Fall(ing) Towards Florida

It is October 20^th and we depart the lovely marina at River Dunes Resort to begin a series of offshore runs to Florida. 

The harbor at River Dunes

The weather is cooling off but otherwise pleasant.  We ride the tidal currents from the Pamlico River, down past Beaufort, to the beautiful protected anchorage at Cape Lookout.  We are nestled in a harbor almost completely surrounded by barrier sand dunes.  

Sunset at Cape Lookout with the light in the distance

Only a few boats are here, and on the other side of the dunes we can hear crashing Atlantic waves. 

We leave Cape Lookout the next morning at 4 am for a 32 hour passage to Charleston.  The seas are lumpy with waves and wind from different directions.  Only in the last five hours does the wind tighten up, and we have a glorious sail into Charleston Harbor with speeds exceeding 9 knots. Of course we get a bit of help from the fast flowing currents. We anchor in Charleston across from the Mega-dock where all the large yachts tie up.  

With the mega-yachts docked in the background, local fishermen work their crab pots next to the anchorage.

Over the intervening days it becomes quite a show.  Meanwhile, we enjoy all that Charleston has to offer – bicycling the historic old town,

One of many charming houses in the Charleston Old Town

And for Burt, biking over the Ravenel Bridge - too steep for my liking.

attending an extravagant farmers’ market, and meeting up with friends and fellow cruisers for happy hours and dinners. Charleston is a great destination for foodies! One day we take the water taxi from the downtown to Patriots’ Point and ride a bike trail about ten miles out to Sullivan’s Island, a beach community on the ocean.  We stroll the wide beach 

Looking south along the wide beach at Sullivan's Island

and have lunch at Poe’s, a restaurant themed on Edgar Allen Poe who was stationed at a barracks on Sullivan’s Island.  The ride back more than works off lunch.

Finally a weather opportunity opens for us to head further south.  We reposition the boat near Fort Sumter and depart the next morning at 2 am. The current is with us, but we are dodging lots of commercial traffic on the way out.  800 foot ships seem even bigger in the dark of night.  We motor sail along the coast until the wind picks up, giving us a spritely sail into Hilton Head Island come early afternoon.  We have never stopped at Hilton Head before and have reservations for a dock at Sea Pines Plantation. 

Exuberant tied up at Harbortown Marina

With the boat tied up, we unload the bikes and begin exploring the 85 miles of paved bike trails that wind across the island. Within Sea Pines, the trails are paved, skirt several golf courses, and weave through live oak forests dripping with Spanish moss.   

Warning - alligators along the way!

And, yes, we see them sunning themselves along the way.  This one is about three feet long  - not too intimidating.

Although it is quite hot and humid, the shaded trails are delightful. We stop by a beach to watch the waves roll in. 

Scenes along the Hilton Head beach

Another day, we leave Sea Pines and explore other parts of the island.  The trails access commercial areas and pass by gated communities.  We arrive back at the boat sore and exhausted after the 35 mile excursion.  That night we meet up with friends from Mansfield who have retired to Hilton Head. After a drink on the boat, we head out to a local restaurant.  It is interesting to hear about their new life and new home.

Again, the weather allows us another opportunity to continue on.  We leave with St. Augustine as our destination, a 26 hour passage.  We mostly motor sail but get in several hours of excellent sailing with the noisy engine off.  During the night, we observe an impressive lightening show inland and are happy to see that it does not move out into the open water. The channel into St. Augustine has issues with shoaling, but with decent light, we are able to pick up the navigation marks and easily head into the mooring field right off the old city.  St. Augustine is always a fun stop.  We join in a night out sponsored by the local cruisers at an excellent restaurant and meet up with different cruising friends other evenings.  Our musical friends on Salty Paws record a live CD outside a local gallery during the First Friday Art Walk – we serve as the applauding audience in the background. We ride our bikes through the old town area – St. Augustine is the oldest city in the United States – and admire the Spanish influenced architecture. 

An interesting gate along a side street

The Bell Tower at Flagler College

One Saturday we bike out to Anastasia Island State Park to walk the beach.  Nearby is a Farmers’ Market where we stop to browse and pick up a cold beverage - it is another hot and humid day. And, with the assistance of the free bus service for transient cruisers, we can easily reprovision.

From St. Augustine we will continue down the ICW as it parallels the coast and is well maintained.  After an overnight anchorage south of New Smyrna where we are eaten alive by no-see-ums, we head to Cocoa and anchor off a park with dinghy docks.  Cocoa is trying to encourage cruisers to stop by, and we would highly recommend it.  Burt enjoys an amazing, old hardware store while I indulge in the nicest knitting store on the east coast.  There are plenty of restaurants for gathering with friends, and just strolling through the streets and alleys of the renovated old town is enjoyable.

After several days in Cocoa, we head a bit further south to Eau Galle/Melbourne where the Seven Seas Cruising Association is hosting a Gam.  The anchorage fills up with around 50 boats while many others arrive by car.  We have three days of socializing both at the Gam and also at Squid Lips, a waterfront restaurant/bar nearby.  During the day well know speakers present seminars ranging from world-wide cruising destinations to technical information. A sub-theme this year is cruising Cuba.  While foreigners have always been able to cruise Cuba, the opportunities for Americans to head there are only beginning to open up.  After listening to the legal ramifications, it will still be a few more years until we will be willing to go there.

From Eau Galle, it is a half day further to Vero Beach.  With winds out of the Northeast, much of our trip down the ICW has been sailing, and this portion is no exception.  When we arrive in Vero, we find the mooring field is crowded so we raft up with friends on Anania. 

Our mooring is next to a mangrove islet which is guarded by the resident Blue Heron  which make a major commotion if any of the neighboring pelican intrude on its territory.

Now, Anania has a cat named Dorie, and Dorie REALLY likes Burt.  She immediately jumps on to our boat and for the entire duration tries to make Exuberant her home.  It is lots of fun for us to have a pet on loan, but eventually Anania leaves with Dorie restrained on board and friends on Magnolia pull up alongside. You are never lonely in Vero.  It is Thanksgiving time and the marina and the local CLODS (Cruisers Living on Dirt) host a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner for over 200 people at a nearby park.  The locals provide the meat while the cruisers provide all the side dishes.  We gorge ourselves on all the food and then relax to a jam session provided by Salty Paws and other cruising musicians as the sun sets behind the rustling palm trees. 

We are busy in Vero.  We are concerned that our batteries are aging, so we order new house batteries to be delivered to the marina.  Getting the new batteries on to the boat, changing them out, and returning the old batteries to a recycling center proves to be a complicated undertaking. Also, this is our last opportunity to access big box stores.  We rent a car for a weekend to deal with the batteries and also do significant provisioning that will take us through to next spring. All goes well, and we end up with Sunday afternoon free.  With ready transportation, we head down to McKee Botanical Gardens, just south of Vero.  Originally the property was a tropical game animal theme park, but with the advent of Disney World, it fell into disrepair. In the 1990’s funds were collected to refurbish an 80 acre portion of the property and open a tropical botanical garden. There are few other visitors as rain is threatening, so we virtually have the place to ourselves.  Paths wander through jungle like growth, skirting streams and ponds.  

The density of vegetation is sometime overwhelming.

In one area there is a huge stand of Royal Palm trees planted in rows and towering over our heads.  

The Royal Palm Colonnade

The gardens are famous for their orchids 

and waterlilies, 

Beautiful waterlilies - this one even has a snake swimming through the maze.

and we marvel at the variety present. They also feature some non-indigenous tropical plants that boarder on the bizarre.

We call this the Pink Fuzzy Plant - botanists probably wouldn't agree with our terminology.

This unique plant from Africa entices flies to enter its throat to help with pollination. Upon completion, the flies are released.

While in Vero, we are experiencing some very strong north to northeast winds, some up to gale strength. While we are protected in the lagoon mooring field, bike rides to the ocean beach show us mammoth waves and considerable beach erosion.  No one is going anywhere until this settles down.  Many people here are awaiting weather to make the passage to the Abacos in the northern Bahamas, but we simply want to head further south to the Keys.  We have a friend in Marathon who is keeping tabs on the availability of mooring balls there, and the news is not hopeful.  Most are full of boats intending to stay the whole winter.  We are feeling the pressure and when the first possibility to head offshore arrives we opt to go directly from Vero to Marathon.  We head ten miles down the ICW to Fort Pierce (otherwise known as Port Fierce due to the nasty standing waves at the inlet entrance) where we slip through the inlet into the ocean.  The Gulf Stream is running strong and quite close to the shore so we fight current almost the entire way.  We arrive offshore at Miami during the middle of the night and realize we will have to continue outside the reef until we have sufficient daylight to watch for the lobster pots that populate Hawk Channel.  It is a slow and bumpy ride in steep waves and winds up to 20 knots, only moderating once we cut into the channel near Key Largo. Even as we curve to the west, the wind remains at a constant angle of 60 degrees off our portside.  It should be a comfortable ride but we are beginning to think there is even current within the reef, something that is very unusual.  We arrive at Marathon late afternoon, 35 hours after leaving Vero, and find there are only three moorings left that will accommodate our length and draft.  We feel relieved as we tie up and turn off the hot and noisy engine.  And hot it is.  Temperatures are abnormally high and the humidity is closing in on 100%. Towering clouds over the Gulf Stream and flashes of lightning at night tell us we will be in for several “interesting” days before a cold front sweeps through and clears out the heat and humidity.  Meanwhile, torrential rains fill our dinghy, giving us the fresh water necessary for washing all the salt off the decks and hull.  We will stay in Marathon into January when we will begin to look for opportunities to cross over into the Bahamas.   

Marching Time in the Chesapeake

It has been almost two months since the last blog posting.  No, we haven’t fallen off the edge of the Earth. Rather we have been very busy with all-consuming boat projects.  Since arriving in the Chesapeake we are working seven days a week on the boat with just a few exceptions.  A year ago we decided to have the boat re-painted with Awlgrip.  This is a time consuming and expensive project that takes considerable planning and hopefully is only necessary every ten years or so. In reality, we are not sure our 23 year old boat has ever been repainted.   We chose Hartge Yacht Harbor to do the work, and the first opening to our liking was September 2015.  After a week on a mooring ball in Annapolis where we did tasks that didn’t require a dock, we move fifteen miles away to Galesville, the home of Hartge’s.  It takes another week to strip the boat, remove the mast and wind generator,

It takes a big truck crane to pull the almost 70 feet of heavy mast.

 repair a dinghy davit bracket that also supported the wind generator, and prepare the interior for what is sure to be a dusty and dirty job.  During this time Burt does some interior varnishing and removes the floor boards for refinishing off the boat, and I polish all the exterior stainless. We move into a pleasant, older cottage on the boatyard grounds, maintained for customers who become homeless when their boat is on the hard.  It is difficult to think what we may need to survive for the next four weeks as we won’t have access to the boat once it goes in the paint shed. And, we also take along numerous items that we will work on while the boat is being painted.  I remove all the canvas, bedding, and brass items for cleaning and polishing. Additionally the floor grates in the cockpit come off for refinishing. Inside all items that remain need to be covered in plastic and anything still on the exterior that would be harmed by dust is also covered.

Finally the big day comes when our denuded boat is put in the slings and hauled out of the water 

Starting to go airborne - always a little nerve wracking

and into the climate controlled paint shed (which is really a very large building with a high tech air filtration system). The workers are sheathed in protective suits and with umbilical cords for their air supply.  The dust produced from the process is very toxic.  And of course, all this goes on behind closed doors for days on end.  We do get a few glimpses of what is occurring, though.  First, the old paint surface is sanded down.  

Not much left of the blue hull at this point - note the keel is down below floor level to facilitate the workers.

 At this point they look for any cracking in the fiberglass, and, naturally, we do have some from collisions in the distance past.  Those cracks are routed out and and filled as any remaining cracks would eventually show through the painted surface.  Next, the boat is coated with an Awlgrip primer.

Primer is applied - the painters joke that they thought we wanted a gray boat.

It has enough gloss that any irregularities in the surface can be seen.  More filling and sanding, followed by more priming, occurs until the surface is totally smooth. Finally, the waterline is reconfigured to reflect the fact that the boat leans slightly to one side due to the placement of the battery bank to port.  At some point in the midst of all this, the bottom gets two coats of red anti-fouling paint. It’s time for the final paint job which consists of several coats of blue, along with a gold cove strip and white waterline stripes.   

Pardon the glare - the boat is really shiny.

After it cures for several days, we are allowed to take a look at the results, and they are spectacular.  We just never realized that the original hull surface was in such poor condition.  Finally, new vinyl lettering is applied to the stern, and the boat is allowed to remain in the shed for another week before launching.

And staying in the shed for an extended period is a good idea as we are in the direct path of Hurricane Joaquin.  The boat yard springs into action, pulling many of the 250 boats that are docked there. Boat owners are scurrying to remove sails and canvas and add additional docklines and fenders.  Although we don’t like the idea of a direct hurricane hit, we rest comfortably knowing the boat couldn’t be in a safer place, and we are living in a house well above flood level. If needed, we have extra room in the cottage for any refugees from the storm.  As it happens the hurricane heads off shore, but we still endue several days of torrential rain and wind.  This is the same nor’ easter that brought historic floods to the Carolinas. In the midst of the storm weekend, we attend an SSCA Gam nearby.  As with all other Gams, we go to educational seminars and socialize with new and old cruising friends. I spend one morning there volunteering to help set up and run registration.  We are especially thrilled to welcome Gary and Jana, dockmates of ours from Sandusky, who have just cut the docklines and joined our full time cruising community.

Meanwhile, we are not twiddling our thumbs while the boat is unavailable.  Burt refinishes all the floor boards and repaints most of the mast after repairing a pending failure in the spreaders. The dinghy gets a good scrubbing and its transom is reglued to the tubes where it is beginning to separate.  I refinish the floor grates, thoroughly clean and re-waterproof the exterior canvas in the cottage bath tub, and begin the process of reprovisioning the boat for the coming season.  That is in addition to going to physical therapy for my back three days a week in Annapolis.  We are feeling like work-a-holics.

But we do take a few days off.  After mentioning that I would love to visit the White House, a cruising friend makes arrangements with his nephew who works in the White House Situation Room to give us a private tour.  White House employees are allowed to give tours to friends and family when the First Family is not in residence.  With short notice and some scurrying to get personal information to the Secret Service, we and other cruising friends, Ted and Sally, are told our tour will begin at 9 pm.  We leave Galesville early enough to do a little sightseeing beforehand, but the temperature is stinky hot, and we opt to spend most of our time in the nearby Museum of Natural History which is well air conditioned.   

One of the highpoints of the Natural History Museum is the Hope Diamond - what a rock!

We meet Chris, our friend’s nephew and his wife for dinner first and then walk over to the White House.  

The White House is beautifully illuminated at night.

 Security is tight.  We get grilled, x-rayed and wanded in two separate buildings before being allowed to enter the grounds.   

Outside the side entrance to the West Wind with our friends Ted and Sally.

We are going to see the rarely visited West Wing, but we are not allowed to take pictures inside.  We walk through meeting rooms including the one where the Cabinet meets and peer into the Oval Office.  The art on the walls is impressive.  Apparently, the President can choose to borrow anything from the National Gallery or other national museums.  We visit the press briefing room which is much smaller than we imagined and features assigned seating for one representative of each major news organization, both national and international. Finally, our tour should be over but since Chris works in the Situation Room he manages to get the security guard to allow us to go inside.  We always assumed the Situation Room was some subterranean chamber, but in reality it is less than one story below the Oval Office.  We have to deposit our phones and cameras in a locked cubby before proceeding inside.  It has three meeting rooms that are wired for all types of secure communication.  We see where the iconic picture of President Obama and Hillary Clinton receiving the news of Bin Laden’s death was taken.  Chris is one of several employees who run the computer and audio-visual links, and he describes his responsibilities as we overlook that section.  In another area are tiers of desks with many computer monitors.  Here members of the intelligence community compile information for daily briefings and meetings.  It has been an amazing opportunity to get a glimpse of how the executive branch of the government functions guided by someone at the center of it all.

We also take six days to drive out to Wisconsin to see our son and his family, making overnight stops each way in Ohio to visit with Burt’s sister and brother.  It is a rushed trip, cut short by one day as we need to get back to Galesville earlier than expected.  We do have a wonderful, but brief visit with everyone.  In Wisconsin, the grandsons are eager to show us their new schools (William is in third grade at an intermediate school and Daniel has just started kindergarden at the elementary school).

William introduces his Dad and us to his new teacher.

We attend both boys’ soccer games 

Daniel really gets into his soccer game. After playing for years with an older brother, he finds himself elevated to a first grade team.

and take a tour of Epic where our son works.  The company has grown from 500 employees when he was first hired to 6000, currently. The campus is ever expanding, and we visit his new office in the recently completed “Farm” complex 

The complex consists of four large buildings reflecting traditional Wisconsin farm architecture, each housing around 350 offices.

and take a stroll through the new, mostly underground auditorium, themed around The Lord of the Rings, which holds 12,000 people and is used by the company only two times per year. 

 

Daniel and Grandpa pose near/in a sculpture decorating the entrance to the auditorium.

Nearby are two more complexes under construction, one designed around the Harry Potter books and the other around fairy tales, including Alice in Wonderland.  We could go on and on, but the basic sentiment is that we have just visited a corporate Disney World.   Obviously the company is booming due to all the changes in health care and electronic medical records. Finally, each day we take bike rides along the many trails that lace the Madison area.  It has been a fun and relaxing break from boatyard chores.

We dash back to Galesville in time to oversee the launching of the boat and our move out of the cottage.  

Exuberant goes back into the water with her new color scheme.  Now we will chew nails over any potential scratch.

Now we get to clean up all the mess and reassemble the boat.  Long days later, we have an almost livable home on the water.  Almost, because we are also having the 4000 mile check up done on our engine.  All goes well, and we are happy to learn several concerns we had are unwarranted.  That is until we replace the fresh water cooling pump, a routine matter, and find the connecting hoses are disintegrating.  These become known as the hoses from hell, as they are impossible to remove and replace.  Two engine technician work two days (at $90 per hour) and refuse to allow Burt to assist.  Come the weekend, they are gone and Burt removes some batteries and, voila, the hoses become accessible.  Monday morning the job is finished up in a few hours. As the saying goes, “It’s a boat/boatyard.” Finally, partway through the battle with the hoses from hell, a crane comes in and resteps our refurbished mast. 

Our stay at the boat yard is as pleasant as the staff could make it – both the employees and the resident boaters are very friendly, and the setting, overlooking a sloping lawn into a tributary of the Chesapeake, is lovely. But, we are anxious to get underway.  When we arrived at the end of August, it was stifling hot; now we are getting our first tastes of cold weather and are itching to begin heading south.  We take an extra day to attend the Annapolis Boat Show, browsing some amazing boats and buying nothing as at this stage, we feel we own everything we need.  We conclude the day with the ritual stop at Pussers for Painkillers with cruising friends, talking late enough into the evening that we are the last table remaining on the deck.

Burt enjoying a late afternoon Painkiller with friends on the deck at Pussers - the many masts of the boats displayed at the show are in the background.

We begin our trek south with an overnighter down the Chesapeake. We are in a hurry as a day later construction will begin on a railroad bridge in Norfolk that will result in severely restricted openings.  We stop at Great Bridge, a suburb of the Norfolk/Portsmouth area, for a quick bike ride to the grocery store and dinner out with other cruising friends. Then we start down the ICW, motoring the first two days and anchoring out along deserted shores. The third morning we wake up to cold temperatures and rumors of high winds, but all is quiet at the anchorage.  We head out into the ICW and unfurl the headsail but as we ease our way from the protection of the shoreline, it becomes obvious we are in for a spritely sail.  The wind continues to build, and we find ourselves sailing faster than hull speed with the wind dead astern. Finally, it dawns on us that we are sailing in gusts up to 35 knots and that perhaps a reef would be a good idea.  It remains an exhilarating sail, and we pull into our reserved dock at River Dunes, an upscale residential development and marina that offers discount marina rates to keep business rolling during the real estate downturn.  We enjoy a relaxing two day stay before making our way to Beaufort, North Carolina, where we hope to begin offshore hops down to Florida.  It is cool and forecast to get much colder, so we dare not tarry along the way.