Our Story In a Nutshell

In 2003 , we began our labor of love and started to restore our CSY 44 sailboat,which we named Freedom. After 5 1/2 years of pure sweat, (Florida in July in a t-vac suit and full mask)some tears, endless reading and lots of leaps of faith, restoration was completed in January 2009. The rest of the story is unraveling as we learn to become the sailors we have always read about. Their inspiration has always lead us to new places...the real reson we started this adventure to begin with. We left from St. Petersburg, Florida in January 2009, sailed to Longboat key, then Useppa, St. James City, Cape Coral, Marathon, Rodriguez Key, Miami, then onto the Bahamas. In the Bahamas we sailed to Norman's Key, Shroud, Hawksbill, Warderick Wells, Black Point, Staniel Key, Spanish wells, Eleuthera, Little Harbor, Marsh harbor and then over to Beaufort North Carolina...up the ICW to Norfolk and finally we ended up in the Chesapeake Bay.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Lots To Give Thanks For


Not to sound too mushy....Happy Turkey Day to all our family and friends. We have seen quite a number of you the last 3 months...thanks for being a really wonderful part of our life. We will be shipping out on Friday, down the Intracoastal due to some strong winds over the weekend, we will avoid the Atlantic for now...Have a lot of stuffing,gravy, turkey etc...worry about the calories next week.We will be in touch....To everyone we have not seen recently, we have you on our minds and hearts.
We are celebrating T-Day with our friends from Blue Blaze at the Manges household...always outdoing themselves in a culinary way....
Hugs
From
S/V Freedom (sailing vessel)

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Blue Angels



Wow! If you ever have the opportunity to see an Air Show with the Blue Angels, check it out. They were having a 3 day show in Jacksonville, in order to get ready, they had a practice day on Thursday. How exciting! They were using Beach Blvd as their air runway. Our marina is right on Beach Blvd. They buzzed past us, right over our heads, one at a time, three at a time and finally 6 at a time. We saw them , 4 at a time literally go straight up into the clouds at a 90 degree angle to earth.Then all 4 would meet up and then go upside down away from each other. Personally some rides at Disneyworld can produce fear and motion sickness....these pilots are unreal. You could hear them before you could see them. All of a sudden a Blue Angel would come out of nowhere and fly directly over our heads....you could almost see the pilot. The pics I took were not fabulous but it will give you an idea of what it was like. My Canon was just not fast enough to capture the pics I really wanted. All for free...

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Friends and Vaccinations


Our Halloween weekend in St. Petersburg was an amazing time with friends....catching up and making new memories. Our friend Bob (Capt. Bivalve) had the Halloween spirit! We met at one of our favorite bars in St pete, Moon Under Water and he brought his costume along. Usually a deeply philosophical person, his costume beckoned a different side. See attached. Perhaps it was just a glorified beer glass holder...what fun! We also caught up with our old dockmates and had a wonderful barbecue...Our generous hosts were ,Jeff and Elise who made it a great weekend. This is where the vaacinations come in....they are both nurse practitioners...extremely knowledgeable, capable and always willing to share their knowledge. They certainly convinced us to get our Swineflu vaccines...we were not smart enough to get them in St. Pete....after we turned our rental car back in, in fact one day later and about 20 phone calls later, we found the only supply at the County Health dept in jacksonville...2 buses later (2 hours later)we found ourseleves at the Health Dept and recieved our vaccines...2 buses later(2 hours later) we were back at the Marina.
Mission accomplished. The only catch was when we got on the 2nd bus going to the health dept we overheard a person talk about her chills, aches etc. We were concerned that on the way to getting our flu shots we would get the flu....fortunately we feel fine 24 hours later. Thanks to everyone for a fabulous weekend. Miss you guys!