Finally, here it is, the promised blog on Kinship’s delivery trip. One thing we learned about delivery trips is there is no time to blog. Every day’s schedule is packed full, and by nighttime all you want to do is fall into bed. Then when we got home we put Penny on the market, and who knew she would be so popular?! We spent the week showing her and finalizing the sale. Enough excuses, on to the details….this first leg is described pretty accurately by Matthew in his planning post. We sailed up Chesapeake Bay, across the C&D Canal to Delaware Bay, then did a 200NM, 36 hour off-shore sail, ending in New York City.

Let me introduce our amazing crew, without whom we could not have pulled this off:

That’s Michael and Rosalind in the foreground, and Ian behind them (yours truly at the wheel)

Michelle, the event photographer (hoping she will send in some contributions, hint, hint 🙂

And of course, Captain Matthew

The first day was a lovely sail up the Chesapeake to Annapolis,

where we stayed at the noisy party-dock known as “Ego Alley”, where everyone goes to show off their toys.

Every bridge looks like you won’t fit under it, but of course the route was well planned, and we did

And sharing the narrow Delaware Canal with a huge car transport ship was something! We were so close the whole thing didn’t fit in one frame. We saw a huge variety of ships and boats over the course of the two week trip, enough to warrant its own blog later.

Homeland Security came to check up on us at the marina in Delaware City, and were disappointed to find out we didn’t need any paperwork to take the boat back to Canada.

we headed out on our 36 hour passage to New York City. Not many pics of that leg, as we were all kept busy either sleeping or keeping watch in the fog for ships, fishing boats, lobster traps and unfortunately, for floating debris. I was appalled at the amount of garbage floating around in the ocean, especially at the hundreds of mylar balloons. Those things should be outlawed as an environmental disaster!

The fog lifted and the sun came out in time for our arrival in New York harbour. What a thrill to see all those iconic landmarks from the deck of our own boat!

Statue of Liberty, right up close

Manhattan skyline,

then at night, from our marina berth

A fun rest day with our friends, touring the Big Apple and taking in an off-Broadway musical “Jersey Boys”. Then it was time for fond farewells to our crew, we would take it from here.

Goodbye and a BIG THANK YOU to Ian, Michelle, Michael and Rosalind. Miss you guys!