A first glimpse of Rockhopper

Progress continues at what feels like a slow pace as we are living it.  I think once we look back at this time it will look like a whirlwind.

We closed the door on the Pod on May 26 and closed on the house that day as well.  Luckily, we could stay in town a few more days to finish up some business and visit with friends.  Thanks to Kelly and Seana for letting us stay in Wash Park, and the Huffmans for the spare room in RiNo.  It was fun to be metropolitan for a few days! 

On our way to North Carolina we swung by Florida for a day to check on the progress of the boat.  Rockhopper is currently at the manufacturer’s facility having work done.  Clearly, she didn’t make it into the water by June 1, but we are hoping we’ll be ready for the big splash in July.  Once she is in the water, we’ll have a couple of weeks of work and preparations until we can get underway and start making our way north.   

Rockhopper at the Caliber Yacht Facility in Clearwater, FL

We’ll be dropping in on the folks in Florida next week to see how things are progressing.  Until then, we are staying with family (thanks Lori and Chuck!), spending a lot of time with Dad, and trying to see our NC friends as much as possible while we are here and homeless. 

Out with the microturbines and in with the Micro Wind Turbine

Poor Reinhart.  

He received his wifi antenna and repeater weeks ago, and now his D400 wind turbine showed up and we've still got a few weeks before he can install this stuff and start playing with it.

It is kind of like receiving your gifts at Thanksgiving, but you can't play with them until Christmas.  

We are closing on the house next week and we'll be leaving Colorado on May 30.  We are going to swing by Florida to visit Rockhopper on "our way" to NC.  

If you are interested in the new toys, here are the links.  We've got Eclectic Energy's D400 wind turbine, and RadioLabs' high powered omni wifi repeater kit.  

We don't have a nice photo yet...

We've had a few folks ask for a photo of RockHopper; however, we don't really have any photos of her yet, since we've only spent a few days with her since we've owned her.  However, our former boat, Maia is very similar, so here is a picture of her to hold you until we get to Florida and start posting photos ad nauseam.

Rockhopper, a new blog and a new boat

We've been horrible keeping up with the Sail Maia blog, so we are going to start anew with a more appropriate blog name.  If we are disappointing you on this address, just go on over there and see what sorts of things we used to post about in 2006-2012.

As for preparations, the house in Denver is under contract and Rockhopper is being updated in Florida.  We are tying up things with Lockheed Martin and the US Antarctic Program, and will be liberated as of May 1.  It seems like we are doing the same things we were doing 9 years ago!  It is about time to get sailing again.

Hopefully, we'll really do something with this blog, but if not, you can check out our old blog or our photos picasa photo page