Frequently Asked Questions
What motivated you to decide to begin cruising aboard a sailboat?
We knew we wanted to travel once we retired. We love the water and sailing. So, we decided to explore the "Blue Highways" by boat while we were still in relatively good shape before buying
a RV and traveling the "Red Highways".
How long will you be gone?
We decided to give it a go for at least 90 days and as much as 2 years. We have passed the 2 year mark. Foreign Affair has taken us as far north as Maine and south to the Florida Keys and The Bahamas. Basically, we have been moving north or south with the weather. We are like Goldilocks. We like it not to hot and not too cold. We intend to sell Foreign Affair in 2018.
Where do you plan to go?
Our cruising is limited to the East Coast and The Bahamas. We took possession of Foreign Affair in Stamford, Connecticut on Labor Day weekend in 2014. She was then brought to Herrington Harbour Marina located on the Chesapeake Bay. In October, 2014 she was moved to Summit North Marina on the Chesapeake - Delaware Canal where she was put ashore while we returned to work until our retirement in April, 2015. Foreign Affair has since taken us thousands of miles covering the entire ICW as well as off-shore on our great adventure. We hauled her in October, 2017 and decided to winter ashore. Foreign Affair will be launched again around May 1 and remain in the Chesapeake Bay until she is sold. We will then return to Kansas to spend the summer sailing with our grandchildren on our Catalina 27 on Lake Perry. We will eventually purchase another boat more suitable for cruising the rivers as we intend to complete the Great Loop.
What is the Great Loop?
The Great Loop is a circumnavigation of the eastern US and parts of Canada. The route included the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), the New York State Canals, the Canadian Canals, the Great Lakes, the inland rivers and the Gulf of Mexico. The Great Loop is over 5,000 miles long.
What did you do to prepare for your journey?
Besides learning how to sail, we dedicated much time to reading sailing related publications, going to boat shows, attending boating seminars, seeking out expert advice from experienced cruisers, working on boats and sailing with others. We both joined the American Sailing Association and completed several of their courses to prepare for our life afloat. We are members of the Seven Seas Cruising Association (SSCA) and the America's Great Loop Cruisers' Association (AGLCA).
What about being away from family and friends?
The cell phone, email, Facebook and this blog allowed us to maintain contact with family and friends. Many of our family members and some of our friends joined us for a while aboard Foreign Affair. We also occasionally took "vacations from the boat" to fly back for special occasions or during Christmas season. We also made many, many new friends during our travels.
Aren’t you worried about storms at sea and hurricanes?
No one can avoid the weather. We do our best to find a safe place to ride out bad weather and always keep abreast of the latest weather forecast. We have a rule that if either of us doesn't like the weather or feel it is unsafe to travel, then we don't go anywhere until conditions improve. Even so, we have encountered some very severe storms and survived. We do our best to stay safe and comfortable.
What are you doing with your house, renting it or selling it?
We do not plan to live out our days afloat. We have a house-sitter or neighbors to keep an eye on the house while we are away. Selling it was not part of the plan as we originally felt we'd have accomplished most of what we intended to do could be done in about 2 years.
What are you doing with your cars?
Most of the time our cars are left with family or friends. If we are going to be in a location for more than a month, we somehow get the car so we have it to get around and explore the area. Sometimes we team up with another cruising couple and "leap frog" our cars from location to location as we move up and down the coast. Once we put the car in commercial storage for a month.
What will you do when you don't have a car with you?
Some marinas have courtesy cars or bike they let you borrow. Often, someone at the marina will give you ride. There is also public transportation or rental cars. Enterprise Rental Car will "pick you up" at the marina if they have a agency in the area. We walk a lot. We also have the dinghy.
Will you have cell service?
Most of the time we do have cell service if we are within 5 miles or so of the shoreline. However, there are numerous places in rural and less populated areas where there is no cell coverage. This is particularly true in parts of North Carolina and Georgia, as well as, The Bahamas.
What about internet and TV?
We rely mostly on either using our cell phone as a "hot spot" or the marina's "wifi" to access the internet. We went without TV on the boat for more than a year. We eventually bought a TV and rely on over-the-air broadcasts. In places like New York City or Boston, we get dozens of channels. Usually, we are happy to get most of the major networks. Frequently, we get nothing. We read a lot.
How will you handle your finances?
We put our recurring bills on auto-pay from either a checking account or credit/debit card. We opened a checking account with a bank that has branches throughout most of the East Coast. PayPal is another way we use to move money around. The internet and cell phones have made life much easier for travelers. ue to proper planning, we never had problems managing our finances.
What about your mail?
We never stopped mail delivery. Either the house-sitter or a family member would keep us abreast of what arrived and ask for instructions on what to do with the mail. Most of it just went in the trash as junk mail. Some items were important enough that they be opened and read or converted to an electronic format to forward to us via email or cell message. Cell phone photos of the documents made it easy to image and forward mail. Some cruisers us a mail handling service like St. Brendan's Isle to keep them on top of their mail.
What about food and preparing meals?
Foreign Affair has a wonderful galley. The refrigerator/freezer is small but we have found it adequate to keep us well provisioned for a week or so. The freeze compartment is very small and we can't keep ice cream rock hard. Also, the oven uses a lot of propane, so we hardly ever use it. Carla is a master of "skillet cooking". Pressure cookers are used by a fair number of cruisers in lieu of an oven. Carla is afraid of them. So, we don't have one. We are frequently invited for meals by other cruisers and do eat out on occasion. We have gained rather than lost weight in the past year.
How will you do your laundry?
Many of the marinas have laudromats. If we are lucky, we can do several loads at once. Sometimes, we have to wait for machines to open up as others are also trying to do their laundry. In The Bahamas it cost no more to have your laundry done by a local laundress than to do it yourself. Carla liked The Bahamas since she went almost 3 months without having to do the laundry.
What about heating and air conditioning?
We try to follow the weather to avoid having to use our heater. We anchor out as much as possible which usually provides us with a decent breeze to keep us cool at night. We have a small propane heater which we have used a couple of times to heat up the cabin on particularly cold nights. We only have to leave it on a short while and then turn it off before going to bed. We have a couple of sleeping bags aboard which we can also use at night if it really gets cold.
What are you going to do when you return?
We will continue our travels for as long as we are healthy and can afford it. We intend to sell Foreign Affair and purchase another boat more suitable for cruising the rivers and canals as we continue our quest to complete The Great Loop. We will keep posting to the blog during our travels. Someday, we might have to switch over to a RV. There is a sequence recited by many cruisers: first, the sail boat, then the power boat, then the RV and then the wheel chair. We hope our wheel chairs are electric powered and run fast so we can still continue our travels.
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