On our way

Well we are on our way!

Moosetracks left St Petersburg Municipal Marina on 12/12/12/ @ 12:12 as planned. There was a small gathering of 14 people on the dock as we pulled away from our slip. Terry and Alma did post a short video of our exit on youtube which you can find here Moosetracks Video

Our first stop was the Manatee river where we met up with Friends on Dulces Suenos, LuAnne and Lyman. We also met with Friendship who want to buddy boat with us to the Bahamas, Seldon and Jackie got in late so we met in the morning. We all left bright and early. Dulces Suenos left for Sarasota and Moosetracks and Friendship left for Longboat key. Nice easy stuff to get started, after all we are cruising now!

In Longboat we set plans for the next hop. Seldon had some charging issues and work on canvas he wanted done so he opted to leave starting for Marathon. Liz and I wanted to taker our time so we headed for our favorite anchorage on the west coast - Pelican Bay on Cayo Costa.

We had the most wonderful sail down the Gulf at 6.4 Knots average speed over 60 nm also hitting 8.5 knots at one point. What a great ride. We were early in Pelican Bay and settled in for dinner.

We have a small repair we found on the cockpit scupper hose so we decided to go to Fort Myers Beach for a replacement hose. We found a mooring ball and decided to split duties, Devin cycled to West Marine and Liz did laundry. Well turns out West Marine closed that branch, but the guys in the laundry knew and offered Liz a ride so they caught me on my way back and drove us 20 miles to the new store! Cruising sailors are really a extremely nice bunch and thanks Braid.

So we now plan a jump to Marathon, weather looks like we might leave tomorrow so we’ll be blogging again from there.

Fair Winds

Devin & Liz.

Bon Voyage Party

Well thanks to all our cruising and boating friends for a wonderful Bon Voyage party last night. We feel truly blessed  to have been part of a truly fantastic community and we will miss you all tremendously.
Here are a few photo's we took..

A Banner event

Great Friends

Great food and weather

Thanks so much to Julie and Rick Peterson of s/v Believe for herding the group and organizing such a wonderful party. We really appreciated the words of advice, wisdom and truths that everyone shared and we will treasure your comments in our book.

Fair Winds & Calm Seas for all of you too!
Devin & Liz

Going to the boat show

We are just off to the Boat Show here in St Petersburg. Hopefully we don't spend too much but more importantly we can't fit anything else on Moosetracks so I wonder if they sell more WATERLINE!

The Boat show update...

We talked at length to Bob and Norma Morris at the authors corner, we have a lot to be grateful for in meeting Bob and Norma several years ago on their IP44. They were a great inspiration and helped us tremendously in our preparations. Bob was having a great day and sold out of his book! http://boatnuts.net/

We also spent time chatting to Dee Dubin who has helped us so much since they returned to St Petersburg after their circumnavigation. Rob was busy getting Ventana their IP40 ready for sale so we'll catch him tomorrow. http://www.sailingvideos.com/

We sat on a wonderful IP460 and chatted with Bob Johnson and Bill Bolin of Island Packet. Thanks for making such wonderful boats. Bob thinks he makes them too strong as they all survived Hurricane Sandy and found safe places to rest afterwards ;-) www.ipy.com

One of favorite artists was at the show, Liz has almost all Eric Stone's albums. We partied the night away with friends and enjoyed the free beer and pizza courtesy of Cruising Outpost - thanks to Bob Bitchin !

Time is getting short now but we know after Thanksgiving that the boat is ready, just need to finalize some land based commitments and we're off.

Devin & Liz

Retired 2 weeks

Well it's over 2 weeks and as you would expect we are deep into preparations of Moosetracks for our impending departure. We finally finished the teak toe rails and they look really nice, not much to photograph but nice to look at. We have also had numerous sewing projects including a bike bag for Liz, life raft cover and cockpit enclosure. So here are some pictures....

Cockpit Enclosure

Life Raft Cover

Liz's Bike

The Bike in bag

Then of course we needed a bag for the new bike Devin got for retirement from Jabil, we found a really good price online so bought it instead. Here it is...

 Then we had lots of projects to complete like; fitting a wind vane, a lightening arrester, a masthead LED tricolor/anchor light, a high water alarm in the bilge and second bilge pump. Then it was time to recommission the water maker... and moving all our stores because we worry about water leaks on electronics. Here is the result.... piles of boxes...

Lots to organize

So since we we have worked non-stop for over 2 weeks it's time to take a break. We are heading out to test our gear on Moosetracks over Thanksgiving for 5 days...wooppee!

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Liz Retires too

Well the crew is all complete, now we have a full time Admiral to join the Captain!

Liz had a wonderful surprise send off from all the girls at Shapes Gym and will miss all her wonderful friends. Here are a few photos of the group.

Liz also had some lovely gifts from Greenhills and she will miss all her work friends as well. So it was we had a big gift opening session on Moosetracks. Thank you everyone for the wonderful gifts!

We will try to blog often so that our friends can follow our journey and stay in touch. We will miss you all!

Fair Winds and Calm Seas.

Devin & Liz

Devin Retires

Well what a milestone, last night was my retirement party! 

The Ice sculpture

Is that me?

A wonderful folding bike

 It's been over 16 years at Jabil and I must admit it feels a lot like when I left home all those years ago and had to leave my family and friends behind. I have a lot of different emotions and a lifetime of wonderful memories, it has been a truly great ride and I feel at some point it had to end. As I was reminded many times it is a true blessing that I was able to choose my ending. I will miss all the wonderful people who supported me throughout my career and I wish them every success in theirs.

A wonderful cake 

  I will miss you all !

Personalized ballons

Nautical table centers

Great friends

So it is Liz' turn, she will retire in the next few weeks and we will be sailing away in December. It's a new chapter and we hope a fantastic future ahead with even more great memories to collect. We'll try our utmost to share those with you through our blog.

Fair Winds and Calm Seas

Devin & Liz.

Overdue Update

Well it’s been a long time since we updated our blog. We’ve been very remiss but since we’ve been out recently we ought to update this.

 

We had a great start to the year going back for a family wedding in the UK. My sisters daughter Sam and her husband Mes had a really fantastic send off and we were really delighted to be there and see the whole family once more as well.

 

Devin attended a engine maintenance course at Mack Boring in New Jersey for 5 days. It was fantastic to strip down 3 version of my engine, reassemble them and have them actually start! This course gives us the confidence to approach more than simple maintenance on our own engine and if absolutely necessary to actually repair it. Liz is enrolled in a Spanish course and learning  a great deal and is now exercising in Spanish as well (counting off reps).

 

This memorial weekend we had organized an SSCA anchor away weekend. We have organized several in the past and felt it was time for another. The venue was to be Anclote Key, north of were we are and a good 8-9 hours from our dock. The night before leaving we were going to get out and anchor by Pinellas point to get a head start. Unfortunately when I got back from a business trip the thunder and lightening were all over Tampa Bay. It rained really hard for several hours with cloud to ground/sea lightening, so we gave up on the idea. So it was we got up bright and early on Friday morning. As is customary the wind blew from the direction we were heading for a good part of the day or not at all, so we mostly motor sailed our way there. We arrived just after lunch and settled in.

 

The first evening was a very pleasant evening on Dulces Suenos and comfortable night’s sleep. The next few days were exploring Anclote Key state park and lighthouse as well as relaxing on the sand bar and cooling off in the nice clear waters. We enjoyed several days with LouAnne and Lyman as company. Nights were very calm and days hot and sunny, food and company were excellent.

 

The wind was forecast to back on Monday was were were due to leave. Of course this meant we would have wind on the nose all the way down the gulf of Mexico. Oh what fun! We got up at first light, and waited for visibility to improve a little. The wind was as forecast from the SW and blowing pretty well, unfortunately we had an incoming tide too. This makes the pass to the Gulf pretty rough with steep waves. We motored out and turned south. We were close hauled and not making great speed so we motor sailed under stay sail and reefed main so lessen the time on the large waves which were 4-6 feet by now with the wind building to 20-25 knots.

 

Once inside Pass A Grille, some 4 hours later, we were starting to calm down considerably. We came under Structure E and the Skyway and put out our Jib only and managed to sail all the way back to our slip at 5-6 knots with a following wind. At last a nice sail to finish our trip.

 

Moosetracks has some nice new anchor gear: Rocna 73lb anchor, 3/8” Chain and 200 ft of new rode and it was all fantastic for holding. I also replaced the down tube in the forepeak at it was badly worn. I must admit spending 2 weekends in the forepeak is not fun in 90+ degrees, but very necessary. We now have really strong ground tackle and can sleep soundly.

 

We don’t have many trips planned as we used our vacation this year in the UK, however we do have plans for a thanksgiving trip with Laissez Faire and Priority.

 

So it’s back to work for us. We also have some more jobs on Moosetracks with canvas repair and varnishing being high on our list. All we need now is exotic places !!

 

Fair Winds to everyone.