Passage of "clean" locks

Today we passed 6 locks. One of them was 27' high. We thought that our fenders will get stuck between the wall and the boat and this is why Roger is seating on the boat ready to push the boat from the wall but don’t worry, it can’t happen. The wall was so “greasy” that our fenders were smoothly sliding against it. When we got out, our clean fenders that were white before leaving Clayton were now covered with this brown compound that cannot be distinctly named. The trick keep Chocobo off the wall was to sit on the side of the boat and to push the wall with our feet away from the wall until the lock was full. Then we stood up to get the boat out of the lock. The first time we walked on the white surface of the deck with our running shoes full of that unnamed stuff while all your steps were clearly marked on the deck. The following lock we got the idea and made sure to swiped our running shoes on the top of the wall, which was dry, before standing up. That was the trick to pass a lock here! Now we are ready to go to the others, there are 23 of them left.

Position update

We found a way to update our position in using our satelite phone. We will update it every time we move so, don't forget to follow our progress.

In Oswego with our mast down

We finally got our mast down 2 days ago and motored to Oswego yesterday. We pass our first lock today and are well attached to the wall for free!!

An employee of the marina climbing at the top of the mast!

The Great Departure!

Well finally after many years of preparation this is it. Today we are leaving Clayton NY into the first country of our trip; The United States of America.

First we are going to head toward Sackets Harbour NY where we will get our mast down. With the mast sitting on the side of the boat we will then motor through Lake Ontario to Oswego NY, which is the entrance to the Erie Canal. The canal will take us to the Hudson River where we get the mast up again and then sail south to New-York City.

We did all the essential tasks on the boat and the food pantry is overflowing! As a matter of fact we think that the boat begins to be seriously overweighed and the water level on the hull may be too high. We’ll see how the boat behaves as we go. In worst case we will have to throw some less essential stuff overboard such as water and fruits in order to keep the life essential goods such as wine and rum. On a boat everything is a matter of priority!

We also went to Kingston to sell the car to a “Car Recycle” facility. In other words we got $325 for the metal! But this means that now our main mean of transportation are our folding bicycles. They are nice but trust me, this reduces significantly our transport range. Shopping for grocery will never be the same.

The only thing that we haven’t been able to get working so far is the HF radio, which is required to post our position on the Web. Because of that we won’t be able to post our position while on the way. At this point we will not have access to the Internet as often as we did until now. Therefore, it will take some time before we can update you on our progress but please stay tuned.

No home, no jobs and a dying car!

We moved to a new stage in our preparation to the departure. Sooner this month we left the house and last Friday was our last day at work. Last week we sold the Nissan and we now have only the Plymouth Breeze to move about. The only issue is that the Breeze is almost falling apart and we just cross our fingers that it last until our departure in a week and half.

With all these earthly belongings separated from us we should now feel light and free! No way!! We are not Tibetan monks; we are capitalists who enjoyed a nice and comfortable life for many years! We are now realizing that there will be no steady revenues anymore and feel more like “Oh God, what have we done?” than floating in our “freedom”. But hey, that’s what it takes and we’ll deal with it.

This week we are in Montreal to say goodbye to families and friends and next week we will go to the boat for the final preparation and supply.

Danielle and I would like to take a minute to express our gratitude to everyone who in the past weeks helped us and supported us. Many people spontaneously offered their time or give us generous gifts for our departure and we sincerely appreciate it. In the rush of meeting everyone we feel we didn’t express enough our gratitude so now we do it. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Our goal is to go and sail around the world. Obviously, since we never did this before we may or may not complete it. As we go through the trip we will have a much better assessment of what it means in terms of effort. But hey, if we don’t try we will never know don’t we?

So now the preparation of the trip is reaching the end. Remember that this trip doesn’t start when the boat leaves the dock but really started in January 2008 when we seriously started taking irrevocable actions for the trip. Like any significant projects we started by making lists of things to do and we were quite surprised by the sheer number of things to do. Telling you everything Danielle and I went through would require at least 7 pages of text so I’ll summarize.

Basically, the last nine months were filled with ordering boat parts, changing addresses, renewing our passports, getting married, selling the house, installing equipments on the boat, getting our diesel generator installed, selling everything in the house and getting vaccinated for all diseases that have a vaccine for and all this while working full time OUF!

If this trip is a vacation we will need a good year of it just to recover from the preparation! Danielle now has the endurance of a bowl of Jello and I am ready to surrender my kingdom for a day without planning something or calling someone to get something done. Oups, Danielle is looking at me with round eyes. Ok then, she has the endurance of a bowl of Jello from a Chinese buffet, which we know is so firm that it can be used as a substitute for plumbing mastic or pads under the table legs. I always believed that this kind of Jello was patented by 3M but I am sure the company will deny it.

But Hey! When the going gets though we tell ourselves that all these efforts and sacrifices are for a good cause. You know, such as storms, small quarters, tropical heat. . . . Hey I am just kidding! This is going to be great, really and we know it. Now that the house is sold and all our personal belongings are either on the boat or in storage at some relatives and friends then we can now smell the breeze of the ocean calling. Or I should say, the breeze of Lake Ontario since our first heading will be Lake Ontario to a small town called Oswego.

In Oswego starts the Erie Canal, which leads to the Hudson River and eventually to New-York City. We will follow the East coast of USA down to Florida for eventually crossing the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas.

For the remaining of the itinerary you will have to follow our “adventures” on this web site. Remember that you can click on the “Where are we” button to see our latest position or the “Contact us” to send us an email. The “Video” button takes you to the Vimeo website where we post our video and the “Picture” button takes you to the Flickr web site where we post our picture.

Danielle and I sincerely hope you will enjoy reading our posts, which should be updated more or less monthly or more often if we have easy internet access.

Sanding