ware the ham are we??

wareham I? in wareham! so we are underway.. at this point 5 days into our voyage. its been a steady routine of moving so far. south south south. our departure day saw us off with a bunch of friends and family on the docks in great bay. we motored down the river and had a great sail down to newburyport, MA arriving just as it got dark. we were able to meet up with arthur and his wife who took us out to a great dinner..thanks guys! next morning we were able to have breakfast with annalisa's aunt and uncle virginia and bob before shoving off again for the annisquam river.
this was our best afternoon of sailing so far with the wind off our starboard quarter. it was a beautiful day and we were able to sail into the river and right to our mooring for the night. the next day brought us through the river and the blynmann canal to gloucester harbour. our sights then sighted for cape cod canal we had about 52 miles ahead of us across massachussetts bay. about 16 hours later we motored up the cape cod canal and tied up between two wooden pilings for the night and were able to pass through the canal the next morning without incident, besides passing a ridiculously big cargo ship mid canal and right under a bridge! wow. so we are now anchored for a few days just on the south side of the C.C canal riding out some rainy weather and waiting for the winds to shift back to the west. looks like they will be from the south and southeast for the next 2 days anyway which is right on our nose with our course set for cuttyhunk island and then on to block island.
sounds like justin and brenden are well underway and through a few of the locks up in ithica, on there way down to albany. we look forward to meeting up with them in new york harbor within the next week and a half or so. ill jump right to some pictures now..enjoy :) -joel



p.s to mathew...were still trying to wrap our heads around it but pretty darn exciting :)

boston from the east

tied up in the C.C canal

snug as a couplea bugs underway to cape cod

ye ha its cold!

headed for newburyport

entering newburyport at dusk

goodbye great bay and new hampshire!

thanks send off crew for making it down on a blustry sunday!

loomings

so we missed our first week of november departure date.. seems this should fall into fashion nicely with the rest of our trip as this was the only date we had set and we already missed it! so much for itineraries. HAH. who needs to live by a schedual anyway when your breaking away from a lifestyle of scheduals and deadlines. anyway.. we will be riding down the piscataqua river tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock with the outgoing tide to begin this saga of ours.

our marathon of last minute work seems to all be all but tied up. a few projects will continue as we are underway but the important things all seem to be working nicely. we finally made it out for a quick test sail tonight with clint, brian and jim for a nice quick cruise up the bay and back. that leaves us winterizing the well house tonight and packing the last pieces of the puzzle to be ready for tomorrow. thanks clint for the burritos. :)

our first intended stop is in newburyport, ma. a whole 22 miles from where we are tied up right now, but it is an important stop. this is the home town of arthur berube who will be seeing his old vessel floating for the first time in 3 years and with a lot of new work done to her. following this stop we plan to head down through the annisquam river in ipswich, ma to gloucester harbour, and from there down to cape cod. instead of going around the outside we are opting for the shortcut of the cape cod canal which will dump us in buzzards bay and heading for block island. i dont know when the next chance will be for me to put up a post but hopefully a few good pictures can come out of that stretch.

so thank you to everyone who has helped us make this vision become a reality, and helped us fit out with all the gear we needed to make this trip as safe as possible. we owe that safety to a lot of our friends and family who seem to want to see us safely home again after the voyage.

about to start cutting out a new mizzen mast on our new bandsaw coming strait from brattelboro, VT. Thanks Doug! the wood we are cutting from is a 30' long piece of douglas fir at 6"X8" we brought her down to 4"X4" and tapered to 3" at the top. Annalisa's father Chuck had this piece on the farm that he got from the power company when they were making some repairs to the power lines running through the property. this particular beam was one of the crossties you see at the top of the tall wooden poles.

annalisa says..time for a nap.

a blur of packing :)

Call me Ishmael

Call us Wild Millers. "Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world." Although Ishmael put to sea for his substitute to pistol and ball, we will be putting to sea for the adventure and the travles! Two years ago an old sailing vessel came into my life and with a lot of forsight i could see a dream at the end of a long tunnel of work. First came the work.

The Wanderer, as she is known, a Sea Bird Yawl, by the design of Thomas Fleming Day was loaded on a truck in late August 2006 bound from Newburyport, Ma. to my folks house in Derry, NH. She came from a man by the name of Aurthur Berube who owned her for the 37 years previous. For her long life she has only had 5 owners and I count myself the 5th. Built in 1939 in New Bedford, MA. She sailed the New England coast all her life and now we are planning on taking her to warmer waters!

So following about two years of work she is recently launched and about a week away from departure. She currently sits tied up to the docks at Great Bay Marine in Newington, NH on the Pisquataqua river. Now waiting for her main mast and new mizzen mast to be stepped and rigged, and the rest of her fitting out to finish up.

A lot of suprise last minute work, including an almost entirly new set of spars, has left us scrambling to make our departure date a reality, for all this summer we have been talking about leaving in the first week of November and, WOW, Thats next week!

We plan to cast our votes on Tuesday..election day, move ourselves and our faithful companion Nissa on board and head down river. With the first available window of weather we turn our bow south and keep on going. We have no intended destination per-se. We will be bringing our trades with us, Annalisa as a massage therapist with table on board, and I with my tools for any kind of odd job work that might come my way. A possible visit with my grandparents in St. John of the US Virgin Islands has us looking to the Carribean in the months of January, February but no plans are set in concrete as I know they are bound to change and whats the point of freeing yourselves only to be heckled by deadlines. No, our voyage is going to be day by day and hopefully warmer each day! One exciting possibility is the meeting of a friend on the way, also headed south on his newly built sailboat. Justin is a boat builder by trade from Ithaca, NY, he and Brenden, another friend of ours will be going through the locks in Ithaca on the 15th of November and heading down the Hudson River to hopefully join us in a caravan voyage!

So stick with us, I will try to keep the entries reasonably short and hopefully ull of pictures to fill in the gaps. Cheers! -Joel