Updated on November 15, 2016
Working our way south
It’s cold.
I thought that by the end of South Carolina, I’d be able to ship some stuff back to Michu’s sister’s house for storage: the warm sleeping bag, most of the fleece, the long underwear. Except I’m typing this under the warm sleeping bag, while wearing lots of fleece and my long underwear. The cold is advancing south faster than we are.
From Charleston, we spent a couple of pretty uneventful days in the Intracoastal Waterway, timing our route so that the tides were high over the shallow spots. We found ourselves in Beaufort, South Carolina for a few days, taking advantage of their library and relaxing on their beautiful waterfront. On our last night in Beaufort, we were lucky enough to meet up with two other families heading south; together, we took an outside hop down to the St. Mary’s River.
Our passage was just one night, but once again, it was not our finest hour; in addition to the uncomfortable swell (worse than we expected) and lack of wind (as predicted), we were able to tune in NPR down the whole coast, and had the unreal experience of listening to the election results come in while drifting along in the dark of the ocean. It was difficult to connect what we were hearing with reality, and really hard to have a measured response—we just felt to unmoored from our country, and what the election was saying about the people living behind those lights on shore. Somehow, it still didn’t seem plausible, even as we motored back towards shore the next morning.
We anchored off of Cumberland Island and met up with our new friends to commiserate and explore the island. We’d been hearing conflicting reports about access post-Matthew, and I’m not sure what conditions were like on the north side of the Island, but where we were, the park service piers were not available to visiting sailors. We were also asked not to land our dinghy on the beach, so we all headed up to a pier belonging to an inn and bribed them to let us park for a few hours. Then off to the very chilly beach!
The next day, we felt like no one would really mind if we did beach a dinghy, so we shuttled in to shore in one boat and landed with the intention of hiking to the ruins on the island and then beaching it up. Unfortunately, where we landed was essentially a minefield: deep, soft mud laced with oyster shells. The mud would pull you down up to your knees, and then suck off your shoe; then you’d cut the bottom of your foot. We ended up with one pair of blown-out flip flops (Michu); multiple abrasions (everyone); and one really deep toe wound (Miguel) that required a trip back to the boat for serious first aid (Michu).
Eventually, we all made it to the ruins of an old Carnegie mansion for a picnic lunch surrounded by exotic wildlife—armadillos and wild horses. The horses were descendants of Spanish shipwrecks, and had been living on the island for around 500 years. Not sure how long the armadillos have been there, but we did some research and found out that to cross a river, an armadillo can float by inflating it’s small intestine. As Miguel pointed out, you don’t want to be around when they deflate.
We’d heard about a really nice free dock in Jacksonville, and thought it would be a good stopping point on the way to Saint Augustine, so we headed as a group to the biggest city in Florida. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize how far out of the way the dock was; it took a couple of extra hours to get there. To make matters even more exciting, Milou had an unexpected break in the day when we ran aground. We were just a little on the wrong side of the channel, and had to sit and wait for the tide to come up and float us off the bottom—a delay of about three hours. That put us in to the pier just before six o’clock, which is sadly pretty dark here in Florida. So, after a long and disappointing day of motoring farther than expected and being stranded in the mud, we ended with challenging navigation into an unfamiliar harbor in the dark, replete with lots of commercial traffic (including freighters) and with a backdrop of multicolored city lights to throw us off. Days like this one make me reflect thoughtfully on the resale value of the boat, combined with the savings still in the bank, and how we could translate that into a nice, warm house that doesn’t run into things.
We liked hanging out with other families in Jacksonville, and had a great day exploring their Museum of Science and History (MOSH), but eventually we were kicked off the free pier in favor of the football fans and had to backtrack a couple of hours to make our way to the ICW. This time, our downfall wasn’t skinny water—it was swiftly flowing water. The next stretch of ICW is home to the strongest currents on the East Coast, and our timing put a six-knot current right in our face. When your boat only travels at around five and a half knots, there’s really no point in trying to fight that battle. Instead, we anchored for a few hours right above the entrance and watched pods of dolphins play around our boat.
Much like our delayed entrance to Jacksonville, our delayed start on the ICW had us navigating in the dark to try and find our anchorage. It’s hard to decide which I find more stressful: a city harbor, with traffic and confusing lights, or a small creek crowded with boats, no lights, and rapidly shallowing water. Both situations are, ahem, less than ideal, and I find it really frustrating that we’ve put ourselves in that position not once but twice in the last week. We are not finding Florida particularly amenable to either our draft or our speed; there aren’t a lot of places for us to stop, and the distances between anchorages is sometimes just outside our capacity to travel in a day. Throw in a king tide to really get the current ripping against us, or to push low tide below chart datum to get us solidly stuck in the mud (the supermoon is not our friend), and I’m not particularly enjoying this stretch of our trip. We like our new friends very much, and everyone is safe and healthy and well-fed, but the cold weather is just the cherry on top of our rather grim week. We’ll be taking a couple of days in lovely Saint Augustine to recover.
Our general feeling: we must move south.
Updated on November 3, 2016
Beautiful Charleston
We finally dragged our tired selves into Charleston as the sun was coming up. In our exhaustion, and the dim light before dawn, we spent some time turning circles around a Coast Guard buoy tender working the channel entrance; they didn’t respond to our hails, and their constantly changing direction was playing with our heads. Finally, we just gave them a wide berth and motored past Fort Sumter and up the Ashley River to anchor.
We hadn’t really given much thought to Charleston as a destination. It’s a convenient stop, with a clear channel and a great harbor, but the charms of the city itself didn’t really play into our plan. Big mistake. Charleston is amazing, and we soaked it all up.
The downtown part of Charleston is very walkable, and we took advantage of the free shuttle from the City Marina to get there every day. Despite war, earthquake, and fire, every single block of downtown is oozing with history and character. Generally, when I upload my photos and start looking for what to post on the blog, I’m sifting through a trove of about 60, maybe 200 for a big landmark place like DC; I swear, I took about 500 pictures of Charleston. The mansions are amazing, and I absolutely failed to capture their beauty on film. I found myself trying to come up with a way to have a single Charleston-style house when we return to Madison. Considering they’re set up for maximum ventilation, it’s a terrible plan…but I think I would be ok with it. The double-decker porches and huge windows would justify the drafty winters.
We allowed ourselves to be seduced by package ticket pricing, which insured that we got ourselves to the Charleston Museum; the Gibbes Art Institute; the Aiken-Rhett House; and the Old Slave Market. It was a huge amount of history to try and absorb; thank goodness for the Gibbes, right in the middle—spending time with a bit of Solomon Guggenheim’s abstract collection, and exploring the Charleston Renaissance movement, gave us a bit of a break from Civil War history and contemplating the terrors of slavery.
On Hallowe’en, we brought the boat into the marina for the night. The kids put on their best costumes, and we walked the dock, trick-or-treating with limited success. We ran into at least three men over the age of seventy whose first language was not English, and completely confounded them; most people scrambled to the galley to see what they had that was even close to appropriate. Based on our unscientific survey, most boaters seem to stock Snickers bars; we also walked away with some Cliff Bars, some granola, and a full-sized bag of potato chips. It was a party for the adults, too, as the City Marina has happy hour every weekday with free wine, beer and food. Shrimp and grits for everyone! We also managed to meet up with an old high school friend of mine who has been living in Charleston for the past 20 years. Facebook is so odd…but serendipitous in this case, as it was great to reconnect with Kristin face-to-face.
For our last day in Charleston, Kristin had set us up with the carriage tour. Horse-drawn carriages are big business in Charleston; to keep the streets from getting too crowded, the drivers pull up to a shed to take their chance with a lottery, assigning them either the east, west or central part of town. Drivers need to know everything about the whole city–they never know where their tour will take them. Our driver, Matthew, was amazing–he knew everything about each building we passed. Once again, it was too much to absorb, but we did our best to take it all in.
From Charleston, we’ll head south (as is the theme)–a bit on the Intracoastal, a bit outside if the weather’s good–and on to Cumberland Island in Georgia. We here it’s not to be missed.
Posted on November 4, 2016
Cost to Cruise: October
Boilerplate disclaimer: this is not what it will cost you to go cruising.
People’s constant advice, discussing cruising finances, always seems to be: It’ll cost what you have. We did not find this helpful in our planning, however true it may be. What we’re trying to show is the cost to us, more or less, for one month to go cruising. We’re going for monthly expenses, because they’re easier for us to track; so you won’t see the boat insurance amortized, you’ll just see that expense when we pay it. It won’t be what you’ll spend, but it was the kind of information that helped us out when we were trying to wrap our heads around that magical number for our cruising kitty.
Well, I mean…once again, we did pretty ok on our daily expenses; once again, our budget was blown to pieces by an unusual expense. Hopefully, we are getting all these big-ticket one-off items taken care of up front, right?
Marinas: $420 Grocery: $656.85 Restaurant: $213.85 Supplies: $295.77 Booze: $36.15 Ice Cream: $61.50 Laundry: $38.50 Transportation: $0 Communications: $118.52 Entertainment: $145.98 Pump Out: $25 Boat Parts: $1049.06 Fuel: $71.77 diesel; $25 stove fuel; $12.80 dinghy Boat Work: $1100
Grand total: $4271.65
Of course, the big story this month in terms of money was the replacement of the rear main seal on the diesel engine, and rebuilding the transmission. That took a full week, and was not cheap in terms of labor, parts or dock space. Our entertainment expenses took a jump this month, too–it turns out, once you leave DC, most museums are not free. Can you believe it?
We also did some prep this month for leaving the country–ordering additional homeschool supplies that we don’t expect to touch for a solid year, and stocking up on some charts. That’ll be a trend we’ll continue into November; we’ll be filling the boat with non-perishable food, both for the Bahamas (where food is expensive and not always available) and for Cuba (where there is no food). Will November be the month where booze expenditures finally exceed ice cream? Stay tuned!
Posted on November 1, 2016
Ocean passage
After our unexpected delay in Beaufort, we were anxious to get south. We’d been hearing not-great things about obstacles in the Intracoastal, so we decided to head offshore and make a quick jump straight to Charleston, South Carolina.
Before we left, we spent a day exploring the Rachel Carson Reserve across the creek from the city of Beaufort. The quick dinghy ride over led us to wear sandals, but boots would have been more appropriate; we spent at least half our hike pulling burrs out of our feet. We did get to see one of the wild horses on the island, though!
So many things about our passage were amazing. The weather was great—warm temperatures, sunny skies, and enough wind for sailing until our second night. We had five or six pods of dolphins visit us, swimming right up close to our boat, and occasionally ducking underneath it—both Atlantic Spotted and Common Bottlenose, one group bringing along with it a very small shark. We passed through schools of flying fish, hundreds of them moving above the water together, glinting silver (and one of whom landed on our deck in the middle of the night. Sorry, buddy!). The stars were dense, the shooting stars many. We trailed phosphorescence in our wake. And Michu and T caught a real fish! A Little Tunny, maybe 10 pounds of deliciousness. We hit all the marks, all the cliches of an excellent ocean passage.
Of course, not all was perfect. We had largish, sloppy waves coming at us from the east, and that led to all kinds of trouble: a smashed handle to my casserole dish (my fault for not latching the oven door); bumps and bruises for everyone; and seasickness, once again, all around. We were better prepared for the possibility of not being able to hang out down below—I’d done a whole bunch of food prep in advance, so things could just be heated up quickly or even eaten cold. We had the downstairs better stowed and prepped for sleeping under less-than-ideal conditions. But there was still plenty of misery, and I’m not sure why our family has been so resistant to dipping into the seasickness medication. We carry Bonine, which is meclizine, and is supposed to be effective even if you don’t take it before you get moving…but somehow we all keep telling ourselves we’re fine, we’ll acclimate…and then we don’t.
The other downside of the passage was the lack of sleep. Not only were we doing two nights instead of one, but I could not fall asleep to save my life. I think I got maybe two hours, tops, over 48 hours on the water. The noise, the motion, and random anxiety conspired to keep me up. I’ve done Mac races and deliveries where I didn’t have this problem, but something’s keeping my brain and my body too alert on these passages.
After we landed in Charleston, we ran into friends from a marina north of Beaufort. They have a similar draft to us, so we’ve enjoyed leaning on their experience traveling the East Coast. They’re planning their next hop, and they said they wouldn’t be leaving for a bit because the weather looks horrible. This was news to me; all I see in the forecast is sunny skies and light winds, not a storm in sight…but they were referring to the waves. Apparently, it’s not just us: the waves we experienced from the east were wicked, and expected to continue for the next week. One more layer to incorporate into the passage planning, along with storms, wind direction, wind strength, and tides.
In the meantime, I’m glad that our current plans don’t have us crossing any oceans.
Posted on October 20, 2016
North Carolina
North Carolina: not as bad as we expected.
Really, North Carolina has been beautiful. We were just concerned about the after-effects of Matthew, and thought we’d be stuck (literally) in shoals and shifted channels, along with the crowds of laggards like us. This has not really been the case. While it’s true that we share the ICW with lots of south-bound traffic, we’ve always found a quiet place to anchor. The two marinas that we’ve contacted for dock space have always had it. Depths have been greater than charted, almost all markers are in place; and so far, we haven’t seen less than 10 feet of water under our boat.
To our southbound friends behind us: we hear this is not so much the case south of Beaufort. From our friend Matt this morning: “Brown’s inlet. mm 237 green 61A is off station and is almost onshore. When southbound, honor red 60, the head straight for green 61A, leave 61A 20 ft to starboard (treat it like a red), the ease back to mid channel at green 63. We saw 8′ mlw. Those who ignored 61A went aground.” Our friends on Perla can verify this tale: they went aground there a few days ago. We also hear reports of Spanish Moss eddying in the canals and wrapping a death grip around propellers.
For our boat, those hazards are theoretical and in the future. For the moment, we are tied up in Beaufort, NC, having some work done on our engine. When the boat is back up to speed, we’d like to jump offshore and avoid some of the pitfalls of Matthew’s wake. Our timing is, as always, a question. When will the engine be done? What will the winds be like? For the moment, it looks too windy for us to want to be offshore, starting Saturday. We may delay our departure until Tuesday; we may take the inside path. We shall see, we shall see.
In the meantime, Beaufort is not a terrible place to get some stuff done. Milou was coming due for an oil change, and in preparation for that maneuver, Michu decided that the amount of oil leaking from the engine had passed the point of acceptable. Sorry, Buffalo mechanic; we should have changed out that rear seal in August. We’ve also been enjoying a fine mist of transmission fluid all over the engine room for far too long. We though about waiting until Florida to have things worked on, but Beaufort looked like the kind of place where we could find very qualified help, and spend up to a week without losing our minds.
More tasks: mailing absentee ballots; sewing in new zippers in the mainsail cover.
Mostly, we are pressed to finish boat jobs before we leave to the Bahamas. Once we’re out of the country, we anticipate parts being hard to get. International shipping rates, VAT, isolated tropical post offices, and a total lack of Amazon Prime–it’s a different world out there, and we’ve only just noticed that the clock is ticking down for us.
Having a non-functioning engine is no fun at anchor, so we’ve parked ourselves at Homer Smith Docks and Marina for a bit. Wifi streaming to our boat, and shrimp sold at the end of the dock–not too shabby! The waterfront area has a great, free maritime museum, filled with artifacts from Blackbeard’s pirate ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge. We don’t seem to be in easy walking distance to a grocery or library, but we’ll manage. Maybe we’ll just live on shrimp.
