Surrounded by boxes

Location: Blacksburg, VA
Date: Feb 4, 2007
Current position: Surrounded by boxes

A little over a month ago a couple of friends we met when we were anchored in Annapolis got in touch with us. They have been down in the Caribbean for the last year or so and are planning to sail across the Atlantic to the Azores in early June, then on to England in August. They asked if we would like to join them, as crew, for all or part of the trip.

Our response was rather subdued - something like "What are you nuts? Of course we want to go!!!". And the timing was perfect. We had just, I mean maybe 2 days before, made the decision to quit work, cut the dock lines and sail off into the sunset.

Maybe our friends are psychic, or maybe it's just because they don't know us that well . Not that it matters - we are just so excited about having this opportunity. After emailing and Skypeing back and forth to iron out some details we are finally, definitely on. Neither of us have much offshore experience to speak of, and since they do, this will be a great learning experience for us. We are also looking forward to having the time to practice our navigation and newly acquired weather skills after having just taken an intense 2 day marine weather workshop.

We will be flying down to St Maarten on May 28th, then the plan is to leave around June 2nd to sail the 2,000+ mile, 2 week or so trip to the Azores. After a week or two of rambling around and island hopping, we'll fly back to the US.

More details later.

In the meantime we're packing, making decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of (as we'll be renting out our house), surrounded by boxes.

Fair winds,
Mark & Julie
s/v Rachel