Hey, On time in Beaufort, NC

So I'm getting at least one post up while I'm still in the area.

We arrived in Beaufort, pronounced Bofert, on July 9th at around 6:pm. We had a nice sail from Charleston, SC. The wind was good to us but still had to motor more than we like. We came into the Beaufort channel on an incoming tide. A real fast incoming tide. Mind you, we don't do fast. Our average speed is around 5 knots. We were coming up to a very narrow channel entry at almost 8 knots with breakers on both sides of the entry. I chickened out!!  I went back into the main harbor entrance and started back out. With tides against us we were doing a wopping 2 knots. Called Boat US to get some "local knowlege" and they said "Oh yea, you can go in there!" Yea right. I took a deep breath, realigned on the cut, and went in. Not graceful but I went in. You never now how out of control is until you shoot through a cut barely big enough for your boat, going almost twice as fast as you normally go, and at about a 15 degree angle off of going straight since the tide is definately in control. It's really hard to hold your breath that long!! Made it in and thankfully, we will leave by another route. We're going to the Chesapeake by way of the ICW and will be motoring the rest of the way to Norfolk, VA. For now, we are enjoying Beaufort. As seems to be the usual pattern, we plan on a one day stay someplace and it ends up a three day stay. Had to go see the great Maritime/ Blackbeard Museum. They have a great wood boat building shop next door all run by volunteers. So tomorrow we'll be heading up the ICW to avoid Cape Hatteras and should be in to Norfolk in a week or so. I'll let you know how that goes.

Woke up this Morning

Man, time goes by so fast out here. I finally realized I haven't posted in almost a month. Wow! We are now located in Beautiful Charleston, South Carolina. Lots of history here. It's also HOT! We sailed into here on June 2nd under trying cercumstances. We had heavy seas following us right in between the break walls and as we turned in following a couple of shrimp boats, we spotted a container ship coming over the horizon and one starting out of Charleston Harbor. For those who don't know, CONTAINER SHIPS ARE HUGE!!! The shrimp boat pulled off to the side so we thought he must know something we don't. Of course, it was the right thing to do. A few minutes later the two ships passed right in front of us, and they were moving. We pulled out following the shrimper and when we came to the container wakes, we went over the first and submarined into the second. YeeeeHa!!. After we got into the harbor we went to port and anchored in a nice cove that was just south west of Fort Sumter. It was great. The anchorage had great holding as we found out when a big storm came through in the night. It really blew but we were quite comfortable.

In the morning of the 3rd we motored around Charleston Harbor. It was amazing coming into the harbor,it felt like the 1800's. All the historic building and church steeples in the distance. The  huge modern bridges in the background do distract a bit. After our little motor tour ,we travelled up Cooper River a couple of miles to the Cooper River Marina. This is not in the heart of things, but is comparativly inexpensive and really secure. It lies in between some off loading tanker depots and the Old Naval Base which is now a training facility for Homeland Security. Not an easy place to get to by road.

After we arrived and got secured at the docks we took the train back to St. Petersburg, Fl to pick up our car so we could have it on the east coast. It was a wonderful time on the train. Watch the countryside go by and had lunch in the dinning car, etc. It was Shanes first time on a train. We had time while in St. Pete to pick up a few supplies not available everywhere and visit friends there. Always fun visiting St. Pete.

Driving back to Charleston we went by way of the Blue Ridge Mtns to see if we could invest in some property up that way. Beautiful area but a bit pricey. Still looking at properties in the Charleston area though.

We've stayed here about a month now. Shane has been able to catch up on some school work, meet new friends and have some free time to be on land. Christie has caught up on some of her sewing projects and reevaluated some of the things she brought to the boat. Unneeded or unused thing will be left in the car or trailer to see if maybe she could use them later. My self........I can't even seem to keep up on the blog post. :-)  I have gotten some thing done, like, Refinish the bright work (wood work) in the cockpit area. In an Island Packet, that's a lot of wood! I also respliced some lines, change an anchor chain and rode and ran a remote VHF to the helm. In all I seemed to keep busy in all the summer heat we've had here lately. The last four days have cooled off some and has been pretty pleasant here. So as usual I catch up on the blog about the time we sail off to another area. We are leaving today to sail to Cape Fear and then to Morhead City, NC. From Morhead City we will go up the ICW to the Chesepeake Bay and to points north. We will be somewhere in the Bay till the Annapolis Boat Show and then we'll head south to the Bahamas for the winter. I'll really, really try to keep up on this blog better.

Fair Winds to all

Beautiful St. Augustine

We've made it to St. Augustine from Marathon, Fl. It took us 52 hours of offshore travel. We motorsailed most of the way because it was just too quiet out there. Saw a couple of waterspout offshore the first morning. It was quite concerning till I was sure we weren't going in the same direction. Then they were just interesting to watch. We came to the inside at the Ponce de Leon Inlet to refuel. Spent the night at a dock there and visited some local eateries and the Light House. It was a very nice area. In the morning we decided to travel up the ICW and visit the fort at Fort Mantanzas. It was a small fort built on the inlet to repell anyone that was trying to raid St. Augustine from the back door. Had a great visit with the reenactors there and the park folks were real nice to us "sailors". We continued up the ICW the next day to St. Augustine. Thought we would stay up the Sabastion River while here but the conditions weren't very good for a vessel our size. Almost stayed up the river via being aground in the shallow water. But we made it out safely and went on over to the regular anchorage by the City Marina. Glad we did. The facilities are great. Really nice marina, with  great showers and lounge for the cruisers. There are a lot of things to do in St. Augustine. Many many restaurants, and tourist kind of things. By the way, we're not "tourists" we're "trancients"...........way different!! :-) We are having a great time here. We got 3 day passes for the Red Train and rode it all over town. Shane loves going over to the Original Ripley's Believe it or Not. As though he hasn't seen enough strange things in his life. Maybe it's just so he can get a grasp on reality!? :-) We've had several people over for dinner or drinks, including one of my best friends growing up and his wife and an internet friend from Sailnet whose internet handle is Sailingdog. It was a great time visiting with friends down here in a tropical paradise. In the morning we will be heading up to Charleston, SC for a bit of a stay. We are going to tie up to a dock for a month and move our car from Tampa to Charleston. Kinda looking forward to a little time ashore. We're enjoying ourselves out on the water but it's not always a relaxing thing out there. We're always having to be mindful of the conditions around us, watching the wind and tide changes and making sure the anchor stays set and doesn't get all twisted up. We also have to watch and make sure the other vessels around us do likewise. It can be kinda unnerving at time when things go bump in the night. So anyway, I'll have access to Wifi and will be able to catch up on the blog map and my internet communications. Catch you all then.

Bill and his wife Michelle

Sailingdog and MtnMike

Time to travel

Hopefully we're going to leave Marathon, Fl. on Tuesday the 18th of May. Have to get up the coast for insurance reasons but need to move on anyway. We could easily get "stuck" here in Marathon like so many others. It is really nice and cozy here. Our next planned stop is St. Augustine, Fl. We really like it there and want to visit all the historic sites in the area. I would like to try to go a non-stop sail to there up the Gulf Stream but it's 384nm and I'm not sure we are up for that much time off shore. We'll see how that goes. We won't be so far out that we can't duck in if need be. We probably will never get quite far enough out to loose sight of land. That's always comforting. If that works out good then we will be more prepared to make another big jump up to Charleston, NC. We'll then try doing some ICW travel, doing day trips for a while anyways. We might end up staying in the Charleston area for a week or more, hard to tell. I'll post an update when we get to St. Augustine.

Working our way through the Keys.

Hi everyone. I'm back with a breif update. We sailed out of Key West and anchored near Little Torch Key and Little Palm Island. We visited with friends on Little Torch Key for several days. We had a wonderful time while there. While we were in Key West we bought Shane a surf board at Ron Jons. He decided to practice the other morning and while he was out paddleing around in the harbour a pod of about 5 dolphins came up and started swimming all around him. It was waaaaaaay cool. It was really hard to take a picture of the happening but I did get one, unfortunately it was like a Big Foot pic, fuzzy and just one fin.....looked more like swimming with a Shark!! Just one of those that Grandma doesn't want to see on the internet!!?? Anyway, we are now in the mooring field in Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Fl. We can see why folks get stuck here. They ar really cruiser friendly and have all the amenities here in town. Nice showers, (real important in the tropics) wi fi, a work shop to use, tv, ect. Paid for a week and hope that the weather cooperates at the end of that time. It's nice to get a few thing done along the way. There's always something to fix, repair or replace. The latest improvement has been the installation of a Wind Scoop on the forward hatch. What an improvement in ventilating the whole boat. It's GREAT!! So tonight it's off to the air conditioned movie. Life is Good!

On the Sea again!

Well we're back on the move. Life was good in St. Petersburg and we could see how easy it would be to settle  into the shoreside life. But it was time to go. Made a quick sail out to Egmont Key, not far past the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Had a nice pleasant night on the hook. Took off in the AM to head for Shark River......NOT! The alternater wasn't alternating!! Somehow blew a fuse that had no spare anyplace aboard. Ugh!! Decided we need that kind of electrical generation since it was the only reliable source of power we had. At least sort of reliable. We decided to go in at Longboat Pass Bridge and find a fuse. Sound easy?.....NOT! This pass has a reverse tide that doesn't seem to show on any charts. Tried coming in at the bottom of the ebb tide. That sucked us right up to the bridge as it was opening sloooooooowly! Made it through. We had been advised that there was an anchorage to the starboard of the bridge. That happened to mean IMMEDIATLY to the starboard after the bridge. Figured that out as we started sliding onto the bottom. Dang!! We did get to practice our ungrounding skills. Good Practice for about an hour. Anyway, we did get our electrical problems figured out. Only took a few days!! Now for the exit back to sea. It should suffice to say that it isn't easy to stop a 21,000 lb. sailboat when the bridge gets stuck half way up. Aaahhhhhh!!! NEGATIVE! NEGATIVE! NEGATIVE! Was my wifes response when the tender asked if we could make it that way!! They had to lower the bridge and start over. Exciting morning.

Our intended journey was to go to Shark River on the southern tip of mainland Florida, not to be. After getting out in the Gulf of Mexico we got on such a good tack and were sailing along wonderfully we just decided to go on to the Dry Tortugas instead. So the following evening we pulled into the bay in front of Fort Jefferson. Wow, what a beautiful location. Great snockeling, bird watching and tours of the fort. (snuck into the tours from the tourist boats) It was a great time. Stayed there for 5 days. Waited to pick another pleasant weather window to sail on to Key West.........NOT!! It started out pleasant even though the winds were contrary. By evening we were getting 20 to 25 kt winds right on the nose with no place to go, since we were in the South West Channel to Key west. Reefs blow us and reefs above us. The biggest problem we had, besides the 5 to 6' seas was we were sailing along way to fast and would end up coming into an unfamiliar anchorage in the middle of the night. What a night of bouncing around stalling for daylight.Made it in fine and tied up to the mooring ball behind Fleming Key and went to bed.  Wonderful.

Now we get to spend several days doing the tourist things in Key West. Truly a world of it's own in the Keys. Hard to explain. After leaving here we will continue up the Keys to Little Torch, Bahia Honda and Marathon. Hope to enjoy our stay down here till we start the larger leaps up the east coast to the Chesapeake. So for now it's Sloppy Joes and Key Lime Pie. Yum Yum!

Thanks to everyone for your nice comments. Hope I'm keeping you posted enough. Too bad we don't have access everywhere, but then again........

So long for now.

Stow aways to the Dry Tortugas

Hey there, I'm back. We've been really busy the last few weeks getting ready to head south to the Keys then north to the Chesapeake. It has been a great time here in St. Pete, Fl. We'll miss all the friends we made here but with the help of modern tech. we will be able to keep in touch better than ever. We finished all our work on the hard. Changed out our sensor through hulls and put on another coat of bottom paint. Buffed and polished the hull with Poliglo. It looks great.

In the mean time we had a great Renaming Party. We crowded 12 hardy souls aboard and preformed a traditional ceremony.....well sort of. It was interspersed with some singing and general merry making.