welcome to our blog!

This blog tells the story of our 22-month sailing journey from Oakland, California, to Bristol, Rhode Island, aboard our beloved Bristol 32 sailboat, Ute. Please feel free to browse through the archives (partway down the sidebar to your left) to see pics and read stories of our adventures in North America and Central America . (Sorry the first 3 months of the trip are missing - they vanished somewhere in an internet cafe in Mexico - but all you're missing is CA, Baja and Western Mex).

If you're trying to track us down now that we're landlubbers, try us at uteatlarge at yahoo dot com. Thanks!

Tuesday, July 31, 2007


the Dismal Swamp is sort of a throwback to another time....it was started in the 1700's by George Washington and his cronies and dug mostly by slave labor, and used heavily in the Civil War to transport troops and more. It's pretty amazing. The Army Corps of Engineers does its best to maintain a dredged channel of at least 6 feet deep, but as funding has oscillated over past years, so has the depth. Lucky for us, we saw 8-9 feet throughout and didn't run aground once! But there was one morning the dredge team was out clearing the way right ahead of us.. It reminded me of riding the schoolbus right after a snowstorm, and having the snowplow working ahead of the bus, clearing the way.

1 comment:

laura said...

it looks SO amazing -- i lived in north carolina for two years but only made it out to the coast once... so fantastic to see it from a boat's point of view!

laura