June 20, 2013
I forgot to mention to everyone, I did something gross when we were in dive class, the instructors were telling people that it was okay to pee in our suits while in the water because it would warm us up, well I pee'd in my suit while out of the water (by the way, taking a wet suit off just to pee is a pain in the ass) and i had to pee really bad. I realized why the instructors told us to do it in the water because when I did it out of the water the pee stayed in the suit, went down my leg, and FILLED my boot, which I then had to remove to empty the pee out of. Also, I understand completely how gross this story is, but it was also really funny when it happened.
June 19, 2013
For the past 9 days, Sierra Crupe and I have been taking in about 500 calories a day, which is well below the recommended daily caloric intake of 2500 calories. But today, we ate and drank like kings. Ribs, fried chicken, stuffed green peppers, green beans, broccoli and cheese, AND a large bottle of wine and Munster cheese. I think we achieved the recommended caloric intake today.
June 18, 2013
Our first day of work was....well it had some up's and downs. We are now, not only owners of our own business, but we are also now temp employees for the Chesapeake Boat Basin where our sail boat is. So we started our day working for the marina, worked for 2 hours, then we went to our first customer and talked pricing. From there we suited up, and Sierra drops her goggles into the water, which sank fast into dark, murky water. She was pretty upset, as well she should have been. So she did cleaning with borrowed goggles. We cleaned the bottom of a 40 foot boat, which is actually a pretty big boat for our first day. Everything went really well, we finished up, tore our gear down, the boat owners were going to pay us by credit card, so Sierra goes and gets the phone and card reader and the phone falls into the water, and it falls much faster than the goggles. Phone lost. Contacts lost. Sim card lost. Money we put on the phone two days ago, lost. Phone pictures lost. Payment from said boat owners credit card, lost. LUCKILY, the owner was able to write us a check, of course their from Texas, so now we have an out of state check. So we had to go into town and open a bank account, which will actually help us, because now we can make loan payments through this bank, to Wesbanco back home. We also were paid enough to purchase a new phone, which did not have the same number as the old phone, the number that is on all the flyers we passed out last week. FORTUNATELY, we were able to get the number AND the money switched to the new phone. So all in all, it was a rough start, but a great learning experience. I can't wait till the next job!!!
May 5, 2013
Update: Sierra and I are official SCUBA divers. Yesterday we did two consecutive 10 minute dives and a maximum depth of 16 feet, and today we did two consecutive 20 minute dives at a max depth of 30 feet, that's almost 10 meters! The temperature change at deeper depths was really awesome to experience. Sierra saw one bass one the first day, but visibility was much better the second day. Choppy waters, but Smithfield has an awesome set of lakes at Friendship Park.
May 1, 2013
Update: So me and Sierra Crupe finish our dive classes this weekend! After that, we will be in the Wheeling area only for about another month. And then we will be heading back down to our sail boat in Kilmarnock Virginia. From there we will be working on getting our own small dive business and gaining lots of dive experience, as well as getting our feet in as many doors as we can. We're pretty excited about it all, but we're still tying to stay grounded and very focused. We've been working pretty hard on our plans and getting everything in order. At this point, with the amount of time, work, and money we've put into this, failure has no place in our vocabulary. I have to give much thanks to my parents, who have given us a roof over our head and put up with us through all of this. Also a big thanks to my aunt Nora Britton Haugh who has fed our ambition to go out, work hard, and achieve our goals. A major thank you goes to Andy Britton and Marti Wendel, because without them, we probably wouldn't be capable of doing what we are doing. And a huge thank you goes out to Chesapeake Boat Basin for taking care of our boat over the winter, helping us, teaching us, going out of their way to make sure we succeed in sailing.
April 14, 2013
Thank you Sierra Crupe for helping me find my path. I could never have begun to accomplish the dreams I had without a friend like her. I've meet so many people in life, but none of them have supported me and pushed me the way she has. If I had more friends in my life like Sierra I'm pretty sure I would be president of the entire world by now. But since I don't, I'm satisfied with what she's helped me accomplish thus far, and I'm excited for what we'll accomplish together in the future as the team we've become.
September 22, 2012
I got to get into the water with our boat yesterday to scrape barnacles. It's something I've wanted to do to a boat for a long time and now. Swam under the boat and touched the keel. The water here is about 75 to 80 degrees and the temp outside is about 80 degrees, so it was pretty decent. Didn't get stung by any jelly fish and no little crabbies bothered me, even though one was crawling along the underside of the boat.
September 20, 2012
We're going to practice anchoring tonight. It'll be our first time so we're a little nervous. But we meet a some people here in Indian creek that's been giving us some really good advice about anchoring. We pretty much need to be meteorologists to be good sailors. We were addressed as captains for the first time yesterday. I don't think we can professionally be called that just yet, but it was still kind of cool. This anchoring thing is serious though because its pretty much all or nothing. If we do it wrong, our boat could be onshore in the morning which would end our adventures pretty damn quick, or if the wind changes direction in the middle of the night it can be bad for us. So wish us luck! We'll try and call home tonight to let you all know how it went. Love everyone!
September 13, 2012
Preparing to set sail in two days. We've been getting our boat completed, I learned how to wire the lights up and we got the batteries fully charged. We had some problems with our motor, but we got that all taken care of. And we have our first and second day already charted out. I lost a pair of glasses to the sea.
August 22, 2012
Received our solar charger for our cell phone and ipod yesterday. And we have a solar panel on the side of our sailboat, which will charge our batteries. We are all hooked up, with a lot of other stuff as well. We're home though in WV, but only for about 2 weeks. Then it's back to VA, and then sailing to southern FL. Wish us luck!
July 30, 2012
First day of class! Going out on the water today!
July 29, 2012
Made it to Deltaville safe and sound. Start are first class tomorrow morning at 9am.
Friday, July 19, 2013
Monday, July 15, 2013
Beginning of our Adventures
This is the start of our very first blog, although we should have started this three years ago at the beginning of our relationship, when our adventures really began. After meeting each other in July 2010, we instantly found numerous things that we had in common. Our taste in music, our love for the outdoors, our passion to stray away from modern society. And since then we have accomplished so much.
In July 2011, we were looking for opportunities to volunteer. We tried to get into Peace Corps, Greenpeace, and all of the other volunteer groups you could imagine, to no avail. Then we found the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, located in Sugar Grove, Virginia. We arrived there on my birthday, July 27, to be welcomed with a home made cake from people we literally had just met.
We spent two and a half weeks volunteering. Hiking to our work sites which one was an hour hike up an immensely steep hill, digging up roots, smashing boulders in order to build new and/or repair trails. It was an amazing experience and as badly as we wanted to return the next year, circumstances had led us to the opposite end of Virginia.
The next summer we were looking into sailing. Being from Wheeling, West Virginia, there wasn't much offered by means of sailing. We decided to head south to Deltaville, Virginia to take our ASA sailing intro course at Stingray Point Sailing. Our teacher, Bill Simpson, was a great mentor who let us live aboard the boat we were learning on, which was an amazing experience, yet we were spoiled because he had A/C.
As much as we'd of liked to take more classes, it was between that or purchasing our own boat, and without a boat of our own, our classes would have been irrelevant. With unbelievable luck, we found a boat for sale on eBay just 30 minutes north of Deltaville, in Reedville. It was a San Juan 7.7. We contacted the seller and bought the boat for a very good price.
We stayed at Smith Point Marina for about a month where we met some more amazing people, Ray and Paula Reuter. If it hadn't been for them, we wouldn't have been able to get to where we are today. Literally, because they gave us a GPS. But more so than that, they have just been a huge help and some great friends to us.
We intended to set sail for Florida, so we followed Ray and Paula out one morning around 6 a.m. The day before, we had charted our entire trip. Found anchorage spots all along the Intracoastal Waterway. After getting running aground, Ray and Paula turned around to pull us off the shoals, and we made it out into the Bay on our first big sailing voyage. We planned on getting into the Rappahannock River and docking there for the night, but we ended up coming into Indian Creek. It had taken us 12 hours to sail 15 miles (suffice to say we weren't making it to Florida this year) and we ended up docking for the night at Indian Creek Country Club. We looked terrible walking in there, but we had also had a very tough and long day. Lucky (again) for us, the first night was free. The next morning we set our bearings for Deltaville again, but after fighting to get around Windmill Point (which still proves difficult to us,) we came back into Indian Creek and found Chesapeake Boat Basin (http://www.chesapeakeboatbasin.com) in Kilmarnock. We tried to radio in at least six times, but our broadcasting signal was not a very strong, and they received none of our calls. Luck struck once again, as we pulled in to dock, a very generous gentleman named Tim Henry dropped what he was doing to help us tie off.
The folks at Chesapeake Boat Basin have been so great to us. They've done so much to help us. I think they like seeing a younger generation trying to get into sailing, seeing that most others our age are into power boats.
Towards the end of the warm months, we decided to head home for the winter. There, we took SCUBA diving classes from a very knowledgeable dive instructor, Ted Velas (http://velasdiving.com) Taking our diving exam was frigid despite wearing 7mm suits. Water temperatures were 55-65 degrees, but we pulled through and became Open Water certified divers.
We returned to Kilmarnock this summer to begin our diving business (http://bebritton.wix.com/hull-cleaners) in which we clean hulls, running gear, search and recover, anything dive related. Our first customers were a lovely couple, Tom and Doris Sanders (http://cruisingonsecondfantasy.blogspot.com) They gave us our very first experience with diving and working in the Bay, which is extremely dark and murky. Thanks Doris for the picture.
But seeing that it's just the beginning of our venture, we have not been as busy as we'd like, but we know that in order to become successful in this, we need to push through the hard times. We're hoping by next year our phone will be ringing non stop, and this is highly anticipated.
This was a long first blog entry, but I felt it necessary seeing that it covers basically the past three years of our lives. Virginia is not what I expected it to be. Whether we're in the Mountains, or along the Bay, people all over Virginia have been so amazingly nice and helpful. A whole different breed than the people back home. We love it here, and luck has really been working in our favor, despite the rough times. We love the life we're living here despite the simplicity (but that's really the best part.)
In July 2011, we were looking for opportunities to volunteer. We tried to get into Peace Corps, Greenpeace, and all of the other volunteer groups you could imagine, to no avail. Then we found the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, located in Sugar Grove, Virginia. We arrived there on my birthday, July 27, to be welcomed with a home made cake from people we literally had just met.
We spent two and a half weeks volunteering. Hiking to our work sites which one was an hour hike up an immensely steep hill, digging up roots, smashing boulders in order to build new and/or repair trails. It was an amazing experience and as badly as we wanted to return the next year, circumstances had led us to the opposite end of Virginia.
The next summer we were looking into sailing. Being from Wheeling, West Virginia, there wasn't much offered by means of sailing. We decided to head south to Deltaville, Virginia to take our ASA sailing intro course at Stingray Point Sailing. Our teacher, Bill Simpson, was a great mentor who let us live aboard the boat we were learning on, which was an amazing experience, yet we were spoiled because he had A/C.
As much as we'd of liked to take more classes, it was between that or purchasing our own boat, and without a boat of our own, our classes would have been irrelevant. With unbelievable luck, we found a boat for sale on eBay just 30 minutes north of Deltaville, in Reedville. It was a San Juan 7.7. We contacted the seller and bought the boat for a very good price.
We stayed at Smith Point Marina for about a month where we met some more amazing people, Ray and Paula Reuter. If it hadn't been for them, we wouldn't have been able to get to where we are today. Literally, because they gave us a GPS. But more so than that, they have just been a huge help and some great friends to us.
We intended to set sail for Florida, so we followed Ray and Paula out one morning around 6 a.m. The day before, we had charted our entire trip. Found anchorage spots all along the Intracoastal Waterway. After getting running aground, Ray and Paula turned around to pull us off the shoals, and we made it out into the Bay on our first big sailing voyage. We planned on getting into the Rappahannock River and docking there for the night, but we ended up coming into Indian Creek. It had taken us 12 hours to sail 15 miles (suffice to say we weren't making it to Florida this year) and we ended up docking for the night at Indian Creek Country Club. We looked terrible walking in there, but we had also had a very tough and long day. Lucky (again) for us, the first night was free. The next morning we set our bearings for Deltaville again, but after fighting to get around Windmill Point (which still proves difficult to us,) we came back into Indian Creek and found Chesapeake Boat Basin (http://www.chesapeakeboatbasin.com) in Kilmarnock. We tried to radio in at least six times, but our broadcasting signal was not a very strong, and they received none of our calls. Luck struck once again, as we pulled in to dock, a very generous gentleman named Tim Henry dropped what he was doing to help us tie off.
The folks at Chesapeake Boat Basin have been so great to us. They've done so much to help us. I think they like seeing a younger generation trying to get into sailing, seeing that most others our age are into power boats.
Towards the end of the warm months, we decided to head home for the winter. There, we took SCUBA diving classes from a very knowledgeable dive instructor, Ted Velas (http://velasdiving.com) Taking our diving exam was frigid despite wearing 7mm suits. Water temperatures were 55-65 degrees, but we pulled through and became Open Water certified divers.
We returned to Kilmarnock this summer to begin our diving business (http://bebritton.wix.com/hull-cleaners) in which we clean hulls, running gear, search and recover, anything dive related. Our first customers were a lovely couple, Tom and Doris Sanders (http://cruisingonsecondfantasy.blogspot.com) They gave us our very first experience with diving and working in the Bay, which is extremely dark and murky. Thanks Doris for the picture.
But seeing that it's just the beginning of our venture, we have not been as busy as we'd like, but we know that in order to become successful in this, we need to push through the hard times. We're hoping by next year our phone will be ringing non stop, and this is highly anticipated.
This was a long first blog entry, but I felt it necessary seeing that it covers basically the past three years of our lives. Virginia is not what I expected it to be. Whether we're in the Mountains, or along the Bay, people all over Virginia have been so amazingly nice and helpful. A whole different breed than the people back home. We love it here, and luck has really been working in our favor, despite the rough times. We love the life we're living here despite the simplicity (but that's really the best part.)
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