for the wind to switch to the north, the 10-14’ SE swells to come down, for us to attempt the crossing of the Golf of California (Sea of Cortez), famous for its short, slapping 4-second waves that make any crossing a possible disaster.
This was a night to remember, one of the most difficult we ever encountered, another reminder that we are only 30 seconds from disaster. Indeed, in the morning, we found that 50’ Gulf Star sailboat beached at the bottom of the bay, and it would stay there, battered by waves, for another two days before being towed back to anchor.
A humbling experience, a stern reminder from King Neptune to be always vigilant, always prepared, and to obey his rule!
PS—- PICKLEBALL! Oh yes, there is a wonderful pickleball community in San Carlos, great courts at El Mirador, above Marina Real. We checked them out… on a rainy day!! But they do have tournaments, clinics, some coming up in January. Check it out!
Until next time…
dominomarie
DOMINO 20 2019-12-12 10:52:00
A NEPTUNIAN WELCOME
Neptune must love us. He welcomed us back in the water with wide open arms, blowing kisses and slapping our backs, with tears of joy and an all-nighter to remember!
November 26, 2019
San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico
It was a quiet afternoon, we had just anchored in San Carlos Bay, waiting for morning to fuel up and start our Mexican Riviera cruise. True to our habit, we shunned the marina, its noise and forest of masts, much happier in the bay, looking at the stunning “Tetas de Cabra” (Goat Teats) twin peaks, San Carlos’ postcard signature. Our first night on the water in a year was perfect, until we took the weather report. Ooops! Another Thanksgiving weather bomb was coming: a storm from the Pacific NW coast was swamping California and another storm SE of Mexico was churning up the Mexican coats. Soon, we heard gale advisories for the Gulf of California. We stayed put, anchored in 10’ of water over sand bottom.
By afternoon, the SE wind was ramping up into the 30’s. San Carlos Bay is quite well protected from the swells and although it started getting sloppy-choppy, we weren’t worried. Still, I kept an eye on our position, that’s my job on board… until I noticed that DOMINO was lying at 90 degrees from the other boats. That’s a sure sign we were dragging anchor.
Time for another Chinese Fire Drill! JP fired up our twin John Deere 300 and I rushed to the foredeck, kissed by 35 knots of wind and buckets of driving rain. It took some maneuvering to get us out of the jam: in these shallows, the chain had jumped over the bow roller and twisted all around it. Maneuvering any boat at low speed in high winds is a difficult task. It took all of JP’s fine touch at the controls and his patience trying to understand the frantic hand signals that I invented on the spur of the moments to communicate a never-before encountered situation! But team works always gets us through and we managed to disentangle that half-inch chain from the bow roller without ripping out my shoulder or cutting off my fingers (my absolute worst fear when working on deck) … and off we were to find a better anchorage.
NAVIGATION NOTE for San Carlos Bay.
– Anchorage in the shallows at the north end of the bay: not good holding, lots of grass (on which we slipped, we found out)
– Anchorage at Tomate (west end): not recommended, lots of abandoned moorings, poor-holding soft mud with junk scattered at the bottom: cement blocks, old chains…
– Better anchorage in the middle of the bay 27*56.802N – 111*03.682W in 20-25’ of water, sand bottom… but can be patchy. Test your anchor thoroughly, back down on it strongly.
Re-anchoring in a storm is never fun, even in warm weather. JP found a new spot in the center of the bay, and we dropped anchor again, bridle again (that must be a quick maneuver, before the cat goes sideways!). But upon backing up and applying tension on the anchor and chain, we started backing up… no go! Up-anchor again, find a new spot, down-anchor again, bridle again, tension again: still blowing 35 knots, raining buckets, but we are holding. Time for a hot shower, a gallon of hot tea, deep breaths, and more anchor watch.
As night fell, the weather reports were damning. Expect the conditions to worsen overnight! So, we set up all our on-board anchor watch devices: Furuno, i-Sailor for iPad, Drag Queen app, and took turns. JP can sleep through a storm, I can’t. But we were holding pretty well, until the wind jumped to 45 knots and we backed up 15 yards! I was biting the last of my remaining nails. The boat anchored behind us started to look a bit close, but everything looks closer at night. That boat was horsing wildly, fore and aft, right and left, so wild that it was hard to determine our relative positions. But our on-board instruments showed that we were stable, hooked again.
Panic call on the radio: “ALL SHIPS! ALL SHIPS! I’ve just been hit by a dragging boat… 50’ blue-hulled Gulf Star.” Time to keep our eyes open.
I was livid. Never had I encountered such high winds for so long. All night at 35-45 knots had me in a panic. JP was checking on me every so often, not showing any worry —he never doe— but I kept asking, “How are we to re-anchor at night in such conditions.” Thankfully, many of my Captain friends stood vigil with me, from all over the world. Holly Scott from her boat in Tahiti, Philip Duss from his digs in South Africa, Steve Wedi from his trawler in Baja California, and more friends from Oregon, Paraguay, Florida… Holly shouted her FB command, “DON’T MOVE!” as she was reviewing the i-Sailor track we were recording… We stayed put, and finally, by 5 AM, the wind abated a bit, in the low 30’s, and I went to bed, reeling from another party night with Neptune. I never thought that Facebook Friends would keep me going through hell night… time to get rid of that old SSB?
In the morning, the rain stopped and the wind dropped below 30 and we were treated to a splendid, fresh-scrubbed view of the bay.
Fresh-scrubbed also was DOMINO, power-washed from her grime accumulated during a year on the hard, ready to take on some more! But we would have to wait two more days for the wind to switch to the north, the 10-14’ SE swells to come down, for us to attempt the crossing of the Golf of California (Sea of Cortez), famous for its short, slapping 4-second waves that make any crossing a possible disaster.
This was a night to remember, one of the most difficult we ever encountered, another reminder that we are only 30 seconds from disaster. Indeed, in the morning, we found that 50’ Gulf Star sailboat beached at the bottom of the bay, and it would stay there, battered by waves, for another two days before being towed back to anchor.
A humbling experience, a stern reminder from King Neptune to be always vigilant, always prepared, and to obey his rule!
PS—- PICKLEBALL! Oh yes, there is a wonderful pickleball community in San Carlos, great courts at El Mirador, above Marina Real. We checked them out… on a rainy day!! But they do have tournaments, clinics, some coming up in January. Check it out!
Until next time…
dominomarie
