Well, after months of cabin fever, we finally picked up our recycled
'90 Rhodes on Easter weekend. We made it back to Iowa late tuesday
night. Wow, what a drive. All together we drove 3575 miles in 8 days.
Way, way too much driving. But the boat now sits in our driveway
waiting for us to recover and head to the near by lake. Just to give
you the highlight of the trip:
We ended up taking our Jeep Cherokee Classic instead of our ranger
because our daugther, Holly, was planning on riding back with us and
of course most of her stuff was strapped to the top of the jeep. The
drive to hyde park NY was uneventful.
Holly's gradutation from the Culinary Institute of America was great.
The lunch that was provided to parents and friends was super. If you
ever have the chance to eat at one of the CIA's resturants - do it,
you will not be disappointed. Of course once the graduation was over
the real work begin. We packed up, and head south to NC. The route
took us thru Washington DC. Unfortunately we hit DC at 5:30PM on the
friday before easter. MAJOR TRAFFIC JAM, easily adding about 4 hours
of stop and go traffic to the trip to Virginia Beach.
Saturday morning we stop at West Marine (my new favorite store), then
off to Edenton, NC about a 2+ hour drive. Best drive of the trip,
sunny, easy traffic free roads it was great. Of course we got lost
trying to find GBI but we finally managed to locate it.
There in all it's glory was our boat, already rigged, poptop and
bimini up for display. It is a beauty. After quick introduction to
Gary and Joe (our offical GBI instructors) we were shown the ins and
outs, do's and don'ts of the various items on our boat. Of course
they were going at lightning speed and we were still fuzzy from all
the driving but I think we did ok. Now it's off to go sailing. We
towed the boat to a nearby public ramp, launched, and were on our way
under the watchful eyes of Gary and Joe. We had just enough wind to
fill the sails. After about an hour we headed back and recovered the
boat.
We checked into our B&B (Albermarle House on West Queen St - very nice) and
then headed out to dinner with Stan and Rose.
Sunday, we picked up the boat from the GBI parking lot and headed to
the boat ramp. Without problem we raised the mast, launched and
headed out into the sound. We were almost becalmed on our first solo
sail in our boat. But gradually the wind began to pick up, and pick
up, and blow harder. So that by the time we got to the other side of
the sound we had the jib completely rolled up. By the time we got
back to the boat ramp we also had the main in and it became very
tricky to manuever into the dock/ramp. The wind was blowing us
directly into the dock. The wind was blowing so hard we couldn't turn
the boat along side of the dock I had to back up with the engine to
the opposite dock and then with dock lines pull the bow around to
point it into the trailer. We were pretty happy with how easy it was
to get the boat on the trailer and up out of the water. The other
power boat at the dock was just planning on waiting out the wind and
was taking a pounding.
The next morning, we packed up the boat with Gary and Joe's help
(actually they did most of it). The lashing down of everything took a
little longer than we planned but well worth the effort. Then we were
off to Iowa via Nashville. Two long, long days driving. The jeep
seemed to pull it ok, every once in a while we would get up to 65mph
and then the wind, or some bumps, or passing trucks would get the
boat to swaying and it would get pretty exciting for a few seconds
until I got it slowed down. Most of the time we cruised about
55-60mph.
We are all home now, safe and sound. This saturday, barring any bad
weather we will take the boat to it's primary sailing area, and break
out the grill and the beer, - Cheers!
