A Part of Cruising One Seldom Read About

We're back in Virginia at the marina where all this traveling began last fall. We must now make changes to our supplies based on our plan to sail up to Maine next month. Since we have a storage unit here, we can easily swap out those items that worked for our travel south for other things that will aid us heading north from here. Our bikes come off. We used them extensively in the Keys, but we don't expect them to be as useful, given our plans up north this year. We will put our kayaks back on the deck. We didn't take them south, but we missed them. We know they will be useful in NE. To save space, we only took the charts and guides we'd need as we traveled south. So now we must swap them for the northern set. Finally, we must change some our clothes for those we are more likely to need during our time in Maine. It seems a bit odd to need more cool weather clothing for Maine in the summer than we do in Florida during the winter months.

Beyond provisioning, we take time to visit with our older daughter who lives nearby, an important reason for continuing to use this as our home port. And we make sure all the boat systems and parts are working well. Our bimini front panel needs replacing and two other panels need repair. We're getting these items taken care of while we're here.

We currently have two important issues to address with the boat: re-seating the rudder bearing and figuring out why the engine oil drip and crankcase pressure issues haven't been resolved as a result of earlier work. The rudder fix will require us to haul the boat, so we can drop the rudder out to re-seat the bearing. We'll clean up the boat's hull of barnacles and such while it's out. Depending on the source of the engine problem, that too may require work while the boat is out of the water – perhaps as much as an engine overhaul - $$$ - yuck!! The anxiety of this sort of problem is part of the price we pay as we wish to continue this adventure. Of course these issues also make picking a departure date somewhat more difficult. But we will persist and continue to aim for a mid-June departure.

Since our daughters lives nearby, we take advantage and stay with her while the boat is out of the water. This will give us some time to review with her our possible routes for heading to Maine, since she will join us for the trip up there.

Then there are the other, non-boat issues to address while we are here. These include annual car registration and inspection, deciding whether we get our eyes checked and schedule physicals now or wait till we return in the fall. We're also near our medical insurance agent and our bank. Are there reasons to visit either while we're here or can we continue to deal with them from a distance? These and other questions must be thought through carefully, since unlike most people, we spend so little time in our home port.

While we must address all this in an organized fashion, we will also take advantage of the access to our car and drive to MA and NH for a brief visit with the rest of our family. I'm not sure how we ever had time to work.

Captain Bob

Carpe Diem

Back to Virginia

Our destination calls to us. (I could describe it as the homing instinct, but that would contradict a point made in an earlier blog.) We left Beaufort, NC knowing we had five days of travel ahead of us to return to our base marina in Mobjack Bay off the lower Chesapeake. Unlike the more southern portions of the ICW, this last leg should be plenty deep as long as we stay in the channel. There are no tide issues once we leave Adams Creek just north of Beaufort a ways until we reach the lock south of Norfolk. This is a stretch quite familiar to us, since we've traveled most of it seven times before. On the whole, this portion of the ICW is pretty benign. The one exception some might say would be the Albermarle Sound. About fifteen miles across, this relatively shallow body of water can be easily stirred up into a rather nasty state, and it has the reputation of being like this rather frequently. For us it wasn't too uncomfortable. We had the wind behind us, and we managed to get across before the afternoon winds kicked up the waves.

As cruisers head north across the Albermarle Sound, they are required to make a decision to either turn west and head for the Dismal Swamp route or more or less straight north to the Virginia Cut. Many fellow cruisers have told us how beautiful the Dismal Swamp route can be, but we've never opted for this route. The water depth is not that great, and logs have been known to lie under the surface. Boaters report that an occasional bump rarely causes harm. This spring the water depth was supposed to be pretty good for boaters, but we still passed on it in favor of the familiar Virginia Cut. As I reported in the beginning of this blog, our Virginia destination calls, and it appears that the Dismal Swamp option would likely require an extra day. Perhaps another year.

Now that we've traversed the Cut again in the spring, we were reminded of how beautiful this route is also. One travels in rather remote areas with aromatic smells of spring. We are certain there was jasmine growing out there. We just couldn't see it, but the distinctive smell wafted our way more than once. Additionally there were osprey nests on top of many of the navigational aids complete with chicks eager for their next meal. We're not sure the parents were happy with boat traffic so close to their nest, but we certainly enjoy the views. We even saw an adult osprey appear to be taking a bath right in the ICW channel. Fortunately the bath was finished and the bird was up and away by the time we passed. What a beautiful stretch of waterway!

We abruptly moved from the natural beauty of the remote areas to the noisy traffic, passing barges, busy shipyards and all the ugliness that is found in the back channels of the port of Hampton Roads - a huge change of scene! But moving through this got us to an important and well known spot on the ICW known as mile marker 0 – the northern terminus of this waterway – where we are now anchored. To the cruisers familiar with the ICW, this anchorage is known as Hospital Point and is directly across the Elizabeth River from downtown Norfolk. From here we can watch large ships and barges go by. Our night is lit up with all the city lights from both Norfolk on one side of the river and Portsmouth on the others.

And most important, from here we can reach the end of our boat travel for a bit, as tomorrow we sail up to the Severn River Marina off Mobjack Bay. It was from here that the travel began, and from here we launch other adventures. After a break from boat travel for about a month, we'll head out again still heading north. Our destination will be the coast of Maine. Future blogs will cover that travel, so stay tuned.

Captain Bob

Carpe Diem

Meeting Friends

We spent town nights in Beaufort, NC and spoiled ourselves again by staying in a marina – Beaufort Town Docks. In part this is because we've yet to find a good place to anchor there and easily get to town. The marina's courtesy car also made it easy for us to get to a grocery store and to the Post Office, both somewhat out of town.

We also met up with two boating couples we'd gotten to know in Marathon: Dick and Libby on Tarwathie and George and Carol on Traumerei. When George read my most recent blog, it became clear to him that we were in the neighborhood. He and Carol live somewhat near Beaufort. We got a surprise call from him. He knew that Dick and Libby were docked in a neighboring town and so he suggested we all meet at the Beaufort Docks. He and Carol would pick up Dick and Libby and bring them also.

When we make friends while cruising, we're never quite sure when we'll see them next. It's not like we can plan to visit them next time we're in town. They're as mobile as we are. Weather, family and boat issues all influence our plans and location. So crossing paths at some point in the future is often more a matter of good fortune than our planning. So this unexpected meeting was a special treat for us, one that we thoroughly enjoyed.

Captain Bob

Carpe Diem

P.S.  Remember that you can always know our latest locaton by logging on to Shiptrak.org and inserting my Ham callsign: N1SFR.  This will bring up a map with all our stops on it.

A Glimpse of Northbound Travel

St. Augustine seems to be a complex spot with a fort that first flew a Spanish flag, pirates sailing about and singing...with tourists aboard of course...cruisers flying flags from Sweden, Italy, England and Canada among other places. Henry Flagler's influence is evident with two 19^th century hotels that he built to attract wealthy tourists which in turn got him involved with building a railway south along Florida's east coast to get them there and later down to Palm Beach and Miami. We toured one of those hotels, now turned into the Lightner Museum, originally one of those hotels. We also enjoyed a delicious lunch in the pool of the hotel (now empty, of course) that had been turned into an attractive cafe. This oldest city in the country provides examples of architecture and life here over the last 450 years. We have stopped here to visit each time we travel by.

We finally left St. Augustine after waiting out the weather mentioned in the last blog entry, at a time that would help us avoid low tide in tricky areas. Timing was important for a stress free trip. Since the tide changes from low to high in six hours and then back to low again about six hours later, we couldn't usually avoid traveling at low tide somewhere along the route. The trick was to work the timing to arrive at the critical spots when the tide was high enough.

We ended up staying on the ICW all the way through Georgia, a first for us, since we'd always taken the ocean option in past rips. Georgia was a pretty stretch of ICW but kept us out in coastal marsh terrain most of the time. Cumberland Island was a beautiful stop. Much of the Island is protected by the National Seashore. Just imagine nearly 20 miles of pristine beaches, walking trails through live oak and wild horses to greet you along the way.

After leaving Georgia behind, we anchored in Beaufort, SC. This is a pretty, classic southern town with lots to see and experience. We were on a mission, though, to get up to Virginia soon, so we had only an afternoon here on this trip. We left in the morning as the sun came up. A swing bridge had to be opened for us to continue north, and it doesn't open between 7AM and 9AM to accommodate heavy auto flow at that time. So we had to get through before 7:00 to stay on the tide schedule. We deal with lots of bridges during our travels on the ICW, so it's important to know their schedules for opening.

Two days later we were crossing Charleston Harbor and getting a view of Fort Sumter as we made our way out to sea for an overnight sail to Cape Fear and our next stop in Wrightsville Beach. This two day trip would have taken four days on the ICW, and the weather looked good for the ocean passage. Wrightsville Beach in May we found to be a spot young people like after school ends for the summer. We've been there twice in May and found it full of students enjoying the sun and beach. The jasmine is in bloom in May as well. The whole town seemed to smell of it – how fragrant!

We spent our first night at a marina as a treat to ourselves after getting little sleep during the ocean overnight. We enjoyed a stress free sleep as well as the marina's amenities of laundry and a courtesy car. We then moved nearby for a second night at anchor before hitting the ICW for another day of sightseeing along coastal North Carolina. This stretch required us to time our travel around three bridges that opened on restricted schedules, and also tried avoiding low tide as best we could.

This is typical travel for us on the ICW. Two more days and we'll reach Beaufort, NC - another picturesque coastal town (although quite different from the SC town of the same name) we'll enjoy for a day before heading north once again. Just to put this into a perspective for non-boating travelers, the trip from Wrightsville Beach to Beaufort would likely take no more than three hours by car rather than the two days for us by boat. Like the tortoise, we may be a bit slow, but we bring our home along with us, and we also get to see parts of this beautiful country invisible to most who can only travel quickly by auto.

Carpe Diem
Captain Bob

PS: Find our latest anchorage at: Shiptrak.org  Type in callsign - N1SFR