Welcome to our new blog: Sailing Vessel (S.V.) Afterglow. Allen and Norma Goldstein's sailing blog. Many of you have heard, and some of you several times, of our "Plan A". We write this post just a few days before the BIG EVENT: Allen's Retirement and our move to Seattle.
Afterglow is winterized, covered, and snug in her winter slip in Annapolis, MD:
In Germantown:
We are boxed and awaiting the movers next week, well, all but the barest essentials, that is!
For those who haven't heard our plan A, or who want to see it in writing, here it is:
Allen retires from NIST on November 30th, 2022. Norma has been heroically collecting boxes of all sizes since before June and has been boxing, boxing, boxing. Here it is Nov 26th, and we still do not know when the moving truck arrives; they promise to tell us at least 24 hours in advance. Plan A has us leaving Germantown on December 1st and setting out in our Chevy Volt to drive to Seattle - weather permitting. We plan to take the southern route and visit our sister-in-law Tammy in San Antonio, TX. Then we plan to head northwest, south of the Rocky Mountains, through New Mexico, Utah and Idaho. At Boise, we have to make a big decision: which of the mountain passes to go through to get to Washington State?
Plan A has us unpacking at our home in Seattle and doing some work on the house until the third week of March when we must return to Annapolis to de-winterize and move the boat back to our home marina where we will remain through the month of April. May 1st sees us underway. We plan to take our time and slowly work our way up to Newport, RI, where we plan to leave the boat on July 1st and take the train down to Hampton Roads, VA, to join another boat for the first leg of the Salty Dawg's Sailing Association's "Down East" Rally. We will rejoin Afterglow in Newport and continue with the rally to Cuttyhunk, Rockland, and other ports in Maine. We have not yet decided if we will then join the Maritime Rally up to Nova Scotia, but we would like to get back to the Chesapeake Bay around mid/late summer and take a break from the boat for awhile.
Plan A has Allen returning to Afterglow in the Chesapeake in time to join the Salty Dawg's Caribbean Rally down to the Bahamas on the first week of November . This time Allen will be taking on some crew and Norma will fly to the Bahamas and meet us on or shortly after arrival. We shall sail the islands until around April or May of '24 and then make a decision, most likely to have Afterglow shipped to the Puget Sound. However, this is where Plan A ends and after that... who knows?
Of course, as any project manager knows, the "Plan" is the one thing you can be assured will not happen, so friends, old an new, please follow us on our travels right here on the SV-Afterglow.com blog and if you would like to join us for a bit, drop us a line. We have a nice forward stateroom for two and even some space on the settee for a couple of kids!