Yo He Ho, We're off on the bounding main!

       So at 6:45 AM on Friday, July 6, JimBob cast away the lines and set sail for their big summer sailing adventure. As you can see by the photo at the left, we are dragging our link to the world of the land-lover behind us! It was a beautiful morning. Can you believe that we actually got up so early to get started? I think we were both still asleep when we left our little home port of Dolphin Cove. Cast away that safety net! Jim looks confident that Bob knows what he's doing on the boat. Bob is chugging down some stiff caffeine to hide his nerves.
      The weather was ideal for a very long first day. We had a lot of miles to cover and, in the end, it took us eight and a half hours to get up the Connecticut coast to Westbrook. If we had been driving we could have made the trip in a couple of hours. Whatever. After the long trip we spent a quite night in a slip. Little did we know that the slip we occupied would leave us sitting on the ground during the night. But as the sun came up, so did the tide. And so did the boat. Off we went, again an early start. No sooner did we slip out to sea when Bob discovered that the GPS (satellite navigation system) wasn't working. We went around in circles for a while trying to figure out what was wrong. No luck. Bob made the decision to navigate the old-fashioned way. With charts. Thank you Roy Sambrook for the new set of charts for coastal New England. They came in super handy!
      After arriving at Stonington, Connecticut and settling in to Gene Brown's (our neighbor) lovely slip, we were fortunate to meet Al, the dock wizard of Stonington. He took Bob to the local West Marine where after forking over eight hundred dollars we had a new GPS. Does everything on a boat cost a thousand dollars? Apparently so! Here it is below, jury rigged near the wheel for good viewing.
      Now we are set for the off-shore trip to Block Island, Rhode Island.     Stay tuned!