Getting ready for part 4 – our trip back up to Long Island Sound!

Well – we made it to Little River a little more than 2 weeks ago (April 12) and I have been woefully late in getting this update out. Apologies again. So let me catch you all up.

We left Steamboat Creek, GA on Saturday April 9^th where we had anchored overnight. The anchorage was beautiful and really out there in the middle of nowhere. We had the fishing dock / boat launch to go to land to take Gracie ashore and after as early as possible departure began our trip that would take us up the North Edisto River, the Wadmalaw River, the Stono River, the wild Elliott Cut to the Wappoo Creek, just in time to catch the ebb current and a NW wind to cross the Charleston, SC harbor in about 20 kt winds. The timing of this trip also included catching the opening of the Wappoo Creek bascule bridge which only opens on the hour and half hour and the Ben Sawyer bascule bridge which only opens on the hour! Had we missed the first at the bottom of the hour, we had no chance of getting the second without waiting for about an hour. As it turned out, we caught the first (just barely) and were able to get across the Charleston harbor in a half an hour in time to catch the second. (All the cruisers out there reading this will fully understand this detail!) Wind, current, motor, and sail all played a part in this little dance which got us to our dock for the night at the Isle of Palms Marina. We went here because the dockage was supposed to be reasonable but it turns out that they raise their rates April 1. Their new rates were not reflected in Active Captain (which is what we use for lots of our itinerary planning) but we stayed anyway because we had arranged to meet up with Joan's brother and sister-in-law that evening there.

We had a great dinner with Joe and Elise Mangiulli at the Morgan Creek Grill which is right next door to the marina. We stayed on the fuel dock after getting fuel so it made for an easy in / easy out stay.

The next day our journey was to an anchorage we had stayed going south in the South Santee River. There are very few places you can go these days where you can not hear the sounds of civilization but where we anchored in the South Santee River was definitely one of them! When we went ashore before leaving the next morning, however, we think the sounds we heard then were sounds of an alligator growling!!! We made a hasty retreat to the pier and our dinghy with our tasty little doggie!!

After South Santee we were only one day away from Little River and just happened to be running perfectly with the current which was very strong and went to another little gem of a place we found on our way south – Bucksport Marina for Joan's birthday (April 11^th)! Unfortunately, the restaurant we were on the dock right in front of, Seaweeds, was not open during the week yet so Joan's birthday dinner was limited to chef Whit's grilling on the stern!!

We arrived in Little River, SC on Tuesday April 12^th, right on schedule, and have been in our previous dock location (Dean and Andrea Pence's slip on “O dock”) Light House Pointe, in Coquina Harbor. Gracie has been ecstatic!!!! She really much prefers land to water. Perhaps that is why she still has not gone to the bathroom on anything other than the land. (And we still have a square of sod on the boat for her to use!!) She is in for another big shock when we load up and head back out onto the water!! Poor little doggie!

Since arriving in Little River, we have been doing lots of re-provisioning, cleaning, and enjoying beautiful weather here in South Carolina. All our condo friends have been hanging with us and participating in happy hours and dinners! My son and his wife, Andrew and Suzie came down from Raleigh, NC for a weekend visit last weekend. Lots of fun.

The plan is to leave on Monday May 9^th to continue our northward journey. We will be retracing our tracks back through the ICW to Long Island Sound. While most of our stopping places are the same as on the way down (which is really determined by how far we can go in a day as well as needing to get Gracie ashore) still many factors come in to play that change plans – tides and currents, availability of accommodations, breakdowns (heaven forbid), weather, and whim. Weather, however, is the big ticket item! But we do have more sunlight during the day to work with so we are sure that even though it is the same it will be different. Plus, we may also change some of the places we will be stopping – we are still trying to keep our journey - a trip and not a delivery. Joan is very much more at ease about the places we will have for stopping each day since we have already been to them. It is not a big unknown for each day. Now it is more a matter of execution. As always, it will be an adventure because on the water it is never exactly the same!
          To be continued.....

   Our trip to Charleston, SC had us racing tugs and barges through very small channels.

Coming in to Charleston, SC

On the dock for an overnight at the Isle of Palms Marina - just the east side of Charleston, SC.  Fuel, showers and food!

 Our lonely landing spot for Gracie on the South Santee River

 Our walk at South Santee  - keeping a sharp look out for beasts!

 Found two of them!

 Bucksport Marina - where we docked in front of Seaweeds.

 The Bucksport Marina.  $.75 a foot!!!   How could you NOT stop here.  Note the grill ready for Joan's BD dinner!

 Our condo at Lighthouse Pointe - Lightkeepers village on Coquina Harbor in Little River, SC

 Suzie, Pearl (black dog), Joan, Gracie and Andrew!!

Working – working hard – at getting back to Little River, SC!!

Again, I apologize for the long pause in posting! This time it is actually because we have been busier working on our trip back than anything else. The weather has again been playing a major part in the trip planning and execution and because of the weather we have had extra route planning. I trust this will become clear as I update our travels – following.

We left Titusville after spending an extra day there because of a band of thunderstorms that was passing through northern Florida. Our next stop (Saturday 3/26) was Daytona, FL and this time, rather than anchor under the bridge (which was kind of a lousy place) we found that we could get into the Halifax River Yacht Club because of our membership in our home yacht club – Shennecossett – in Groton, CT. The Halifax River Yacht Club was founded in 1896 and say of themselves: “Our present clubhouse and docks still remain on their original site where they were first built over 100 years ago. We are the only yacht club on the eastern seacoast to have this distinction. Our club and organization is one of the few, if not the only, to be in continuous operation in the Halifax area since its inception." You can check out their web page which is pretty cool at http://www.hryc.com/. Everyone at this club was so friendly and they treated us as if we were royalty!

Next stop was Saint Augustine. We arrived and planned to stay there and extra day, in part, to hold for high winds as well as because the city is so cool! However, different from our trip down it we toured the city walking in shorts and t-shirts rather than pants and sweatshirts like on our way down about two months earlier.

We left Saint Augustine making our way to just beyond the St Johns river in Jacksonville to our little free dock on Sisters Creek on Wednesday 3/30 and then on to Fernandina Beach the next day hoping to stage another overnight out on the Atlantic up to Charleston, NC. However, due to weather (between dodging major thunderstorms coming east over the nothern part of Florida and Georgia and high winds of course) it looked like we would not get a weather window to do that crossing for at least a week and a half. So we decided to continue up the ICW through Georgia and southern South Carolina, a part of the ICW we had not seen yet. And so we have been crawling along!

First stop in Georgia was Brunswick, then the Duplin River (at Sapelo Island), then Savannah where we played tourists for two days. Leaving Georgia we then stopped in Beaufort, and to where we are now – the middle of nowhere anchored in Steamboat Creek on our way to Charleston, SC today.

I will be back with more on all this as well as pictures later. It is 7am and we need to get off and running – 15-20 knot winds today to battle with!!

Here are the pics!!
                       The Halifax River Yacht Club - Daytona, FL
                                      Coming in

        See us on the dock! - hint - look for the wind generator!

         Upstairs in the HRYC building -the interior

  

 Downstairs they have a Tiki Bar - where we ordered burgers and sat outside with Gracie.

    

Somewhere along the way to St Augustine - thought about stopping to get some fish!

    Evening view from our boat in St. Augustine, FL

    Bridge of Lions in St Augustine - opening for our trip north Wed. 3/30

   Stopping again at Sisters Creek.  Free dock just north of Jacksonville, FL

Evening falls with clouds on the horizon in Fernandina Beach, FL  - our last day in Florida

We have left Florida and have now entered Georgia (below) - Friday April fools!

 Arriving in Brusnwick, GA.  Our marina is just up past this bridge.

 We were on dock 1 right in front of the marina office (blue roof).  Thunder storms predicted.

 After Brunswick we anchored off Sapelo Island in the Duplin River.  All by ourselves!  A look at the ferry dock
   from our anchorage.  We dingy in to shore for Gracie at the ferry dock.

    What we looked like from the ferry dock.

 On the ICW as we approach Savannah, GA - we knew we were not in Kansas any more.

 We went dockside again so we could spend an extra day being tourists in Savannah.

 Gracie is keeping quiet about the tourist thing!

 In Savannah we took an open air trolley that allowed us on and off all day as well as describing all the sights.

    Savannah is just beautiful!

   And has lots of history!

 Gracie loved it too!!

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 After Savannah we went to Beaufort, SC (pronounced "Byoo fert" as in beautiful).  We took a mooring here
   and spent two days due to high winds.

 On the way now to Charleston, SC - we stopped at Steamboat River and anchored off the fishing/boat launch. (Gracie helps us find all these cool places!)  It has calmed down from the 20 kt winds of the day.

On the road again – heading north! (And yes, we really are still alive!)

We did, in fact, decide to stay put in Vero Beach. It was just too nice and we really had accomplished the best plan, for us, for this winter's journey. We found sunny and warm (and sometimes – hot) weather to be in for the winter. Of course going to the Bahamas was supposed to be the goal but actually the two main maxims of our trip guided our decision. Safety and having fun. Vero Beach was a very safe place to be from a storm perspective with access to anything we might need for repairs, provisions and medical. Fun – we were having fun not having to worry about many factors involved with this year's Bahamas crossing factors. El Nino has provided some really nasty, strange, cold and windy weather this year. The Botulas caught perhaps the only good crossing since December! But we were concerned also about getting back. So we just stayed put! We were able to turn our weeks worth of payment into a monthly rate so our price per night on the mooring went from $15 to $12. We moved from being far away from the marina at the very north end of the mooring field (mooring #52) up much closer to the marina and dinghy dock. It was about half he dinghy ride which saved us a lot of gas seeing as we went to and from the land about four or more (as many as eight!) times a day.

We made a lot of new friends at Vero Beach Marina – including the marina staff. Gracie became somewhat infamous at the office, where we usually went each day. She knew exactly where they kept the doggie treats!!! We became good friends with a couple from Chesterfield, NH (Richard and Jeanny Aldrich) who owned a farm and have rented it out to have a sailboat and an adventure! Their boat had been called “8 is Enough” because between the two of them then had eight kids but they decided to change the name to “Imagine”. Rich is a professional carpenter – quite handy about the boat and Jeanny is a professional chef and nutritionist. She started the Wednesday night pot luck dinners which we participated in before our departure. (Note: they were also avid Survivor enthusiasts like ourselves so after dinner we hit the boaters lounge for our weekly dose of Survivior!)

By our third week at Vero we were also joined by Alan and Michelle Watson as well as Dan and Marcia Crouch, both having returned from the Bahamas and both from our yacht club in Groton, CT – Shennecossett! There were also no less than four other boats from Vermont in the anchorage! Small world eh?!

We had lot so fun in and around Vero Beach, which we came to find out the Vero Beacher's call Zero beach – land of the newly weds and nearly deads! Since we were not going any further south, we decided to rent a car for two days and spend a bit of time seeing the sights to the south. (Another of our reasons for staying in Vero is that we had come to find out that both Fort Lauderdale and Miami had become very boater unfriendly. The more south you went from Vero, the more difficult the cities were making it to anchor and get ashore, and with Gracie that was a necessity!) So we went to Fort Lauderdale for a day to join the spring breakers and made a planned stop in Forth Worth along the way where Luitgard and Wolfgang (our German friends on the Nordhavn 50) were still waiting for a window to cross to the Bahamas. We met them again and went out to lunch at a wonderful pizza place in South Palm Beach. We then continued down to Fort Lauderdale to accomplish three things: See Sailorman (a used marine warehouse), West Marine (which is their flagship store), and see the town and beach with all the crazy spring breakers! Mission accomplished! Vero to Fort Lauderdale is about a two hour drive. Day two of the car was for seeing all of Vero Beach and provisioning the heavy stuff like seltzer, water, beer, etc!

So after a month in Vero, we headed north again on Wednesday March 23^rd. We traveled all the way to Merritt Island, FL to met up again with Phil and Nancy Stewart and a repeat dinner at Alfredo's Paradiso for another outrageous Italian dinner! And then Thursday we went to Titusville and met up with Myles and Merja Cahoon who are our friends from Vermont who have a winter home in Leesburg, FL. Lots of theater discussions in the two days!! We wanted to get in to Titusville early because of the thunderstorms that were predicted to come through in the evening. And come through they did!! We had high winds and rain, lightening and thunder for several hours. This morning the weather indicated that we had had 4.5 inches of rain last night!! I have never seen it rain so hard ever before!

We decided to stay the day here in Titusville today because of thunderstorms this afternoon, which we had and plan to leave tomorrow for Daytona Beach.

I know that some of you thought we might have dropped off the edge of the earth – we haven't posted for so long. Time just got away from us and we were actually quite busy these last few weeks. A tour boat came through the harbor at Vero Beach and I heard the tour director say on the loudspeaker something to the effect of: “It is not a vacation, it is a lifestyle!” Cruising like this really is a lifestyle!

    We took some harbor tours in Vero Beach - Gracie is always on the bow of the dinghy!

 Some of the cool roads in the town of Vero Beach.

  Wednesday night pot luck!

 Jeanny's pies!

 

Some of our new friends:  The Jones Family (Anita, Maria, Lala, and Reese)

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 Our old friend from Worton Creek, MD, and again in Wrightsville Beach and now in Vero - Ray from Compass Rose.  And dog Nautica

 Other characters from the marina: Chris - who always had treats for the dogs and Pete (red shirt) - Scrubbing Bubbles diver.

 Our raft mates: Marcia and Geoffrey

 Rafted up with us for our last two days in Vero.

 Lo and behold - we also connected with our SYC friends: Alan and Michelle Watson (Kindred Spirit) and Dan and Marsha Crouh (Cutting Class).

 Our trip south to Fort Lauderdale:  Sailorman is world renowned!

 And right across the street is the flagship store for West Marine

 It was downright hot our last week and a half in Vero.

 And so, now we head north.

 In Titusville we meet up with Merja and Myles Cahoon - our friends from Vermont wintering (for a few weeks) in FL too!

More to come!!