Wow, what a weekend! Early last week my wife sends me an email at work saying that she took the liberty to see if there were any slips left at the Blackbeard Pirate Festival at Hampton, VA. She said they have one left, I think someone cancelled. We decided to spend the money and get the slip for the weekend.
I took friday off so that we could get the boat there for the weekend, a little over 30 mile trip. We had a front looming over us since mid week and the forecast for friday was horrible, but we just kept preparing in hopes that something would break in the weather.
Woke up at 6am friday to rain and looked at the radar... went back to sleep for two more hours :neutral:. 8am the wife wakes up and kids me out of bed and says that we need to get everything ready in case there is a break in the weather. We had spent the night before and all of friday morning watching the weather. At about 11am we thought we saw the system starting to split and it provided us a window, so we loaded the cooler and nervously hopped on the boat. Since we were heading into the wind most of the time and in a hurry due to weather, we decided to motorsail, something I've never done for a long distance. As we were entering the hampton river and dropping the main, the wind shifts and I look behind me at this storm building. We got to our slip right in front of the pirate ships, we thought it was the best slip in the house. It started raining about an hour after we were settled.
After dinner, we had a movie on for our 3 year old and I made some jiffy pop because I had never tried it and the popcorn post on here made me curious. The sell it at wally world, it was fun to make, like filling the Hindenberg with popcorn. The rain slowed and stopped later in the evening, early night and some pirates were wondering around and people that were still up had a nice time hanging out readying for the festivities to come.
Saturday was lots of family fun, food, pirates, cannons, etc, followed by crazy parties all down the docks. It was a lot of fun to people watch and our end of the piers (away from the powerboaters was pretty quiet) so when it was time to retire for the night, it was peaceful.
Sunday we stayed until after the 1:30 sea battle reenactment and headed out around 2:30 or so. We had what may have been the best sail I can remember going home. Winds were perfect and we were making around 7 kts even with our 110% Jib (forgot the other sails) and our 30 year old blown out mainsail. We got home a lot earlier than we expected. My wife got some practice at the helm and the two daughters (3 yrs and 1 month) slept the whole sail home, so we got a little peace.
Anyway, thought I'd share. Two weekends in a row with a one month old on board, my wife is awesome! She is looking forward to going back next year already :dance:
You can see a few more photos here http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=123458&id=745639551&l=5d2ee1bf7d
I took friday off so that we could get the boat there for the weekend, a little over 30 mile trip. We had a front looming over us since mid week and the forecast for friday was horrible, but we just kept preparing in hopes that something would break in the weather.
Woke up at 6am friday to rain and looked at the radar... went back to sleep for two more hours :neutral:. 8am the wife wakes up and kids me out of bed and says that we need to get everything ready in case there is a break in the weather. We had spent the night before and all of friday morning watching the weather. At about 11am we thought we saw the system starting to split and it provided us a window, so we loaded the cooler and nervously hopped on the boat. Since we were heading into the wind most of the time and in a hurry due to weather, we decided to motorsail, something I've never done for a long distance. As we were entering the hampton river and dropping the main, the wind shifts and I look behind me at this storm building. We got to our slip right in front of the pirate ships, we thought it was the best slip in the house. It started raining about an hour after we were settled.
After dinner, we had a movie on for our 3 year old and I made some jiffy pop because I had never tried it and the popcorn post on here made me curious. The sell it at wally world, it was fun to make, like filling the Hindenberg with popcorn. The rain slowed and stopped later in the evening, early night and some pirates were wondering around and people that were still up had a nice time hanging out readying for the festivities to come.
Saturday was lots of family fun, food, pirates, cannons, etc, followed by crazy parties all down the docks. It was a lot of fun to people watch and our end of the piers (away from the powerboaters was pretty quiet) so when it was time to retire for the night, it was peaceful.
Sunday we stayed until after the 1:30 sea battle reenactment and headed out around 2:30 or so. We had what may have been the best sail I can remember going home. Winds were perfect and we were making around 7 kts even with our 110% Jib (forgot the other sails) and our 30 year old blown out mainsail. We got home a lot earlier than we expected. My wife got some practice at the helm and the two daughters (3 yrs and 1 month) slept the whole sail home, so we got a little peace.
Anyway, thought I'd share. Two weekends in a row with a one month old on board, my wife is awesome! She is looking forward to going back next year already :dance:
You can see a few more photos here http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=123458&id=745639551&l=5d2ee1bf7d
