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!

Monday, August 27, 2007

here's a video snapshot from the offloading of Ute. the last week has been a funny, funny, and bittersweet time for us; we're sad to say goodbye to this way of life and at the same time, we can't sell the boat fast enough! let the next chapter begin!


To get our stuff of the boat, as you'll see in the vid, we pack it up on Ute, transfer it to the dinghy (ideally without accidentally dropping heavy boxes over the rail and into the Mystic River), drive a a couple minutes in the dinghy to a public dinghy dock, then carry it to a borrowed car (thanks, fam) and then unload it from the car into the garage.

This has proven to be an amusing process. Not strenuous or particularly stressful, but challenging in its own way. Thank god for our family here in Mystic that is helping us in every step of the process.

The folks that run the local water taxis and tour boats (and there are plenty - this is a big tourist town in the summer) have gotten friendly with us and a few even include us in their tour when we drive by in our precariously loaded dinghy, riding low in the water, engine sputtering, with one of us perched on top of a smelly pile of Rubbermaid totes. A few dozen households in greater New England will scratch their heads when they look through their vacation photo albums, wondering who snapped the pictures of the vagrants in a small inflatable vessel.

We're showing the boat to prospective buyers nearly every day. We feel like she's a great value for the asking price, but the market is lousy right now, so....all we can do is wait and see!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It seems from these pics that a dinghy, a packed rubbermaid tote and a mazda miata might displace about the same amount of water. Everything pictured is so packed and portable.

And there you go baffling the tourists again...country after country the head scratching continues.

In awe of Ute guys,
Jhg

Anonymous said...

Get this...my lack of skype means I haven't heard your voice since I was in Panama last September, and watching that video and hearing your voice made me all misty eyed!

-Sarcosuchus