1/29/12
Although Manana is sitting on the hard in St. Joe, Michigan, we are busily making preparations for our trip to take her to warm and salty waters. We are planning to splash her as soon as we complete the bottom maintenance and the weather (and the marina) permits in the spring.
Our plan is to sail her over to the Wisconsin shore to cruise Door county for the first short leg. It's one of the places we have not made it to and thought we should see it before we leave Lake Michigan. From there, we will work her around  through Lake Huron, Lake St. Clair, and Lake Erie over to the Erie Canal. There, we will drop our mast and have it shipped to the exit on the Hudson River, restep it and head down the river and finally, into salt water. We are leaving our time schedule and the route we take from there as flexible as possible, since I will still be taking care of business, but we would like to be in Key West for the Parrotheads Meeting of the Minds in November.
We spend the last two days at Strictly Sail in Chicago trying to get solutions to some of our questions and purchase what we feel we will need. The results were a little disappointing since we wound up with more questions than we started with. But, it is the beginning of the journey!