It’s been months since I’ve written a blog post. We took a winter break from our sailing life and traveled to the United States to be with our family and friends over the holidays. While we love our adventures and our decision to sail around the world, our family is very important to us. We needed some quality time with the ones we love.
The first week of November, we flew from Dublin, Ireland into NYC and rented a car. We collected our luggage, got through customs and then drove to spend the night with our friend and arguably our number one follower, Sheliah O’Leary Schmidt. Since we arrived in NYC late, it was wonderfully convenient to arrive at her place in Mount Kisco, NY by 11:00 P.M. and have a great night’s sleep in her comfy bed after 24 hours of travel and no sleep. International travel is not easy, especially when you are trying to get from a boat with tons of bags and have to travel by foot, train, bus, and plane, to get to your destination.
Departing Ireland
Our morning started at 5:00 A.M. before the sun was up. We had to get a dock cart to load our 3 large duffle bags, 2 backpacks, and 2 carry-ons which we would be hefting about a mile to the train station. The sleepy, dark little town of Bangor where our boat was tucked safely away at the dock for the next four months, showed no signs of life as we may our way down the dock.
Of course, the wind was blowing about 30 knots as we struggled to push the cart down the narrow dock and not get blown into the water. We completed the 5-minute walk down the dock to get to the street, where we had to dump the luggage out of the cart and proceed with no mechanical advantage.
We armed ourselves front and back with bags, and carried the one large remaining bag between us, each grabbing a handle to distribute the weight. The reason we were so heavily laden was that we had travel and Christmas gifts for everyone back home. Also, our journey would be taking us from the warm south to cold and snowy Lake Tahoe. We needed jackets, hats, boots, and gloves, as well as warm weather clothing for our 4-month stay in the states.
The walk to the train station through town was uphill. I could get about 2 blocks before I had to drop everything, breathe again, and wait for my heart to stop pounding. I could feel the bruises forming from the straps of the heavy bags cutting into my arms and shoulders. At 5:15 in the morning, there was not one coffee shop open in Bangor and not a single sign of any human being. It was like walking through a ghost town.
Thirty minutes and several stopping breaks later, we arrived at the train station. I dropped into a chair with all the luggage piled around me and let Dan go get the train tickets. When the train arrived, we packed up like vagabonds and muscled our way with our heavy bags onto the train. We endured curious stares from the smattering of other passengers, as most everyone else was carrying nothing more than a briefcase.
I wish I could say the rest of the journey got easier. That would not be true. From the train, we had to walk, hauling our luggage to a bus station. Getting our luggage on the bus was no easy task. The bus delivered us to Belfast Airport. From Belfast, we had a connecting flight in London to the US. We were able to check our bags but since we were flying on different airlines, we had to retrieve our bags, walk to a new terminal, and check them in again on the next leg of the flight.
New England Bound
With the 6-hour time difference, by the time we got to Sheilah’s, we had been awake and traveling for 24 hours straight. Thanks to her bubbly personality and wonderful hospitality, we survived the night and woke up refreshed and rested and on to our next destination, Connecticut.
On the way, we stopped in the town of Red Hook, NY, where I grew up. I visited my cousin in the neighboring town of Rhinebeck and my best pal from grade school, Jackie Mangiamele. We even stopped to take a walk down memory lane and I drove up the driveway of the farmhouse I lived in on our hundred-acre horse farm.
My brother Christopher was our next stop, in Salisbury, CT. He is a home builder and recently remarried to my wonderful new sister-in-law Kathleen. We spent a few nights with them. I got to catch up with my nieces and nephews that I haven’t seen in years, and tour some of his amazing construction projects.
After our brief but lovely visit with Chris, we drove a few hours to Hartford to spend a couple of days with my college roommate BethAnn Johnson. BethAnn is one of those people that keeps me grounded even though we are separated by thousands of miles. She is always there to check on me, encourage me, and give me help and support when I need it the most. We had been separated for 30 years by miles and time after college, but when we are together, the magic of our compatriot spirits is instantly rekindled. She is one of those friends that neither time nor distance dampens our love for each other.
BethAnn was responsible for creating the GO FUND ME account that raised the money for us to purchase new bikes after they were stolen in Waterford, Ireland. Our bikes were our departure gifts from our children when we set off sailing. They were our only means of ground transportation and meant freedom and mobility for us. We felt so lost without them. BethAnn took the initiative to help us raise the money for new ones. Unfortunately, the bikes we needed could only be purchased in the US. We would have to carry our bikes back with us – more luggage to add to the return trip!
Home Town Visit for Thanksgiving
Once we finished our stay with BethAnn and her lovely family, we had to travel back down the coast to our be with our family in New Jersey. Our middle son, Derek, lives only 20 minutes from the Philadelphia Airport. We returned our rental car there and were ecstatic to be spending Thanksgiving and the next few weeks in our home town of Swedesboro, NJ.
Our daughter Katie flew in from California to join the rest of the family for Thanksgiving. Our oldest son Philip, his wife Shelby, and our precious 4-year-old grandson (and favorite crew member) Orion, live an hour away in Parkesburg, PA. Over the next few weeks, we visited friends, family, and had wonderful adventures with our immediate family. Our grandson fondly renamed us, “Boat Grandma and Boat Grandpa” and he cried every time we left his presence, begging us to never leave him again. Kinda broke our hearts.
After the Thanksgiving Day was over, we all packed into the cars and drove 4 hours to Penn State where Dan’s sister has a mountain cabin home, for a second Thanksgiving. The cabin is huge and sleeps around 20 people. It is a great place to spend a weekend, surrounded by nature, no internet, the perfect place to eat, drink, play games, and take walks in the woods. Dan’s father joined us, as well as Dan’s brother and sister-in-law. We had Dan’s entire family, plus all our kids for a total of 18 family members.
We felt we did a great job of getting our visits in, to both sides of our families! However, there were still more people to see.
Heading Down South
My sister is relentless when she makes up her mind. Since we were back in the United States, she insisted that we spend a week in her hometown of Charlotte, NC while we were back. She has owned and managed an impressive horse farm and equestrian program for over 30 years. I have spent lots of time at her farm for clinics, riding adventures, and taking care of her farm when she traveled. Our shared love of coaching equestrian vaulting had us collaborating and merging our two teams for the last twenty years.
We rented a car and made the 10-hour drive from Swedesboro to Charlotte. Carol was a gracious host and had lots of fun activities and horse projects lined up for us. Unfortunately, Carol was finally retiring having turned 65 and finally done taking care of 11 horses and teaching about 100 students a week. This would be the last time we would see Shea Rose Farm and spend time with my sister on the farm we know and love so well. After a week at Carol’s, with tearful good-byes, we departed from the legacy Carol created and prepared for the next leg of our journey, Charleston, SC.
My mother, brother, and twin nephews reside in Charleston. My mother had recently relocated to Daniel Island as my father passed away last year and she was looking to find a new community near family members. Our dual purpose for visiting Charleston was to see my mom’s new home, visit with our family, then accompany my mother to California where she would be spending Christmas with us and our kids. Derek and Philip’s families would be making the trip across the country to California. We had rented a large house in South Lake Tahoe to share a magical, white Christmas. We were dragging my 89-year-old mother to the mountains, snow, and ice. She was all-in!
East Coast to West Coast
After our brief visit to Charleston, we dropped the rental car off at the airport that had faithfully gotten us down the coast of the US and made the 3,000-mile flight from Charleston to San Francisco with mother in tow. Daughter Katie and her husband Sean live an hour north of San Francisco. They had the task of picking up all 3 of our visiting families from the airport. We all arrived on the same day, just multiple hours apart. Three 2-hour round trips later, ten of us bunked at Katie and Sean’s place and prepped for our Christmas in Tahoe.
We grocery shopped for food for 10 people before our 5-day stay in the mountains. We had all our luggage, food, Christmas gifts, decorations, and bodies, packed into a pick-up truck and rented SUV. We were under a time constraint as a winter storm was following on our coattails. We were all packed into the vehicles like sardines. The packing alone was an engineering feat! We had to depart at 4:00 A.M with our 10 passengers and of course Meatball, Katie’s bulldog puppy, to get through the mountain pass before it closed due to the storm.
We arrived in a few hours at the rental cabin. The roads were snow-covered, and the storm arrived just about the same time we did. We managed to get in a few days skiing, some sledding, and hiking and had the perfect winter Christmas experience. The views and scenery were breathtaking. It was such a contrast from the ocean and island life we have experienced in the last two years.
We spent every night playing games, eating amazing cooperative culinary masterpieces, and enjoying uninterrupted family time together. Everyone agreed that the food, the mountains, and snow, the thoughtful Christmas gifts, were all wonderful. The greatest gift, we all knew, was the precious time we got to spend with each other, and the joy, love, and laughter that abounded. It will definitely go in the books as one of my favorite family Christmas memories.
Two Months in California
We knew the weather in Ireland was cold, rainy, windy, and miserable. We decided to wait a couple of months in the warmer and friendlier California climate before returning to our long list of winter boat repairs. We were not idle during this time. Dan did some Rolfing (structural integration) on friends and family. I earned some money writing. Newly accredited DOCTOR Katie Keville provided us with weekly acupuncture treatments and started us on an herb regimen. We healed our bodies and our minds and got ourselves in a great place mentally and physically to return to our adventures.
While in California, we did all the touristy trips to the coast and Bodega Bay, the Redwood forest, Napa Valley, Sonoma wine tasting events, and had some amazing culinary experiences. We were finally united with our new collapsible marine bikes and got to take some biking trips around Cotati and Santa Rosa. Dan meticulously ordered items from Amazon for our boat that are expensive and difficult to get in the UK. He packed the duffle bag we had used for Christmas gifts chock full of boat parts and things we wanted to take back that we could only get in US stores.
Meanwhile, we had another important task to complete. We had to apply for our visas to Russia for our summer sailing itinerary through the Baltic Sea. Can I just say that sailing to Russia is no easy task? Besides the forms and documentation, not to mention fees, you have to have a personal invitation as well as a Russian speaking representative with you to check into the country.
Fortunately, we have a wonderful contact through the Ocean Cruising Club (OCC) of which we are members, who have a member in Russia who is famous for helping OCC members in sailing to St. Petersburg. Vladimir was on point sending us the official invitations, reviewing and submitting our paperwork and fees. He orchestrated everything for us efficiently and with expediency.
That was the easy part. The hard part was traveling into the city of San Francisco to apply for our Russian visa. Since Katie and Sean were working every day, we had a find a way to get into the city for a meeting with the Russian consulate. We took our bikes the few miles to the train station, packed them on the train and took the train the closest stop to the ferry port. We rode the bikes to the ferry, locked them up safely, and boarded the ferry for the city. Once in the city, we had to walk two miles to the building housing the Russians. We made our first meeting with only minutes to spare.
The meeting took over an hour. There was much confusion on the part of the two Russian ladies helping us and no one had ever entered their office to apply for a visa to enter Russia by way of a sailboat. I guess it would be a long sail from California to Russia, but our boat was in Ireland, much closer to the destination. There was much dialogue back and forth between the two ladies in the guttural, hasty Russian language. No progress was made between the two so “phone a friend” began.
To make a long story short, they felt they had started the process down the correct path, so they took our American passports, obtained our signature, our $700 plus extra for their office time. Then they announced the visas would be back in three weeks. The only problem was, we were leaving to return to Ireland in two weeks.
Problem number one. We had to do more paperwork to allow our daughter Katie to come and pick up the Russian visas on our behalf since they would be arriving after we were gone.
Problem number two. We needed our passports to return to Ireland. Oh boy. Talk about an “oh shit” moment.
After leaving the office, we immediately contacted the American Passport Office to try and get a second set of passports. Our boat buddies had accomplished this task as they knew that when traveling through certain European countries, you will have to give up your passport to obtain a visa. You don’t want to ever be in a foreign country without your passport. For these special cases, a second passport can be issued.
We called our boat buddies who were holed up in Portugal and explained the situation. There was silence on the other end of the line. “You know, you need your original passports to get the second set.”
Second, “oh shit” moment of the day. We briefly panicked that we had just relinquished our passports to the Russians and would not be able to get a second set and leave for Ireland as planned when Dan realized we had Passport Cards. This secondary identification has all your passport information on a card in case you lose your passport or need additional I.D. Fortunately, Dan had the insight to order a set when we renewed our last set of passports.
What we didn’t know was if the passport office would accept the card in place of the passport itself for the identification needed to get a duplicate passport. All our birth certificates and other personal documentation was in Ireland with our boat.
Dan made a phone call to the passport office standing on the sidewalk just a few hundred yards from the Russian Embassy. He had to verify that we could use our passport cards to obtain our second passports. We didn’t know if we would have to storm back and retake our passports before they were mailed them to Russia. After a long day of travel and consternation, we were both on the edge of panic.
Dan waited on hold for what seemed like an hour as the kind lady from the American passport office made several phone calls to get our questioned answered. Our new claim to fame? We single-handedly stumped both the Russian and American officials on the same day.
We finally got the answer we were waiting for – the representative at the American passport office did not receive any information that the cards could not be used as identification for the duplicate passport. Well, that made us feel better. NOT!
We had an appointment for the following week to attempt to get our duplicate passports, back in San Francisco. Totally exhausted by this point, we took our walk, the ferry, the bikes, then the train, back to Cotati. It was pitch black and cold when we finally arrived back at the train station. We called Sean and he rescued us and our bikes in the pick-up truck to save us the frigid bike ride back home.
Back to the City
The following week we repeated the process to get to San Francisco. At least this time we knew exactly how long the trip would take and we felt like seasoned veterans. The trip was a breeze and we just barely made our 11:30 appointment at the passport office.
I wish I could say the interview went smoothly. Dan had done his homework. We had our pictures, identification, and multiple pages of paperwork pre-filled and ready to hand in. We had to wait in several lines and finally got to the last step of the procedure. The lady behind the window took one look at our paperwork and said, “These are not the correct forms.”
Dan had followed the directions exactly as specified online. He argued with the lady for a few minutes as she defiantly handed us the new forms through the window. Not only did we have multiple pages of dates, addresses, ID numbers, and signatures to fill out, we had to start back at the beginning of the lines. People moved away from us in alarm as I fear there was steam pouring out both our ears.
A question on both our minds, as we now had just over a week before needed our passports to leave the country, was, “What if this lady is wrong and this is not the right paperwork?”
We watched as she took our other papers and threw them in the trashcan. Dan was quite sure our originals were correct as he had verified the information from different sources. If our track record was any indication, it was doubtful she had ever processed the paperwork for duplicate passports. Would this hold up the process if she was, in fact, wrong?
We had no choice but to fill out the new forms and wait in line again. We finally got our moment with our lovely passport agent and handed her the new forms, as well as the $600 for the duplicate passports. We also had to pay to have them expedited as we only had a week to get them before our flight back to Ireland.
Let’s throw in President’s Day to add more delays to getting our passports. With mere days until departure, our passports finally arrived, three days after the delivery date for which we paid the extra fees. With a huge sigh of relief, we spent two full days packing from our four-month holiday, adding two folding bikes to what we now needed to carry back. I don’t even want to put in writing what our baggage fees totaled.
Katie was set to pick up our Russian visas when they arrived after our departure. She and Sean would be meeting us in Venice for a motorboat trip at the end of March and she would hand deliver our visas… or so we thought. We had planned this trip as we all wanted to visit Venice before it sinks out of existence. Venice is not on our sailing itinerary as the Mediterranean (on next summer’s itinerary) is going to take a long time to visit and Venice is too far out of the way. We thought renting a motorboat with our kids and sailing buddies would be a fun outing before we set off sailing to the Baltic in May.
Sick at Sea
We gathered our belongings and arrived back at the San Francisco airport for our flight back to our boat. We checked all our bags and just had our carry-ons. It had been an incredible four months back in the states and we were both exhausted and happy to be returning to our quiet routine aboard Equus in the sleepy little town of Bangor, Ireland. We had missed our baby!
The flight was a breeze. We had the insight to rent a car when arriving in Dublin so we could put our bags right into a vehicle and drive back to the boat. I was not going to repeat the bus, train, and hike with more luggage than we started with!
Once again awake and traveling for 24 hours straight, we arrived in the wind and rain back at our boat at O’dark hundred. We didn’t unpack. We slept like dead people. We awoke and decided to spend the day sightseeing since we had a rental car. We would return it the following day. I started coughing and feeling lousy as we toured the northern coast of Ireland. It was frigid. The wind was so cold and strong, it took your breath away when you opened the car door.
It snowed, sleeted, and was generally the most miserable weather you can get in Ireland. By the time we got back to the boat that evening, I knew I had caught a cold.
To make matters worse, the Coronavirus spread to Venice. All non-essential travel from the US to Venice has been prohibited. Katie and Sean tried to get a refund from their airlines, but since the virus has not officially been named a pandemic, that was a “no go”.
On my end, I tried desperately to get the boat company to refund our $2,500. Our boat buddies, as well as Katie and Sean, were all supposed to meet in Venice and this was not going to happen. The boat company DID NOT CARE. If I couldn’t provide a letter from the airlines showing the flight was canceled due to Covid-19, they didn’t want to work with us.
I’m a fairly nice person until you piss me off. Boy was I pissed off. Let’s just say the wrath of Alison was unleashed and I began sending less than nice correspondences to the boat owner. She told me that since we were on a boat, we would be fine. Never mind that the entire city of Venice has been shut down and is a complete ghost town. I asked her if she would bring her family to Venice in the midst of a global outbreak of a life-threatening virus, and of course, got no answer.
Persistence and threats paid off. We got our dates for the motor cruise changed to the first week of October. Hopefully, the virus will be long gone by then. Katie and Sean were able to get their flights changed for free to come and visit us in Ireland. While it won’t be a Venice trip, we plan on renting a car and touring this beautiful island. And… Katie needs to deliver our Russian visa.
Now that we will be continuing our journey, I hope to be writing blogs and taking photos of the incredible places we will be venturing this spring and summer. I apologize for the time that has passed since my last blog post. I was doing so much writing for pay that I didn’t have the energy to write for fun. I do love telling our stories, and I hope you stay tuned as there is never a dull moment aboard our little seahorse, Equus, our home, our lives, and the reason for all our adventures.