New Activities

We are always planning ways to live with much less space once we move aboard. Linda is planning on giving up her cross-stitch and her knitting. She has been knitting Afghans for Foster children for the past few years. This is an activity that a group in our neighborhood does, meeting on a weekly basis. To replace these activities while living on Ariel, she is taking up sketching. She just enrolled in lessons a couple of weeks ago with a local artist. Her favorite pastime is gardening, which she must give up. While we now live in a condominium, we have plenty of space for gardens. Linda has beautiful perennial gardens, both sun and shade. She will really miss the gardening and will look forward to taking it up again once we move back off the water.

Storage Load 1

Our trip to Penn Yan, NY, on Friday went well, although the truck consumed a lot of gasoline, and the tolls on the Mass Pike and NYS Thruway were high for the truck. We found our storage container in good condition, and we were very pleased to find the solar-powered fan system we installed earlier this past summer working well. After unloading the truck and securing everything, we visited with Linda’s mother before going on to stay with Norm’s mom for the weekend in Lindley. NY. Arriving at Gladys’s home near dinner time, we were pleasantly surprised to find Norm’s brother Bill there and further surprised that he had planned a meal for us. Bill cooked some great burgers on the grill, which we had with his pasta salad. Norm’s mother made baked beans to go along, and we capped the meal off with apple pie. Bill is known for his apple pies, and this one was up to his usual high standards. Later, after dinner, it hit us both just how tired we were after a busy and strenuous day.

Plans for Weekend Delivery

We picked up our rental truck from Budget this morning and loaded it during the day. It is a 16’ model, and we just managed to get everything in for this trip. Our daughter Pamela and her husband Scott are meeting us this weekend and taking a few items home with them. We look forward to seeing them. They live in Broadview Heights, Ohio, with their dogs Dolly and Sophie. Being so far away, we appreciate every opportunity to see them.

We heard from our good friends John and Linda Piper last night. They retired over a year ago and are living and traveling on their Trawler. They had sailboats for many years, but soon after setting out on their adventure, they decided a trawler was better suited for them. They spent this summer back on Lake Erie and just completed crossing New York on the Erie Canal, and are now traveling down the Hudson River toward New York City. Unfortunately, our plans do not permit us to meet up with them on their trip south for the winter.

Outline of Plan

We have planned to cruise for a minimum of two years. We are open-ended beyond that. We will decide after we know how much we are enjoying the experience and how much we feel we have left to explore. We are selling our house, but we wanted to keep our furniture and household goods for the day we move back to a land-based home.

This past spring, we bought a 40-foot steel shipping container. These are water-tight as they are normally used on container ships. We were lucky in that we were able to place the container on Linda’s brother Buster’s farm in upstate New York.

For the past few weeks, we have been packing our first truckload to deliver to the container this coming weekend. This is to clear the closets, attic, and basement as we get the house ready to put on the market this winter.

Introduction

We are Norm and Linda. We are in the final year of preparations to move aboard our sailboat, Ariel. It is hard to know exactly when we decided to begin our retirement years exploring the East Coast of the United States and the Caribbean on a sailboat. It was an evolutionary process over a period of years.

We have been sailing for about 15 years. We began our sailing experience in Sandusky, Ohio, on Lake Erie. Later, we relocated to Massachusetts and, for the past several years, have made Portsmouth, Rhode Island, our home port.

One of the most difficult challenges was finding the right boat for us. We read all the sailing magazines, visited the boat shows, visited many boat yards, and had many discussions with other boaters, and became very confused by all the options. Finally, we made a list of the features we wanted in a boat for the type of cruising we had planned. Once we did that, the sailboats made by Island Packet Yachts became the very obvious choice for us.

In 1999, Island Packet introduced the IP380. Even before the first hull was shown at the Annapolis boat show, we knew this was the boat for us. In 2001, we purchased what would later be named Ariel. Ariel is hull number 103. Since then, we have been equipping and preparing Ariel for the day we will move aboard.

Ariel Christening (still at dealer's lot)

Receipt of Delivery Day