Monday, September 30, 2013

Crab 5 - Aaron 0

After waking up at a not so nice marina in Greenwich, NJ we started our journey to Chesapeke, MD with muffins of course . We did a 33 mile run today. Then we arrived in Chesapeke City! After a fun vist to the town hall we had lunch at a cafe and we went to a canal museum :().

Then we came to our funnest (I know, not a real word) part of the day, watching Aaron try to catch a fish or a crab off of our boat. After about 2 hours and like 6 pounds of steak (Aaron used it as bait ), he finally gave up.

Aaron hopes the crab/fished enjoyed his 5 star meal!

Then we had dinner, no not steak but petty close to it. Our waitress thought we were pretty funny, her name was Brittani and she was really nice, but I thought we could have gotten ice cream out of the deal. Katie and Aaron tried to convince dad to play 7 Wonders but we settled for hearts. Then we fell asleep in our 80 dregee Fahrenheit boat.

Top Five Things for Today:
1. Fishing
2. WiFi
3. 11 days 'til Juilo is here (yeah!)
4. Brittani
5. No sandbars.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Daddy, can we play 7 Wonders?

Today we had to leave Utche's marina. It will be missed. The free hotdogs were awesome. Plus the cutesy little town was nice too. But leave we had to, because the Bahamas weren't getting any closer.

I'm going to be honest, I don't entirely know what happened after we left. I slept and did homework and was completely oblivious to the world. I didn't really start paying attention again until we tried to anchor just off the channel in some river or other. Unfortunately, it was too deep, and the current was too fast, and the anchor never set, so we just went looking for a marina.


We found one. It was in the middle of a huge marsh. And there were very few boats. But there was water and power, so all was well. We even took a dingy ride to explore the marsh (there are many secret pathways just wide enough for the dingy). It was pretty fun. We had delicious pork tenderloin for dinner. Then came the 20 minutes of trying to convince dad to play a board game.

So, onboard, we have a strategy board game about collecting resources, building stuff, and getting more points than mom. It is a very fun game, but dad sucks at it. The one time he was forced to play, he lost. By a lot. Now he just refuses on the spot when asked to play. So after asking him 9 or 10 times to play, we just played hearts instead. Katie lost.

Then we fell asleep after watching a great sunset.


Saturday, September 28, 2013

Widen Your Silo!

We learned that eating typical foods from the Canadian Food Guide can be nutritious and beneficial for your cholesterol, however when on vacation you should lose 10lbs or it is Lipitor for you! 

We had a great time in Sayville, however we were educated that our 'food silo' or the foods that we consume fall within a really, really narrow range of consumables and we really needed to widen the silo. After eating mussels, steamers (remove their heads before you consume them), we decided that we would widen the silo even further,  so we headed to Wildwood, NJ. The two mile long boardwalk was a great place to widen the silo...in fact the best place for a pizza with french fries had to be served by this guy...a guy who takes your cash and doesn't bother to wash his hands. Oh, while we are talking about this, here is something interesting...when you ask for a washroom in this restaurant, you are directed to their sink next to the Coke machine. My only hope was this guy was hoping we were going to wash our hand, however we were looking for a washroom/bathroom/salle de bain/lavatory or some other facility....we passed on both.

Must admit, never had a pizza before with french fries on it!

Friday, September 27, 2013

CM: Cape May by Corey Morrison



After an easy 40 mile run from Atlantic City into Cape May NJ, we planned to stay at Utsch's marina which has a very interesting approach requiring you to deviate from the channel and trust the dock hand is right, or has a TowBoat US in their marina. To cut to the chase, we made it with only some nerves being shot. The next day we rented a car and drove to Baltimore for TrawlerFest, which had lots of anticipation amongst the captain... it wasn't nearly as big as we hoped but never the less still very fun seeing as every boat was a trawler and most people were "trawler people" who understand this type of pleasure craft. Being on a trawler, we travel at about 8 knots. For those of you back in Canada, in kilometres per hour, that's roughly converts into: a really slow speed.

Before 25hp (this is a 9.9hp...)

Luckily we have a dinghy that has a lower drag coefficient and a better power to weight ratio than Seamorr, with one person. However it isn't the same with all 5 of us... so we need more horsepower. We pulled the dingy out (used the 50,000 lb travel lift).


After Trawler Fest, we got more horsepower. A 25hp Yamaha will carry us all away to safety or for an afternoon of tubing (blog post coming soon).




Wednesday, September 25, 2013

DO AC

Today we were in Atlantic City. For those who have never been, picture Las Vegas. Then remove the desert. And add an ocean. And take away 90% of the people and 3/4 of the casinos. Oh yeah, and we were the 5 youngest people there. And of course add a nice boardwalk. Our day began, like all days should, with the world's greatest pancakes.

They were thin pancakes, served by a restaurant just a dinghy ride away from our marina, and they were sweet and tasted even better with blueberries and homemade maple syrup (maple syrup from Napanee, of course!). After devouring three ginormous pancakes, we went to check out Atlantic City's boardwalk.

We tried going by dinghy, but it was slow going, cramped, and rocky. We eventually turned around after being pulled over by the US coast guard who thought that we were going to brave the Atlantic ocean in an 11 foot boat. We took a jitney (public transport bus) instead.



Atlantic City does have a nice boardwalk, with plenty of touristy stores, including the largest candy store I have ever seen, a Ripley's Believe It or Not tour (which Katie really really wanted to visit) and a pretty good ice cream place where they made a milkshake of any flavour which we stopped at for lunch (the mint chip milkshake is awesome by the way). We also got free tickets to a magic show from a tourist shop run by DO AC, the tourist information guys of Atlantic city. The magic show was pretty good. Magique I think it was called. Corey got called up onstage.  We found it hilarious.

After the show we headed back to the marina and went to the pool. The pool is awesome by the way, it's heated and there are deck chairs and hot tubs and it's mostly empty because it was a Wednesday afternoon, and there's a bar that you can order fries and chicken fingers from, so of course we did. After relaxing at the pool for a couple of hours we headed back to the boat, and mom and dad abandoned us again.



This time they were going to dinner without us, so the kids stayed on the boat and streamed movies. Then ordered room service because our marina was so fancy that you could order room service to the boat. The pizza was good.


Meanwhile mom and dad won $60 at the casino. They came back and we all fell asleep.

Best Pancakes Anywhere!

So, I have consumed a ton of pancakes with syrup from Napanee, but check out these pancakes from Atlantic City! These pancakes consume the syrup, so you enjoy the pancakes and the syrup.....nothing better!


A video of the "syrup-sucking" pancake.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Sharks and Dolphins and Hot Tubs, Oh My!,,,

We started our day at the crack of dawn for some it was at 6am, and for Aaron it was at 10 (a 12 hours sleep for him!). Then we had a 12 hour run ahead of us! From Long Island across the ocean to Atlantic City. That was an 80 miles day. With nothing around us for miles, Kim decided to teach me about projectiles. After 70 miles, we found a bunch of pods of dolphin. Followed by a shark, a great white shark to be exact. Then an hour an a half later beautiful buildings were surrounding us from all directions. Then we arrived in the the Golden Nugget Marina. It was amazing!!!! Then we causally walked through the 5 star hotel in our bathing suits. We found ourselves in a roof top pool and wonderful hot tub 😄 After a steak and potato dinner, we enjoyed a family bonding movie on hulu.

Top Ten Things of the day - 


1. Great White Shark 
2. Dolphins
3. Hot Tub
4. Steak with mushrooms
5. Ocean
6. No Sandbars
7. Family time 😒 (kidding)
8. Wifi
9. 16 days t'ill Julio's here!!!!!!!!!
10. A Clean Boat after we washed the clumps of salt off of her!

Saturday, September 21, 2013

An awesome week in Long Island NY

We have been relaxing in Long Island for the last 4 days - well most of us.... Kenn went to work (who knew retirement so short lived  - but it was a worthwhile demo!!) while the rest of us seriously lounged....  We have been staying with John and AC Barry who have this amazing house right on the water.  They made us feel right at home.  Hanging out in the sun, playing with sea kayaks, exploring Long Island, and taking a day to head into NYC. Katie has developed a love-hate relationship with chickens....Might be the next addition to the Morrison cottage when we get home !





On Thursday we took the train into NYC. We wandered around Times Square, Central Park and 5th Avenue.  The carousel in Central Park was great, except Katie thought something like the seats on Leviathan would be better and the boys had a new use for the leather seat belts on the horses.  


We had lunch at Trump Tower thanks to gift cards from G&G (yes we found a Starbucks there) wandered through the American Girl Store and took the NBC Studio Tour which highlighted the SNL stage and production.  We also decided to catch a Broadway show "Matilda".  Everyone really enjoyed it (even if it was a musical !!)  We took the train home that night (thankfully it was still "that night' when Corey realized he had us on the wrong train with 2 minutes to spare !!! 

The rest of the weekend was spend exploring Long Island.  John took us in the boat across the bay to Ocean Beach - a cool cottage beach town on Fire Island where cars are almost non existent.  We ate food way "outside our usual column" including mussels, steamers, lobster and Mahi Mahi - honest - we ate food from shells, survived and truly enjoyed it!!! 
We drove around the scenic farmland and wine country of East End of Long Island on Saturday visiting very cute little towns such as Riverhead, Mattituck (amazing cheese shop on a very cute street called Love Lane), Greenport and then took a couple of ferries to get across Shelter Island to Sag Harbour. In this port they have boats large enough to carry cars on their stern decks!! We found a light house on Horton's Point we toured and happily could answer all the "aids to navigation" questions the tour guide had!

 
The town of Southhampton has some serious mansions to be seen, but we all decided we didn't need a huge hedge around our homes!  The whole awesome day was spent listening to the symphony of John's very intelligent, comfortable car he very nicely lent us for the day. 

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Nothing to see here...just move along...nothing to see here.....SeaMorr Spa Day

After a sleepless night of "washing machine of death" where the waves were smacking our bow from  both sides and gyrating the boat from all angles, we decided we would take a leisurely trip westward along the inside of Long Island Sound. But first, we needed to get the boat out of our slip and into the 3 foot waves and the 25mph winds. We knew that once we were out from Shinnecock Bay and the inlet, the waves would subside.

SeaMorr Spa Day

After traveling approximately a mile, the waves subsided as did our forward travel. Kim wanted a beach day and wanted to basically slow things down, so we decided we would take a break for the next twelve hours. (And as a benefit we got to meet a mullet and 500HP of Mercury Power). SeaMorr decided to take a breather as well and wanted to feel the gentle moist soothing sand along her hull....we called it a "Spa Day for a SeaMorr".

As we headed westbound, we met another boat that was heading easterly. We slowed for a slow passage and found ourselves stuck in some sand. As the tide was dropping, SeaMorr was enjoying less and less water and more and more sand. For the next ten hours, we had a perfect view of a great house. We were able to watch them have breakfast, cut their lawn, wash their car, do their laundry, eat lunch, play tennis, BBQ some dinner and they seemed to have a great day moving about their house.


The call went into BoatUS and they responded as soon as they finished with another boat that was stuck in the mud. We deployed an anchor from the stern, hoping that the current would actually move SeaMorr back into deeper water, unfortunately with the tide dropping and it wasn't of any help. At this point, there was 48" of water on our port side (left) side and 43" of water on our starboard (right) side and we need 42" of water under the hull, so that told us the bow was stuck.

BoatUS tied a bridle around the bow of SeaMorr and encourage her off her perch, however that was unsuccessful. The decision was made to wait for the tide to change and touch base with us at 13:30, which was low tide.


BoatUS returned and at this point and we could see that there was only 6" of water at the bow and the stern (back of boat) was now sitting up out of the water where we could see the trim tabs and see that there was probably only 18" of water under the stern. The good thing was, the boat sitting perfectly square and there wasn't any fear of "Coasta Concordia".

We knew at 19:30 we would be at high tide, so we decided to hang out and if there were any issues, we have the phone number of BoatUS (he had to leave and pull someone else out of the mud).

At 17:00 we have a boat that passed us and we could feel the boat had much more water under the hull as we started to rock.

At 18:00 SeaMorr drifted off the sandbar. We called BoatUS to let them know we were free, but he insisted that we stay put as he was on his way. He was there to make sure that we were able to go forward, reverse and that our steering was OK. Luckily, all was OK.


We were off and heading to Sayville to see John and AnnaCarin. We met John at a draw bridge where he got on the boat and motored with us to Sayville.....John brought Rib-eye steaks that Aaron magically cooked to perfection.


As we headed west, we had an awesome sunset. A great way to finish SeaMorr's Spa Day.