Time to sail north!

Independence has had a wonderful season, so many great sails, great guests aboard and a few wonderful adventures. The pilot whale, dolphin sightings and lots of turtles, especially the one that we thought was hurt that was really two and definitely doing just fine come to mind. The day we discovered that aerosol spray sun lotion REALLY does make the deck slippery also sticks in my mind, that is the closest we have ever come to having someone slide overboard, it was a great sail though and one of the days we made it all the way to Lameshure Bay on the south side of St.John!

We did our last charter on Monday, a great group from the Carnival Victory wound up the season for us, and we are just about ready to set sail for Wilmington, North Carolina. You would not believe the amount of gear that gets moved off the boat when we stop daysailing to make room for all the off shore gear that get moved aboard. Most of that is done and now we are fine tuning the wind vane for self steering, bending on the staysail in case it gets too windy for the jib and checking all systems. I will do a big grocery shop just before we leave, hopefully July 6th, and then we will pull the yellow dinghy up on deck, lash it down and store the outboard and head north and west. The trip should take about ten days and we will have a full moon to get us started.

Our daughter is visiting with our two grandchildren, Lea (3 months) and Marisa (2 years old) so our preparations have been happily interrupted by Oma and Opa duties. On July 4th we took the whole crew up to Maho Bay. Hillary and the girls went to a friend's wedding on the beach and we were able to install the steering gear on the stern in clear water. We detoured through Peter Bay on the way home and the turtles didn't let us down, we were able to show Marisa a little baby green sea turtle and his great grand daddy. The wind filled in a little and we popped the jib for a great down wind sail home into Red Hook. Fireworks over Cruz Bay viewed from our front porch ended a perfect July 4th.

Independence will be in a marina about 18 miles up the Cape Fear River for about two months and we will be in Greensboro, NC, having more time with our family. The plan is to go back to the boat around September 20th and do a haulout and paint the bottom. As soon as we get a good weather window in early October we will head to Bermuda. The weather is usually very conducive to getting maintenance projects done there, no sweating in the varnish but still warm enough for it to dry! We'll head for St.Thomas and home around Halloween, weather permitting, and be ready for another great season sometime before the middle of November.
First mate Ray is planning to be back aboard next season and has all kinds of projects and travel plans for this summer.

I'll be checking in as often as I can and checking the emails, if you don't hear back for a few days please be patient, it just means we are at sea! We hope everyone has a great summer and that you are thinking about going sailing with us on Independence next season!