… Begins with a single step.

OK, we are not going 1000 miles (only 600), and our initial move is a bit longer than a single stride, but we are officially underway.

At 15:00 this afternoon we dropped lines at Bert Jabin’s Yacht Yard, and moved out into the South Anchorage off the Naval Academy in Annapolis. Sometime around midnight the wind is forecast to swing to a favorable direction or the start of our trip. It will likely be a crowded trip south in the ocean. Tomorrow begins the best weather window in the last two weeks, and it is a narrow one. Boats that don’t get underway quickly will have to wait another 10 days or so for the next one. We are expecting a crowd!

The forecast is for a fast and fairly easy trip. We will not have much chance to dally, because we’ll want to be settled in before the next front comes through, but it it looking like all downwind from Annapolis right on to Hilton Head, SC, our first port of call.

From Hilton Head, we will hop down to Brunswick, GA for a few weeks, then to Fort Lauderdale in early December, and from there we will be headed over to the Bahamas near the end of the year.

Our short motor this afternoon was the first real underway test of our engine since we replaced the engine mounts and realigned the drive train. It was AMAZING. Smooth as glass. Over the course of years the drive train had gotten rougher, and noisier a little at a time, so slowly there was no short term change to notice. Now it is so smooth you do not have any change in the feel of the boat when you engage the transmission. This is a good thing, but is also a bit disconcerting and will take some getting used to!