Day ONE of the Voyage South

This week is the real start of our next adventure south. Maryse has done a super job loading on board all the supplies we will need for the trip as well as becoming very skilled at canning  lots of comfort foods in Mason jars. Ambition is now stuffed full and ready to go. Warm clothes for the first leg of the journey and bathing suits and shorts for the WINTER months - I know - that was mean! 

At Shelburne Shipyard, Ms Belinda has done a superb job of putting together all the pieces of our electronics suite for navigation and entertainment. All is calibrated and now there is absolutely no reason for us to get lost! Our navigation suite is made up of a Garmin 7612 chart plotter at the wheel which provides all our charts covering Lake Champlain to Florida Keys, Bahamas, Dominican Republic and all the Caribbean islands to Grenada including Bermuda. We also depend on our Garmin Wind, Depth, Speed and Autopilot - the last being critical for us, as 99% of the time the boat runs on autopilot - it does a much better job following a course than I can steer and MUCH less tiring! At the navigation table inside, there is a second Garmin chart plotter that mirrors all the information from the wheel and also doubles as a back up unit. 

To keep all the electronics up and running we use both solar panels and a wind generator to keep the batteries full. Of course the engine produces electricity when we are not being sailboat and Ambition also has a 8Kw generator that produces the same power as if we plugged into 120V at the dock. 

We are participating in the ARC1500 Rally - a group of about 30 boats that will leave Portsmouth VA around November 6th together and all arrive in the British Virgin Islands about 10 to 12 days later. As part of the Rally regulations we have dramatically increased our inventory of safety equipment and supplies. We use a SSB Radio (like a ham radio) to receive our weather information from our weather router (a weather guru!) and to communicate with other boats and cruising nets - kind of like a voice Facebook! If you wish to follow our progress we broadcast to satellite every four hours our current position, speed and direction. This web site will display the information for you on a Google map - https://share.delorme.com/ambition 

On Thursday morning this week Ambition was docked at Shelburne Shipyard and she looked like this:

By early afternoon Rick and his fantastic team had converted Ambition from a sailboat into a powerboat and now she looks like this: 

I really do prefer the Before vs the After pictures but the latter is necessary to squeeze under the bridges as we make our way from Lake Champlain through the canal that takes us up and over the Adirondack mountains and join up with the Hudson River just north of Albany NY. We will be converted back to a sailboat just a little south of Albany.