Life On Orion

 After our first day on the actual Inter Coastal Waterway (ICW) we have arrived in Chesapeake VA and are tied up at the Atlantic Yacht Basin. It was an interesting trip navigating through Norfolk with all of the military installations and restricted areas - so much to look at, but so much boat traffic including loaded freighters.  Yikes! A lock full with other boats and a lift bridge finished out the day and we rewarded ourselves by walking a short distance into town for beer and an early dinner of fried shrimp.  Tomorrow we make final arrangements for the boat to be hauled out and painted and Tuesday we fly to WI with Dewey. See you after the holidays!

 Today was one of those days we have been waiting for - warm, sunny, no fog, minimal crab pots and no "incidents".  We left Deltaville around 10 am after waiting till the fog dissipated  and traveled to Hampton VA without a hitch.  We even had our first 2 dolphins ride alongside the boat!  That was awesome!!  As you can see below, it was warm enough to go have a cocktail on the fly bridge and Dewey had his first little field trip outside on the boat too. We are nearly at our intended destination of the Norfolk area where we will have the boat hauled out of the water, the bottom painted and a couple of odds and ends attended to. We are looking forward to meeting our newest grand child, arriving next week and spending the holidays with family.  When we come back to the boat, it will be 2021 and we start the Great Loop adventure in earnest!  Stay tuned...

 We continue to make progress moving the boat south and are finally in Virginia.  We stopped for a night on Solomons Island yesterday after a warm, calm day on the Chesapeake. The new game we played was dodging crab pots! The steel cages used to trap live crabs are hidden below the surface of the water and the cage is marked by a bobbing float about the size of a cantaloupe. They must be avoided or you risk getting the lines tangled in your prop - not something I want to experience.  Anyway, apparently crabs are plentiful here because it was a mine field - felt like whack-a-mole - just when I thought there couldn't be any more, I would spot 6 more!!  Kuddos to Tom for threading the boat through the crab pot gauntlet. Solomons Island was a delightful stop and I look forward to coming back when we can spend more time.  But, today was another chapter....  We delayed our departure due to fog and although it had lifted in the marina area, when we got out on the bay, it quickly closed in

 I am happy to report that we had a warm, sunny travel day for the first time in weeks...  Winds were calm and only had some 1-2 foot swells on the Chesapeake Bay for our trip from Baltimore to St. Michaels.  One of the highlights of the journey today was going under the regal Bay Bridge that leads to Annapolis. We did have an unexpected event about 12 minutes out from our marina which we now refer to as "fender wrangling".  I went out to get the fenders positioned on the starboard (right) side of the boat in preparation for docking and suddenly I heard a loud snap and looked to see our large round (and very expensive) fender floating away from the boat behind us in the bay.  Somehow the clip holding it onto the railing snapped and I was horrified!  I hollered to Tom to let him know what happened and he proceeded to turn the boat around so I could attempt to retrieve it with a boat hook.  I'm not sure how we managed, but Tom brought the boat up right along side of the fen

 We have been in a slip at the Inner Harbor Marina just a 10 min. walk from Daniel's house for the last 5 days.  It have been fun spending time with his family and our two granddaughters and Charlotte even had a sleep-over on the boat last night.  Baltimore has one of the most beautiful skylines when it is lit up at night and it has been surreal looking out of the windows and seeing that every night.  Tomorrow we hope to have warmer weather and less wind, so will start our journey down to Virginia.

 Tom's friend, Jeff Pell, joined him for a week on the boat also, while I traveled to CA for Kate's Zoom baby shower.  They got the boat through the rest of the Erie canal and to just south of New York City.  We were stuck there due to high winds and waves for a few days, but were adventurous and took the train into NY City to see the 911 Memorial, and walk the High Line.  If you aren't familiar with the High Line, you should look it up - the city took an abandoned rail line and turned it into a walking green space above the street level and even with COVID restrictions it was a fun walk. My personal highlight was driving to Mystic, CT one day where the Julia Roberts movie "Mystic Pizza" was filmed.  It is a charming town and I look forward to going back when we have more time and more sunshine.

 Tom and our son, Daniel, took the boat from St. Clare Shores, MI to Buffalo, NY while I stayed behind in WI to take care of some family business.  I joined Tom the following week and we entered the Erie Canal that took us to the mouth of the Hudson River.  It was like motoring in a bathtub for most of the way, with the shoreline close and lots of houses and small towns to look at.  Other times the canal merged with a river and it was a lot more tedious and boring.  What was NOT boring was going through 34 locks along the way.  As the water levels of different bodies of water change, you have to be moved up or down in a contained tub of water and released on the other side.  To summarize, Tom had to steer the boat into a narrow opening at one end of the lock and slowly maneuver it alongside of a very slimy, rough concrete wall where he slowed down long enough for me to reach over the side of the boat and grab a thick, slimy rope (with gloves on!), put the boat into neutral and race to

Welcome to our Blog!  We are Tom and Sarah Anderson from Scottsdale AZ and have retired, purchased and lived on an RV for a month or two and are now living on our North Pacific 43 motor yacht, the Orion.  We hope to share our adventures and travels with you as we go. We both retired in July, sold our home and many of our belongings, bought a motor home and stored the rest of our belongings 2000 miles away. We bought our boat in Michigan at the end of September and have traveled about 1000 miles trying to get to warmer weather before winter sets in and causes problems for us. Needless to say, it's been a wild four months!  So many of our friends have been inquiring about our "blog" and to be honest, we have been so focused on getting to warm waters, we haven't had time.  Our plan for the remaining two months of this train wreck of 2020 is to get Orion to a shipyard in VA where we will have her hauled out and have the bottom painted in preparation for saltwater life.  S