Jungle "On the Hard"

Now she is backed out and placed in the yard. I'll have pictures of that when we return.

The lift makes quick work of lifting Jungle.

Here' a view of the lift and Jungle.

Jungle is in position so the lift can pick up the 22 ton ship.

Jenée and I head back to SoCal for the holidays, while Jungle gets a much needed bottom painting. We are taking her out at Westland Marina in Titusville, FL. We'll do additional work on Jungle before "splashing down" in late January. Here, Jungle is being put in position for the travel lift.

Here's a video of Jungle moving to land - the yard manager moves her around like a toy.

What's a few more shots on board Jungle?!

Can you spot Katie the Jungle cat?

The Captain and Admiral posing on board. I lost 50 lbs in my latest diet. My secret - sensible eating, portion control and radiation 5 times a week! Jenée is is forcing me to eat as much as possible and drink Ensures all day long. Two things, I'm not digging my one-on-one time with Jenée as much, plus I plan to machine gun Ensure whenever I see it on land, while wearing a Ninja outfit. Think of it as a public service exercise. Oh I kill me! So does that damn Ensure!

John and Jenée reeling in a catch - turned out to be a small shark. We sent him back.

Here's a cool looking trawler passing us headed southbound on Adams Creek, NC. This is a narrow part of the Inner Coastal and very quaint. Fact is Jenée and I still prefer open ocean as we can sail round the clock, versus motor only. But this was a nice break from the weather.

Here's Linda posing on her first voyage at sea, after a couple of days and her sea-legs under her. On her first day Linda had Jenée's delicious breakfast and lunch, then showed it to us again later - Yahtzee! I call that the sailing tri-fecta or the Davy Jones three course meal - I just made em both up. I'm funny. Linda didn't think so at the time.

How about a few more people shots on the trip south. I plum forgot about them until Linda sent these pics. So, here's me and brother John, I mean my brother John and me, no wait, John and I, no, two asswipes, staring out a window - whatever! See my new haircut? Compliments of radiation treatment. I'm told it does grow back, probably in a blond afro - that's nice.

Jungle Landed - Titusville, FL

And we're safely tucked in for the night at the Westland Marina in Titusville. We set sail from Boston on 40 degree weather on Friday, Nov 12 (never leave on a Friday - bad luck) and we pulled into Titusville on Sunday, November 21. The total open ocean time was 7 nights. Mass Bay and Pamlico Sound, NC was another 2 nights. This was the first open ocean sailing for Linda and John Fraine and they were absolute champs! Everyone kept to their shifts and John made some great and timely course changes when we were battling the Gulf Stream. Now that we're here, Jenée and I will get some clean up work completed before spending time with our sailing friends, Charlie and Saundra Gray and land based friends Martha and Carl Williams. Then we'll pull Jungle for a much needed bottom paint job. Jungle will remain "on -the-hard" until we return from California in late January. Of course that's after my 3 month check up at the Boston University Medical Center.

Back to the Inner Coastal Bridges. The fixed bridges are set at 65 feet - Jungle was designed with a mast that stands 62 feet off the water - phew !!!

And on this same evening, beautiful moonshots. This one was taken at 4 AM on my watch.

Ahh, more beautiful sunsets once we are out to sea.

Here is a bridge view coming into the Oregon Inlet.

Here is another view of our roller coaster ride into the Oregon Inlet in North Carolina. We entered the Inner Coastal and spent two nights before heading back out sea for a 4 night sail to Florida.

I wanted to show off a little technology - this is a screen shot from Jungle's Furuno GPS system. The one we have is a bit older technology but it works very well so we decided to make it work versus going for the "latest and greatest" new toy. Here we see the tracking from Boston down to North Carolina. - approx 600 nautical miles. The yellow dots are waypoints or target destinations on the map. You can see one yellow dot at the 76 degree waypoint where we changed course and decided to keep going on to NC since the weather was so good.

On the move south!

It's now Weds, Nov 17 and we sailed all day and anchored out before we continue heading south and out to sea tomorrow. We plan to land in Cape Canaveral by Sunday - time to get a move on.

Here's Frank and Edna Summerlin - marina owners. We had a wonderful breakfast to start our day. The night before, Frank drove the crowd out to dinner then came back and picked everyone up. Great hospitality.

After 3 days at sea and a rollicking ride into the Oregon Inlet just north of Cape Hatteras we settle in at the The Big Trout Marina in Englehard, NC. The Inlet had 10 foot waves chasing us in at low tide - a bad time to come into harbor anytime. We surfed our way in after I called the coast Guard for a little "local knowledge". Petty Officer O'Connor was Johnny on-the-spot with great advice. Admiral Jenée came up top just as we were hitting our first wave and nearly lost lunch. It made for an interesting hubby-wiffie chat on the merits of entering the Inter Coastal Waterway, all while wrestling a 22 ton boat into the channel - fun times. But it was all made worthwhile with a relaxing evening at the Big Trout Marina - very scenic.

Success! John and I are putting the finishing touches on the replacement sail and we're good to go. I may have lost 50 lbs, but I think you'd agree my ass looks great. Or maybe Great, you look like an ass. Either one works.

No sooner do we get started when we rip the main sail - s##t! Oh well, fortunately we have a spare main, now if I can just find it!

Here's Jungle on Friday sunrise sitting on the other side of the Cape Cod Canal in Onset. Today we set sail directly for the Delaware Bay and into the Chesapeake. We should arrive by Sunday evening.
Well, as a new update we skipped over Annapolis and went straight for North Carolina - 3 full days at sea. This time of year, when you get a favorable weather window you need to take advantage.

Treatments over, Cap'n Jimbo is ready to sail. Great having John and Linda for the trip south - definitely can use the extra hands. The fact is, John probably forgot more about sailing than I know - but I'm not telling.

Our crew is ready to go for a sail south. My brother, John Fraine and his bride Linda flew up from Naples to join Jenée and I for the sail south. As John said, I left this place 20 years ago to get out of this weather - let's go!

Autumn Blast Continues - Connecticut Style!

Pumpkins, gourds in all colors. A great visit, catching up with greta friends.

Suzie and Crystelle cozying up.

A beautiful cool, crisp, New England day. Plenty of pumpkins.

We saw the best foliage and colors in Connecticut. Here's a cider farm that was sitting very pretty.

First stop is with one of my favorite ladies - Anne Ranhoff at her farm in Pomfret, CT. Jenée and I spent the night in Pomfret with Suzanne Ranhoff and daughter Crystelle. We had a wonderful dinner out and visit with Anne and Bunny (Elaine Ranhoff).

Contact in Boston Harbor!

During our trip out from Boston to Provincetown a few weeks ago, we found a rock ledge in the middle of Boston Harbor. Turns out we ventured a bit outside the channel markers during a low tide - oopsie! Well Jungle needed a good bottom cleaning anyways and had the diver take a video of the damage to the keel. Good news for us - only superficial scrapes in the fiberglass wrapping over the keel. We'll get her repaired after we sail south to Florida in November, December. You can see the video from the link below and see the keel damage - white fiberglass showing through the blue bottom paint on the keel. The video starts from the stern of Jungle and the keel damage is visible at approx. 1:17 into the video - a professional scrape!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtK2QEW1hGs

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Foliage Hunting in North Conway, NH

A perfect picture within a picture. Lucky me.

Panoramic view

Nice color around this NH lake.

Nice river view next to the covered bridge.

The fall weather was perfect so we decided to take a land yacht up to North Country - New Hampshire for a little foliage viewing. We weren't disappointed as we found a nice covered bridge among the NH back roads outside of Conway, NH. The colors were not quite a peak level but still bright. This was Jenee's first foliage trip in the area.

Fenway Park and Laguna Beach Art

Ahh, but this painting of my beautiful bride will sell for millions! The Cottage Gallery is across PCH from the Sand and Surf Hotel.

On another note, My Laguna Beach neighbor, Burt Newton called to check in and told me that a local art gallery, the Cottage Gallery, had a painting of Jenée on display. The artist, September is a very talented local artist and Jenée sat for her in 2009 before we set sail. September had me in a couple of paintings as well. Let's just say those are not as high in demand - probably a seasonal thing.

Yo, how you doin?

Capt. Ed is a local fisherman (Marshfield and Nantuket) and is head of the Massachusetts Fishermen's Partnership. Massachusetts is the last of the small local fishing concerns and supplies our famous seafood. The super sized commercial boats are not allowed into Massachusetts waters and that's a good thing. Ed does a good job watching over the fishermen's needs and the local consumers (us). In his representation of the local fishermen, Ed stands with others against Nantucket's proposed offshore windmill farm. Besides the negative environmental impact to Nantucket shores and taking away some of the finest fishing grounds in New England, Cape Wind hasn't provided a delivery solution for the power. It's one thing to generate the electricity, the other is to effectively deliver it 30 -50 miles inland. There is a huge loss of power over lines and the solution here will be in the $ billions. Surprise Massachusetts taxpayers! Good luck Eddie B. - a good man.

My buddy Ed Barrett called me up with tickets to go see the Red Sox. I'm a sucker for Fenway Franks, so I'm in! Here is the action on the field - uh, actually it's the Fenway ground crew finishing up before the start of the game. Nice red shirts.

Boston Walking History Tour

Bob and Marilyn really like their drink umbrellas. Crazy kids.

Hey Jim, how's your water? Enjoy.

Jenée made historic Mojitos for Bob and Marilyn.

The admiral back home.

Hey guys, what's up? You're a little late.

Paul Revere's house is our next walk-by.

Ah, Mike's Pastry, a historical North End bakery for canolis.

Just outside the church is the Paul Revere statue.

This is the oldest American made organ and clock. Now you know.

Time for a great Italian lunch in the North End and a visit to the Old North Church. Built in 1723, it's the oldest active church in Boston. Let's see, one if by land, 2 if ... whatever. The fact is, there was no sea, it was the Charles River. The 2 lights were flashed for 1 minute and the Brits arrested the church caretaker as he was the only one with keys. He was released due to lack of evidence.

We get back to Charlestown (location for the new movie "The Town) and to Dry Dock 1. This was opened in 1833 and is used to service the USS Constitution. The current ship is the USS Cassin Young, a WWII destroyer. "The Town" - we saw it, good movie, already walked through all the movie locations. BTW, in the opening scene, there is a panoramic shot over the Bunker Hill Monument. You can see our Marina on the left side of the scene. They come back to it a few times in the movie.

We then strolled over to Boylston Street (too much walking!) and the Trinity Church. Another great example of old architecture framed by new architecture. In this case the backdrop is the Hancock Tower. Both structures are built on pilings since the Back Bay ground is basically landfill. The church, built in 1877 is on some 4500 wooden pilings. The Hancock Tower started out as an engineering nightmare when I was a kid - good news, it's still standing.

Cheers! The full tourist gig today. This is the Bullfinch Tavern made famous by the TV show. I used to go here for a burger and beer after playing basketball before it was Cheers.

A stroll through the Boston Common and Boston Public Gardens brings us to;

For a lighter experience, we visit the Granary Burying Ground on Tremont Street. Paul Revere, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, James Otis, Boston Massacre victims and other patriots are buried here. Also Mary Goose - debated and rumored to be Mother Goose, but I don't believe it.

Followed by a walk up State Street to the Old State House. This beautiful structure is about 300 years old and has undergone many renovations. This is also the site of the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the beginnings of the Revolutionary War. Once the Declaration of Independence was read from this site in 1776, the locals changed the name of the street from King Street to State Street - so there.

First stop is Fanueil Hall.

We had beautiful weather for our tour of Boston.

Bob had two tours of duty in Vietnam as a HUEY helicopter pilot and he and Marilyn are enjoying retirement from many years of government service. He's also a cuddly son of a gun.

What are you looking at ?!

We are back in Boston with our good friends and boat buddies from Annapolis, Bob and Marilyn Witcher. It occurs to me there is always time for another insightful, informative and highly educational history tour - it just ain't happening on this blog. All the photos in this update are compliments of Marilyn - nice work. We begin our tour in the old Charlestown Navy Yard with a shot of the USS Constitution from a distance. I could have taken Bob and Marilyn over for a closer look but I didn't feel like walking. Nice boat.