The Voyage of the Mighty Tenho: April 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...

John, Tessa, Hugo (12) and Maggie (9)

Having spent 10 years in DC, we moved onto the boat in June 2012, with the intent of sailing across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean for a year. As of June 2013, we've sailed from the U.S. (Annapolis, Maryland) to Bermuda, then to the Azores, to Lisbon and down the Atlantic coast of Portugal and Spain, through the Straits of Gibraltar, along the southern coast of Spain (with a quick trip to Morocco) to Ibiza, then Sicily, through the Corinth Canal and Greek islands, winter in Turkey, a few weeks in Israel, with a side trip to Egypt. After a month in the Adriatic in spring, we all sailed to the Azores, where mom, cat and kids left by airplane, leaving John and crew to bring the boat back home to the Chesapeake.