CHARLESTON

Wednesday, April 29

We spent our layover day in Beaufort tied to the dock, emerging for a few errands and some touristing between rain showers. I got a couple of projects done on the boat, but added to the list of more things to do.

4 PDQ catamarans in a row at Beaufort

Thursday April 30

Beautiful morning with a clear blue sky and minimal wind. After a leisurely cup of coffee or two we left Beaufort and headed north to Charleston in the company of two other PDQ 34s, HERON and GEMINI. The tidal currents in this area are quite strong, running 2-3 knots. It was great when we had the current and wind with us - like riding a bike downhill with a tailwind. Under those conditions we were making around 15 knots, but then the channels would change and all of a sudden we were going against the current and against the wind. Then our speed would sometimes drop to 9 or 10 knots. Still, a beautiful day to be out on the water.

We got into Charleston early afternoon and after getting tied up at a marina, walked into the historic district. It was a pretty good walk for Elaine, considering she just got her cast off two weeks ago. At that time, the surgeon said she might be off her crutches in 7-10 days (she tossed them as soon as we got home from his office) and in her "walking boot" for a month. Today's walk was probably about 2 miles, and she did it without the boot...

Notes from Elaine

Now that we are in Charleston, South Carolina, Dave is getting his shrimp and grits fix.  And I bought grits at a grocery store today, since I had a monstrously hard time finding it in Marin. Seemed logical at the time, although I'm not sure if we can eat 2 pounds of grits during our travels.

Throughout northern Florida and Georgia, I could hear the shrimp "crackling" under the boat - apparently they snap their claws for propulsion - and sometimes it is so loud, I think it is raining outside. I learned this all a few years ago (I thought our electronics were buzzing) when we traveled south through the region - the things they never tell you when you live on a boat...

I am constantly surprised at my dearth of knowledge of American history as we make our way up the coast. It seems I am constantly trying to brush up on my history before I visit a historical site. It is so much more interesting in person than learning in a textbook though. And so we push on northward...

UP TO SOUTH CAROLINA

Monday, April 27

Got an early start today after a reasonable night at anchor. Although we were in protected water, the strong winds kept the boat moving all night, and that movement produced a few noises that were occasionally distracting. Also, since there was such a strong tidal current where we anchored, the boat was oriented to the current rather than to the wind. Since it was pretty warm and humid, it was uncomfortable when the wind hit on the port side, rather than the starboard side where our cabin is. Ultimately the temperature cooled off and we got a reasonable amount of sleep.

The early start was needed if we were to catch up to the rest of our group. We were still behind a day from our stay-over in St. Augustine. The goal was was to get to Isle of Hope, Georgia by the end of the day. This meant covering around 110 nautical miles (126+ statute miles) in one day. Not impossible, but a long day. Unfortunately, we ran into some very strong headwinds of 15-20 knots on and off throughout the day and the tidal currents seemed to always be going against us. This meant instead of going around 12 knots (14 mph) we would often drop down to around 10 knots (11+ mph). The wind felt cold up on the flybridge, but we bundled up (i.e. put on long pants and long sleeved shirts with windbreakers) and kept on going. In theory, we could control the boat from inside the cabin, but 1) it seems more adventurous to be outside and 2) the depth finder does not always read out in the cabin. On the ICW, there are many, many areas of shallow water, so the depth finder becomes a very important instrument.

On our way south a couple of years ago, there was one section of the ICW which was incredibly shallow - the Little Mud River in southern Georgia. That was the only time I have seen my depth finder readout at “0.” Luckily, we did not get stuck at the time, but it was a bit harrowing. We were transiting that very same area today, so keeping a harp lookout on the depth was crucial.

Actually, it turned out a bit anticlimactic since they have since dredged the area and the shallowest we saw was around 6 feet. Our boat “draws” only 2 feet 4 inches - a very shallow depth compared to most boats, so it is rare that we get into too skinny of water.

Isle of Hope Marina

Well, we made it into Isle of Hope by around 4PM and, with a little help from our friends, got a slip at the marina so we didn’t have to anchor out and use our dinghy to get to dinner. Dinner was at a nearby restaurant, Driftaway, known for their shrimp & grits. They were incredibly good!

Tuesday, April 28

There’s a weather front moving in soon, so people are anxious to get going. We, however, decided to spend the morning in Savannah, since we had never been there and the marina offered a courtesy car for our use. We went to the historic district, had a quick breakfast & walked around a bit.  We decided Savannah is not a “morning” town. It was very pretty, but not much going on at 10 AM on a Tuesday morning. We stopped by the grocery store for a bit more food, then got underway by about 11AM.

The front coming in is causing some very strong winds in the 20-25 knot range. Most of the time, these winds don’t affect the protected waterways much, but we occasionally have to cross larger bodies of water where rivers empty out into the Atlantic. Some of these “sounds” can be several miles across, very exposed to the winds and very choppy. We crossed a few today - Savannah River Inlet, Calibogue Sound and Port Royal Sound - running into 3-5 foot waves on occasion.

A passenger ship on the narrow ICW

We made it as far as Beaufort (bew-furd) South Carolina - not to be confused with Beaufort (bo-fort), North Carolina. It’s important to remember the correct pronunciation so one does not offend the locals.We are currently at the Downtown Marina, very centrally located in this charming little town, and I think we will have an extra lay-over day here tomorrow since the storm is due in tomorrow morning with very heavy rain and wind. After the front passes through, it’s supposed to warm up and be sunny for the next week, so we’ll sit this one out and head up to Charleston, NC in a coupe of days.

GETTING CLOSE TO GEORGIA

Saturday, April 25

After a nice night on the mooring, surrounded by dolphins, we moved into a slip at St. Augustine Municipal Marina - primarily so that I could get some work done on the boat. First on the list was to replace both start batteries for the main engines. Caught a ride over to the auto parts store and, after a little futzing around about battery sizes, ultimately got 2 new batteries installed. This solved the electrical problem we had been having, and it was nice having the reliability of two brand new batteries.

Next on the list was to replace a 12 volt outlet (like a “cigarette lighter” outlet) up on the bridge. We use my iPad for back-up navigation and to access an ICW guide, so it is nice to keep it on and charged up. The 12 volt adapter we had been using in the outlet did not give adequate amperage, so I replaced the whole unit with a 12 volt double USB outlet which will keep the iPad going all day, and leave an extra port for phone charging, etc..

Since the forecasted rain and thundershowers didn’t materialize by afternoon, I kept going on the list and started installing the cell signal amplifier. This is a three-part system consisting of an external antenna, the 12 volt-powered amplifier and an internal antenna. There are restrictions for placement of the external antenna relative to other antennae, so I decided to replace the old Sirius satellite antenna (which we don’t use) with the cellular one. I also got the amplifier installed and wiring run to connect it to the external antenna, but then ran out of energy.

The new cell amplifier antenna

Elaine’s suggestion of heading into town for a cold beer was too tempting. We ended up having a couple of cold ones, walking around a bit then stopping at a Cuban restaurant for dinner, complete with Sangria. Luckily that gave me time for a short nap back at the boat before the Warriors/Pelican game came on in the marina lounge.

Sunday, April 26

A leisurely start saw us leaving St. Augustine around 9AM. We set a relaxing “trawler” pace of 6-8 knots for the first few hours before stopping for fuel at Palm Cove Marina near Jacksonville.

Elaine doing Physical Therapy on the bridge

We then upped the speed, but fought a strong headwind and unfavorable currents for the whole day. At Fernandina Beach we had to make a decision whether or not to proceed across Cumberland Sound or anchor out for the evening. It was already 4PM, we were tired from the sun and wind and the Sound had pretty rough water conditions with no place to bail out for about another 15 miles, so we pulled into Bell’s Creek and anchored in semi-sheltered water. The only protection around is vast fields of marshes which do calm the water, but don’t do much for protection from the wind.

Bell's Creek anchorage

Plan for tomorrow is get an early start to, hopefully, cross Cumberland Sound while the wind/tide conditions are right, then keep on heading north. The rest of the PDQ Catamaran group is now about a day ahead of us, so I kind of doubt we will be catching up soon, but that’s okay - we have no deadlines…

ON THE ICW

The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (for our non-boating friends) is a series of linked waterways along the East Coast that allows one to travel in mostly protected water from Florida as far north as New Jersey. We are currently on the ICW, backtracking our route down from the Chesapeake Bay a couple of years ago. We hope to take a little more time going up than we took coming down, since we were headed south in December and were in a hurry to get to a warmer climate. The ICW varies from man-made canals to natural bayous, to rivers to expansive sounds, but, in Florida, it often consists of fairly narrow channels that can be lined with anything from multi-million dollar mansions to rickety fishing shanties. Other than these narrow channels, there are many lagoons behind barrier islands, separating the calmer water from the Atlantic Ocean and providing many great anchorage sites.

Typical Florida ICW view

It was a beautiful anchorage last night — until a run-down sailboat dropped anchor nearby and, pretty much, ruined the neighborhood. Loud music, raunchy, overly loud conversation and a dog barking. I had been considering sleeping outside on the bridge where the breeze was nice and cool and the view of the stars was magnificent, but ended up in the cabin with the fan on “high” to drown out the noise.

Today started out with decent weather, but we had rain on & off starting around 10 AM. Some of the rain squalls were so heavy we had to slow down due to reduced visibility. In general, I like to stay up on the flybridge, even with the heavy rains, to dodge all the crab pot floats so that I don’t get the lines wrapped up around the propshaft. If that happens (and it has) it means diving down to cut the lines and, hopefully, be on your way. However, there is always the risk that the prop and/or propshaft will be damaged — big $$ repairs! Today I stayed up on the flybridge, in my trusty foul weather gear, until the lightning started. At that point it’s down to the lower helm and the relative safety of the cabin.

Rain squalls on the horizon

I think we have finally solved the issue of whether or not manatees exist, although we have no photographic proof! We did see a couple of them today as we were cruising through the Haulout Canal — man, are they huge!

It ended up being a fairly long day as we anchored just above New Smyrna at about 5PM. By then it was pretty warm, so I jumped into the water to wash my clothes. At 77 degrees, the water was refreshing, but my "rinse cycle" didn't last too long.

I commented to Elaine that if I had just completed a 9-5 day of driving I would have been tired, but a full day at the helm really wasn’t that bad. 

Lighthouse at Ponce de Leon Inlet as we left our anchorage early morning

Friday April 25

Had a very quiet and restful night at anchor and headed out this morning with St. Augustine as our destination. We had stopped at St. Augustine a couple of years ago on our way south, and enjoyed it so much we decided to lay over for a day. At The time (December), the holiday lights were up and even the rainy weather didn’t detract from the charm of the small city. Getting your boat settled in here, though can be a challenge. There is always a very strong tidal current at the municipal marina and today was no exception. We were late at requesting a slip for the night, so all we could get was a mooring (for our non-boating friends, essentially a permanent anchor connected to a buoy to which one ties up). We were assigned a mooring which was very near the ocean inlet and very exposed to the winds. The end result was rough water conditions which were not comfortable. We managed to get switched to another mooring which was more protected, although much further from the marina docks. This meant a longer dinghy ride to get to town, but the calmer conditions were worth it.

We met several friends here for dinner - all fellow boat owners heading north for the season. It did mean getting dressed up a bit on the boat, then climbing into the dinghy for the ride to the dock, but even in the moderately strong winds, we arrived dry and intact. Heading back to the boat, after a very sociable dinner, we “improvised” navigation lights with our $2.50 solar-powered garden light which Elaine held high on the dinghy trip back.

The relatively minor electrical issues we have had with the boat the past couple of days have, I think, been solved. There are two battery systems on board - the engine start batteries and the “house” batteries (which supply our daily power for lights, refrigerator, water pumps, etc.). We have had to combine these two systems manually to get the engines started the past few days, and the battery monitors have given confusing read-outs regarding the state-of-charge for the start batteries. Well, today I finally crawled into the engine room and measured the battery charge with a hand-held meter and found that the start batteries are dead. These batteries have been on the boat since we bought her, so it’s not really surprising that they are no longer taking a charge. However, that means the task for tomorrow is to find new start batteries here in St. Augustine tomorrow and get them on board. Oh well, I didn’t have much on my calendar for tomorrow anyway…

ON OUR WAY!!!

OKAY!!! We left the dock pretty much on schedule, although not without a couple of hiccups.

I have not had time to clean the boat and really couldn’t stand the thought of traveling in such a dirty vessel, so I was just going to rinse it off this morning.Well, that dirt that has been accumulating the past several months wouldn’t just rinse off, so I ended up scrubbing the boat with a brush and soap. Now we had a clean boat and were ready to go. Everything was in its “voyaging” place, all the appropriate accoutrements were on the flybridge, let’s just start the engines and get out of here.

Hmmm. No response when I turn the key. One battery monitor shows the batteries at full charge, the other battery monitor shows the batteries completely dead. A couple of phone calls and a little electrical improvisation and TaDa!! the engines started.

Elaine, at the helm, got us off the dock and out into the waterway while I handled the deck chores, and the rest of the cruising day was pretty uneventful. The usual sightings of dolphin, osprey, pelican, etc. Still haven’t spotted a manatee, so we’re not 100% sure they exist.

Elaine at the helm for a "not early" morning start

We decided not to stop for fuel on the way out since we had 3/4 full in the main tank, although the secondary tank was almost empty. This was enough to give us a couple of days of cruising, and we would be a lighter boat, with better fuel economy if we weren’t carrying that extra 100 or so gallons of fuel. Besides, it was not as if we were going to be out in the middle of nowhere. We’d be passing multiple cities and marinas on our way north and could stop for fuel most anywhere, even though we have our favorite spots with the best prices.

Relaxing in the "Admiral" position on the flybridge

We are now anchored behind Serenity Island (sounds exotic, but it’s really just the tailings from dredging the Intercoastal Waterway). After a few minor repairs on deck, a refreshing shower, and a Dark & Stormy, I’m waiting for the results of Elaine’s culinary skills as she works away in the galley. Hopefully a quiet, cool night, then we’ll be off in the morning for our next stop.

Notes from Elaine

 So we have finally started our trek northward. Usually I go around and get us ready to undock, unloosening the lines to set us free. Since I am wearing this cloddy boot, I took the helm while Dave undid the lines. “Don’t run into any boats” he says. Yes sir.

And although the run today was fairly routine, I was grateful for beautiful weather and no rain. We finally anchored off an island off the waterway, I am always amazed how the wildlife take us for granted – I watched a flock of twelve pelicans fly by no farther that 8 feet from our boat. They were so close I could see a fish dangling from one of the pelican’s beaks. And dinner ALWAYS tastes better outside on a boat watching the sunset - pasta with vodka sauce and italian sausage, arugula and goat cheese salad. And so our adventure begins...

Sunset at Melbourne FL

DETACHING THE DOCK VELCRO

A lot has happened since the last post. Elaine got her cast off and fitted with a "walking boot," we got the house buttoned up, spent ALL of Saturday getting from the West Coast to the East Coast and are busy with last minute things getting ready to leave the dock soon.

It's a funny thing with boats, but the longer they stay at a dock, the harder it is to get them away from it. People talk about "dock velcro" growing between the boat and the dock, so if you don't break that bond on a regular basis, you may never get away. Well, it looks like we will be ready to take off on Wednesday morning, with our first stop probably being Vero Beach. We actually would be able to go now, but, at the last minute, I ordered a cell phone amplifier for the boat and it is not scheduled to be delivered until Tuesday afternoon.

Cell coverage is pretty good all along the Eastern seaboard, but there are many areas with weak signals and some with no signal. When we were cruising south from Annapolis a couple of years ago we stayed in touch pretty well until we hit Georgia where we lost all cell contact. Ironically, I hear that the coverage has gotten worse over the past year or two since the telecommunication companies have upgraded and replaced their towers. There are more land-based towers, and perhaps better land-based coverage, but the range of each tower has been reduced. The customers they are trying to please are their  land customers, so the boaters get the worst part of this deal. The cell amplifier should increase the signal strength up to 50X, and since we are depending on a cell-based signal for internet service I figured it would be worthwhile.

Our "To Do" list is getting shorter and shorter. We did a grocery run to stock up the galley, a run to the liquor store for those essential "Dark and Stormy" elements, replaced the ship's clock battery and checked out all the systems on board to make sure everything worked. Other than waiting for the amplifier, we are down to just a couple of things left to do. I've been working on the outboard motor for the dinghy today and at least have it running, although it doesn't idle well. I had to clean the fuel system of a water/gas mixture, and I may consider disassembling the carburetor tomorrow to make sure there's no water in it. The last thing we will do is fill up IMPROV's fuel tanks on the way out of town. We haven't spent any time cleaning the exterior of the boat, but the torrential rains have helped a bit. I figure we can clean along the way.

I got a phone call from the oncologist who ran the investigational drug trial I participated in. Apparently the results of the trial hit the major news outlets today. The results of the trial were quite impressive and he wanted to know if I would consent to an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, representing the 22% of patients who had complete response with the drugs. We'll see if the logistics work out...

GETTIN' READY...

You're never completely ready to take off on a trip like this. At some point you just have to say "OK, this is the day we're leaving." Hmm, maybe "Okay, this is the week we're leaving." Well, we are going to leave sometime this month...


                                                         It's been a long time coming. In 2012 we sold our old boat,

Our previous boat, AD LIB,
a 37 ft trawler

sold our house, gave away our car, bought our current boat and left Chesapeake Bay

Annapolis, Fall 2012

in November, heading south. The plan was to spend Winter of 2012-13 in the Bahamas, then head north, cruising along the east coast of the US up to Canada and the Great Lakes. The story of how our plans got interrupted can be read here, but we are now, pretty much, back on track.

So, the general plan is to get back to Florida, get the boat in shape, fuel up, get some provisions on board and leave the dock somewhere between the 21st and the 23rd of April. An informal "flotilla" of boats like ours will be creeping up the east coast this Spring/Summer so we'll have some company of both old and new friends to socialize with along the way. Everyone will be on their own, but we will rendezvous now and then for sundowners, dinners, etc.

Our current boat, IMPROV, anchored in the Bahamas, Spring 2014

We don't have a specific end point, timeline or geographic goal set for this venture. We'll head north and see how far we get by the time we're ready to come home. Likewise, we'll see how the route works itself out. Once we're up to New York, the options include Long Island Sound &/or the Hudson River. Maybe New England, maybe Lake Champlain, maybe Erie Canal to the Great Lakes. A lot of thought went into naming our boat IMPROV, and even though it has already shown to be an appropriate name, I suspect this voyage will reinforce that.

Notes from Elaine

As Dave is getting ready for our voyage this year – fiddling with electronics, charts, buying assorted gadgets (most of which are unfamiliar to me) – I too am getting ready for the trip, namely, WHAT AM I GOING TO WEAR?  Since we have to fly to get to the boat, I have to schlep my seasonal clothes in suitcases and am thankful that I only have to bring a spring/summer combo. Hence, for the next few months, readers can spot me. “Oh, there’s Elaine – I recognize that shirt”.

For those of you who may not know, we probably would have been under way right now but we were delayed by my elective foot surgery. I have been sporting a bright lime green cast which will come off three days before we leave so I guess I will need to beef up my packing list with brightly colored accessories. And no, my walking boot does not count…

And so, we pack for our next adventure…