October 23-29

Reaching for our first finish line!

Well, as planned we exited the ICW on Monday morning through the Port Royal Sound and set sail for the Ossabaw Inlet. It was a beautiful sunny day with light winds from the north. We couldn't have planned the day any better if we had tried. The current was flowing out of the sound, carrying us into the ocean at about 8 knots or better. From there we turned southwesterly and managed to ride with a positive current all day long. It was a motor-sail, but hey, at least we got the sails out and it was a perfectly relaxing ride. The relaxation came to a end as we approach the Ossabaw Inlet. This was not a heavily traveled channel except for the local fisherman and we would not have any familiarity with the current shoaling areas. While it wasn't considered too hazardous by the cruising guides, we still had work hard to find the safe passage to the inside. This can make things just a little tense when you are suddenly unsure if you can make it inside without running aground. Jim got us through (I got too wound up) and the inside river was great. Arriving here at low tide gave us a view of the inside beach for a few hours. We dinghy'd ashore followed very closely by dolphins. What a sight to see right at water level in a 8' inflatable boat. For the first time since leaving home we walked barefoot in the sand and got our feet wet. (see pics) Each afternoon as we record the day's progress we look at distance to the next state border or when we'll cross the next degree of longitude, etc. As of Monday afternoon we were just 73 miles (as a crow flies) to the entrance to St Mary River Inlet and Fernandina Beach, Florida. This is the first Floridian port on the east coast.

From Ossabaw we motored inside the ICW to Doboy Island and then on to Brunswick Georgia. This was the only civilization we've seen for a while so it was time to go ashore and restock. You know the routine: laundry, groceries, wash off the boat, refill water tanks, get fuel, and squeeze in a little local sightseeing. Brunswick offered so much to our way of life we stayed a second night just so we could take advantage of everything they had to offer. We would have had to stay a week, but the second night was a wonderful thing.

So it's Friday and this is it. We will be in Florida by this afternoon! We're rested and refueled and off we go. From mile marker 680 to 714 should be a piece of cake. The decision to sail outside or stay in was answered for us. There was almost no wind and a light sprinkle starting. It was a slow quiet ride and we crossed the state line at 430p, dropped the anchor at 5p. We are anchored directly across from Fernandino Beach Marina (and a sweet smelling paper mill). The sunset was beautiful, current temp 71 with a low of 65 tonight. We'll be able to leave some hatched open :)

WE HAVE MADE IT TO FLORIDA, YEAH!

Next decision, move along or stay here another day? Saturday morning was a cold nasty thing. Wind gusts over 20 knots and rain. We're staying right here until the conditions improve. We have a whole new set of charts and guides for Florida to read so this will be a stay home day for sure.

2011-10-29

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October 17-22

This week started out on the cold side with the chance of rain in the forecast earlier in the week. Our plans to use an inlet to the ocean were postponed until later in the week due to the wind direction and velocity and the threat of thunderstorms. We're continuing to travel 30-50 miles a day and finding a place to anchor at night. The peaceful quiet solitude is really something to experience. On Monday we anchored in front of Hughes Marine in the Shallotte River. Other than a few fishing boats, we saw no other travelers on the water.

By Tuesday morning we were crossing into South Carolina. The view evolved to a more remote wilderness with few or no waterfront properties. We also noticed a sudden change in the foliage from all green to some browns and orange. We're starting to see native (not imported) palm trees mixed into the other types, too. The Waccamaw River provided several twists and turns where an anchor fit nicely. We stayed over a second night here in anticipation of that cold rainy day the local weather expert predicted. As it turned out Wednesday was warm and sunny most of the day and we took the opportunity to work on the boat. It's just like your house or apartment, there's always something that needs to be fixed or cleaned or both. Jim always has maintenance or rigging to attend to and Linda cleans out compartments in an attempt to find more room. The cold front did finally arrive and with it some very gusty wind making our second night a bit noisy.

We had a short hop to Georgetown SC and looked forward to an afternoon on shore before we spent the following day at sea. What's left of the Georgetown waterfront was disappointing. The cruising guides have failed to keep up with the economy here. We found a lot of empty store fronts and no convenience stores. Remember, this is the view of a town from the city docks. We're not seeing the world through a car window or local tour guide. Our experiences are being collected through the eyes and ears of a couple of sailors. We're reading a little bit about the history of the area as well as the more recent marina and provisioning information as we go, but sometimes that information isn't what we find. The basin here did give us the protected anchorage we were looking for so it was still a good place to have stopped. We were about 5 miles from the inlet to be used on Friday for a sail.

Friday finally gets here and we head for the ocean. The winds were light but at least we wouldn't be dodging channel markers and shoals all day long. We made the ride from Georgetown across the Winyah Bay with a nice strong current helping us reach 8.5-9.1 knots of boat speed and we're on our way. Our course will be WSW for the day as we aim for Charleston. The wind? Of course! The wind is from the WSW. Well, we sailed the best we could anyway with the engine running for support. It was a great day out there with small waves and relatively warm air. We arrived in the Charleston harbor at 6:38pm. Oh, by the way, sunset on Friday was at 6:38pm. It was a beautiful sight, but now we have to find our preselected anchorage in the dark. We dropped the hook at 8p and that's all we saw of Charleston. Was it worth it? Yes. But this day would have it's effects on us in the morning.

We decided to stay inside the ICW on Saturday to recover from the long day we just had finding Charleston. We were up and out around 830a. Linda: “I seemed to have lost my internal compass. Am I still on night vision mode? Is this a bad dream? Where am I? Jim come here and help me with the charts.” Jim: “go that way, away from the bridges” Long story short we put the engine in neutral and let it turn a slow 360. It seemed to reset our bearings and off we go. It's 845a and there's a bridge we can make in time for the 9a opening. Using the VHF, Jim hails the bridge operator requesting he hold the bridge if we don't quite make 9a. Well it's Saturday so the bridges open on demand, no problem. Wrong. The problem was Jim's compass hadn't reset yet. He hailed the wrong bridge. lol “Cap't I don't see you yet, when you get closer we'll open 'er up for ya.” Oops, wrong bridge. We then call the right bridge name and apologize to the first one. So the bridge opens and we're off, again. A few minutes later we proceed through Elliott Cut. This very narrow canal has a strong current, and it's against us of course. We knew this was coming as we had read about a few days earlier. We had the motor running at 2000 RPMs and a boat speed of 6.5 knots. Our actual speed over ground (SOG) was 2.7-3.0. It was the longest .3 miles ever! On the other end we spill into the Stono River. Aah? Which way? Right or left? Jim? “The book says go south” . OK, left it is. It took me 4 miles to figure our we were going the wrong way if wanted to stay on the ICW. We did a 180 and motored against the current again arriving back at the cross roads 1.5 hours later. Oh, wait. This gets even better. Have you ever wanted a redo We're finally headed in the right direction and the day settles into a familiar routine. Eventually we talk about where we think we should stop for the day and anchor. We have a bend in the course picked out and it should be fine. The chart shows this spot to be 12-16 feet deep.... you guessed it, it's not. When we suddenly reached 4.5 feet, the boat stops. We read somewhere: There are two kinds of boaters. Those that have run aground, and those that are lying about never having run aground. Our soft landing was no big deal and we were off the sand in a few minutes with the reverse throttle. We found an even better place a few miles later and decided to try to forget this day :)

We're in Beaufort SC now, and we're planning another ocean sail for Monday morning. Georgia is only about 20 miles south, and Florida is just over 100. This will be another exciting week as we celebrate those milestones as well as our 3 months out at sea.

2011-10-16

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October 10-16

It's Monday morning and we're on our way to the start of the ICW @ Norfolk, VA. This would be the last day “outside” for a while. With few notable issues, the day was like any other. Light winds and the hum of the Westerbeke engine. The approach to Norfolk was a busy place. This bay, if you can call it that, is a large merger of several rivers and ports. Hampton Roads as it's called today, is a huge commercial port as well the home of the Norfolk Naval base. This is where the big guys park! (see pics). We anchored at channel marker R36 also known as Statue Mile Zero (St M 0) with at least 20 other boats that would start their journey into the ICW in the morning, too.

Our first few hours on Tuesday included waiting for a few bridges to open as well as jockeying for position with all the other traffic. Power boats can move much faster than sail, and they have some powerful wakes to deal with. Generally the power boats lead the cluster, followed by all the sailboats in descending order of engine size. It takes a few miles for this all to work out and in the mean time everyone wants to be first. We're all on VHF channel 13 communicating our intentions and politely passing on the port side. Well that's how it's supposed to work. Not all captains follow these simple rules. More than once we've witnessed some not so nice passing and are keeping a constant watch for it. The waterway is narrow and depths can range from 20+ feet to as low as 8 if you weave away from the rum line too far. The guides we're using have mentioned more that once the importance of staying alert for shallow water and debris (see pics of the tree stumps). This combined with the passing scenarios can be rather exciting at times. We also listened to several communications coming out of the Naval Base. Imagine hearing something like this as your riding along: “This is WARSHIP 72 preparing to embark from berth # 12 heading to channel mark R6. Standing by on 16”.

We caught up to all the larger boats by mid afternoon since they had already stopped for the day. (see pic) We were happy with our progress for our first day and found the recommended anchorage just a few more miles beyond the busy marina area. You probably won't find Buck Island, but that's where we stayed. ICW_St M 56.

From here we found the Alligator River, the Alligator/Pungo canal, Pungo River, Neuse River, Adams Creek anchoring every night when the time was right. On Friday we were in Morehead City, NC. No relation of course, but we did buy a few shirts to mark the occasion. This was our first marina stop in 11 days. We were running low on fresh water, fuel, groceries, and clean towels. The city marina fit the bill for all these needs and we enjoyed a nice warm afternoon there running errands.

Saturday brought us to ICW_St M 245 and the Mile Hammock Bay and Sunday we finished the day just south of Wrightville Beach, the Carolina Inlet ICW_St M 295. The properties along the ICW these last few days has been very interesting. This must be where all the North Carolina money is spent. (see pics). We've had some discussion about which houses may actually be hotels or condo/time shares as opposed to singe family homes. One place even had a giraffe (see pic)!

We're moving along at a good pace and should not have any trouble reaching Florida by early November. We're hoping to use a few inlets this coming week to escape the confines of the ICW and sail along via the Atlantic. We'll let you know how that works out next week!

2011-10-09

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On the road again...

...just can't wait to get on the road again.

We traveled about 100 miles back and forth this week within the Chesapeake Bay. What a great place for boating, truly. If you've never been here, add this to your places to visit in the future. Everything here is about boating. The area is easy to navigate and there are hundreds of places to see and enjoy. We anchored out in 9 different areas over the last two weeks and enjoyed them all. We've resumed our southern course and should see Norfolk VA and the Inter Coastal Waterway (ICW) sometime tomorrow afternoon or early Tuesday morning.

With a stay at the Liberty Marina in the South River last Monday we were able to catch up with several of Linda's cousins that she hasn't seen in about 18 years. It was a wonderful evening of hugs and sharing memories. (Thanks for picking us up and for the pizzas everyone!) Later in the week we had another visit from Jim's cousins. They brought the long awaited Screen and UV enclosures we'd ordered back in July from a place in St. Catherine’s ON. (see pics after this posting). After leaving this Marina we had our eyes on a few creeks that we had passed up on the way in, so off we went for an anchorage marked on our charts. We found a very interesting sight in Church Creek (see pics) in the exact location of the recommended anchorage – a recently sunken sailboat. We have no idea what happened but couldn't resist taking pictures as well as a quick ride around it. We liked this spot so well we left and came back for a second night! It was quiet and remote and only about ¼ mile off the main river.

This second week in the Chesapeake not only gave us those opportunities to see family but it also fit well with the schedule for the Annapolis Boat Show! This is said to be the largest “in the water” boat show in the country as well as the longest running, this being the 42^nd or 43^rd year. We anchored just outside Spa Creek near the Naval Academy fields and took a water taxi into shore. Not having been to this before, we were both impressed with the large number and variety of vendors not to mention all the boats brought in for anyone to board. You've heard the expression “like a kid in a candy store”? It's a good thing we didn't bring very much $ with us. :) We did find a solution for our not so comfortable V-berth (see pics) and managed to spend all the money that we did bring along.

We're in Deltaville VA tonight. This is where we found our boat almost 3 years ago at this time. Who would have thought the Sabre would find her way back home after so long, but she did.

Happy Columbus Day everyone!

9/26 – 10/2 Chesapeake Bay visits

We had a nice week in the Bay, stopping in a few rivers, creeks, coves to anchor, and tracking only about 100 miles. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge was another beautiful view, although we do not recommend staying anywhere near it overnight. The traffic noise below in Kent Narrows was hard to ignore. We did learned how to smash and eat a Maryland Blue Crab at Harris Crab House, so it wasn't a total loss to have stopped there. The marina there was actually a “dock-ominium” and each slip is owned individually. They keep a few open for transients but otherwise they are were all full. These were not floating docks, rather very rough cut telephone poles and limited room within the basin to maneuver. Imagine what you might pay to have a slip just over the bridge from Annapolis..... try 115K or more!

We dropped a hook in Reed Creek up in the Chester River, and again in Ogleton Lake on the western shore just a few miles from Annapolis. There are blue crab fisherman in most every little nook and cranny of the Bay. We've learned about and watched what are called “trot lines”. This is a very unique fishing method, one we've certainly never heard of before.

We found ourselves in Little Choptank River on Thursday afternoon. Sister Barbara and her husband Ray own a home on the eastern shore and our boat tied up nicely to their dock! We spent all day Friday just running errands and restocking the boat while waiting for Barb and brother Joe to arrive. It promised to be a wonderful weekend and good times with family......

Saturday morning brought October. Saturday also brought cold air, strong winds and an unusually low tide. Our plan to take them out for a sail ended when we could see the bottom paint from shore and knew that the boat was sitting on the muddy bottom. LOL Their normal 5' minimum depth fell to about 3'4”. There was no danger to the boat, but it wasn't going anywhere for a few hours. Anyway, we enjoyed the time we stayed with them and planned our exit from the dock on Monday morning accordingly. :)

We're at the Liberty Marina in the South River tonight and have plans for dinner with Linda's local cousins tonight. If the weather doesn't improve tomorrow we may be reconsidering another week in the Bay and resume our southern route! We're seeing the first reported snow falls in WV on the Weather Channel. Oh Boy, it's time to go!