Heading South Again!

What we've been up to -

The past few months have been quite different and a little crazy for us.  We left Second Wind in "Wet Storage" at Atlantic Yacht Basin (Chesapeake, VA) and rented a car to drive back to the Albany area the second week in October  My sister and brother-in-law (Denise and Tom) graciously offered us their house while they were in Florida so we moved right in. Laura had scheduled achilles tendon surgery on October 14th with a 6-week, no weight-bearing stint to follow.

After talking with her doctors, we realized we wouldn't be back to Second Wind until mid-January.  Atlantic Yacht Basin highly suggested we winterize the boat before their holiday break when nobody would be around the marina from Christmas to New Years.  I REALLY did not want to do this.  I've winterized boats in the past and it's a real chore.  Plus it seems to take forever to get the antifreeze smell out of the water tank.  Lastly, Second Wind has never been winterized (at least in the past 17 years) so it would be a real challenge to identify and get to everything on the boat.

Instead, I sent out texts to several of my friends to see if someone would want to join me for a couple weeks sail south from Norfolk.  Our long-time sailing buddy Rob accepted the challenge. Tom and Denise came back from Florida the week of Thanksgiving so Laura would have someone around to assist with her daily living.  I drove our car to Chesapeake, VA on November 28th, Rob flew in on the 29th, we stocked the boat and headed south on December 1st.

Atlantic Yacht Basin was great.  I had them haul the boat for bottom-paint and change a thru-hull that had been giving me problems.  All the work was done on time and close to the estimates.  They did run a little over the estimate on the thru-hull because the backing-block was rotted and had to be replaced.  All-in-all, a very good stay there.

Great Bridge to Savannah

We had some cold weather (down in the 30s) the first few nights but, overall, the weather was excellent for us. 

Here we are on our first day jib-sailing down Currituck Sound.

 

Now...  How many people would have left on a boat without knowing where they are going to stop?  I figured we would see how far we could get in our allotted time and find a marina nearby.  I didn't figure most of the east coast marinas would be full - mostly because of the major storms and damage from hurricanes in Florida.  After hearing from a boater friend of ours that had problems finding a marina in central and northern Florida, I asked Laura to start working on finding us a place to stop where we could keep the boat for a month (or two?) until she was ready to continue sailing.  She readily agreed to the challenge and got to work.

I texted her names of marinas and she started a spreadsheet with the contact information and results then spent lots of time on the phone.  It was a difficult job with many marinas being full or out of our price-range.  Some places wanted as much as $4,000 a month.  That's crazy!

The closest place we could have stayed was Myrtle Beach Yacht Club but we were there in less than a week.  The farthest place she found was Savannah Bend Marina just over the GA / SC border.  Rob and I had such nice weather and the boat was running great so we decided on Savannah Bend.  Note that we looked as far south as Titusville and all the places from Savannah to there were full or super expensive.

We arrived at Savannah Bend Marina on December 10th.  Rob and I put the boat to bed again (nap not sleep) with the hopes Laura and I would be back in a month or so.  Here is Rob and Second Wind (and her waterway smile) tied up at Savannah Bend Marina.

This time we even kept a freezer running that was full of leftover food from our trip - we were a little optimistic when grocery shopping in Great Bridge.  Rob and I both rented cars in Savannah and left the next couple days.  He drove back to the Orlando area to their Florida home.  I drove back to Chesapeake, VA, stayed at a hotel overnight, dropped off the rental, Uber'd back to my car at Atlantic Yacht Basin and drove 10 hours back to Albany.  

570 miles in 10 days is great for a sailboat down the ICW.  You never know when you will get held-up for a day or more because of nasty weather but we never had good winds or seas to travel off-shore and make more miles  I was so happy it all worked out for us and Second Wind.

We spent the holidays with Tom and Denise and our families.  We had a white Christmas!

Laura was progressing well and was now in a walking boot with Physical Therapy twice a week.  On December 28th we had her last doctor's appointment where they said it was OK to quit the boot and start walking again.  The doctor also gave us the best news that she could move back on the boat in "a couple weeks" and gave her a brace to wear when the boat was moving around.  

Back to Second Wind!

On Thursday, January 5th we picked up a rental car, Laura had her last Physical Therapy, we packed up the car and said sad good-byes to Tom and Denise.  After spending 3 months in their home (the last 6 weeks together) we had become good friends.

Late Friday afternoon we pulled into Savannah Bend Marina and Laura stepped onto the boat after almost exactly 3 months away.  We were back!!

I can't say enough about Savannah Bend and the manager Nicole.  She was awesome to us and I would definitely go back.  Here was a Christmas Tree in front of the marina office that cracked me up.

We spent the weekend hardware and grocery shopping plus working on the boat.  Besides packing away almost $500 worth of groceries, Laura was cleaning up a storm.  In my spare time I was getting the boat ready for cruising again including engine and transmission oil changes plus a full afternoon of scrubbing the decks from all the bird poop.  We did take Sunday afternoon off for a little sightseeing in Savannah and a nice dinner at Tubby's Seafood right on the waterfront.

The weather forecast for sailing down the coast was excellent so we pushed ourselves to get everything ready to leave Tuesday (Jan 10th) morning.  I returned the rental car Monday evening.  It took me 3 hours to travel 20 miles and back - accidents, trains and rush-hour traffic.  Then we were ready to go!

Savannah Bend Marina to Daytona

Tuesday, Jan 10th and Wednesday, Jan 11th - Cloudy, calm winds, temp mid 50s, sea temp 56

185nm (2 days and 1 night)

We departed the marina at 7:45am after a high pucker-factor undocking.  We were sandwiched into a slip that was very tight.  After I backed up the boat into the fairway, we only had about 3 feet between us and the boat on the next dock when I was able to turn the boat around in the fairway.  Laura was excellent (as usual) giving me distances off the bow and we made it out without damage to ourselves or other boats.  Success!

This is only a couple minutes later.  The marina is just on the other side of the bridge.  I love this picture because of the big smile on Laura's face.

A few minutes later we enjoyed our first colorful water sunrise through the clouds.  Look how calm it is.

We discussed traveling off-shore and doing an overnight cruse to St. Augustine.  Laura was agreeable - mostly because we had a great forecast with calm winds and seas.  We left the ICW a few miles later and continued east down the Wilmington River, through Wassaw Sound and out to sea.  Along the way, we had some playful dolphins at the bow for several minutes.  Laura was able to get this cute video of them.  It was an awesome way to start our cruise.

The ocean was fairly calm (as predicted) with only a slight swell off the port quarter which rolled us a little.  Both of us were a little disappointed it wasn't a better ride but things calmed down after we pulled out the mainsail and sheeted it in tight for roll-control.  

The Sun came out later in the morning and the skies cleared for a beautiful motor-sail down the coast of GA. 

During the day Laura called Burdines Marina in Marathon and confirmed our reservation for February and March.  YEA!  Another (partial) winter in the Florida Keys!

It was a subdued ocean sunset over the Georgia coast which is typical for clear skies.

We passed Brunswick, GA around 7pm and St Mary's Inlet / Florida border around 10:30pm.  Laura tried to sleep from 8 to midnight and I let her go until 1am.  Unfortunately, she didn't sleep much but recovered after a couple cups of coffee.  I hit the sack at 1am and slept for an hour or two until the boat started moving around a lot and woke me up.  Laura said the winds picked up to 13-15 knots which started building up a little sea for us to punch through.  It either calmed down or I was just too tired and went back to sleep for an hour or so.

I woke up at 5:30am and took over the helm.  We were only about an hour from St. Augustine inlet - even though we had lowered engine RPM to slow down the past few hours.  Laura was able to sack out for a couple hours as I ran the calm inlet just after first light and was waiting for the Bridge of Lions Bridge just before their 7:30am opening.

We spent the rest of the day on a quiet ICW motoring to Daytona where we anchored around 3pm next to the Main Street Bridge (one of our favorite anchorages).  Two sailboats came in a little while later but gave us plenty of room.

After 32+ hours of listening to the engine, it was great to have silence around the boat.  It's always a little of an ordeal for us to do an overnight off-shore like this but we wanted to get south to warmer weather as quickly as possible and it was tough to turn down the great weather. Plus, we saved 3-4 days of the Georgia ICW by bypassing it all off-shore.  If we had stayed in the ICW from Savannah to Daytona, it would have taken us 5-6 days instead of 2.

This cracks me up....  Laura and I both crashed on the sofa after putting the boat to bed for the evening.  I finally told her we couldn't sleep now because we wouldn't be able to sleep all night if we started at 4pm.  Instead we both got up, mixed a cocktail and sat in the cockpit watching the sunset.  Then I grilled a large pork-chop for dinner while Laura made the fixin's. We had our first boat-party! After dinner we watched a couple shows on TV then finally hit the sack around 8pm.  Both of us crashed and slept over 10 hours.  We needed that!

Daytona to Titusville

Thursday, January 12th - Sunny, calm winds, air temp 55

49nm (234nm total from Savannah)

There was a cold front scheduled to come though on Friday morning so we wanted to get a little farther south in a protect anchorage or mooring.  The moorings in Titusville would have been good but there were none available.  Instead I decided to go 6 miles farther and anchor on the north-west side of the Addison Point Bridge.  The bridge causeway would protected us from the south winds Thursday night and western shore should give us protection from the west winds on Friday.  

Also, I had made reservations for the new Jensen Beach mooring field next week on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  Laura's nephew Jon is flying in and will join us for "a while" including the trip down to Marathon.  Titusville is about 3 travel days from Jensen Beach so that would work out good if we left on Saturday after the Friday storms.

It all worked out well with a busier ICW along this route with boats traveling in both directions. We anchored at a nice spot in the wide open anchorage.  We were the only boat here.  Nice!

Except....  about an hour later I saw a smaller sailboat coming into the anchorage.  It turned out to be what we call a "derelict" boat that someone lived on as a water-condo.  The owner(?) was pushing the sailboat into the anchorage with his dinghy - probably to get protection from the south winds tonight.  It didn't even have a working engine.  Oh boy.

I didn't pay much attention until a little while later I see him getting ready to anchor about 200 feet away in a direction that would put him directly up-wind of us for the storm tomorrow.  No way!  This anchorage was about a mile long and 1/4 mile wide.  Why did he have to anchor there?   I went out on the deck and yelled over to him.  I said he would be directly up-wind of us for the storm and asked him to move.  He yelled something to me like, "If you didn't want a sailboat, why did you buy one?" (what does that mean?) and dropped his anchor right there yelling back, "I'm not moving.  You can move if you want."  Holy crap.  I don't think I've ever seen another boater act like this.  I guess the key is "another boater"....

So...  we picked up our anchor and moved to a different section of the anchorage where I wouldn't be worried about him running into us if his anchor dragged.  Laura wasn't too happy with me when we had to re-anchor twice because the first time we would have been too close to the shallow water when the winds changed tomorrow.  But, just after sundown I was happy with where we were and we had a cocktail and nice dinner.

Friday, January 13th - Day 4.  Storms and high winds, temp 70 but dropping into the 30s tonight.

Didn't move today.

Storms came through around 8am with 30+ knot winds and lots of rain.  The rain didn't last for too long and by the afternoon it was partly cloudy and the solar panels were doing their job.

"Karma is a bitch"

I went upstairs after the rain and saw our neighbor's boat was sideways to the wind.  That's not good...  Apparently, when the winds clocked this morning and turned his boat around on the anchor, he hit a shallow spot and was aground.  As I looked at my RADAR and chartplotter, I could see he anchored in a shallow spot outside the anchorage area.  That wasn't too smart.

Now, I'm usually the first person to help another boater in need.  There have been several times in the past when I've seen someone in trouble and dropped my dinghy to go over and help without being asked.  Guess what I did this time?  I had a great breakfast and watched him try to move the boat with his dinghy.  He didn't get very far.  A little while later a small crane barge with two outboards came by and stopped to help him.  Nope.  Still couldn't move.   Here's a picture of them trying.  Click on the picture and you can blow it up to see the barge and small sailboat.

Around sunset, he's still there.

We decided to change our plans and stay here until Sunday.  There is a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch scheduled for late Saturday afternoon and we are in the best anchorage for the best view.  The launch pad is only about 10 miles from us.  Woo Hoo!  This should be awesome!

I called the Jensen Beach mooring field and moved our reservation back a day to Tuesday.  Now we have plenty of time to get there if we leave Sunday morning.  I'll let you know how it all works out....