Dec 8, 2010 500 miles left to go!

I watched the sunrise over a beautiful ocean this morning. The reds and golds and streaks of orange turned the water into an alien planet. There is no place on land where you can see the very same view. I am on watch now and we have all three sails set out full, the wind is blowing gently off the starboard quarter from the NW at only 10 to 12, just enough to keep the boat moving at about 5 knots. The engine is off so the only sounds are the waves slapping against the hull as she pushes through the water, and the music from the stereo that I am playing quietly so I don't wake up Dylan and Dick. I am listening to Dierks Bently, banjo and mandolines and fiddle music early in the morning... You can take the boy out of Montana but...



I have been thinking about what makes these longer offshore trips so facinating to me. I think that part of it is the changes day by day from calm and quiet, soul searching sailing on a painted sea to the gray heaving monster sea and screaming, ripping wind that seems to hate the little boat and its inhabitants. When I used to whitewater kayak the feeling of survival after shooting out of a huge whitewater hole in my little boat sometimes was exhilerating enough to make my face hurt from smiling and I think that these extremes are, perhaps my attraction to offshore sailing.



Today will be as different from the stormy days before as a pretty delicate flower in a mountain meadow in the spring is to a gnarled old dry sagebrush on a cold Wyoming patrure in winter. The sun is already growing hot and soon we will be in the cockpit in only shorts and sunglasses, the waves are dropping and soon will be only glassy swells spitting out schools of flying fish that skim across the water with their little fin/wings trailing drops as the dart back and forth trying to avoid the predator Mahi folowing them just below the surface.



Time to go... I think I will make some French Toast for the guys this morning!



Sailing into the Morning Sun,

Captain Tofer, Capt. Dick, and Dylan

A Bit of Christmas Cheer

Merry Christmas from the WD

Benny being Benny

Our great Lil tree

Em has the the spirit!

Kanyon is a great Elf!

I got Kaleb with a smile.

From our home to yours,

Many Blessing, The Burton's









Enjoy, a little look into our daily lives

Hello all, I was lucky enough to get a underwater camera this year for my birthday.  So, I am snap happy and have pictures of lots of things.  Enjoy and little look into our daily life.  Blessing, Rebecca

Thanksgiving day, Dad did all the cooking!

Yes, we even get cold when it drops to the low 70's.... I know you feel sorry for us.

Em is my new model .... how much fun is that?

Tofer on the move, this was just a afternoon swim off the boat before I went to work.

What a fun picture!  Em is so much fun.

OH, my who is that.... we look so great...... Em begged me not to post this one....

Just bits of our life...
Blessing to you and Yours,
Beck and The Crew

Blog Dec 4 -5, 2010

Yesterday was a beautiful day with winds only blowing 10 to 15 from the WNW. We ate Jill's Lasagna and slept each in turn. Dylan worked through some sea sickness issues and felt pretty good by the time his night watches came around. We knew yesterday morning that this was the calm before the storm. Our weather guy Capt. Bob Cook keeps us informed and gives us routing instructions and he had been setting us up for the WSW blow that we knew was coming. We had been steering south for the first couple of days because we knew the high west winds were going to push us east fast. Sure enough at about 9:00pm the westerlies started to fill in at 20+ knots and they continued to build through the night.



Let me paint you the picture of today. I woke up to take my 06:00 watch and Dick came down from the cockpit soaking wet. When the guy coming off watch is dripping seawater and looking grim you know that you are in for work. The sun came up right in front of the boat and I got my first glimpse in daylight of what I had been hearing throughout the night. The sea was slate gray but faded into oranges and reds in front of the boat. The waves had grown to 16 to 18 footers boiling and rolling white foam as they came from behind about every six seconds. The wind was blowing a steady 40 knots gusting to 50 (our highest gust today was 55) and the wind was blowing white spin drift off the tops of every wave like I used to see on the cornices that formed way up high on the peaks when I was skiing in Jackson Hole. When the wind is blowing like this the whole ocean is a living monster, tendrils like moving snakes can be seen just below the surface everywhere you look and little tiny waves on the surface turn into huge waves right before your eyes. When you look right behind the boat every six seconds a new behemoth forms and barrels down on you like a 747 airliner with a similar roar. The roar of the approaching wave is deafened though by the sound of the wind ripping through the rigging and over the sails. The boat almost always rides right up over the top of this mountain and surfs down the back side only to rise again on the next one. Once in a while the boat slides off to the side just a little too far and the white foaming top of the overtaking wave crashes over the boat drenching you with a thousand gallons of water. You almost always can see this coming and have time to hunch your shoulders, tuck your head into your jacket and hold tight with your hands to the sides of the cockpit.



Today the adventure continued with a new twist. The auto pilot decided to continue his strike and every so often quits altogether forcing the guy at the helm to think quick, grab the wheel and fight the boat back onto her coarse an reset the auto pilot. If you are to late she rounds up into the wind and waves and it's a lot of fun getting her back on course in these seas and winds.



We are all doing well, the very fact that I am writing a blog tells you that. We were well rested going into this and our weather guy told us this morning that it would be over "soon," a somewhat cryptic answer but still he is a weather guy.



Thanks for all of your riddles and messages we love to receive them.



"Ridin' The Storm Out,"

Capt. Tofer, Capt Dick and Dylan on "Changin' Tags"

Day 1 and 2, Dec. 2 and 3, 2010

Welcome to the voyage! "Changin' Tags" is well on her way from Norfolk, VA toward St. Thomas. We left the dock this morning at around 09:00 after a final run to the grocery store, a great breakfast of eggs Benedict at a local cafe, and topping off the water tanks and strapping down the dingy on deck.



Both Dylan and I are used to the warm Caribbean so our bodies simply rebelled against the 40 degree weather! We looked like "Stay Puff Marshmallow Men" in our layers of foul weather gear. As we left the dock three fast little navy boats full of SEALs zipped past us looking firmly ahead... no waves or smiles... what's with that? Then as we approached the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel three HUGE Navy hover craft barreled past us as well. Leaving Norfolk it's hard to forget about our troops overseas. Here's to all of you over there a SALUTE from "Changin' Tags" and a Merry Christmas!



We spent the day motoring in very little wind and low seas around Cape Hatteras. I made some grilled swiss cheese sandwiches for lunch and put roast beast on Dick's and my own... DylAn reminded me at this point that he is a vegetarian... a fact I had known but forgotten. It might have served him better to have reminded me while we were in the grocery store earlier but there is plenty for him to eat and Dick and I get more steak, hot dogs and hamburgers so we are OK with it too.



For supper I made some spaghetti and we all ate quietly trying to stay warm. In the middle of the night our old friend AUTO PILOTI decided that he had had quite enough of our treatment of him and went on strike. Well let me tell you there is absolutely nothing that makes you love a working auto pilot as much as one on strike. Dick and I played around with it while Dylan hand steered around Diamond Shoals at 3:00am. Dick pulled out fuses, we both read the books, we messed with the gain and turned it on and off a bunch of times... finally we gave up and decided to head into Beaufort, NC to get it fixed and then Auto decided to work again and has been steering like a champ ever since. This morning we made our turn to cross the Gulf Stream and if you look at the "SPOT" at you will see that we are finally heading out to sea.



Dylan is doing great although waking him up in the middle of the night has been a very humorous challenge for me. He wakes up staring at you like a deer caught in the headlights, and the first time I woke him up he just went right back to sleep. Once he is up and about he stays awake and alert at the helm and he seems to be adjusting to the motion of a mono-hull with no ill affects so far.



Thanks for all of the riddles from Mike, and Dylan's Aunt... we are working on them. Don't send us answers!!!! we work on them until we solve them.



Hope you all have a beautiful day!



From the Gulf Stream,

Captain Tofer, Capt. Dick and Dylan

Fall Deliveries

(Our stow-away on the "Marinette" delivery this year)

Every fall I am fortunate enough to deliver a few boats. My two favorite are S/V “Changin’ Tags” and S/V Marinette. Both are center cockpit Island Packets so they are beautiful boats. “Changin’ Tags” is the 46 foot version and “Marinette” is 44 feet. They are so similar in the interior that I am constantly looking for something on one boat that is on the other or expecting to find something that I KNOW should be in a certain spot only to realize after a fruitless search that it’s actually on the other boat.

                        (S/V Marinette at her berth in Aventura, FL)

“Marinette” moves back and forth from Aventura, Florida to Mamaronac, New York. I have done the trip six times now, two times with the owner Dr. K and his son Mark on board for portions of the trip and the rest of the time with a variety of crew. My son Jimmy crewed for me for three of the trips and I have also had, Richard, Blaine, Mike, and Ross come along. Mike and I just finished the trip from NY to FL right before Thanksgiving. It was a great trip but the weather in the Fall is always a little rough. We had to wait out a gale warning off Cape Hatteras and then beat to windward for about 36 hours off of Charleston in 30+ knots of wind. Island Packets are big, beefy, tough, offshore sailboats but they are not really known for their ability to sail to windward in the best of conditions. In 30 knots of wind and 16 to 20 foot seas… well it’s a stop sign. We made it only a day late though which makes me happy, as a delivery captain I like to be as accurate as possible with my estimates.

                 (S/V "Changin' Tags" at her berth in St Thomas, USVI)

“Changin’ Tags” moves back and forth from Norfolk, VA to St Thomas, USVI. This is a true bluewater trip and is almost guaranteed to have some sort of excitement. Let me see… we have filled up the fuel tanks 900 miles from land with the help of a Container Ship, the “Desert Serenity;” we have battled gale force winds for the better part of a week; we have turned and run from 3 nasty storms in one trip and been forced to turn tail and scoot away from Norfolk once when we were only 200 miles away. I have wrestled six gallon jugs of fuel back onto the boat which had been washed off the deck in monster seas and were still atatched to the lifelines. The wind blowing so hard I could hardly keep my eyes open. Through it all the owner, Dick Shirley, battled along beside Jimmy and I. He held the boat steady at 6 knots alongside a huge containership while fuel was passed down to the deck on a line, he laughed and joked as we watched the wind guage climb to 67 knots and has always proven to be a great sailor and a great Captain as well. Jimmy came along on most of the “Changin’ Tags” deliveries and I am happy to say that the time he spent out there facing the ocean’s wrath as well as her calm and beauty, and the time he spent with men like Dick have made him into a man and son I can be proud of. We will be leaving Norfolk on December 2nd and we will miss Jimmy but we will be bringing along another young man, 15-year-old Dylan Milton will be crewing in Jimmy’s place. He and his family live aboard a Cat called “Ubunto.” I am sure the trip will be a great experience for Dylan as well.

We love to get messages on the Iridium phone offshore.  They are free for you to send and free for us to read.  We cannot send you back a reply but pop us off a message every now and then and share the trip with us.  All you have to do is go to:  http://messaging.iridium.com/  and leave the 8816 that is already there and add our number to it 32521786.  In the email line just put your name because we can't email you anyway but then add your message below.  There is a counter and each message can only be 160 characters but you can send as many as you want.  If you are sending multiple messages just put 1/2 or 1/3 or what ever at the beginning so we know which message of how many because they do not always arrive in order.  Also if your message is for a specific crewmember just put it in the email line for example....  Rebecca to Tofer 1/3...

Remember you can follow us on SPOT by clicking on the little word SPOT on the upper left side of the blog where it says "Where we are now".  The SPOT shows you exactly where we are every 6 hours or so.

Oh and for Blake on Slow Motion... BREAK OUT THE HARD RIDDLES FOR THIS TRIP!!!

Thanks For Reading!
Captain Tofer

How about a blog from Grenada the day before we leave?

We have been here a little more than a month now without Becky. We have learned a lot about each other and about how much we all miss and need our mom/wife in our lives. She takes so much of the presure off of me and dulls out my sharper edges… trust me the kids really like it when Dad is as dull as possible. She fills in the holes of love and nurturing with the kids in a way that only a Mom can.

For example if I am approached by one of my children bearing a cut my first reaction, depending on the decibel level of the scream, is to see if there is enough blood spurting out of said cut to make a mess all over the boat. My second reaction is to tell said child to shut the hole in his face before my eardrums break and let me look at it. I am usually rather un-nerved at this point and am not really very gentle as I poke and prod the cut to see if it needs stitches or a band-aid. Either way I dump some alchohol on it clean it with a swab and bandage it up while at the same time telling the child to stop screaming. Splinters are handled with the tip of my pocket knife and alcohol (just like my dad used to do with such afection for me when I was a wee lad.)

Clothing and hygene… I prefer it if they wear one pair of shorts for the week so I don’t have to do as much laundry… T-shirts are wearable until they no longer pass the “sniff-test” and I generally discourage the wearing of any shirts by the boys unless we are going shopping. Teeth are brushed every night or when I notice that they are a shade of yellow that proves to me that the child has been lying to me all week and not brushing them at night when they were told. Showers… what? They have been swimming every afternoon! What kind of dirt can stick to that pruny body? No really I make them shower… when the hair on their head sticks up and cannot be moved without breaking it off… time for shampoo.

Haircuts… moving on…

My wife softens all of that and fixes all the little messes I make out of our offspring by gently cleaning wounded fingers, using a sterile needle to softly prod a splinter from its hiding place, encouraging soapy showers and shampoo, changing shirts and shorts almost every day (we do still live on a boat people!) checking to make sure the teeth are clean after the kid has spent 20 minutes making faces at himself in the head mirror with the water running and still has a dry toothbrush.

Her humor and infectous laugh and big beautiful smile and the sparkle in her sea blue eyes keep me grining from ear to ear. She has been my very best friend for more than 20 years now, she shares my dreams and heartaches and this whole idea that the kids and I could live without her for a couple of months was ludicrous! We won’t make that mistake again mark my words!

Grenada is a beautiful island and the Port Louis Marina was a great place to stay for a very reasonable rate. I would recommend it to anyone. We had a great time with new friends on Ubuntu, EmilyAnne took French lessons, the kids swam the pool almost dry and I had a place to get into the habit of morning running. We actually had a great time for these weeks but again… we would much rather be with Becky.

I will try to send her a couple of updates as we sail and feel free to send us messages on the Iridium phone (they are free) also I will update the spot about every 6 hours so you can track us as we sail by clicking the little “spot” word on our blog page.

God Bless,
Captain Tofer