It is an easy trip from Vero Beach
to St. Augustine
on the ICW, taking three days with two nights at anchor along the way. This is northern Florida where large homes and water front
communities are interspersed with nature preserves. You can go for miles in the company of dolphins,
birds and manatees without seeing any development. The ocean is often just over the dunes to the
east. In all, it is a pleasant
experience, reinforced by the knowledge that the current sea conditions in the Atlantic Ocean make that a less desirable alternative.
We reach St.
Augustine early afternoon and launch the dinghy so
that we can enjoy a brief visit to this historic and attractive city. To celebrate our last night in Florida, we have dinner at a nearby restaurant with
friends we know from the Bahamas. They are in St. Augustine to store their boat for the
summer. And this isn’t too unusual as
our group of Bahamas
cruisers are falling by the wayside, most storing their boats in southern
locations. We are in the minority as
full time liveaboards, heading as far north as possible.
After dinner, it is time to prepare the boat for the
offshore passage. The dinghy is secured
to the deck, jacklines installed, and the engine gets a thorough check up. The weather for our passage is looking
favorable, and we will leave at first light in the company of friends on
another sailboat who are veterans of two circum-navigations and one trip to Europe and back.
It humbles us when we encounter such people.
The next morning is beautiful, and we head out into the Atlantic with a parade of boats. Most will peel off somewhere along the coast
for shorter hops, but our two boats are determined to make it all the way to Beaufort, NC.
The waves are almost non-existent, the sky is blue, and we begin a long
motorsail northward. We will be at sea for three days and two nights. One truism of sailing is that if anything
will go wrong, it will happen at night.
This proves to be the case for us.
In the middle of our first night out, while I am on watch, the prop
suddenly begins to make a very ugly noise, actually shaking the boat. In a panic I shift to neutral and the noise
stops. Burt comes on deck, and we think
through the situation. There seem to be two possibilities; either the zinc on
the prop has come loose or we have hit something that perhaps is tangled in the
prop. We cautiously put the engine in
reverse – no ugly noises. Then we try
minimum RPM’s in forward and still no ugly noises. We eventually get the nerve to go back to
cruising speed and everything is operating just fine. The downside to bump in the night events is
that your adrenaline is now sky high and neither of us gets much sleep for the
rest of the night. We will hire a diver once we get to Beaufort to verify that
nothing is wrong below the waterline.
Things go just fine until the following night. Just after I begin my watch, I see flares
going off in the distance. I call over
to our buddy boat and ask if they have seen anything, but they were below at
the time. Over the next few minutes
several more flares go off. I take note
of our position at the time and take a sight bearing in the direction of the
flares. We are about 50 miles off the
coast and barely in range of the Coast Guard when I call in our
observations. More flares are going off
while I answer what seems to be hours of inane questions, often relayed by our
buddy boat since they are receiving the radio communications better than we
are. At the same time, another boat,
perhaps 20 miles away from us is also reporting the flares and with their
position and sight bearing, it seems the Coast Guard could figure out the
location of the activity. But, the poor
soul on duty that evening is having some difficulies. Finally, hr requests that we alter our course
and begin a Search and Rescue Operation.
I am not too thrilled about this as we have no idea how much further
offshore we need to head, but we comply with the request. After all, if we were the boat in danger, we
would hope others would be willing to come to our assistance. It all ends when the Coast Guard contacts us
again with the news that the flares we have been seeing are actually a naval
training exercise. We are amazed that it
took over a half an hour to identify the source. We go back to our intended course, but it is
another night where adrenaline is pumping and again we get little sleep. We pull into Beaufort around noon on the
third day after covering 384 nautical miles in 58 hours. We are exhausted and splurge on a dock along
the town waterfront.
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| Burt relaxes in the hammock-chair along the Beaufort waterfront |
Now, we shy away from docks due to the expense. We actually
have not been at a dock since we checked into the Bahamas
in Nassau in
early February. But, this time it appears it will be an interesting and
enjoyable experience. We are told to
pull into the slip next to the sailboat with the 100 foot mast. It doesn’t take
long until we meet the captain and crew of our neighbor, an Oyster 72 out of England. They are the paid crew, a husband and wife
from Britian and the Netherlands,
respectively, and now residents of British
Columbia. They
are friendly and are looking for some company for the evening. We make
arrangements to join them for a drink and dinner ashore and include the couple
on our buddy boat. It makes for an interesting conclusion to the day as our
companions have sailed all over the world.
We listen spellbound to what they have done and experienced and stop for
a cup of expresso on the Oyster before calling it a night. As the evening ends, we find that all of us
have cruising friends in common. In the
sailing community seems to exemplify “one degree of separation” with those we
encounter, and we plan to stay in touch with this interesting couple.
The next morning the Oyster leaves as they are making an ocean
passage all the way to Maine
where the boat is undergoing six weeks of maintenance. In its place a 146 foot motor yacht pulls in,
and we now are looking out at a very BIG white wall. It appears things will
remain interesting. Again, this is a
delivery crew, also taking this boat up to Maine.
Once the boat is docked and cleaned from top to bottom by the large, uniformed
crew, the captain stops by to chat. He
is retired from the Coast Guard, and this is his full time job. The boat
winters in Florida and New
Orleans (we suspected that when we saw a Saints Super Bowl Flag on
the bow staff) and summers in Maine
where the owner uses it for about six weeks in June and July, before he heads
back to work in August. And why would he
need to be at work in August? Perhaps,
because he is the owner of the New Orleans Saints and a pro basketball
team. Sometimes the wealth we observe is
astounding.
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| Laady Gayle Marie docked next to our tiny boat |
Once we have gotten some well deserved sleep and are done
gawking at our neighbors, we take the dinghy to do some exploring around
Beaufort. The small town sits on the
mainland and is separated from the ocean by a series of barrier islands that
are part of a national seashore. We take
the dinghy to one of the islands and go on a hike. But we see little; our eyes are glued to the
foot path as we try to avoid large piles of horse manure. You see, these
islands are all populated by herds of wild horses. We dinghy to another section of the island
where we find some of the horses knee deep in water, grazing on the marsh grasses.
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| Wild horses grazing in the marshes |
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| Marsh land separating the numerous barrier islands |
The area is named the Rachel Carson Wildlife
Preserve in honor of Carson’s
years spent studying the ecology of the area.
Later that afternoon we venture
over to the annual Beaufort Music Festival, just down the waterfront from our
dock. While we can hear the music on the boat, it is fun to mingle with the
crowd. A variety of North Carolina groups are featured during
this two day event.
We would love to stay in Beaufort, one of our favorite
coastal towns, but we are on a tight schedule.
North winds are predicted so we will make the remainder of the trip to
the Chesapeake on the ICW instead of tempting
fate along Cape Hatteras. We spend three days motoring
through sparsely populated swamp lands.
There are few towns along the way and almost no cell phone service. We anchor alone in remote locations for the two
nights underway before heading into the Norfolk
area that bustles with activity. There
we dodge commercial and military traffic, and transit a lock and many opening
bridges on restricted schedules, thus making this final leg to the Chesapeake a bit slower.
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| The USS Comfort docked at Norfolk, a symbol of America's generosity around the world |
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| One of the large aircraft carriers with a jet visible on the deck |
Once free of Norfolk,
it is time to unfurl the sails and head north up the Bay. Our first night’s anchorage
is at Deltaville where we spent a month last spring doing maintenance.
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| The serene anchorage at Deltaville |
The next night we pull into Solomon’s Island, where in previous visits we have anchored in an
adjacent creek. This time we decide to
take a mooring ball for two nights and explore the town. The place is full of
marinas and boatyards, probably because it provides easy access to the Bay for Washington, DC
residents. There are a few bars and
restaurants along the waterfront, and right next to the mooring field is a very
nice maritime museum which we visit.
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| The maritime museum at Solomon's Island with its iconic screwpile lighthouse |
That night the museum is sponsoring an outdoor concert, one of their major
fund raisers for the year, featuring A Band Called Perry, a nationally known
country band. Five thousand fans have
purchased pricy tickets, but we sit on the back deck of the boat enjoying the
music and light show for free. Yes, it
is not quite as loud for those of us on a mooring, but that’s just fine by us.
One last breezy and rainy sail brings us to Galesville,
MD and the Hartge Yacht
Harbor. Here we will pull the boat, leaving it on the
hard while we head back to Ohio and Wisconsin to visit
family and do annual doctor checkups. We
have routine maintenance, varnish work, serious cleaning and polishing, recertification
of our life raft, and installation of a new autopilot to accomplish once we
return. So, it will be about a month until Exuberant is back underway and
heading further north. We reflect back on our recent travels – not counting the
days spent waiting for acceptable weather, we have covered almost 1100 nautical
miles in thirteen days since we left Green Turtle Cay in the Bahamas. No
wonder we are feeling a bit tired.
