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Leg 2 Norfolk, VA to Florida, USA |
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Stayed at Norfolk for 6 days, picking up my liferaft, visiting friends and waiting out weather.
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Reached Great Bridge lock at 11:53am. Refueled at Pungo Ferry. 17.5 gallons. | |||||||||||||
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Laundry Day! | |||||||||||||
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Verizon Wireless internet access does not work! Met Rob, Kathy and the kids on Tecumseth Voyager, from Ontario, Canada.
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Waiting out high winds, wireless internet still not working. The 20-25kt
winds pushed all the water out of the marina to the other side of the sound. The
water level dropped 3 ft in a marina that has almost no regular tides. But the
Tecumseth Voyager is in the slip next to me so I have friends to play with while we wait.
Refueled - 12.1 gallons |
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Beautiful trip, there was a complete rainbow showing half the way down. I actually got to sail a little also.
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On the hook across from Beaufort Docks.
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On the hook in Mile Hammock Bay, Part of Camp Lejeune Marine Base. Helicopters buzzing around everywhere.
I heard that Kate and Chuck on Eridanus were just a day behind me, and Ed and Wendy Napoleon were going to pick them up at Mile Hammock Bay (Ed is retired Marine Corps) and take to their house for dinner. Since the invitation was also extended to me I decided to stay here for that, and then bad weather was moving in, so I will be here until at least Thursday.
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Very nice place. I pulled into a slip and met Bert, who had just pulled in also -
he keeps his boat here - and he helped me tie up and then drove me to the grocery
store and back. You gotta love North Carolina!! Refueled here - 23.2 gallons
The latest in North Carolina lawn sculpture. |
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Late start today - I had to do work!!! I thought I would have an easy 10 mile run
from Snow's Cut to Southport, but it turned into a race with the sun - there is a
very strong current running in the Cape Fear River - it slowed me to 3.7 knots at
times (I usually make 6 or more), and I just made it before the sun went down. I
almost motored past the basin, but I saw Eridanus tied up to the city dock, so I
turned in and while I was trying to decide where to go, there was a Coast Guard boat
measuring something in the (very small) basin, going back and forth. They shouted
over asking what I was going to do, and there being no real space to anchor and no
obvious transient marina - I made a snap decision and told them I was going to raft
up to my friends boat and went over and rafted up to Eridanus (Kate and Chuck were
not aboard at the time). Luckily they are not tired of me yet! They came back and
we went out for a decadent seafood dinner...
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Interesting day. Got an early start (for me), but ended up waiting at the Sunset
Beach Bridge, the last pontoon (parts of it float on the water) bridge on the ICW,
because the tide was very low and the bridge was aground! That was a new one for me!
While milling aroung waiting, Eridanus drifted to the side of the channel and ran aground
also, so I pulled them off and we continued on, going to Barefoot Landing, a free dock at a
large outlet mall. Because there is only the seawall to tie up to everyone rafts up to other
boats, sometimes getting 2 or 3 boats deep... Had dinner on Eridanus with Brad from the Downeast Rover, a steel topsail schooner that does group charters.
Waiting for the bridge to start floating again. |
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Early start and a quick trip, the current was with me all day, hitting speeds of 8.5 knots at times.
Georgetown is a quaint, very pretty southern town, with a nice Harborwalk area of shops and resturants,
which were unfortunately mostly closed because it was Sunday....
Morning mist at Barefoot Landing. |
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VERY early start, fighting current all day, and some very low tides, trying to get to
Charleston to meet our friend Jon Eisberg, who is doing a delivery of a 46' Grand Banks
trawler. Eridanus is slightly faster than me, so they squeaked by the 4pm bridge opening
outside Charleston. I missed it by 10 minutes and had to wait 2 hours to the next opening.
This meant I had to transit Charleston harbor after dark. Very stressful, I almost got run
down by a freighter, but I made it! We had a great dinner on this very decadent boat - this is
what cruising is all about - good friends...
Refueled - 21.8 gallons
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Bad day in South Carolina. It started out well enough, a late start because the bridge across the
ICW will not open until 9am. That made making it to Beaufort before dark unlikely. Strong currents all
the way, at times lifting me to 9.5 kts, other times slowing me down to 4.3. At sunset I tried to enter a
branch off the ICW that was in a guide book as an acceptable anchorage, and the chart indicated as having 11-15
feet of water - but it had shoaled in and I ran hard aground. The good thing was that it was low tide (the tides
here are 6-8 feet!) So all I had to do was wait and the tide would lift me off. But that also meant that going the
rest of the way to Beaufort in the dark (5-6 miles or so), and as I have never been there before, it makes for a
very stressful ride - expecting any second to stray out of the channel and run aground or hit some uncharted object or
floating piece of junk. But the trip was pretty uneventful - thanks to the bridge tender that warned me as I was
cutting a shoal too close as I approached the bridge at Beaufort. I was guided into the anchorage by
Brad on Downeast Rover who was having dinner with Kate and Chuck. Then it took 3 tries to get the anchor set properly -
with me running back and forth like a madman pulling up chain and a 45 pound anchor by hand, and then dashing back to
the helm before the current carried me into another boat. I was fit to be tied after it was all over - tired, stressed,
and in a foul mood. But Brad, Kate and Chuck came over and made me go to Hemmingways with them for a couple of tequilas. So I'm off to Andina's for her annual 'orphan's' Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. Thanksgiving Day - Good day in South Carolina! Well, Andina, out hostess Emily, and thier friends cooked up the best Thanksgiving dinner I have ever had. There were 2 turkeys, one roasted and one deep fried, ham, spicy BBQ, all kinds on veggies and an array of desserts. It was wonderful, especially considering my expectation of Thanksgiving on the road was that I would probably be eating a deli turkey sandwich in some anchorage by myself. Friday - Still in Beaufort waiting out bad weather. Finally changed the engine oil! We had dinner on Downeast Rover, Brad had taken the leftover turkey carcass, and using it to make a stock, cooked up a turkey, duck and shrimp gumbo that was fantastic. I added my ceasar salad and wine and we ate like kings again! Stopped by Andina's bar Hemmingways afterwards. Very cool place... Tucked away down an alley, but facing the harbor, palm trees in front and 'colorful' characters that stop by late in the evening.
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Short day today. I decided to stop at this marina because there was not a stopping
point to my liking that I could reach before dark. There are a lot of anchorages, but most
required putting out 2 anchors and I am feeling lazy...
Refueled - 15.1 gallons
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Excellent day! It started with the marina I was staying at - they bring a complementary newspaper and
donuts to your boat in the morning. I got to munch Krispy Kremes and scan the headlines before I left!
I cast off and made great time all day. I had hoped to reach
New Teakettle Creek today, but was not sure I could make it. (I even put a sail up for a while to increase speed!)
I reached the Sapelo Sound, where I had to decide to go ahead and cross and keep going, or turn off into the Wahoo
River for the night.
There were about 15 miles or so to go before the next decent anchorage, and most of that is in the
sound, a fairly open body of water. There were 3 other boats that had left at the same time I did this
morning, and all of them turned off into the Wahoo. The wind was starting to increase, blowing from the west
at 15-20 kts - and that was the direction I needed to travel, so there would be a strong breeze right on the nose
for the next 7-8 miles. But I decided to go for it, dreading not making it by sunset, requiring
yet another night transit of the ICW to a location I have never been to. But I got lucky and made it
here and dropped the hook just as the sun was disappearing behind the marsh grass. I had a celebratory cocktail and made
a great spaghetti dinner... Then to top everything off - I had a client call me with a problem and I was able to connect to the internet and
fix it! I also came up with a temporary solution to a problem I have had since I bought this boat. While standing behind the wheel, the dodger is exactly at my eye level, which requires me to either stand on my toes to see over it or duck my head (or sit down) and look through the plastic window, which distorts things too much. Up to now I have been putting the dodger down when I was steering a lot, but now that I am boating in cold weather, I don't want to lose the protection. So today while crossing the Sapelo Sound with the autopilot going, I rigged up my temporary fix. I took a small piece of thin plywood and an old wood box that Clementine oranges originally come in, and with duct tape rigged up a platform for me to stand on so I can see over the dodger. It works great! It was a lifesaver while hand steering through all the ranges in Georgia!
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As I was leaving New Teakettle Creek, another boat that had pulled in after me had dragged anchor in the night and was
completely aground, high and dry with the keel stuck in the mud, listing over about 30 degrees. The captain called me as
I went past, but there was nothing I could do, except reassure him his boat was not going to fall over. He had already
contacted TowBoatsUS and help was on the way (which was a good thing, because as I was transiting the Little Mud River at low tide. I
passed the tow boat and he warned me of very shallow water ahead and told me to stay to the port side of the river -Thank You TowBoatUS!)
but there was really nothing to do until the tide came back in. But I will double check MY anchors from here on out!
Refueled - 12.1 Gallons |
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I'm in Florida!!! I was going to wait out the predicted wind and weather at Jekyll Island, but that place was boring and my
wireless internet connection was not working. But to leave Jekyll Island going south, you must cross St Andrews Inlet. The ICW at that
point goes way out the inlet into the Atlantic almost, for a very short span, and then you turn back in to protected water.
In a NE wind the waves can build to 8 feet or so and come in very close
together. The wind this morning was from the NE, but it did not seem too strong, so after watching a couple of boats go by and not
come back, I decided to poke my nose out there and take a look. Early on it was not too bad, but as I was heading out the inlet the wind
started to pick up, blowing 15-20 kts from the NE. But the waves never got more that 2 feet or so and I kept moving. I rounded the marker
and headed back in with the wind at my back and a following sea, which made for a rockin' and rollin' ride which the autopilot could not
handle, so I had to perch on my little stand (which with all the motion was threatening to collapse under me any minute!) and steer by hand
almost all day long. It was a short day, luckily, only 4 hours to Fernandina,
with the last hour blowing really hard as I crossed another inlet. But I made it OK, with the only problem being that the motion of the boat
(I guess..) caused both the roll of paper towels and the toilet paper to completely unroll!! Very strange, but it has happened before on rough
days...
Well the predicted bad weather never happened, but I stayed in Fernandina another day anyway, to do some work and actually made out pretty well. I stopped by the local lumber yard and did some dumpster diving and came up with some scrap to build a more stable platform, and I paid a guy there $5 to cut it in the shape I needed. He would have done it for free, but they were so nice helping me look all over for scrap that I wanted to return the favor somehow... A visit to the local hardware store provided me with a new space heater (warmth!!!) and some expensive paint for the platform from the 'goof' section for only a buck! |
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On the way here today, the boat that was hard aground in New Teakettle Creek in Georgia the morning
I left there went past me. I was glad to see they got out OK. I said hello as they passed and told them I
was the boat that was on the creek with them that day. They went on by and not 20 minutes later - bam - they
went aground again! I think I am a curse for those poor people.... Cold snap in Florida. Stayed an extra day here to work and avoid a cold wind chill factor, and as my friends back home in Maryland are digging out from a snowstorm, I am cranking up my newly replaced spaced heater here. |
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Another short day, a late start to avoid the frosty morning, and an early stop so I can go to a
grocery store.
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Beautiful day - started cold but warmed up very quickly. I got a LOT of stuff done today. I got a new propane tank (my old one is not legal anymore), sanded and got a coat of paint on my new 'bridgedeck', did laundry, and hosed the birdshit off the boat. Had dinner and listened to music at the bar and found a couple of decent books at the marina book exchange... All that after a 50 mile day! | |||||||||||||
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Staying here to wait out some weather, and restock the pantry. The couple on the ill-fated boat that runs aground every time they get near me is here and I finally got to meet them. They are on the Iris Lorraine, and the skipper told me when they caught up to me yesterday his wife said "Whatever you do, don't pass Synchronicity!" I hope we broke that curse - but it was close for a while - as they were following me they kept straying perilously close to the edge of the channel and I was thinking it was going to happen again - and almost got on the radio to warn them, but they corrected in time... | |||||||||||||
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Well, I have hit the 1000 (nautical) mile mark on this voyage! After much hemming and
hawing about whether or not to stay another day in Titusville (It was very cold and breezy today)
I decided to move on. It was chilly most of the day, but not too bad. On this trip I have been passed by a lot
of different boats, but today I was passed by a blimp! I decided to anchor out tonight at North Rocky Point, a little bit of nowhere, but the location of my rescue 2 years ago of some stranded kids who were fishing on one of the spoil islands here and got trapped when the wind picked up. I ended up staying here for 2 days because the wind was howling. But today was a good day - no problems, did little cleanup projects during the day and anchored solidly on the first attempt. Then I made a great chicken stir-fry dinner and had a glass of wine as the sun set. Some numbers after 1000 miles:
Distance Covered: 1027.3 nautical miles I've watched the water change color from the olive drab geen of the Chesapeake, to the brown tannic acid waters of Virginia and the Carolinas, and then change to the light aqua blue of Florida. I am looking forward to the deep blue of the Atlantic and then the brilliant greens and blues of the crystal clear water in the Bahamas. I have seen the tidal range go from the 12-18 inch range of Maryland to the 8-9 feet changes in Georgia, back to almost non-existant in parts of Florida. The land has changed also - to the trees lining the shores of the creeks and bays in Mayland and Virgina, changing to marshland and grasses - to pine trees and then to palm trees. Dolphins, which were an occasional sighting, have now become regular visitors - but I have yet to see a manatee, despite hundreds of warning signs up and down the ICW in Georgia and Florida! The ICW has a lot to offer, but a week would be sufficient, 7 weeks of it is a little wearing... I'm fortunate to have friends up and down the coast, as well as new friends made along the way, to help make this trip a lot more enjoyable.
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In Vero Beach to take a short break. I will visit friends, see a client, and get my outboard ready. Vero Beach is very boater friendly, with a free bus service and nice facilities.
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