The Saga of Sesame

Home Again, Home Again

2010-05-20T10:25:00.002-04:00

We had a nice quiet trip down the Delaware Bay for once and even had a favorable current most of the way.

We anchored off the Coast Guard Station in Cape May, NJ and got a chance to say hello to friends on Exhale who we had crossed the Strait of Florida. After listening to the forecast the next morning, we decided to go past the inlet and travel the longer and more difficult route up the New Jersey Inland Waterway.

The inland route is full of twists and turns, very shallow water (particularly with the new moon), and bridges. The low fixed bridges (30 feet) make it impossible for most sailboats to use large sections of the Waterway.

We ended up trying to anchor behind Mordecai Island at Beach Haven when a gentlemen waved us over to his dock and invited us to tie up for the night. He even invited us to use his shower in the house. We declined the showers, but accepted the dockage. A very strong thunderstorm came through during the night and we were grateful for the security of the dock. New Jersey was beginning to look a lot better to us than in the past. A radio call to Exhale (which had to go outside in the ocean because of the low fixed bridges) as we went by Atlantic City revealed that they had NOT had a pleasant trip outside and aborted their trip earlier than planned.

The inland route does have some interesting sights, including the garish Atlantic City and the beautifully kept houses perching over the waterway.

We left early in the morning for a relatively short trip to Manasquan and worked our way carefully up Crabtown Creek to a tiny little bridge and the anchorage at Glimmer Glass. We were about to land the dinghy at a beach for a walk into town for a few supplies when another home owner shouted over and invited us to use his dock for our dinghy. Where was THIS New Jersey all the other times we had been through?

Another early start sent us out Manasquan Inlet for the trip across to New Jersey and New York. We went past Sandy Hook and through the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and took a left at the Statue of Liberty to the anchorage behind her at Liberty Park. We were there early in the afternoon but would have faced a strong adverse current if we had continued on through New York.

The anchorage is an interesting spot. During the day (Sunday) it was a main thoroughfare for jet skis and small fishing boats. There is a view of the Park and the Narrows Bridge. We were anchored off what we believe to be a new science center with what purports to be the largest IMax theatre in the world. The cruising guides all say that this is NOT the place to go ashore and leave an INFLATABLE dinghy as you explore the park. So we'll have to wait for a future road trip to see where we really were!

The next morning, we rode a strong current all the way through New York City and a lot of Long Island Sound. We passed close to the South Street Seaport and under the slew of bridges that feed the city.

Execution Rocks, Long Island Sound

With a bad forecast for the next day, we went all the way to one of our club moorings in the Thimble Islands off Stony Creek, Connecticut.

The next morning (May 19, 2010), we had another short trip -- this time on a rather cold rainy day -- to the mouth of the Connecticut River and our mooring in North Cove, Old Saybrook, CT. Home sweet home?

Outer Light, Old Saybrook

It will take a while to decompress and get back to "real" life. We'll fly to Dallas early in June to see our daughter Lyz and family just in time to celebrate grandson Mikey's 4th birthday. I'll post a final summary of this trip once we get a chance to go though the log and come up with various facts and figures.

Family and Friends through Maryland

2010-05-15T19:05:00.006-04:00

We had a short trip from Deltaville, VA to St. Jerome's Creek, just across the Maryland border, where we were going to meet some good friends and see brother Jock and his brood for an afternoon and a passel of local blue crabs. It seems as if every mark along the way was celebrated by a family of ospreys.

We anchored right in front of Jeanne and Tim's beautiful compound where we had anchored a few times before. The water is fairly "skinny" near the shore so we were grateful for our sturdy dinghy for the ride ashore.

Tim and Jean were, as usual, more than perfect hosts and put on quite a nice luncheon on their patio. Thanks again for being such good and patient friends who have accepted a motley bunch of transient boat bums into your lives!

Brother Jock, who lives nearby, and I paid for a bunch of crabs which we cooked with Tim's aid and assistance while Jeanne came up with some miracles on the grill and out of the kitchen. Jock gave some of his clan lessons in the fine art of eating blue crabs.

As we saw so often along the waterways, the U.S. Military is ever present. One whole stretch of the shoreline was full of antennae and other ominous looking stuff.

But a lot of the Chesapeake is still traditional lighthouses and pretty shorelines.

One of the old lighthouses is preserved at the marine museum in Solomons, along with an old oyster dragger. We anchored near there for a night and did some grocery shopping. The next morning we went by the Calvert Cliffs whose layers of sediment have been studied closely by archaeologists and other scientists.

We spent a couple of nights at anchor in Spa Creek in Annapolis.

We rented a car one day to drive to the Washington suburbs to see the Captain's son Bill, his wife Liz, and daughters Alison and Emily. They treated us to a lovely lunch at the Trump National Golf Club,joined by their daughters. We were lucky to get to see them at all since Bill and Liz were off to a fancy party at Mount Vernon that night, Alison had her Junior Prom, and Emily was home for a short while in the middle of her final exams at college.

After lunch, we drove a few miles to see another grand-daughter, Julia (in the upper right of the picture), perform in her middle school's production of Beauty and the Beast.

Daughter Ginger came back with us to spend the night aboard the boat and the next morning her husband David and all the kids - Sam, Julia, Zeke, and Nina - appeared. Zeke had only had a couple of hours sleep after his Junior Prom and Nina had just finished up her college final exams the day before. Julia's closing night was just the night before. We had dinner at a buffet restaurant and hung out on the boat which was in a slip in the middle of downtown Annapolis.

We were delighted that we could see both families with such short notice during very busy times in their lives.

From Annapolis, we went across the bay to our favorite boat yard to be hauled so that the bottom could be cleaned and painted for the first time in a year. (Actually, we had it cleaned by a diver while in Abaco.) We lived aboard "on the hard" for two nights after discovering that we could not get a rental car and we were a long way from any real civilization. We were scheduled to be launched at 6:30 AM, but the other yard which shares the hauling pit had managed to sink an old wooden work boat in it that they had launched the night before and we were delayed until about 10:00.

We managed to get to Chesapeake City, MD on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal early enough to anchor and go to the Tap Room for the traditional last crab feast for the Captain.

Both the Admiral and the Captain are feeling a bit of cabin fever after 8-plus months aboard, so the rest of the trip home will probably be more of a "delivery" than a "voyage". It's over some of our least favorite waters, particularly in bad weather. So we will probably put in some fairly long days to get home as quickly as possible.

Rushing North through Virginia

2010-05-15T18:56:00.001-04:00

From Oriental, we went to a favorite anchorage off the Alligator River at Catfish Point. It's a little disconcerting finding your way into the channel through a sunken forest of trees on both sides.

Once we got in, we anchored in a lovely little cove with only one other boat and were treated to a full moonset, immediately followed by a sunrise the next morning.

"Shore Thing" is from Groton, CT

We then found our way back to Elizabeth City and its free docks and the traditional Rose Buddy wine and beer and cheese reception which is held any time there are at least four boats at the docks. Each lady is given a rose.

We were held up for about three hours the next morning because the drawbridge would not open. It looked as if we might never get through the Dismal Swamp. At least I finally got a decent picture of the human target which is on the other side of the river from a rather disreputable looking trailer. (We go through this section as fast as we can!)

The South Mills lock raises us 8 feet to the level of the man-made canal through the Dismal Swamp. We met the crew on Scooter while we were waiting for the Elizabeth City Bridge to open.

Between the two locks, we passed by the North Carolina Visitor Center and its free dock and then into Virginia. Unfortunately, the old canal superintendent's house continues to crumble.

Robert, the lock tender at Deep Creek on the other end was kind enough to wait for us to arrive since he had heard of our delay that morning on the othere end. He collects conch shells and has them all around his lock keeper's house. We gave him a large one from Abaco which the captain had made into a horn.

Because of Robert's kindness, we were able to get all the way through and managed to come up with another free space at a public dock in Portsmouth right in front of Olde Towne and across the way from a huge cruise ship which was drydocked in Norfolk. Scooter had been with us all day and took our recommendation to go to the dinner movie theatre, The Commodore, while we collapsed on board.

For once, the weather gods were kind, and we were able to move right along to Jackson Creek in Deltaville and its beautiful Chesapeake Bay work boats.

Chesapeake Bay work boats.

We were anxious to get a bit further north to see various family members.

Into North Carolina

2010-04-27T09:00:00.001-04:00

The Atlantic Section of the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway) technically runs about 1,097 statute miles down the east coast from Norfolk, VA to Miami, FL (some claim it really starts somewhere around Boston, MA) and must be maintained to keep it navigable. Various political entities have various responsibilities which vary from state-to-state.

Many sections of the ICW, both natural bodies of water and man-made canals, must be dredged to keep them at the proper depths. These also vary from as little as 5 or 6 feet at low tide to much greater depths which are necessary in channels which are also designed for the transit of large ships.There are dredges of all sizes and shapes.

The ocean inlets in which large tidal currents move the sand around a lot are a particular problem.

As we continued north, we anchored in another shallow creek in Southport, NC before going up the Cape Fear River in surprisingly calm seas. We looked back at the lighthouse marking the mouth of the river.

Much of the Carolinas along the ICW is used for training by the Marine Corps. We went past Parris Island, their major training facility, near Beaufort, SC. Just north of Topsail Beach, NC Camp Lejeune has many acres on both sides of the waterway on which they run mock battles and landings . We have been stopped a couple of times while they have live-fire exercises across the ICW. This time, we went straight through to anchor in Mile Hammock Anchorage right in the middle of the facility (no landing is allowed anywhere!). We caught up with Mel and Jean aboard our sister ship Dovekie and spent some time with them swapping stories.

We looked back at the anchorage with its old rusty landing craft as we left in a fairly heavy fog the next morning. Luckily it burned off before we got to the first bridge. We spent the next night in the large mouth of Cedar Creek and had Mel and Jean aboard for another gam and dinner.

Sea Fox

Although the ICW is a major waterway for all kinds of yachts, great and small, it is also a place where once beautiful yachts go to die as owners run out of money or the desire to go on. We have watched Sea Fox, a wonderful old wooden Wm. Hand motorsailor go downhill for a few years as it sits in an old boatyard. We hope that someone who has the will and the wherewithal will find it and restore it before it is too late.

We parted company with Dovekie after Cedar Creek as they headed on to visit family and friends and we decided to avoid the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds for a couple of days because of threatening weather which had already created some major tornadoes further south. So we headed across the Neuse River to Oriental, NC which is one of our favorite places. We missed a spot at the free dock downtown by about 5 minutes as a sailboat sneaked in ahead of us. So we anchored up Greens Creek and anchored for the night.

From the Webcam

Under the Bow of a Shrimper

The next morning, we checked the webcam on the internet where we could see that one of the two free slips was empty. We pulled the anchor at about 7:15 AM and arrived in time for our first stay at the free dock in about 6 stops in Oriental! We were also in time for a marine tag sale and a farmers' market. We were even on the webcam (http://www.towndock.net/harborcam/).

Oriental was originally named "Smith's Creek" but was renamed after a ship's nameboard ("Oriental", obviously!) washed up on the beach. Now there is a dragon (their official icon) in the pond beside The Bean (see the webcam --the dragon moves) and a dragon is featured in their annual parade.

The bad weather is extending our stay here (we have moved over to the Oriental Marina which we like a lot because it has a friendly staff, showers, water, electricity, and cable TV -- all at about half the price of marinas back home) and we are getting in some R & R as well as some long-overdue boat maintenance and cleaning. We are three days from Elizabeth City (the entrance to Dismal Swamp and a very friendly town to boaters) and then another two days to or through Norfolk once we get moving again.

Then it's Chesapeake Bay which can also have some tricky weather but also holds the attractions of seeing family and eating more blue crabs! We may also do a quick haul of the boat to get the bottom cleaned and painted.

Through South Carolina

2010-04-24T16:03:00.006-04:00

Pelicans

A wonderful bird is the pelican

His bill can hold more than his belican.

He can take in his beak

Food enough for a week;

But I'm damned if I see how the helican.

- Dixon Lanier Merritt

We saw many pelicans along the way. When flying from one place to another, they often use the WIG (Wing In Ground-effect) to glide just above the water without flapping their wings for a long time. Man has been trying to emulate this with WIG aircraft, but they have a nasty habit of crashing fairly often as they dip a wing into the water. Sometimes you can see the pelican's wing tip or chest hit the water, but it doesn't seem to be a problem.

When they are hunting, however, they go higher and look down for their prey. When they see a fish, they just simply plummet straight down, seemingly totally out of control.

Other birds dive gracefully into the water. A pelican crashes! One of our cruising guides says that they are protected from the impact by automatically inflating air sacks on their bodies. Unfortunately, nothing protects their eyes and older pelicans often starve to death because they cannot see to hunt anymore.

Onward to South Carolina

Beaufort, SC

So, from the Isle of Hope, we continued up the water way past beautiful Beaufort, SC ("bew-fort") to anchor in Factory Creek just north of Ladies Island Bridge.

Then it was off to Toms Point Creek, one of our favorite anchorages with all kinds of twists and turns so that you can always find protection from the waves and some protection from the wind. The creek goes on forever and I took a dinghy ride up it to see some rather nice houses.

We left early in the morning to a hazy sunlit day.

And went to another one of those many creeks that wind through the marshes in the "Low Country" of Georgia and South Carolina. Along the many miles of marshes which stretch in every direction almost as far as the eye can see are little islands and hummocks (AKA: hammocks) with a house and a dock.

An alligator swam across in front of us as we were getting ready to anchor in Minim Creek.

Our next stop was a planned 2-day stopover at Osprey Marina on the Waccamaw River. It is inexpensive and very friendly and we planned to use it as a base from which to spend a full day at Brookgreen Gardens which we had only had a couple of hours to see a few years before on the way south. [Little did we know that the rental cars were only available at the airport which entailed expensive cab rides and all kinds of airport surcharges. But that is another story that we will not bother with here.]

Brookstone Gardens

Brookstone Gardens was created on the grounds of an old rice plantation in Murrels Inlet, SC in 1931 by Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington. There are over 50 acres of formal gardens which contain over 1,200 American sculptures from the early 1800s to the present. Wherever you look, there are flowers and trees and sculptures. Following is just a tiny sample.

Diana in front of the Alee of Live Oak Trees and the gold-clad statue of Dionysus

Flautist

Man with Newspaper

Water Lily

Pig (in the Children's Garden)

Flowers, flowers -- everywhere.

Dedication (set in a garden wall)

"Exuberance"

Pledge

Boy (in Butterfly Garden)

Monarch

See http://www.brookgreen.org/ for further information on Brookgreen Gardens.

Heading North through Florida and Georgia

2010-04-15T19:29:00.008-04:00

From Manatee Pocket in Stuart, we went to Vero Beach for a few days. It's a great place to recover from a crossing, go to a real American grocery store for the first time in three months and good stuff like that.

As is the practice at the Vero Beach City Marina, we rafted next to another trawler named Trixsea and had some interesting conversations with Jack who single hands her. His home port in Fort Meyers and he was on his way up to St. Augustine for a trawler rendezvous and was then heading across to the Bahamas for some of the summer. (The Floridians go to the Bahamas in the summer because they are cooler and less humid than Florida.

The Captain walked over to the park one day to see a little powerboat show and the fabulous art museum. He also bought tickets for I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change at the great modern theatre there. The show is advertised as the second longest running show in Off-Broadway history and it was a lot of fun. Our seats were in the balcony that they named after us.

From after about 5 days at Vero we went north and anchored off Cocoa where The Skipper dinghied in and bought a bunch of live crabs and cherrystone clams at Ms Apple's Crab Shack. Then we went on to Titusville, where we hoped to see the scheduled shuttle launch.

The morning before the launch started with a beautiful Easter morning sunrise complete with a couple of sunrise services at the nearby park. The sun rose very close to the launch pad for the missile.

At 6:23 the next morning, the launch went off as scheduled and it was pretty exciting to see our first one! It took a while for us to hear and feel the sound and the shock wave, but they were pretty powerful when they came. It was even more spectacular a couple of minutes later when the sun started to light up the vapor trail. There are times when air pollution is quite lovely!

Meanwhile -- a lot had been going on!

GROUNDHOG DAY (A True "Saga"?)

This is a reference to the movie of that name, not to the actual date. We got to see the ICW between Cocoa and Ponce de Leon Inlet a number of times on this trip because of a major screw up by yours truly. The Captain decided to tow the dinghy for the shortish trip to Titusville instead of putting in up in the expensive davit system. Three hours later as we approached Titusville, we looked back to find NO DINGHY! We did a 180 and headed back to look for it while broadcasting lost dinghy reports on the VHF radio. We were unable to get close to the lee shore (where the dinghy would have drifted) because it is very shoal on that side of the ICW. Of course, the dinghy is grey with a black engine so it is hard to see anyway. After getting almost all the way back to Cocoa, we gave up and headed back to the anchorage in Titusville. We reported the loss to anyone who would listen: Cocoa police would not even take a report over the phone; Titusville police were very nice and even gave us an "incident number", and a very nice Browart's County Sheriff Office deputy called us back and was VERY helpful and said he would put out a search.

We finally gave up and headed back north after the shuttle launch because we figured that someone had the dinghy in their back yard and was altering it so that it could not be identified. Our plan was to go St. Augustine and see what we could find at the Sailors' Exchange there to get us home again where we would have to sort out insurance and stuff before we got a real replacement.

BUT, late on the afternoon the next day, the deputy called with the news that the dinghy had been recovered and secured to a dock near Cocoa!!! WOW!! The next day we returned to Titusville and took a slip at the marina for the night, Deputy Webster picked me up and delivered me about 15 miles down the road to the dinghy, I ran the dinghy back to Titusville and immediately attached it to the davit system. And the cruise went on with a MUCH relieved (and VERY lucky) Captain and Admiral!

Now, back to our story..............

So, we went back to Rockhouse Creek near the Ponce de Leon Inlet and lighthouse to rejoin our friends on Bravo. There was a guy camping out on one of the islands. We took a dinghy ride in to take a closer look at the lighthouse which claims to be the tallest in Florida and the second tallest in the U.S. I decided that I would not show off by climbing to the top.

[Editors Note: Florida politics are interesting to watch if you are not an integral part of them. This lighthouse was made obsolete when they built a major Coast Guard station between it and the inlet with a very expensive state-of-the-art beacon to guide boats into the inlet. A very few years later, a developer apparently made the correct political "contributions" and was allowed to built a major condominium complex directly in front of the beacon, making it necessary to recommission the magnificent lighthouse!]

The next day took us to a night at anchor off St. Augustine. The "Bridge of Lions" is finally totally "restored" (i.e.: completely rebuilt) after five (?) years and they are still taking down the huge temporary lift bridge they have been using in the interim. Summertime from one of our home yacht clubs went through the bridge just ahead of us. We met a man who is doing the Great Loop on a pontoon boat.

We walked around the old town for a couple of hours and had Guinesses and dinner at an Irish Pub/Seafood restaurant.

Another day up the ICW took us to the Fort George River where we anchored off the Kingsley Plantation and dinghied in to tour it.

The original plantation house and the ruins of the slave quarters are now part of a National Park. Mr. Kingsley, a slave owner, was married to an African princess (who owned some slaves in her own name) and had a number of children with her. This was fine until Spain turned Florida over to the U.S. and intermarriage became illegal. Kingsley had to move his family to a Caribbean Island where they flourished and, eventually, came back to the U.S.

People either love or hate the ICW through Georgia. I rather like it. It is unique as it is largely natural with fewer man-made sections than most of the rest of the ICW. The Georgia coast has a lot of flat marshes reaching for miles to the ocean as well as many large and small islands and sounds. The result is a waterway that stretches the straight-line distance of about 100 miles to about 138 as it follows the winding and twisting creeks and rivers and goes across a number of rather large sounds. You will often see another boat a couple of hundred yards across a marsh from you seemingly headed in the opposite direction. In reality, he is going the same way you are and you will get to the same spot in another hour or so as you follow the creek in its meanders through the marshes and islands.

The first stop in Georgia is Cumberland Island which we had missed on the way south because of a reluctant dinghy engine. The main "avenue" through the island is through an arch of live oak trees leading to the ruins of Dungeness, a winter "cottage" owned by one of the Carnegies.

Armadillos have been introduced to Cumberland fairly recently, but they feral horses have been there since the island was the playground of the rich and famous. The dunes are constantly moving and shifting.

Along the way across to the ocean side of the island, Bill and Claudia from our home yacht club caught up with me. They had brought their sailboat, Illusion, down from Brunswick where they have kept it in a slip year around for a few years.

Because of threatening weather, we chose to hide in the Frederica River the next night and anchored right off the fort. Unfortunately, it was low tide and the unfinished dinghy dock is still a long way from the water and surrounded by very deep mud, so we could not get ashore for the grand tour of the fascinating grounds of ruins of this town created by Oglethorpe.

The forecast changed overnight and we ventured forth, often accompanied by friends who had been with us for months, but are so camera shy that we have dozens of photos of where the dolphins were and very few of dolphins.

We went by more of the islands that were used by the rich and famous as winter retreats and playgrounds. Some, like Cumberland and Jekyll Islands (photo on left) were simply abandoned. Others, like St. Simons (right photo) and Hilton Head are still very active.

We anchored in Kilkenny Creek for a night and then went on to a slip at Isle of Hope Marina, largely because they have a courtesy car. We went to Radio Shack, West Marine, a Super-Walmart and other neat places. We also got to do a laundry; wash the boat down; do what is, hopefully, the final repair on a small air leak in the dinghy; and accomplish an oil and filter change without covering outselves and the boat with dirty engine oil.

If all goes well, the next stop will be the anchorage off Ladies Island near Beaufort, South Carolina.

Back in the U.S.A.

2010-04-04T08:54:00.001-04:00

We left Green Turtle Cay at 0750 (7:50 AM for the landlubbers) on March 23 with some fairly confusing weather forecasts which suggested that we might be able to get across the Florida Straits and the Gulf Stream without too much trouble in the next few days. It's like the person with two watches who never knows what time it is. When you have 7 different "authoritative" weather forecast on the internet, VHF radio, and SSB (single-sideband) radio, you haven't got a tinker's chance in hell of knowing what is going on!

It is a long day's trip to Great Sales Cay, about halfway between Green Turtle and West End. There is nothing there except for a nice harbor in most conditions. We chugged our way there against 17-20 knot headwinds and chop. It wasn't bad for Sesame which has lots of power but the sailboats were sometimes slowed to less than 3 knots by the chop right on the nose.

We got there in time (1455 hrs) for cocktails and a leisurely dinner as we watched for the sailboats to arrive just before dusk.

The only forecast available at the edge of the world was Chris Parker's on the SSB radio which only Bravo was able to receive and shared with the rest of the fleet over VHF radio. Chris suggested that the weather window was getting questionable and we left for West End at 0700 hrs still thinking that we could stay there and leave very early (0300 ?) the next morning. The sunrise foretold a nice day in the offing.

The sailboats took advantage of a little breeze to do some motor-sailing. The beautiful day more than made up for the unpleasantness of the day before. We had run into the two green sloops a few times. Strega is the far one in the picture and he spent most of his time single-handing on a tight budget. Like most of us, he had no interest in being stuck at West End's very expensive marina for any length of time.

Bravo and Exhale (the catamaran) were with us for the entire trip from Green Turtle although we could travel a bit faster. We were all planning to stop at West End for the night until we started to pick up more weather forecasts as we neared "civilization" again. The window was closing and the faster we made the passage, the better.

Sesame had to stop at West End for fuel in order to make it across the Straits as quickly as possible, but could not go above "trawler speed" (7+ knots on the way to West End for fear of running out of fuel. We had used quite a bit of fuel pushing her through to Great Sale the day before.

So we got to West End around 1400 (2 PM) and had our last conch burgers (still the best in Northern Bahama) at the straw bar on their beach, filled the fuel, and were just getting underway again at 1500 as Bravo and Exhale came in for fuel. At 1515, we were on the way for what promised to be about a six hour passage pushing along at 10 knots. The passage was not at all bad for the first 4 hours until we hit the western side of the Gulf Stream and 5-6 foot swells with confused seas on top of them. After about an hour, these subsided somewhat and we saw an "interesting" sunset off the coast of Lake Worth. (If you click on the picture and blow it up to full size, you can barely see some buildings on the lower right side.)

We got to the inlet at 2100 and were at anchor in the harbor at 2200 (10:00 PM) after a 15 hour day. When we awoke, we found Exhale and Bravo anchored in front of us. (Actually, something woke The Admiral up in the middle of the night and she found Bravo drifting down beside us and had time to welcome them back to the U.S. as they got organized to re-anchor.)

In the other direction, tied to a dock at Peanut Island, were the reproductions of the Amistad and the Bounty.

After calling in to customs with our "Local Boaters Option" numbers, we said a temporary good bye to our Canadian friends who had a far more tedious check-in procedure to follow. Actually, the US government never knew we left (there is no law that says we must check out of the US, nor do we have to check out of the Bahamas when leaving there) so we wonder why so many of us go to the bother of checking back in? Methinks that the paranoia created by terrorism has also resulted in some very foggy thinking in Washington!

We worked our way up the ICW to Manatee Pocket in Stuart the next day as we headed back north. News from people who waited a day or two to cross indicated that they had a passage all the way across that was like our lumpy hour off the west side of the Gulf Stream. We had even considered running down to Lucaya (less expensive marinas) to wait for a window if necessary. A few days after we got back to the US, there was a tornado in Lucaya which did major damage to boats and marinas.

So -- we are on our way back north with no real agenda except to avoid going so fast that we catch up with the cold weather.

Green Turtle Again

2010-03-22T11:12:00.007-04:00

We came through Don't Rock Passage and approached New Plymouth's colorful cottages on the way to Green Turtle Cay's White Sound.

After touring Black Sound with the "big boat" and anchoring in White Sound, we took the dinghy to New Plymouth for lunch and a little sight seeing. Again, the folks with one of the best views in town can't see it.

The Captain went to the Alton Lowe Museum and got the full tour from the lady who looks like she was one of the first settlers. The only thing different from two years ago is that her husband, who used to sit by the window overlooking the lane all day, died a few months ago.

There is a lovely painting of how the downtown looked "before the hurricane" and a number of photographs of the devastation and destruction. The rebuild and restoration looks very much like the old painting.

Before the Hurricane

The first floor of the museum is crowded with various displays of the history of New Plymouth, including pictures of Neville Chamberlain's home. Upstairs are two bedrooms. The privy and original kitchen are in outbuildings in the back yard.

Down the street is the shop where Vertrum Lowe cranks out many model boats. The smaller ones have $800-$900 price tags and the larger ones are $3,000 and up. He can tell you the history of every boat he has modeled. I did not see him working but there are many virtually identical copies of the same models. One wonders where he markets all the models which fill his small studio.

Sunrise in White Sound.

While waiting for a weather window necessary to make the three-day passage back to Florida, The Captain decided to do the professional snorkel trip he had always wanted to do. The weather was so bad all winter that the dive shops were starving to death because wind and waves and sediment in the stirred-up water forced them to cancel the majority of their trips. He was closed out of the half-day trip and signed up for the full day trip with shore picnic the next day for fear that he would miss out completely again. The full boat takes 18 people plus the crew of 3. There was one cancellation at the last minute because one of the ladies' teen aged daughter had discovered how easily rum punches go down the night before.

Brendel anchors the boat in the reefs outside Manjack Cay. A group of diving students and other people with scuba gear go off with the two young dive masters while Brendal goes off on his own to free dive for the lobsters (crayfish) he will serve for lunch later. We snorkelers did our their thing around the boat. The reef is full of wonderful corals and a tremendous variety of fish. We saw a nurse shark, a large grouper which we suspect was Brendel's hand-fed pet, and smaller fish of every shape and color imaginable. 'Twas quite beautiful. There was on spot that was very crowded with reef fish. As I snorkeled above them, I noticed many lobster bodies on the bottom on which the fish were feeding. I had wondered what they were doing in a bucket on the swim platform when we left the dock in Green Turtle!

After about 1 1/2 hours, we pulled up the anchor and started "searching" for Brendal (part of the "performance"?) He showed up in a few minutes (I suspect that he gives them the GPS co-ordinates for the rendezvous) with a spear full of lobsters, including one huge one. As soon as Brendel was back on board, he broke out the rum punch which flowed freely for the rest of the day.

We tied to the dock in the northern anchorage at Manjack Cay and Brendel stood in the water and used the swim platform as a prep table for lunch. He prepared the lobsters he had speared and then pulled out a bunch of lobster tails and fish that he had brought with him while the two young dive-masters collected wood for the fire and set up for lunch. (He has been doing this for a very long time and has it all down to a science!)

Brendel has a pet sting ray which is attracted by the fish pieces he throws in the water. He sticks pieces of cut fish between the ladies' toes and the ray glides over and eats them as the ladies giggle. They were all afraid of the ray because of Steve Irwin's death. Brendal claims that it was not an accident, but virtual suicide caused by bravado and stupidity.

Although Brendel obviously has an eye for some of the finer thinks in life, his real forte lies in schmoozing the middle-aged ladies and their flabby pink husbands as they get higher and higher on the rum punch. The young lady who is one of his dive masters claims that he gets a lot of repeat customers and that the women always drag their husbands (and children) back for more trips. (Methinks it has something to do with his distinguished greying hair, hard body, and the three different very colorful speedos he wore during the day.)

He cooks the lobster and fish with salt water and various spices and veggies over an open fire. The assistants create a wonderful green salad to go with the seafood. Everything was absolutely delicious!

So here we are still at anchor in White Sound waiting for our weather window. Now it looks as if the crossing to the U.S. might not be until this coming Sunday or Monday. But it really isn't a shabby place to be!

Final Circuit: Hopetown, Little Harbour, and Back to The Whale

2010-03-21T15:59:00.004-04:00

HOPETOWN

Back to Hopetown for Heritage Day, complete with a little speech and presentation by Vernon Malone and all kinds of local food including stuffed lobster (crayfish) tails.

There are at least 4 variations of the exciting crab races. In all of them, you pick your number and pay $2. If you have the winning hermit crab, you get $1 for each contestant in the particular race. The profit goes to charity.

Outside the harbor, they had Bahama dinghy races. It was early in their season so there were only 3 boats out. One was sailed by a friend from Connecticut who "winters" in Florida and Hopetown. Another was sailed by a guy with his golden retriever.

They also raced Sunfish sailboats.

LITTLE HARBOUR

Little Harbour

Little Harbour is one of the most relaxing spots in Abaco with a well-protected anchorage. We love the gallery and Pete's Pub. The only real problem there is that you cannot get provisions for the boat.

We met some friends there who had anchored a couple of miles away and came in by dinghy for some beach combing, a couple of drinks, and lunch.

Pete was back at work in the workshop and forge after some shoulder surgery in the States. He claimed that this work was for therapy.

There were some paintings in the gallery which were pretty impressive including this one of a large Bahama dinghy.

Another sculpture probably by Randolph. I do not know the title.

TILLOO CAY

On the way back north, we anchored off "Farside" on Tilloo Cay. It has 5 bedrooms, 6 baths, a hanger for your plane, and a dock for a 80' vessel. If you would like to buy it, we'd be happy to pay to rent part of the dock from you for the winters to help you defray your expenses.

Farside: $4,850,000

The sunrises come free with the house.

Tilloo Sunrise

MARSH HARBOUR

We went back to Marsh Harbour briefly for fuel, water, and a few groceries before heading "Through the Whale" to get back to northern Abaco so that we could stage to go back to the U.S. We took a long walk and saw "The Castle" which I think was built by a rich American with delusions of grandeur. It does have a pretty impressive view I would think!

LEISURE LEE

On our way back through The Whale, we decided to detour past "The Nutty Mermaid" at Leisure Lee where we had spent a week with The Admiral's sister, her husband, and her mother-in-law. A great spot and looks terrific from Abaco Sound too!

TREASURE CAY

We also went by the marina in Treasure Cay and through the mooring field and anchorage.

And onward past Don't Rock and the Don't Rock Passage inside Whale Cay toward Green Turtle Cay.

The next episode will include the Skipper's snorkeling trip aboard Brendal's Dive Boat from White Sound in Green Turtle Cay. We hope that the following chapter will come from the U.S.A., the weather gods permitting. We plan a two day passage to West End, anchoring at Great Sale Cay (no civilization or communication) the first night. Hopefully we will spend only one night at West End ($$$$$) and transit the Gulf Stream and Florida Straits (60 miles) the next day to St. Lucy or Lake Worth, Florida.

More winter weather in Abaco

2010-03-21T11:11:00.003-04:00

Once the in-laws were gone and we waited out a few more weather fronts in our slip at Marsh Harbour Marina (with electricity, cable TV, water, showers, laundry, etc), we decided to do the "circuit" again, which The Admiral had missed while she was in Dallas.

MAN-O-WAR

We started with a short trip across to Man-O-War and anchored in Eastern Harbour away from the Settlement. The supply boat came through one day and ran a slalom through the anchored and moored boats.

A Digression

We discovered that MANY of the boaters who spent the winter in Abaco left their boats here or in Florida for the summers and wondered why we didn't do the same and thus avoid the long round-trip up and down the coast in the fall and spring. The answer, of course, is $$$$$$! Also, we would definitely NOT want to be without our boat in New England during the summers and cannot afford two boats as many of the cruisers have. But we did some dreaming for a while, particularly in Man-O-War with its boatyards and many moorings.

Sarracinia (sp?) is owned by a Canadian couple but has been kept in Abaco for the last few years. They have paid the duties and registered her here. She could be bought for the mid 20s US. She is beautiful and well equipped but is "composite construction" (fiberglass and wood) and has a 6-foot draft which is pretty deep for the Bahamas.

This little Pacific Seacraft "Flicka" could be had for around $20,000. The Flicka is a wonderful "cult boat" with lots of room for her length overall and is virtually bullet-proof. She is also "duty paid." But 20 feet is still a trifle small for most of us.

This Pearson Triton is a "project boat" and could probably be had for next-to-nothing. The engine and sails are both shot. A cursory inspection revealed that it's even possible that she has been underwater. We did not even call about her since we were not ready for that kind of effort and expense.

A friend in Maryland has put his lovingly and expertly restored Fales Navigator 32 on the market. If she could be had for a decent price, she would go to the top of our list as the perfect boat for Abaco or Florida for the winters.

Or -- if we win the lottery, this neat aluminum trawler which has been maintained in Man-O-War and is listed for $50,000.

While it is still in the back of our minds, at our age there are a lot of things we could do with that kind of money and it is probably not a great idea to have two boats and all their expenses -- UNLESS WE WIN THE LOTTERY!

End of Digression

So we acted like tourists at the various craft shops and gift shops. This mermaid on the outside wall of one of them struck our eye. This guy has collected all kinds of local shells and various flotsam and jetsam and sells them in his tiny crowded shop and on a table outside.

Albury's Sail Shop is now full of "bag ladies" who make many different kinds of fabric bags and purses on their rusting sewing machines. They are nice but pretty expensive and the shop is FULL of them. We wonder where they are sold, because there is certainly not enough tourist traffic in Man-O-War to take care of the huge volume they put out.

The cemeteries are "decorated" with plastic flowers. (Note the new grave with ship's wheels.) I suspect that this is because the only water on the cays is rain water (caught in cisterns at every house) and reverse-osmosis water (which is expensive). There is very little rain, so the fresh water is too precious to waste on those who can no longer appreciate it and plastic flowers don't need water! One "advantage" of putting your cemeteries in the sand dunes at the edge of the ocean is that they are cleaned out periodically by hurricanes and you can just start over. (Natural "recycling" at its finest?) They will often put up a single marker with the names of those whose graves "cannot be found."

But a "modern" solution is being developed. This worker is using rock-cutting tools to cut two graves deep into the coral and rock so that they will not wash away in the next hurricane. If they keep doing this, much of their prime real estate will be taken up by the residences of their "dearly departeds" as it is in many towns in New England (and elsewhere, I suppose).

The Captain took a long walk out toward "The Narrows" one day and thought he had taken a wrong turn and wound up in England! Just across the path, however, were the beautiful colors of the ocean off Abaco.

Conch ("Konk") is a major local seafood which is used in all kinds of gustatory delights, from chowders to conchburgers to cracked conch to conch salad and many others. Their shells are used everywhere for decoration and landscaping.

Partway out the narrowing peninsula on the north end of the cay is a house called Bonnie Dune (all of the houses have names which are used as "call signs" for communication over the marine VHF radio they all have, in the same way the boats use their names). This house was owned by good family friends from Connecticut for many years. On the side of the peninsula which is on the protected harbor, there is a dock and a "snore shack" (usually a simple square bunkhouse for guests -- hence the name). [The house is in the trees to the right of the dock and snore shack in the picture.]

Across the lane (wide enough for a single golf cart) is a path leading up to the main house which I think as about 900 square feet. The view of the ocean from the deck is spectacular and there is a gorgeous sandy beach.

It's another half-mile or so to the "The Narrows" with the ocean on one side, Abaco Sound on the other, and a little gazebo in between.

NEXT: Revisiting Hopetown, Little Harbour, Tilloo, and Green Turtle as we prepare for our return to the U.S. when the weather cooperates.

Great Guana

2010-02-22T16:03:00.003-05:00

Great Guana Cay is the most sparsely populated of the larger cays and its protected Settlement Harbour is quite small and almost filled by the Orchid Bay Marina. Just north of the settlement is Fishers Bay which is open to the northwest. It has a number of rental moorings as well as plenty of room to anchor.

Grabbers

There is a dinghy dock at Grabbers which serves a drink called, of course, a frozen Grabber. They serve meals, including a decent pizza according to the Admiral.

There was a ray fish relaxing next to the dock when we came in.

Fishers Bay and Sesame from Grabbers.

Grabbers is famous for the sunsets that you can see from its beach.

The houses are painted in the familiar pastels of the other cays, but are quite simple with minimal landscaping.

The sunsets are justly famous from the anchorage as well. The sunrises are not too shabby either.

The captain took a dinghy ride up to the north end of the cay which has been taken over by a new development called Bakers Bay Marina and Resort. It is a complex of canals and acres and acres of empty landfill and bulkheads waiting for zillionaires to build their castles. The most prominent feature is the 200 foot private yacht named April Fool (a friend wrote that the owner is Sandy Weil, who was CEO of Travelers and then City Group -- doesn't that mean that we all own a piece of the boat through bail-out funds?), 6 or 7 large houses, a large "club" building and many empty docks and slips.

Bakers Bay and April Fool, listed as one of the world's largest 100 private yachts.

Further north is what looks like a resort with private cottages with canvas roofs and a beach with lots of water toys on it.

The beaches along this area used to be very popular with both cruisers and locals but are now guarded so that the general public will not sully them even though they are virtually empty.

There are many caves, large and small, that the waves have carved into the relatively soft coral.

This is Fishers Bay looking southeast toward Grabbers. (Sesame is to the left.)

Fishers Bay

The major goal for most tourists on Great Guana, is Nippers. Just follow the signs to the top of the hill overlooking the ocean.

On Sundays, Nippers has an all-you-can-eat Pig Roast which we haven't tried before. DELICIOUS! Dinner with a frozen Nipper or two calls for a very early bedtime!

Nippers has its own beautiful ocean beach and reef.

The Captain had agreed to act as a photo boat for a shoot for Island Packet boats so we ran back to our slip in Marsh Harbour early in the morning, only to find that the photo shoot had been postponed because of bad weather. It was just as well since the forecast had unexpectedly turned nasty for a few days anyway. So we'll relax here with our shore showers, electricity, cable TV, etc. for a few days and hope for some nice weather to do some relaxing off a few beaches and in some nice harbors.

Marsh Harbour (mostly)

2010-02-18T19:24:00.008-05:00

The Admiral returned from Dallas 3 days after our one-month rental of a slip started at the Marsh Harbour Marina. The slip rental is $.60 per foot per night plus some extras for electricity, water, and cable TV. Although we don't plan to stay for the entire month, it gives us a good home base to which we can return when we want to.

For those who are not boaters, slip rentals in the States go as high as $3.50/foot per night and some are even higher. Having the slip gives us a home base for the month as well as a safe place to keep the boat for the week we will be spending with Judy's sister and bother-in-law at a beach side house.

Sesame in her slip at Marsh Harbour Marina

Steak Night at the Jib Room

Steak Night

Every Saturday is Steak Night at the Jib Room at the head of the dock. It's one of the most popular events in Marsh Harbour every week.

"Rake and Scrape"

After dinner, there is always a "Rake and Scrape" with dancing. Rake and scrape is peculiar to the Bahamas and uses a regular saw and screw driver as a rhythm instrument. Jason, who is also the dockmaster at the Marina, is the resident musician who performs to taped music. The night ends with a limbo contest but the Admiral and the Captain retired to the boat long before that happened! The video below is a short sample of rake and scrape by Jason. (Be sure you have your speakers on.)

Happy Hour Pot-Luck

The Jib Room

During the day, the Jib Room serves lunch Wednesday through Saturday and drinks every day. Thursdays are Happy Hour during which the boaters and other guests being special hors d'oeuvres and drinks are 2 for 1. The house drink at the Jib Room is a "Bilge Burner". (Every bar in the Bahamas has its own name for its own mix of rums and fruit juices.)

Mermaid Reef

Mermaid Reef is a National Park off the beach a short walk from the marina. It is supposed to be a great place to snorkel, but the weather patterns this winter have made it pretty lumpy and/or cloudy most of the time.

Judy's sister Carol, brother-in-law Larry and Larry's mother Ginny rented a house in Leisure Lee, about 9 miles north of Marsh Harbour by water and 15 by land. All the houses have names which they use as "call signs" (like a boat name is used) to communicate by marine VHF radio. Their house was "Nutty Mermaid" (no relationship to Mermaid Reef so far as I know).

The Nutty Mermaid at Leisure Lee

Front Lawn at Nutty Mermaid

It is right on the beach on the Sea of Abaco with its own little island right off the beach. It is in a development called Leisure Lee. The Captain finally got to do a little snorkeling although there was not a lot to see. It was a great place for walking the beach and shelling, however.

Dwight, Carol, and Dwight's dinner guest

Carol got a boat ride from a friendly neighbor up the beach and they caught a pretty big lobster.

Around the next point was a lovely little beach with what looked like a giant bonsai tree. In the other direction along the very long beach were a few small birds keeping watch.

We took everyone for a short motorboat ride over to Man-O-War Cay where we toured the two harbors and dropped the anchor for lunch before returning to Marsh Harbour.

Treasure Cay

On yet another cold and windy day (yes, it's all relative: it was in the mid-60s and blowing 30 knots with gusts) we went a few miles north to Treasure Cay (which is not a Cay, but part of Abaco Island) in their rental car.

Treasure Cay Beach: One of the World's 10 Best According to National Geographic

We lunched at the beach bar while we watched some kite surfers off the beach.

Infant Coconut Palm

There are coconut palm trees and coconuts all over the place. I read that they lose a few tourists every year when they are conked on the head by falling coconuts. We learned how to tell which ones were good but have not yet figured out how to get the tough outer husk off of them without a big machete. Left alone, the coconut begins to sprout and become another palm tree.

Now that the inlaws have headed back to the states, the forecast finally calls for some decent weather. We'll try to spend some time re-exploring some of the places the Captain explored while the Admiral was in Dallas and anchor off a few beaches we haven't seen before.

Tentatively, we plan to look for a time to go back across The Whale to Northern Abaco in mid-March and revisit places we have seen and places we have passed by very quickly which are worth another look. Then we'll start looking for a weather window to head back to Florida and start the trek north to Connecticut.

Bachelor Cruise III: Little Harbour

2010-02-05T14:52:00.122-05:00

Little Harbour was settled by Randolph W. Johnston, an American sculptor, and his family in the early 1950s. His son Peter is carrying on with Pete's Pub, art gallery, art workshop, and foundry. Pete's son Greg is also an active artist on site.

Pete's Pub is right on the water. There are no walls and a sand floor. The fish sandwiches are fresh and delicious and were swimming yesterday afternoon, if not this morning. I had lunch there with Erik and Judi from Bravo after we watched a "pour" at the foundry.

Just across the dune from the pub at the end of a boardwalk is the ocean beach.

There are sculptures wherever you look: on the beach, in the dunes, in the trees and bushes.

There is a tremendous variety of artwork in the gallery including bronzes by Randolph, Peter, Greg, and others. On the left is "Everywoman." "Orpheus and Eurydice" are on the right.

This is the "9 Ages of Man" and "Grief." I believe that they are all Randolph's.

Peter has done done a whole series of sculptures based on Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea.

Methinks I saw this lady swimming in Hopetown Harbour last week but she was all in one piece and had all her extremities.

Actually, I was in Little Harbour twice in this three-week period, but I have put them together in one entry.

The first time, I got a great tour and personal seminar by the Richard Appaldo, the foundry manager and resident artist. He was Randolph Johnston's last apprentice and has been a full-time resident at Little Harbour for about 10 (?) years after a few years as a part-timer. He was doing the fine work on a wax mold that had been created from a plastic or rubber female mould which had come from an original sculpture modeled in modeling clay much like the clay we played with as kids.

These are rough wax forms which had been poured into the plastic or rubber molds and have to be cleaned up and perfected.

The wax sculpture is dipped in layers and layers of a liquid silica and sand. It is then fired in a kiln which vaporizes the wax and turns the mold into hard ceramic. Thus, the name for this centuries old sculpting technique: "The Lost Wax Process."

Here are a bunch of ceramic molds ready for casting with liquid bronze.

I went back a few days later to see Richard and Pete's son Greg do a "pouring" of 2,000 degree bronze into the molds which had been reheated in the kiln just before the pouring.

A few hours later, they "crack" the mould. It's a lot harder than I imagined. The ceramic has to be chipped away, piece by piece.

The result is a rather rough sculpture which needs extensive polishing, welding, "chasing", and resculpting before it is given a patina and waxed.

Greg is the third generation of Johnston sculptors in Little Harbour.

Someone flew in on a seaplane for the festivities and lunch. I'll bet they had a "Blaster" or two at the Pub also. (Every bar in Abaco -- and probably the Bahamas -- has its own name for its fruit juice and rum drink.)

Little Harbour is a lovely spot with great protection from all the weather fronts that come through. It's the furthest south we'll go in the Bahamas.

We'll be back after I pick up The Admiral in Marsh Harbour!

Bachelor Cruise II: Hopetown

2010-02-04T14:36:00.003-05:00

Hopetown is a fairly upscale town on Elbow Cay, a rather long cay just south of Man-O-War. Its Elbow Reef Lighthouse is visible for miles around.

Sesame was fortunate to grab one of the less expensive moorings (there is no room to anchor in the inner harbor) just inside the entrance and under the lighthouse.

I took a hike up the hill and up the stairs to the top of the lighthouse to look down on the harbor and Sesame at the left-most mooring.

She DOES look rather "cute" from such a distance.

The town (as seen from the mooring) is another Loyalist town, but has lots of color and ginger-breading on its wooden cottages.

There was some interesting activity in the harbor for such a staid community.

The houses are dripping with charm. Many of them are rentals or "second homes", a staple of the economy here.

There are at least a couple of cemeteries in town. They have magnificent views of the ocean. The little stone on the right says,

Effie I. Malone
Died March 5th 1888

Aged 1 year and 6 months

The Angel Called Her

This is a another cemetery immediately above the beautiful beach where I spent an afternoon in the water and reading in my own "cabana" (the nearest neighbors were the residents of the cemetery). Strangely, in a country with so much beautiful flora, the cemetery plots are usually decorated with old faded plastic flowers.

The beach stretches for miles along the ocean side of the cay.

Everywhere you look is more empty beach.

Vernon's Grocery is one of the two small groceries in town. Vernon is also a baker, a Justice of the Peace, a "Marriage Officer", the Town Historian, and many other things, I am sure. His last name is Malone, like so many of the natives. He is referred to as "Mr. Vernon", since Mr. Malone would would just be confusing. Like the little girl above, he traces his ancestry to the Malones, American Loyalists who landed here in 1785. The store consists of three short aisles with mostly packaged and hard frozen goods along with some relatively fresh fruit and vegetables depending on when the supply boat last came in. His bakery (kitchen only) is attached at the side of the store with a separate entrance. The little tags on the shelves are witty sayings, many of which I used to have in my own offices.

Although the town has a number of good restaurants, I found a good hot dog with all the trimmings and an excellent inexpensive ($6.50) conchburger at a little roadside stand across the road from Vernon's.

The Wyannie Malone (remember the last name?) Museum has some interesting displays and is housed on one of the old houses.

One night, (yes, that's a full moon over the cross) Shere Khan, a cappella singers from Princeton University, sang at the Methodist Church. It was a lovely concert by some fun and very talented kids. To set the mood, the sun put on a rather nice display as it set over the harbor below us just before we went in to the concert.

Next stop: Little Harbour and Pete's Pub, Art Gallery, and workshop and forge.

Bachelor Cruise I: Man-O-War Cay

2010-02-03T13:19:00.004-05:00

I put The Admiral on a plane to Dallas and left that day for Man-O-War Cay, just a few miles across Abaco Sound. As the sign says, there is no place like Man-O-War.

Yes, it has the same glorious sunsets that happen here all over the place.

I found a nice spot to anchor right at the south end of Settlement Harbour where I could watch the comings and goings around the village (aka: settlement).

Man-O-War is unique among the Cays because it has a very active business community, centered on boat building and repair and is not totally dependent on tourism and 2nd home owners like everywhere else in Abaco. Our friends on Bravo were hauled to replace their broken shaft. The labor rate is $40/hour as opposed to the $90 or so found in most of the East Coast of the US.

They actively repair and restore older wooden boats like this traditional Bahama sailing dinghy. They also build modern fiberglass boats, mostly center console outboards. Since all the yards are owned by Alburies, they are named for the owner's first names.

The cay is virtually (totally?) all white and mostly members of the Albury family for many generations. Every morning about 4 boatloads of black workers come across from Marsh Harbour at around 7:00 AM and leave by nightfall. Some of them are highly skilled boat builders and workers.

The Cay is served by two small grocery stores. The one by the harbor is owned by, of course, an Albury.

Transportation is by gasoline golf carts, some of which are available for rental by the tourists. Yes, as a former British colony, they drive on the left.

"Location. Location. Location." Most of the houses are very well kept and very simple with no decoration. (This isn't one of them.) It is a very religious community with a number of churches. BYOB! No liquor is sold on the cay or served at the two restaurants.

The cay is supplied by an almost daily freight boat and large loads are brought in by barge. This barge was delivering loads of sand and some heavy equipment.

A little Bahama dinghy sailed through towing a modern fiberglass outboard. Malolo, a beautiful traditional motor-sailor, was built in MOW in the 50s and was found by her present owners in Maine and restored by them in Nova Scotia. They returned to MOW for the first time two years ago with great fanfare when we were here and came back this year after more restoration.

Kaye and TJ invited the poor starving bachelor skipper aboard their lovely Alberg 37, Shearwater anchored in the south harbor, for a delicious pork chop dinner. Sesame brought some fresh-baked brownies.

On the way to the beach at the narrows north of the harbor in the dinghy, I passed through many rays flying around in the beautifully clear water.

I walked across the narrow isthmus to the ocean side. At low tide, there is a nice beach on the sound side and I found a few nice shells including a couple of sand dollars.

The coral along the beach had some interesting shapes encased in it. I am not sure what they are or were, but I'm imagining prehistoric trilobytes or something like that?

During a passage of one of the frequent weather fronts that come through during the winter, one brave soul went out the passage.

Sesame sat happily in Man-O-War for a few days, figuring that every night at anchor saved enough money to buy a rum drink or two ashore. But then the Captain remembered that he was anchored off a dry town and decided it was time to head out to Hopetown with all the money he had saved. Stay tuned!

Across "The Whale"

2010-01-14T15:23:00.002-05:00

We wanted to stay in Green Turtle for their modest Junkanoo (sort of a combination of Carnivale and Mardis Gras with an African beat?) on New Year's Day. We anchored in Black Sound for a few days so that we could walk to New Plymouth for the festivities.

The parade starts with a much bigger than life figure which is articulated and moves to the music of the drums and horns behind it. Many home-made costumes and dancers follow. The green feathered costume was quite spectacular. The video below has sound and shows the movement of the costume and some of the other dancers. [Hit the arrow to see and hear it. Make sure your speakers are on.]

That night, we watched the fireworks from our boat back in the harbour. [A puzzlement for an old English teacher: Since we are in a country which uses British spellings, the accurate spelling is "harbour". But when it isn't part of a proper noun, how should an American spell it in his narrative?]

We had to wait another couple of days before the waves died down in Whale Passage, a passage from the ocean to the Sea of Abaco past Whale Cay. It was still a bit "lumpy" when we went by, but we were able to take "Don't Rock Passage" on the inside of the cay where it was fairly quiet.

After Don't Rock we headed toward Marsh Harbour, the largest town in the Abaco islands. It even has a traffic light!

We anchored near the Marsh Harbour Marina and were treated to a beautiful sunset our first night there.

The weather forecast warned us of yet another cold front approaching with strong winds and rain so we ducked into the marina for a few days. Dockage was 65-cents a foot per night as opposed to the $2.50 or $3.00 and up they get in much of New England and Florida. We tried to reserve a slip for just the two nights of the worst weather, but ended up having to sign up for five nights to be guaranteed a spot. A day later, the marina was full.

We went to the Wednesday "Rib Night" (nothing to write home about, but good) and the Saturday "Steak Night" (still as good as we remembered it from two years ago).

The weather never really turned out to be as bad as forecast, but it was nice being on the dock anyway. There was a great sunshower with a spectacular rainbow. Unfortunately, the photographer forgot to bring his polarized filter so it doesn't show up as well as it might.

Josh, the young single-hander who we had been with off and on since West End gave a "seminar" on fish cleaning on the dock. He had speared the fish under a boat on the dock this time, but had gotten all kinds of fin and shell fish with both hook and line and spear from his dinghy too.

We stayed on the dock one extra day to make it easier for The Admiral to catch her plane to Dallas to help daughter Lyz's family move from their temporary apartment to their brand new house.

The Skipper is now on a two or three-week "bachelor cruise" and plans to re-explore some of Southern Abaco. With a little luck, he'll be able to anchor out every night and keep a bit of money in the cruising kitty.

More to follow. . . .

Christmas in Abaco

2009-12-31T12:17:00.003-05:00

We checked the bar room of the Green Turtle Club and found that the North Cove Yacht Club Burgee (that had been put up by a fellow club member whose family owns property on Green Turtle) is still there with the dollar bill we had signed two years ago.

On Christmas Eve morning, one of the cruisers who had a rather modest sailboat at the dock hosted a breakfast for the entire fleet (about 50 people) at the Club. We all ordered off the menu.

Santa Claus found the boat overnight and The Admiral found a very modest present under the little tree.

On Christmas Day, Brendal helped to host a big pot luck dinner behind his dive shop which is next to the Green Turtle Club. Captain John and Sylvia did all the organizing as they apparently have for many years. They live on a small sailboat in the harbor for the winter and buzz around in a small Boston Whaler. Captain John runs a tour boat from Dafuskie Island in South Carolina during their "season."

We took the dinghy over to New Plymouth a couple of times to walk around and do some grocery shopping. It is the only "town" in Green Turtle and has all kinds of really authentic charm. We shop at Sid's(now run by his son Scott and his daughter -- Sid's widow often sits on a small couch at the door and greet everyone as they come in and leave), which is the best of the 4 or 5 little grocery stores in town. (I have no idea how they support all those stores, but they were all there two years ago and probably for many years before.) The town was founded by Loyalists from New York whose lives were getting rather unpleasant in the years following the Revolutionary War. There's a great little museum run by a woman who looks old enought to be one of the original settlers and has wonderful stories to tell.

Back at the anchorage in White Sound, we saw some lovely sunsets and sunrises undisturbed by shore lights and air pollution. It seemed that every other boat was from Nova Scotia and many of them flew their provincial flag with pride along with the Canadian national ensign and the Bahamian courtesy flag.

A young single-hander who we had first seen at West End did very well with his spear and fishing pole!

We took a couple of days to go a few miles north to Manjack (aka: Munjack or Nunjack) Cay, one of our favorite anchorages two years ago. We started off at the northern anchorage which we hadn't been to before and walked across to the ocean side.

Apparently, some developer put up a pavilion which various people have turned into a kind of "signing tree", putting their names on all kinds of flotsam and jetsam and hanging it up. They have also made large piles of the tremendous amount of jetsam that has washed up on the beach by way of waves and current -- almost all of which is plastic junk.

We dinghied around the northern point to discover the new house of a guy we had met a couple of years ago. We had seen his little Compac sailboat in Black Sound and were told that he was "off Island" for a couple of weeks.

Then back to the main anchorage off the house of Bill and Leslie who provide free WiFi to those who anchor off their beach. They also welcome anyone ashore and ask only that guest either help collect and pile up junk from the shore or even take it back to someplace where it can be dumped.

The Skipper explored the creeks that wind through the mangrove swamps at the end of the cay and saw an example of new mangroves seeding themselves along the way.

On the way back he stopped to see the Wharram-designed catamaran Peace which we had talked to a couple of times down the ICW and was invited aboard for a cup of tea and good conversation with Ann and Neville. They are tucked away in a corner between Manjack and Crab Cays and stay there for most of the winter.

After a night at Manjack, we headed back to Green Turtle, this time going down to Black Sound to test our new anchor in the bad holding ground. Our new friends aboard Sheena II (a neat ferro-cement trawler from Canada), Mike and Sue, got a good deal on dockage at Donney's Boat Rental Dock.

Those of us who wake up early enough got the great treat of seeing the almost-full moon setting just a few minutes before sunrise.

Today, New Years Eve, we will walk to the beach and do some shelling before we dinghy over to a BYO cocktail party back at Brendal's in White Sound. The weather is supposed to be poor for the Junkanoo in New Plymouth tomorrow, but we will be able to get there by either sea or by land from here.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Bahamas!

2009-12-26T19:48:00.007-05:00

We diddled around between Lake Sylvia in Fort Lauderdale and the anchorage between Florida International University and Oleta State Park in North Miami for a few days as new weather fronts seemed to pass through every other day. We finally decided to cross from Fort Lauderdale (Franz and Louise dinghied up from their slip in Hollywood to wish us a safe voyage) on the second day of a two-day window. It wasn't a great crossing, but it wasn't bad and we got into West End on Grand Bahama Island at 2:15 PM on December 15 after leaving Lake Sylvia at 7:00 AM.

We saw a couple of cruise boats heading toward Nassau and crossed paths with a car carrier which was riding the Gulf Stream north.

The Admiral often complains that the boat is too small so, to accomodate her, the marina at West End charged us as if we were 40 feet long (their "minimum"). They also have hefty mandatory surcharges for electical hookup and water use. At least "free" WiFi comes with all this money, so we could communicate with everyone through email or Skype and get some good forecasts to cover the next 2 or 3 days when we knew we would be in a communications blackout until we got to Manjack or Green Turtle Cay. NOT! No WiFi and they seemed unconcerned about it. So we settled for a print-out of a forecast from an unnamed source from the dock office. It indicated that we would have a good trip to Great Sale the next day but would have to continue on the next day in somewhat questionable weather as the wind clocked around. There was a lot of discussion around the docks about where to go since staying at West End could turn into at least a week's stay at very high prices.

We had a very quiet trip to Great Sale the next day. It is a totally deserted island in the middle of nowhere, but about half-way between West End and the cays ("keees") of Abaco. After a quiet night, we left in an increasing breeze with the intent of going to Green Turtle Cay and a night at the Green Turtle Club dock followed by some time at anchor in the harbors of Green Turtle.

The weather gods were not at all cooperative and we ended up beating into major head winds and seas that broke completely over the bridge (the skipper, needless to say, was operating from the lower helm station). [Note that cruising blogs rarely show photographs of this kind of weather since the photographer is hanging on for dear life and doesn't even want to open a porthole for fear of drowning the camera to say nothing of himself!] After about five hours of this, the skipper aborted the voyage at Allans-Pensacola Cay and found a relatively peaceful anchorage with four other power boats.

The weather did not seem to abate much over the night, but we saw the other boats begin to weigh anchor and move around late the next morning. A VHF radio call to Coco Nut revealed that they had gotten a forecast that the wind was going to swing around again before night, making our anchorage untenable. The only option was to head on to Green Turtle in what we thought would be equally horrendous conditions as the day before. Thankfully, it ended up being a much easier passage and we took the last slip in the marina in the middle of a downpour.

We ended up spending three nights on the dock. There is a special "deal" that lets you eat meals at the restaurant and take the meal bill off the dockage fee. It isn't cheap, by any means, and you tend to overeat for a few days! The Admiral bummed a golf cart ride into town with the owners of the boat in the next slip who were there for the entire winter and did a little shopping.

After three days, we moved out to try the new anchor in the harbor and wait for the potluck dinner on Christmas Day.

We later discovered that a number of other boats had left West End the same day we did largely because of the expense they would incur if they were weathered in for a few days. They went down to Lucaya/Freeport and stayed in slips for a fraction of the price until the weather cleared up a bit and came back around a few days later. We are all now together in White Sound, Green Turtle Cay, Abaco.

We hope you all had a Happy Christmas!

Happy New Year to Everyone!

To be continued when we have a better WiFi connection.

South From Vero

2009-12-08T10:41:00.005-05:00

The Thanksgiving potluck at the park in Vero Beach was quite festive and there seemed to be plenty of food to go around including the small turkey and dressing and gravy that we managed to cook in our tiny galley. We sat with our mooring mates, Franz and Louise, and other folks we had met along the way.

Franz had tried to teach me how to fish to no avail, but he gave me a catfish to use as bait in my crab trap. My first (and only) catch was a barely legal blue crab which I steamed the next morning and awarded the claws to Franz. It was quite tasty.

We had a rather spectacular sunrise one morning at Vero.

One boat came in with most of his mast missing and the highly experienced owner said that it broke on a calm day just off an inlet.

We spent some leisure time setting the boat up for the holidays with bows and wreaths and lights from the Dollar Store. I have enhanced the lights with PhotoShop since they did not photograph well. The little lights are LED and are powered by their own solar cells and batteries. They come on automatically at dusk.

The full moon one night was quite beautiful and reminded me of the song from The Fantasticks. (This photo is not PhotoShopped.)

When we finally headed south from "Velcro Beach" (I think Jimmy Buffet might have come up with the name because you tend to "stick" there because it is so well set up for the cruisers), we ran past all kinds of interesting boats including what looked like a matched pair of Elcos.

We spent a couple of nights in North Lake Worth as many thunderstorms came through. Erik and Judith on Bravo were anchored nearby.

More interesting boats popped up as we went by the Lake Worth Inlet and Palm Beach. The one on the right is the Bounty.

These kids wanted to show us the fish they caught -- or were they just rubbing it in that the Skipper was still "fishless"?

We ran by Lighthouse Point where we had spent some good times with the Bodens and watched the busy traffic at Hillsboro Inlet. There are many inlets, but few really "safe" ones. The smaller ones are labelled "used by locals and fishermen" in the guides. In other words, you have got to be nuts if you go through this inlet in anything but absolutely perfectly calm conditions with no tide or current and have a native Floridian (about 1% of the population) guide with you.

THE SOCIALIZATION OF MANATEES

Once you get into South Florida, there are all kinds of "Manatee Zones", restricting boat movement in one way or another. In truth, boats with their propellers can be fatal to the once-endangered manatees, but the reality is a bit more political, methinks.

Note that the "Summer Manatees" must be more agile than the winter ones, since they apparently can avoid boats going 5 MPH faster. Note also that few people live in their winter cottages along the shore in summer.

We have noticed in the past that manatees are upwardly mobile socially and tend to hang out off the very expensive mega-mansions and condos of the super-rich. There are far more manatee speed restrictions in these areas than off trailer parks and undeveloped land. (I refuse to believe that politics or payoffs would have had anything to do with these designations for the betterment of these lovely Rubenesque mammals.)

As upwardly mobile as these animals may be, there are still some areas where they can only afford to go on winter weekends. I haven't yet read the research that shows how they learned to read calendars and clocks, but I am delighted that some government grant or other was able to furnish them the opportunity.

Some new signs are beginning to show up that weren't in evidence two years ago. Do they signify a little less corruption in government and government-appointed employees or the simple fact that scientific research has shown that manatees are no longer endangered and that they better find another way to restrict the speed of boats off rich people's winter homes? Next year, we expect that all the manatee signs will be replaced with ones that read:

FILTHY RICH PEOPLE HABITAT
Anyone throwing a wake of any sort

will be shot.

We finally found Fort Lauderdale, dubbed "Fort Liquordale" by many racing sailors. It is wall-to-wall boats of every size and description. Every house is on a man-made canal with its own boat dock. The land the houses sit on was created from the dredging spoils from the creation of these canals.

This is definitely the land of, "Mine is bigger and better than yours!" You build a multi-million dollar two or three story winter cottage on the landfill (usually only 2-3 feet above sea level) that goes for $6,000,000 for a canal-front or ICW front lot. Then you put your 4 story mega-yacht on the dock in front of it so you can't see the water!

We went past the Los Olas City Marina where we had stopped a couple of times before and saw a sister ship in one of the slips. The Water Taxi is a great tour as well as a great way to get around the city.

Bahia Mar is supposed to be the biggest marina in the world or something like that. There is no question that it has an impressive array of huge motor yachts, with hail ports like the Cayman Islands and other places where the owners can avoid taxes, which never seem to leave the dock. They do, however, provide employment for the armies of crew and boat cleaners who religiously wash the boats down every day in a state which has signs all over the place to "Conserve Water."

We anchored in Lake Sylvia, just beyond Bahia Mar and quite close to Port Everglades Inlet as the crow flies. Note the departing cruise ship in the background on the left.

The plan is to hang around here and maybe North Miami (a nice harbor only 14 miles away) until a "weather window" opens up for the passage across to West End and the Abacos. We will leave from Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale) when and if the window comes.

With a little luck, the next chapter of this "Saga" will come from somewhere on the other side!

Northern Florida

2009-11-25T19:24:00.006-05:00

We made some cell phone calls to try to track down spark plugs for our sick outboard as we went from Georgia to Florida and past Fernandina. They claim that the shrimp business really started there. They also have two big paper plants which belch rather aromatic smoke which the locals call "the smell of money." We have never stopped there and hope to in the future. Apparently the old town has a great deal of charm, largely because Flagler's railroad completely bypassed it.

We finally raised someone at Amelia Island Yacht Basin who said he would track them down one way or another. When he asked for my name so he could call back, he immediately said, "I'll bet you own a Camano Troll!" It turns out we had been in communication with Tom and Gerrie Clare two years before when we were heading south and they were finishing up the Great Loop on a sister ship. We ended up waving to each other as we passed going in opposite directions just south of St Augustine. (See our December 2007 blog.)

Tom now works part-time at the marina where he has a slip for the boat. He found the spark plugs for us at the local NAPA, offered us a discounted slip for the night at the marina next to his boat, took us shopping, took us home to his wife for a gourmet dinner and good conversation, and sent us back to the boat with some delicious home-made frozen lasagna. It was a delightful day and evening and we thank them both for putting up with us boat orphans.

We waited for a while the next morning since we had a pea soup fog worthy of Maine in July. We felt our way down the ICW for a while, but it cleared by the time we got to the busy St. Johns River junction.

We pushed on through to Saint Augustine, one of our favorite cities but one of our least favorite anchorages because of strong currents and opposing winds.

We paid our $10 to park the dinghy at the Municipal Marina and made like tourists both on foot and on the Trolley Tour. Saint Augustine purports to be the oldest continuous European settlement in America and is really quite beautiful with a very strong Spanish history, as well as French and English and, of course, American.

One of the streets is canopied by "live oaks" which are hundreds of years old. The trolley also took us over to the beach and the lighthouse. We didn't walk up to the top of the lighthouse, but we did watch some surfers at the fishing pier for a while.

Back at the anchorage, we discovered that Summertime from our home port and one of our clubs had dropped her hook nearby. We left fairly early the next morning and looked back at the progress being made on the multi-year reconstruction of the historic Bridge of Lions.

The Art of the Slow Pass

When you are in a sailboat or a slow powerboat, one of the most unnerving sights is to see a large sportsfisherman coming in either direction at full speed, pulling a HUGE wake. If he continues his course and speed he will, at the very least, create great discomfort aboard the slower boat and, at worst, create some real damage and personal injury with his wake.

ICW etiquette demands that the slower boat slow down even further so that the faster boat can slow down enough to throw a much smaller wake but still get by without taking all day. If the faster boat is passing from astern, the slower boat moves in behind it as quickly as possible after the "slow pass" and both resume their normal speeds. If they are passing in opposite directions, both slow so that they are throwing smaller wakes and they angle across each other's wake and resume speed. If the faster boat does NOT slow down after the slow boat has significantly reduced her speed, MAJOR problems can occur since the slower boat has reduced its ability to steer at idle speed and can be left to wallow helplessly in the swells left by the jerk who, rumor has it, compensates for deficiencies in his own manhood with a heavy-handed throttle. Sometimes the slow pass is preceded by a radio call on VHF Channel 16 or horn signals, but usually eye contact or a wave and an obvious speed change is sufficient.

[END OF LESSON FOR TODAY.]

After Saint Augustine, we passed Fort Matanzas, the scene of the final annihilation of the last 300 Frenchmen in that part of Florida by the victorious Spaniards. The fort was built later and never saw action, but supposedly discouraged invasions through the Matanzas Inlet.

We spent the night at anchor in Rockhouse Creek, just inside the Ponce de Leon inlet north of New Smyrna. It's a fun dinghy ride out to the inlet past all the shoals. We had passed an old friend from home aboard Nomad who has been doing this trip every year for something like 24 years. They anchored near us for two nights.

Florida is constantly building new canals into which they can put their yachts and new land from the sand dredged up from the ICW channels onto which they can put their mega-mansions and condos. It seems like one big Disneyland for wealthy adults at times.

Along the cut canals are more modest homes, some with very creative boat houses at the ends of their short docks. Elsewhere, there are true "house" boats beside the channel.

The route south took us through the Haulover Canal and past NASA's huge assembly building across from Titusville. We missed a shuttle launch by about a week.

We passed friends of my brother's in Peace who we had seen in Abaco two years ago and who said they were heading there again this year. About six ominous looking go-fast boats from US Customs and Immigration were involved in some kind of simulation as we were going by. Note the masks or whatever they are wearing.

Even the pros have problems. This was a pushboat and large barge with large concrete beams aboard which apparently ran aground in the ICW at close to high tide.

There are all kinds of islands along the dredged portions of the ICW which were made from the dredging spoils. Over the years, they have been seeded by wind and tides and birds and have become their own complete ecosystems.

Our goal was the Vero Beach City Marina where we are rafted with some other boats on a mooring, will use the free shuttle bus to go shopping, and share a Thanksgiving potluck dinner with over 100 other boaters from the moorings and docks -- the great majority being "snowbirds" like us on their way further south for the winter.

Charleston, SC to Florida

2009-11-25T11:52:00.001-05:00

Once we were sure Sesame was safely tied up and plugged in, we rented a car to drive south to Kissimme, Florida to see our daughter Lyz and her family just before they moved to Dallas for Chris's new job.

We got to play with the grandsons, Matthew (4 months) and Mikey (3 years).

"Poppie" got to take Mikey and Matthew out trick or treating. Mikey was Woody, from Toy Story, riding his horse Bullseye(?). Matthew was either a dragon or a lizard, take your pick.

After a relatively chaotic week getting Chris to pack the SUV with everything they would need to live for at least 2 months in the temporary apartment in Dallas that would be their home until their new MacMansion is finished, we saw him off on Friday for his 2-day drive with the "stuff" and the dog. Two days later we put Lyz and the boys on the plane for Dallas and drove back to Charleston. We left the house pretty much "as is" for the professional movers to take care of since they are being paid by Chris's new employer.

As we walked the Megadock at the Municipal Marina, we discovered that we had namesake boats docked on either side of the pier.

We spent a couple of days shopping and being tourists since we had the expensive luxury of a slip with electricity (= airconditioning and heating!).

We toured one of the oldest town houses in the city and had lunch at a seafood joint where the waitresses wore interesting shirts.

We did some browsing and Christmas shopping at The Market. (Guess who gets the sweet grass basket?) The Market is a string of roofed open-air shops just behind the original slave market which is now a museum.

We were treated to a beautiful sunset over the anchorage one night.

We were anxious to get going again after a few days of bad weather and took a last quick tour around the marina which hosted a huge variety of boats from our little 28-footer

to The Sublime

and The Ridiculous

We left Charleston and headed south through many opening bridges, all of which we had to wait for on our first trip down the ICW on our Nonsuch 30 sailboat with its 54' mast. Now we only have a 14' "air draft" and are able to sneak through a lot of the bridges while they are closed.

Along the way, we saw a lot of dashed dreams, aka: boats that could be bought cheap!

Most of them were "water stored".

In the same areas there were some fairly impressive "winter cottages".

The "riparian rights" around here seem to guarantee everyone the right to build a dock to the edge of navigable water and everyone seems to take advantage of it, no matter how long the dock. And they don't share! Each and every house has its own dock, some of which I swear are a mile long!

More modest houses celebrate the few "forested" clumps of land in the middle of the marshes. The only visible access is through many miles of winding creeks between the house and the mainland.

As we got into Georgia, we passed the Bonaventure Cemetery made famous by the book and movie The Garden of Good and Evil. We also passed Moon River which was actually named after the song rather than vice versa.

There is a steady stream of "snowbirders" on their way south. Sometimes, one misses a turn and has to wait for BoatUS, Tow Boat, or a tide change.

We passed the Jekyll Island Hotel, the winter home of the mega-rich in the 20s and 30s, now owned by the state but still open to the public as a combination luxury hotel-museum-restaurant. We stayed at the dock in the foreground on our first trip south in our sailboat, but there is no longer any water there.

Our last stop in Georgia was Cumberland Island, another home of the rich and famous until the Germans scared then all away in the 1940s with their U-boats. The skipper had planned to spend a day ashore and maybe even take a swim in the ocean on the far side, but the dinghy engine failed to start and we had no replacement spark plugs, so we decided to head on to Florida.

The Dismal Swamp to Charleston, SC

2009-10-31T18:47:00.001-04:00

We were the first one down the road in the misty morning, heading for the first lock-through at 8:30 AM at the far end of the canal on our way to Elizabeth City.

We went under the double bridge that leads into Elizabeth City and docked at the free dock downtown. After we did a little organizing on the boat, we hired a cab to take the Skipper to the hospital for a scheduled blood test and the Admiral to the market for a little grocery shopping. We met back at the boat and used our new cart to drag the laundry a few blocks to the laundromat. The Admiral went back to the boat while the Skipper stopped briefly at the Rose Buddies' wine party on the dock, a tradition started many years ago by some gentlemen in the town to welcome transient boaters. It was such a busy day, that I forgot to take pictures!

Our next anchorage was Dowry Creek, just past the marina there. The next morning was pretty spectacular as mornings often are when you get up early enough to see them. We were now in a rush to get all the way to Charleston, SC before we left the boat to go to Kissimmee because the entire Intracoastal Waterway was scheduled to be closed on either November 10 or 13 for 10 days for the replacement of the Ben Sawyer Bridge. We didn't want to be caught on the wrong side of the closure when we came back from Florida because there are not very many nice and/or inexpensive places to stay for that long just north of Charleston and the way around the outside (out in the ocean) was long and totally dependent on good weather.

So we pushed on to Oriental, one of our favorite places and made a reservation for two nights at the Oriental Marina to wait out another wind storm before we crossed the Neuse River again. Our slip was right across from "The Bean", a great coffee shop with a lot off locals sitting on the porch judging one's docking skills.

Our timing was perfect because there was a barbecue and apple pie contest the second night we were there for only $10/person. The proceeds went to charity so we felt we were making a major contribution to humanity by chowing down on pork barbecue, beans, coleslaw, and apple pie -- despite our diets.

The weather was good enough the next day for a long trip down the Waterway past Beaufort (Bow-fort) and Morehead City, through Bogue Sound, past Swansboro and into the middle of the U.S. Marines major training ground. Mile Hammock is an excellent harbor, but no one is allowed to set foot ashore. There were a number of boats anchored there and we anchored right next to the old hulk of a landing craft they use for training.

Off again the next morning for our another marathon trip past the Surf City Bridge and the Topsails. We had intended to stop at Carolina Beach but we made the decision to push on through and head down the aptly named Cape Fear River in less than perfect conditions. Luckily, the wind abated and the tide turned just as we started down and we had a very pleasant trip to an anchorage called The Pipeline in Southport.

Another extended long trip in the effort to get to Charleston in time to see our daughter and her family off took us through the marvelous old pontoon bridge and the border between North and South Carolina at the Calabash river.

We went by Barefoot Landing which used to be a free dock near a shopping and entertainment complex in Myrtle Beach but is now an inexpensive facility with a few amenities. We saw what looks like a real lighthouse outside Coquina Harbor, but there is certainly no navigational purpose for it alongside a man made ditch at the entrance of a man-made harbor. A mystery to be researched later?

Myrtle Beach is wall-to-wall golf courses. One has a parking lot on one side of the ICW and the course on the other. The golfers take an aerial tramway across.

Every other condo complex seems to have a golf course for its front yard. It seems as if there are more golf holes that there are people to aim little balls at them!

We came down the beautiful Waccamaw River past Osprey Marina where we had stayed a couple of times. There is a little anchorage with some houseboats (some sunk) just before Bucksport, which seems to have come back from the dead -- at least for the moment.

We went just a few more miles down the river and anchored in Bull Creek, just beyond the north end of Prince Creek.

We continued down the Waccamaw River and made a quick stop at Georgetown for fuel and fresh shrimp at the shrimp dock. We went across Winyah Bay which includes the inlet that we would have to take if we had to detour around the ICW closing. Thank goodness, we were now on a schedule that would get us past the problem in time!

We bypassed McClellanville, which sounds like an interesting stop and pulled into Awendaw Creek which is actually a very shallow inlet from the ocean.

One of the boats coming in off the ocean pulled alongside and asked if we would like some blue crabs. The answer, of course, was an enthusiastic affirmative and he passed a large plastic box across which the Skipper emptied into the largest bucket aboard. There were so many that they overflowed onto the cockpit and the skipper's bare feet. A very lively dance ensued followed by the donning of shoes and the capture of many errant and combative crabs. They were soon subdued and put into the large crab and lobster pot we always carry which resulted in a much quieter -- and tastier -- passle of crabs. After an exhausting evening picking crabs, the Skipper fell into his bunk for a refreshing sleep and sweet dreams. The next morning returned the favor with another gorgeous sunrise over the ocean.

On the way to Awendaw, we had gotten a report that the ICW closure was postponed to the end of November! We were tempted to turn back and take the boat back to leave her at the Osprey Marina at about half the price of the Charleston City Marina where we now had reservations. But we pressed on since we were now only half a day from Charleston. As we passed the bridge, it was quite apparent that it wasn't close to be ready for the final installation of a new bridge.

We were given a very nice inside slip at Charleston City Marina where the boat will be for a couple of weeks while we drive a rental car to visit our daughter and her family in Kissimmee, Florida until we put them on a plane for Dallas on the 7th. We left a jack-o-lantern on the bow to protect Sesame while we are gone. It has a solar charged light which should turn on every night automatically and scare any miscreants away.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Deltaville, VA to The Dismal Swamp

2009-10-30T20:18:00.006-04:00

We left the comfort of St. Jeromes Creek in the face of poor forecasts in the coming few days which would make it uncomfortable getting across the wide mouth of the Potomoc River.

We went inside the Smith Point lighthouse and headed for Jackson Creek in Deltaville, Virginia where we had weathered a few storms and cold weather in previous years.

It was a good day to travel and we arrived in the creek while it was still very pleasant. For a minute, we thought we might have taken a wrong turn and were in front of Mount Vernon which we had passed on the way up the Potomoc a couple of years ago. It turned out that it was just some wannabee who wanted a pretentious house on Jackson Creek.

A closer look around revealed a bunch of beautiful Chesapeake work boats. We also noticed that some of the leaves had begun to turn.

A young guy came by a few times paddling a surf board with totally dry clothes. He moved it with great ease and speed. I am sure I would have drowned trying the same thing! He said his 67-year-old father goes out on it all the time in all kinds of weather.

It then commenced to blow pretty hard and rain quite steadily for 6 days and nights. Other boats came in to the marina or the anchorage, but very few left because of the lousy weather. We were glad to be on a boat because there was flooding over a wide area of the bay. The local yacht club dock was close to two feet under water.

On the seventh morning, we saw our first sunrise in many days and decided it was time to head toward Norfolk. We were part of a long parade of all the boats who had been gathering and hiding out for the last few days.

The sailboats had enough breeze to motorsail as we all headed toward the sun and the warmth of the south. We had some schedule constraints since we had just heard that our daughter and her family were moving from Florida to Dallas on the second week of November and we wanted to find a place to leave the boat so we could drive down for a visit before they left.

We passed a number of schooners who were heading north. Either they were returning from a rendezvous around Norfolk or were heading for one in the Chesapeake -- or both!

We passed through Norfolk, figuring that we could get to the Dismal Swamp and maybe even through the first lock and up to the North Carolina Visitors Center free dock.

A whole fleet of these guys rushed by us probably protecting us from the terrorists who were on their way in from the ocean. We went by the museum with its battleship and a number of active warships in drydock or under repair and refurbishment in the docks.

We successfully got through the bridges before one or them shut down for two hours at rush hour and hung a right into the Dismal Swamp Canal.

We made it to the last opening of the Deep Creek Lock with time to spare and found a bigger trawler waiting there. Once in the lock, we could see where we were in relation to the rest of the world (or the East Coast of the US anyway).

The doors behind us closed and water rushed in in front of us to raise us about 8 feet up before the doors in front of us opened and let us out of the box.

We followed the other trawler through the canal past the old Superintendent's house which has deteriorated a lot in the last two years since we saw it last.

As it began to get dark, we passed into North Carolina and pulled into the North Carolina Welcome Center at dusk to tie alongside another boat for the night.

The next day we planned to go through the other lock early in the morning in order to get to the free docks at Elizabeth City to run some errands, do some laundry, get a scheduled blood test for the skipper, and do some grocery shopping.

Upper Chesapeake Bay

2009-10-12T09:49:00.005-04:00

We watched Arabella, a charter yacht, heading through the C&D Canal from our free berth at the floating dock. And then went to the Tap Room again for some more crabs and the Admiral's birthday dinner (she had ravioli).

After three days, we headed on down the Bay toward Annapolis, catching up with Charisma (spelled with the Greek letters) who we raced against for many years in Off Soundings.

The weather was still a bit unsettled, but it wasn't a bad trip. The sailboats were slogging through it with reefed sails.

Sandy Point Lighthouse is just north of the Bay Bridge.

We anchored in Spa Creek in Annapolis for a few days and woke up to a number of pretty sunrises. We had great visits from the Skipper's two children and their spice and some of the grandchildren. We also met up with Patty (our daughter's good friend from college) and Jerry for a nice Mexican Dinner at a neighborhood restaurant away from the touristy downtown.

Considering the fact that it was a Boat Show week, the anchorage was relatively quiet. There were a lot of people around, however, and it was a bit difficult to get the dinghy into one of the road endings to be able to walk ashore.

We went to the first day of the Sailboat Show (we took the water taxi from the boat to the shore), mostly to look at the equipment (toy) booths. We bought one toy -- a wind scoop with screen that will fit in a port hole to increase ventilation in hot weather, at least when there is a breeze.

After another day's wait for good weather, we departed toward Solomons Island, passing a lovely anchored Concordia yawl on the way through the outer anchorage.

It was a fairly uneventful trip this time as we passed by the Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse which I think may be the last screwpile lighthouse outside a museum. Then we hung a right at Cove Point toward Solomons Island.

There was a Krogen rendezvous at Calvert Marina where we had driven to the Trawler Fest the week before from Annapolis with friends from Shangri La. We went by the Calvert Museum with its lighthouse and tour boat.

It's a pretty exclusive area, but there are some run-down docks, including this one complete with a sunken 35-40 foot boat. We dinghied ashore for a few groceries, another dozen crabs for the skipper, and a dozen cherrystone clams which we indulged in that evening.

The next morning it was off toward St. Jerome Creek to meet up with the skipper's brother on his boat. There is a nice house right at the mouth of the creek. We anchored off a mutual friends' house. Unfortunately, they were off on a short cruise on their own boat, so we missed them. We hope to catch them on the way home in the spring.

Brother Jock and his crew showed up a little later and we rafted together for cocktail hour before splitting off for the night. The sunrise the next morning was pretty spectacular. (That's Jock's boat on the left.) We got an early start in somewhat questionable weather and discovered that it was snottier than we expected, so we turned tail and headed back to the anchorage to wait for more favorable conditions.

So, here we sit in a lovely protected cove while we listen to much bigger boats on the marine radio talking about the cruddy conditions out on the Bay. Nothing much to do but to listen to music, read books on our Kindles, and write a blog! It sure beats work!

[NOTE: I have shrunk all the photos this time because it makes it easier to edit the post. A simple click on any of them will enlarge it. They are all high resolution. Once it's enlarged, you can right click on it and save it if you want to.]