since the beginning of this little plan, jr and i have been keeping a blog.  silly as it seems, we kept it private and used it more or less as a journal for thoughts and ideas.  i kinda’ feel like it was beneficial to both of us for fine tuning the plan and for working through the crazy that has been our lives for the last 3 years.  we wrote about the evolution of our rental house, our surprise wedding, and of course, the passing of jr’s beloved mother.  it was a much needed outlet and now we have put it to rest.  sailingjourney.net was born when we got serious!  we are officially in the “doin’ it” stage and we wanted to start fresh and clean!  anyway, i was perusing through the old blog and found this post in drafts!  so, although it’s a little late, i wanted to share a throwback.  enjoy!

september 2012

our sail to rock hall, md was our first time crossing the bay, our first time using the dinghy (or any dinghy for that matter!) and our first time anchoring journey.  we never took the time to check the outboard motor that was stashed nicely on the stern rail, but jr thought it would be an interesting thing to do while we were lounging in rock hall.  pulling into the anchorage, we were surprised to see it so full.  the channel was pretty narrow and there were boats everywhere!  anchoring went ok considering i freak out about doing anything boat related when there is an audience.  once settled in, jr thought it an opportune time to check out the dinghy motor and found that the fuel pump was leaking.  no zooming around in our dinghy for us!  we snacked and settled in for the night.

the next day we worried about being anchored to close to the channel, and since lots of boats had left, we decided to move to a more comfortable spot.  while hanging out to make sure the anchor was set, another sail boat pulled up next to us and asked us if we liked crabs.  ummmm…  yeah!  he said he had some steaming in the cabin (what?  of your boat?!) and they’d be done in a bout 15 minutes!  we were like, “is this for real!?”  so, although we had planned on dinghying into town, we messed around a a bit more to see if this guy was serious.  sure enough, he cruised by about 15 minutes later with a dozen freshly caught, freshly steamed, seasoned perfectly maryland blue crabs hanging off a boat hook for us.  free of charge!  he wouldn’t even take the beers we were offering in exchange.  we had no crackers, hammers, or knives.  we had no table covers, vinegar,  or old bay.  but dang those crabs were good!  thanks captain johnny, you were our first real insight into how wonderful living on a boat can be!  don’t worry, we keep old bay and crab crackers on the boat now, just in case.

later, we rowed into a marina and fretted about weather or not to pay the transient docking fee.  another first for us, who knew there were public vs. private dinghy docks!?  geeeez!  we decided to chance it and then tried to figure out how to get into town.  it was quite a walk, but a lovely day.  we had ice cream (surprise), searched and found a west marine so jake could buy the part we needed to fix the outboard.  but alas, it was closed!  we had dinner at a fancy little spot called the kitchen, but we couldn’t shake the worry we had about the dinghy. last, we hit up a grocery store to get breakfast and beer and headed back to the dinghy (it was fine by the way).  that night, we watched another beautiful sunset from our cockpit and looked for shooting stars.  it was perfect.