Wednesday, October 15, 2014

summer on the boat

Couldn't make it any longer...we rented out the house and moved back onto the boat for the summer.  Kids & John loved being on the water and Ms. I-hate-long-commutes (me) got used to the drive from Annapolis to DC every day.  Coming home to the family on the boat, swimming in the marina pool and an evening drink watching the boats on Back Creek made it well worth the drive.  But now we're back in DC, kids are in 5th & 8th grade and boat time is limited to weekends.  Hugo's getting tired of writing every English paper about our trip, but he found this great quote for his last paper:

"Sailing is the closest I can get to nature - it's adrenaline, fear, a constant challenge and learning experience, an adventure into the unknown. And of course there is nothing better than wearing the same T-shirt for days and not brushing my hair for weeks."   -- Daria Werbowy


Maggie bringing home a friend from
another liveaboard boat family




















Hugo & friends being pulled behind Tenho...
and finding a new use for fenders



















This night heron was a frequent morning visitor in summer




















In September we said goodbye to Skeeker,
our constant companion from 1998 to 2014

Sunday, April 13, 2014

chomping at the bit

Tenho has been out of the water since July 2013.  It's now April 2014, and we're all chomping at the bit to get back on the water, even if just for the weekends.  We'd arranged to have the boat pulled when we got back to the US, assuming that after a year on the boat we'd all be ready to have some shore time.  Just the opposite...we all really miss the boat and being on the water.  It's funny, I remember reading other blogs from families who'd done similar trips, and I always wondered what their lives were like after the trip, and the blog, ended. 

As for us, we moved back into our house in August 2013, and within a month, all the boxes were unpacked, the kids back in school, and I was back at work.  Unless you stop to think, it's as if we never left. I think Maggie's transition has been the easiest, while the rest of us have been getting used to more homework/structure at school, job hunting, and the somewhat lost feeling of life without a big adventure on the horizon.

But all in all, we are unbelievably fortunate to have had such an amazing adventure and to have all made it home safely.  Skeeker, in particular, is glad to be back home where she can spend evenings in front of her fireplace!

Buffed and bottom painted...ready for launching!















Hugo and Maggie, now 13 and 10
























Skeeker back home in front of the fireplace

not the last post...Tenho's adventures from Azores to Chesapeake

The blog of the Mighty Tenho is not yet dead!  The blog about our trip would be incomplete if I failed to include John’s experiences on the way from the Azores to the Chesapeake.  Plus, I really miss writing.  This particular story starts in February 2013.  The crew of a 48 foot Swan sailboat abandoned ship after battling storms between Newport and Bermuda.  The sailboat, Wolfhound, had been left adrift in the Atlantic.  In the months before John was to make his own crossing back from the Azores to the Chesapeake in June 2014, he would tell the kids the story of Wolfhound, still drifting around in the Atlantic, and with a crazy look in his eyes, he would tell Maggie that he was going to find Wolfhound on his way home and bring it back for her.  Months later, I was with the kids in Wisconsin while John and my brothers-in-law sailed Tenho from the Azores to the Chesapeake, when I got an e-mail via single side band radio from John “WE FOUND WOLFHOUND!”  You’ve never heard such whooping and hollering!  It was too far and too full of water to bring home to Maggie, but what an incredible high when they realized what they’d found.  

And in another great surprise, John and my brothers-in-law came home with a dozen jars of canned marlin.  They'd hooked into one during the trip from the Azores to the Chesapeake, which provided a nice change in diet and extra fish for canning.

Wolfhound, abandoned at sea February 2013
















Marlin for dinner.  And breakfast and lunch...

Sunday, June 16, 2013

last post

Tenho has about 3 weeks to go until she's back home in the Chesapeake (along with John and crew), but for the kids, cat and me, the trip is over.  We're at the airport, just waiting for our flight back to the U.S.  And in another month or so, our house will be empty and we'll move back in...by September, kids will be back in school and job prospects are starting to look up...   So that's it, the end of the Voyage of the Mighty Tenho!  Although who knows, maybe someday.........

Sunday, June 9, 2013

"There's something in the water!"

“There’s something in the water!”  Those words have always meant some exciting new discovery, something new to learn.   This time, however, was a bit different.  We were just past Gibraltar and three miles off the coast of Spain, when my dad’s 74 year old eagle eyes spotted something in the water.  “There’s something in the water!  It look like a stick?”   Ten seconds closer and Hugo exclaimed “it looks like a lost dinghy!”  Seconds later, through the binoculars, I could see a person in a red life jacket.  Instantly, we did a quick turn to take down the sails and went alongside and John yelled down “do you need help?”  Ummm….man in 65°F (18°C) water clinging to kayak with no paddle three miles from land drifting into the Atlantic Ocean?  Ya think maybe he needs help?  The rescue was easy…Hugo helped prep a line and get the swim ladder into the water while John put the kayak on the lee side of the boat so the man could grab the rope.  Luckily he’d been able to pull his upper body out of the water and up onto the kayak so he wasn’t completely hypothermic, and minutes later we’d pulled him (and his kayak) up onto the boat.  We wrapped him in a sleeping bag and warm hat, and Hugo practiced his Spanish asking him questions.  Turns out he’d lost his paddle in 3 to 4 meter seas and spent 2 hours hanging onto his kayak in the water. Somewhere in the story was also a paddling friend and family, one of whom alerted the Spanish Coast Guard when Mr. Kayaker was overdue (we never did get his name).  The Coast Guard had been looking for him a couple of miles away along the shore, but instantly came over when we called them.  We met up with them near the shore in calmer seas and transferred man and boat.  The whole episode was less than 45 minutes long, and before we knew it, we had the sails back up and had resumed our trip to the Azores.

Two hundred miles off the Azores came the next “there’s something in the water!”  It looked like a Chinese cargo ship had lost a load of wontons or frozen shrimp overboard.  Maybe from the “Great Happy” cargo ship we’d passed in the night?  (Who comes up with a name like that for a cargo ship anyway?)   We fished one out and saw it was a small snail, surrounded by a huge mass of eggs and air bubbles.   Where did the snails come from and where could those tiny snail larvae possibly hope to end up?

My favorite “there’s something in the water” moment was in Marina de Ragusa in Sicily.  Maggie was on the pier next to the boat when she suddenly yelled “There’s something in the water…it looks like an UNDERWATER FLYING DRAGON!”  It was about 6 inches long and I’ll be darned if the dark blackish thing didn’t have a squarish head, two horns, and moved through the water by flapping rounded wings on either side of its body.  Just like an flying dragon.  A Google search later, we discovered it was a sea hare, although we decided someone obviously wasn’t very imaginative if they thought the things on its head looked more like rabbit ears than dragon horns.

But now, we’ve come to the last of our water discoveries on this trip.  Here we are, finally, in the Azores, exactly eight days and 1200 miles after leaving Cartagena, Spain.  What a long trip.  The first few days we clawed our way against wind and currents, then a few days of glorious ocean sailing, followed by motoring into the wind.  But here we are, and just one short week in Ponta Delgada, and then I’ll be on  a plane with my kids and the cat back to the US, leaving John and my two brothers-in-law to bring Tenho back to the Chesapeake.

Throwing the kayaker a line
 
Spanish Coast Guard escorting us to shore for transfer
 
Kayaker man safely transferred
Rescue tracks
 
Rescue tracks
 
 

Snail and eggs
 


Underwater flying dragon
 
 
Underwater flying dragon
 


Friday, May 31, 2013

Cartagena Spain

We arrived in Cartagena just in time to catch the beginning of “A Taste of Cartagena”, with food from all the local restaurants and live music just a few hundred yards away at the entrance to the marina.  The kids have enjoyed being back in a town they remember from last fall and every day after homework they head into town to buy ice cream and go to the park.  

The next leg of our trip is hopefully a non-stop sail to the Azores, so we’ve been working to get the boat ready, changing oil, stocking up on groceries and pre-cooking meals.  If all goes well, my next post will be from the Azores in about 7-9 days. 

Main pedestrian area in Cartagena

 
Hugo about to launch
 
Maggie
 
The kids' favorite ice cream store in Cartagena










Tuesday, May 28, 2013

last photos from Italy and now we're in Spain

After four days/three nights underway, yesterday we finally arrived in Cartagena, Spain.  A long crossing…the gale that had been howling down from France left big waves that hit us on the beam and made everyone a bit queasy the first day.  Despite anti-seasickness meds, Maggie threw up 4 times in the first 24 hours, although I think she was a bit disappointed she didn’t beat Hugo’s record of 7 times in 1 day when he was 8 and had the stomach flu.  What a tough little up-chucker.  Never a whimper or complaint, she just gets it over with and then goes back to sleep.

It was a rude re-introduction back into sailing…we’d had such a nice few days in our last stop in Italy in Cagliari, on the island of Sardinia.  Cagliari is a perfect place to see superb examples of all the various civilizations that have dominated large areas of the Med:  it has a Carthaginian necropolis, a Roman amphitheater, Byzantine churches and a wonderful walled medieval part of town.  The well laid out archeological museum explains the history of the island, particularly the unique Sardinian Nuraghe civilization, which started around 1800 BC.  What an interesting comparison to what we'd seen from the same time period in Egypt.  We rented a car and drove into the interior of the island to learn more about the Nuraghe with a visit to a remarkably well-preserved massive fort-like tower and village.  Then we drove up to the nearby plateau, where the Nuraghe went to get the enormous volcanic basalt stones they used to build their towers, and also saw the cork trees which the Nuraghe used as insulation in their sleeping areas.

Another gale from the west starts tomorrow, so we’ll stay here in Cartagena until it blows through, and then head towards Gibraltar.
Nuraghe village remains


























Their tower complexes included a
courtyard with a well




 
 

Remains of a house, with a circular ritual
bathing area and an arch from the cooking oven

Nuraghe warrior figure


Phoenician amulet necklace...have to admit I like their
faces better than the classical Greek ones!