svIslandSpirit.com

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Team Island Spirit had a fantastic run from Rock Hall, Md direct overnight to Cape May, NJ 110 miles. We left Rock Hall Sun at 1pm and with 10 knots of wind we ended up sailing over towards Baltimore hoping that the next tack onto Port would allow us to make turkey point. Not so due to current on the nose and a north wind making it a very close beat. After 1.5 hrs of having fun sailing, we decided we needed to make way towards the C&D. We had no plan other than to NOT get into the C&D before 5:45pm when the current would then turn east running into the Delaware Bay. Blasting through the C&D we tested out our broadband onboard Verizon network and place a Skype video call back to Jeff’s family and realized that we had one cool set up onboard! Laptop #2 was listening to AIS with Sea Clear displaying their info on our free ENC charts. Laptop # 3 was Jeff’s laptop and he was tapping into his email and checking weather and surfing the web. Yes, we are techno geeks and wanted to really hit this setup with all we had, sure enough, it is working very well. We exited the C&D at 2300 hrs and decided with this north wind of 15 and a full moon, we would not stop at Reedy but rather we would keep on the ebb tide and run this to Cape May. With 50 miles to go, we ran all night with 2 on deck at all times and one off watch taking 2 hrs to sleep. ( I sleep from 2am to 3:44am) The wind built to a high of 27 knots with an average of 18 to 20 knots from the port beam. We arrived at the Cape May Canal at 6am, and ran the canal pulling into Utches Marine fuel dock at 7am. After taking on fuel we motored over to the anchorage area next to the Coast Guard station and drop the hook and got to use my NEW Lofrans Tigress windlass. What a dream that machine is, it works great! Now we are testing out the network with 3 laptops online, and performing speed test and we have 800Kbps download speeds and 500Kbps upload speeds from the boat via the Verizon EV-DO broadband network. Check out your own speeds at: http://speedtest.net/ . OK, time to catch up on some sleep.

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We headed up the bay departing around 1pm and arrived at the head of the bay around 5 due to current on the nose. But, this put us into the C&D with the current flowing east to the Delaware Bay. Once in the Delaware Bay we had to push current for 1 hr till that bay turned and he sailed ourt Jib with 15 knots on the beam under FULL MOON all night! This is why we did not stop at Reedy Island, it was just too nice to stop, so here we are heading down the Delaware Bay around midnight. Here are a few photos of departure and the C&D.

The happy shot as we leave the dock. That is always the toughest part of any voyage

Jeff Gabor, our good friend and crew

The view of the C&D Canal from the helm

OK, it is 1:30 AM and I am in the middle of the Delaware Bay, Radeen is on watch, Jeff is off watch, I need to go to the other laptop and check the AIS ship data in our area. I see a ship out the porthole. More fun later.

Watches tonight: 2200-0000 Hayden, 0000-0200 Radeen, 0200-0400 Jeff, The we start again. We keep two on deck at all times at night, except to do post like these. OK, off to help Radeen.

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IP350 Unfazed owners Bill and Vicki Fay’s son Ben got married and we were invited. How lucky were we! Ben and Kristen’s wedding was so beautiful! The Chesapeake Bay Beach Club was lovely, the weather magnificent, and we had a wonderful time.

Hayden had fun trailing the professional photographer in search of great photos of the happy couple.

Getting ready for such an elegant evening was a bit of a challenge from the boat. We miss our great sailing friends, Bill and Vicky, since they moved to Hawaii and we will miss seeing Ben and Kristen on our dock. Smooth sailing to all!

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Packing and loading up for a 7 weeks sailing vacation is a real challenge. Every summer we move aboard our Island Packet and head off sailing for the summer. Last summer we ended up in Maine, this summer we have no plan but we do plan on spending the summer in Block Island. That is one of our favorite places, so why not spend the summer there. If all goes as planned, we will be heading for the offshore run to Block on Sunday at Noon! The high pressure is looking PERFECT for ocean sailing. Let’s hope it holds out. Here are afew photos of loading up….ugh!

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Departing Sunday for Block Island! this post was sent via cell text message! COOL

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Jeff and I have designed a new wooden toggle that will help to press the engine room doors closed and hold them tightly against the newly added foam gaskets. We hope this will reduce the engine room noise below in the cabin. The newer Island Packets have the engines placed lower in the hull making them more quiet. This 1994 boat is old school and needs some work on the decibel reduction program. This should do the trick. Now to add another layer of sound proofing to the doors. (post added via email posting!)

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