[BlueJacket Sailing] BlueJacket's 2008 Cruising Plans

[Geoffrey W. Schultz]

Happy New Year from the crew of the BlueJacket!

We hope that everyone had a wonderful 2007 and we hope that 2008 will 
be even better.  I've been remiss in writing to let people know what 
we've been up to since we arrived in Deltaville, VA with 
BlueJacket.  We decided that we're going to do something very unique 
(for us) as we're going to head NORTH this upcoming season and we'll 
spend the winter at home, outside of Boston.  As a result we had to 
winterize the boat as she's going to be in freezing temperatures for 
the first time since I've owned her.  We've never done that before, 
so that was a learning experience.  We also had to pull everything 
off of the boat that couldn't freeze, which included lots of 
food-stuffs and cleaning products. It's amazing how much stuff we 
took off, and in the process we gained about 2" of waterline 
back!  The SUV we rented to drive home was packed to the gills.  We 
also had BlueJacket hauled so that the hull could dry out and we 
pulled the mast so that it could be repainted.  She definitely looks 
a lot different!

Since we've been home I've done a major overhaul on the 
www.GeoffSchultz.org web site.  It looks very similar to the way it 
looked before, but the underpinnings are completely different.  All 
of the pages are dynamically generated from a database and as a 
result of doing this, I've been able to imbed Google Maps into all of 
the indexes and trip reports.  You can click on any of the position 
markers on the maps to see the date that we were there and links to 
any trip reports.  I can now create trip reports on the web site via 
e-mail from the boat and I've replaced the Yahoo based mailing list 
with my own so my trip logs won't get reformatted or have ads 
inserted.  The bottom line is that the web site looks much like it 
did before, but it has a lot more capabilities.

As I mentioned before, we're going to have a very different cruising 
season this year.  The current plans are to head up the Chesapeake in 
early May and then follow the Delaware Bay to the Atlantic.  We'll 
head to New York where we'll follow the Hudson River to Erie 
Canal.   That will take us through Lake  George and Lake 
Champlain.  We'll have to pull the mast at one point and transport it 
on the boat for quite a few miles.  Forty to fifty locks later we'll 
enter the St. Lawrence River near Montreal, Canada.  From there we'll 
follow the St. Lawrence to Quebec and then to the Canadian Maritimes 
where we'll explore Prince Edward Island.

[]


We'll then cross to Newfoundland and explore the southern coast.  The 
guide books make this area of Newfoundland sound spectacular, 
comparing it to the fiords of Norway with 1500 ft cliffs that have 
waterfalls cascading into the sea.  From there we'll head to Nova 
Scotia and explore the Bras d'Or lakes which bisect the northern end 
of Nova Scotia.  Then we'll work our way down the Atlantic coast of 
Nova Scotia, eventually crossing the Bay of Fundy and re-entering the 
US.  We'll then head down the coast of Maine, New Hampshire, 
Massachusetts and eventually we'll end up in Rhode Island where I 
think that we'll leave BlueJacket for the winter.

I plan to enter the Canadian Maritimes sometime mid-August as by then 
the waters have warmed up and the prevalence of fog is reduced.  I do 
expect a lot of fog as the guide books show that fog is present 
between 25% and 50% of the days in August and September.  I'm glad 
we've got a good radar!  We should be back in RI sometime in 
early-mid October, just in time to enjoy New England's beautiful 
foliage season.  The whole trip will be about 2500 nautical miles and 
will take about 6 months.

So that's the plan, and who knows, we might even stick to it! 

:-)  Have a great new year and keep in touch!



-- Geoff & Sue  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://eight.pairlist.net/pipermail/bluejacketsailing/attachments/20080101/e3c6aefc/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 6aaf7a4.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 274789 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : <http://eight.pairlist.net/pipermail/bluejacketsailing/attachments/20080101/e3c6aefc/attachment-0001.jpg>