Straight from Sweden. Our friend Jenny, who works for Sony Ericsson, sent us a sweet backpack & shirt from her adventures in Marstrand (a port of call in The Volvo Ocean Race).
The shirt is that great wicking material & it just looks racy. I’m going to want to put Kaleo’s rail in the water & sail fast every time I wear this. Though I do feel a little bad wearing this gear since I was cheering for team Puma, who took 2nd behind Ericsson 4, throughout the race.
Thanks Jenny for the great gear!
An outstanding 1st place finish in the Gold Rush Regatta with our sailing mentors and friends, Tim and Diann, at the Grapevine Sailing Club. We are beyond grateful for them helping us to ‘learn the ropes’ aboard their beautiful Beneteau First 235, “Coquette”.
Thrilling, competitive 1st place finish sail race this evening with Matt, Tim & Diane aboard Coquette on Lk. Grapevine!
Great, but short afternoon on the water! After serving this morning we headed out to Lk Grapevine to meet up with our captain & admiral, Tim & Diann aboard s/v Coquette. It was the kick-off of the summer race series but was called due to thunderstorms as we were tacking up to the start line. Ah, well … another race in a couple weeks :o)
We woke up to our last morning aboard Thalia today and with heavy hearts we dingied ashore to return to land life. What a treat it has been to share this experience and we are so grateful to Lisa & Kirk for their generous hospitality, enlightening conversation & patience with our endless questions about their incredible lifestyle.
Spent the afternoon in D.C. walking the National Mall & Memorial Parks.
Meandered through the Smithsonian & caught a 3-D IMAX show
At just about the farthest walking point from where we parked, we got caught in a pretty rough thunderstorm. With a mix of running, walking to catch our breath, & laughing at the ridiculousness of it all – we returned to the car soaked like wet puppy dogs. Changed clothes, stopped for dinner, headed to the airport & slept like babies the entire flight home.
We spent the day exploring the “sailboat capital of the world”, downtown Annapolis with Kirk and Lisa. We strolled through the local shops, made our way past “Ego Alley” and they treated us to lunch at McGarvey’s along the city dock. We lounged on deck this evening with a stack of “TravelTopics” questions, learned more about each other, enjoyed the conversation and read as the sun set.
Another glorious day of sailing The Chesapeake Bay! We have so much respect and appreciation for Kirk and Lisa “showing us the ropes” (pun intended).
We woke up with daylight, shared morning greetings and breakfast, and even borrowed the dingy to row over to a little island we could see across the way. We spent the rest of the day learning, asking a zillion questions, and listening with intent to our Captain and Admiral :o)
Tonight, we anchored up in the Chester River. We took this pic of the moon looking up through the windows of our state room. A day and eve well spent!
An amazing beginning to our sailing excursion of the Chesapeake Bay! We started the day with a fun breakfast at Chick & Ruth’s Delly in downtown Annapolis before meeting up with Lisa & Kirk at Weems Creek. We dingied out to tour the beautiful “Thalia” and put away our small amount of gear.
We then all dingied back to shore & headed into town for lunch & to Trader Joe’s to stock up on “provisions”. Once we returned to the boat & settled in, we set the sails & headed out past Thomas Point lighthouse toward our first night’s anchoring near near High Island up the Hrode River.
I particularly enjoyed settling into our “state room” aboard “Thalia”, sharing great conversation and a restful dinner in the salon, and lounging in the cockpit and deck taking in two spectacular shooting stars and seeing the orbiting satellites blazing across the clear night’s sky.
Aerial view of Annapolis, Maryland
It’s a great day for celebrating! Today is Matt’s birthday and when asked how he’d like to spend it, I wasn’t surprised when we headed to the water. We met up with Tim and Diane to sail on their incredible, Coquette, at the Catalina 22 National Regatta Championship on Lake Grapevine.
