Enee to Enee

Leaving Enee

Finally a chance to catch up on some pics and notes from our experience moving from Enee the Catalina 30 to Enee the Endeavour 40. Yes this boat will also be named Enee Marie. Current name is Neauvou Vie...or some such unpronounceable French word.

The pic at the left is a sad pic of Enee after we had completely emptied her of all our stuff (except Gracie!) She was a good home to us for several summers and for over a thousand miles getting us safely as far as Baltimore. Farewell.


We kept our dingy but when we pulled it out of the water...WHAT THE ....???????. Holy Crap! Look at all those barnacles. We scraped for about an hour with one of the oars to get them off. That's what we get for sitting still so long in Baltimore!

All of our stuff fit easily in a 10' truck about 1 layer deep. Still, how did all that stuff ever fit on our Catalina 30? We left Baltimore area about 4:30 in the morning and drove to Huntington, NY on Long Island. Gary the previous owner met us there and we moved our new boat to the gas dock. With some help from the gas dock kid we moved all our stuff aboard and just shoved it all in the V-berth from which we could sort things out a box/bag at a time. One problem was that our previous owner pretty much left everything aboard for us! That's nice but now where does our stuff go? Which of the many, many spare parts that he left are really necessary and which are just old broken thing? It took us another day to throw out some stuff and put all of our stuff away. Many trips to the dumpster with the tender boat.







It doesn't take long to make a boat feel like your own. A couple of meals and some nights sleeping aboard and new Enee feels very homey. Sue cooking something wonderful in the galley (stirfry?). We feel like we are in "land of the future" with hot and cold running water and even a shower! We're not white trash any more!




Already my favorite place to sit and write, check charts, tide tables, etc. Very nice nav station. Desk top is big enough to hold one of those big chart books and the lid flips up to hold navigation tools. Little black box to my right is the old Loran device. I think it needs some coal shoveled into the back of it or something.



After living in the harbor in Huntington for a few days waiting for high winds to subside we were ready to sail her to Port Washington where we picked up our crew members. A 22 mile trip in moderate winds. Nice to be going again and wow....this boat is BIG!

The Trip South
Our friend Jesse met us at the fuel dock at the Manhassat Bay Marina. The marina was nice enough to let us stay at the fuel dock for the night for free as long as we went out to eat at their restaurant which we had planned to do anyway! Perfect. Roger arrived a little later and we had a great meal before heading out the next morning.


We timed our departure well so we could go down the East river in daylight AND with the ebb tide. Boat speed over the ground down the East River was 9 knots at times! Wheeeeee!

This was a COLD trip. Temps during the day were maybe in the low 50's and into the 30's at night with a brisk wind. We all wore many, many layers. Jesse had the good idea to only do 3 hour shifts instead of the traditional 4 as when you're cold that 4th hour can really drag.

So we set up shifts 8-11 pm, 11-2 AM, 2-5 AM and then 5-8 AM During the day we just let whoever wanted to steer, to steer and whoever needed a nap to nap. Worked out well. Autohelm performed fine even in rough seas on the second night.


Our crew are showing their best side as they check for flotsome down the river. That's Jesse on the right and Roger on the left!

During the first night the wind came up from our starboard quarter and Jesse and Sue rolled out the genny. We sailed all night that night, the next day and the next night on that one sail and we were always around 6+ knots. Bigger boats just go faster, right?



Here we are safe and sound in Portsmouth, VI. The last night got a little hairy as wind came up to 30+ knots with some scary gusts. Enee handled it better than we did maybe. We were too early to Norfolk and not willing to enter busy commercial harbor with many buoys at night so we sailed in circles for a while until the sun came up. Capt. Scott had probably slept a total of about 5 hours now and it was hard to be patient and concentrate on buoys and so forth. Crew pulled together and we made our way into the Elizabeth river and a very nice marina in Portsmouth - Tidewater Marina around 2:30 PM on Sunday. That's 57 hours from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon. Nice shake down cruise...and nothing broke!

Happy crew upon arrival: Scott, Sue, Jesse and Roger.

For more detail on the trip you can read Jesse's version!