Sailing Baby Blue

If you're wondering where we are ultimately headed on this journey, you are not alone. We would like to know as well. The short answer we've been giving over the last six months has been, "South," or, "Somewhere warmer." Now that we are equal parts warm and South, we should probably start getting more specific. Though our first major goal for the trip was to get ourselves to the Caribbean Sea, that is incredibly unspecific, and historically has not satisfied questioners. Also, if our ultimate destination were the popular cruising grounds of the US or British Virgin Islands, it would have made more sense to head East toward Bermuda from North Carolina and then straight South to the islands. But that would have required a week or two at sea and we thought it might be smart to gather our cruising experience a little more gradually. So here we are in Florida, and to my surprise, there is this giant chain of islands called the Bahamas - everyone is tal...

Today we moved to an exponentially better anchorage right in the heart of downtown West Palm Beach. Before I begin my first published rant since the demise of MySpace, here are some photos of a downtown exploding with Christmas cheer!  I have been looking forward to seeing a sailboat all lit up with Christmas lights since June! Christmas tree made of sand. It even has a name, and that name is Sandi. Here, the town dock, which will be the subject of the following rant. It seems the free town docks are a well-kept secret. We discovered both the docks and the reason for the town's lack of promotion when we ran into a couple of liveaboards who have been at anchor in the area for years, making full use of said docks whenever they need to get to shore. The docks are supposed to be closed from 12am-5am, but it doesn't look as though the few who have stumbled upon them always honor that rule. The whole - Free Town Dock! - idea makes a lot of sense for a town that wa...

 Before we left for Palm Beach, we spent some time at an anchorage north of St. Augustine to get some work done on the boat while we waited for good weather.  Jon trying unsuccessfully to get to shore through the mud at low tide.    I am too excited not to be wearing a winter hat to care about looking like a normal person.    Jon's first catch. He decided it wasn't big enough to justify killing for our dinner  so it was given a pardon.  We finally remembered to take a photo while Jon reattached the engine  mounts and changed the oil. Looks like tons of fun, right?  We bought a couple of jerry cans to allow us to carry twice as much fuel; just in case we have to motor for 48 hours again. Jon is also working on a way to strap our extra fuel to the side deck instead of inside the cockpit where they get in the way. Before we left our anchorage in North Palm Beach in favor of West Palm Beach, Jon j...

The trip from St. Augustine to Palm Beach was very much like our previous two-nighter from Charleston - very little wind and a lot of motoring. This time there was a consistent swell throughout the trip which kept me feeling undeservedly hungover, aka seasick. I am not looking forward to how I will feel in any serious waves. It is said that it often takes a couple of days at sea to get over seasickness, and so far I haven't been out long enough to see if it will go away as reported. (You can read about how I deal with seasickness here . ) I was hoping that I wouldn't be one of the unlucky people who feels sick for each voyage, but of course, I am. And of course, Jon is completely unaffected; a good thing since one of us needs to be relied on to steer this seven ton piece of plastic out of harm's way regardless of the circumstances, and we all know that person is not likely to be me. Anyway, we made it to Southern Florida and were rewarded with warmth - glorious, 80 de...

Here are some tips from me to you, should you ever find yourself turning greener by the minute on a pitching and tossing vessel. If that fate is not in the cards for you, perhaps one or two of the following pointers would come in handy in the grip of an oncoming panic attack. The first rule of avoiding seasickness is: do not talk about seasickness. Who's seasick? Certainly not you. Best not to talk or even think about it. You are feeling great! So, relax. Try to find a comfortable position where you don't have to work so hard to maintain equilibrium. Now, DO NOT MOVE. Breathe deeply. Unclench your jaw. Stop holding in your belly. As great as it is for your abs, you're not at the gym, so let it all go. Relax. You are probably not about to die or anything. So don't worry, and whistle a happy tune. Do not go below. If you must, make it snappy and first remove all the layers of clothing that make you feel clumsy and ...

 Crossing under the Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine, FL .  We decided to stay for a week on a mooring at the municipal marina in order to get  a proper look at the oldest city in the nation. As soon as we were showered and presentable, we were treated to an Ancient City tour  with our guides, Bob and Jane from Voyageur.   The lobby of Flagler College On our second day in town we found a good deal on a whisker pole at the Sailor's Exchange and team-carried all 12.5' of it a mile down the road (without taking out a single tourist)! Water wheel in downtown St. Augustine. The Lightner Museum lit up for the holidays. It's weird hearing Christmas  music in 70 degrees whilst surrounded by palm trees. Jon's grandmother and her friend Mo came down from Ocala the following day. We toured the Castillo de San Marcos and then had lunch at Harry's. (We also gladly accepted their generous offer of a ride to the gr...

After two nights in a real bed and incredibly delicious meals with family, we were delivered back to the marina to prepare for our next offshore adventure. After the stress of days of shallow waters, we were ready to take on the high seas once again, and the weather appeared equally prepared to provide us with a reprieve from rain and cold. It looked like we would have at least four days of calm winds, so we were poised to skip over the Georgia portion of the ICW, rumored to be shallow and winding, and arrive in sunny Florida after two nights at sea. We ran into Bob and Jane across the dock on Voyageur . They've run the ICW several times before and were also planning to head out from Charleston Harbor, so they invited us over for post-Thanksgiving pumpkin pie and passage planning. Late the next morning we left together to take advantage of high water and favorable current. We had them in sight ahead of us almost until dark, when we started to think about revising our St. Au...

The Beaufort, NC to Charleston, SC leg of our journey can be summed up like this: rain, rain, rain, shoal, shoal, shoal, slow, slow, slow. After our previously detailed inaugural grounding on our second day out of Beaufort, we worked our way back into a shallow creek near Topsail Beach (where I ran aground for just a minute) and dropped the hook. What Jon was looking at when we ran aground next to Camp Lejeune. The next day we made it to Southport, anchored right smack in the middle of the harbor full of boats in slips, and celebrated not running aground all day with dinner in town. It was Friday night and the Yacht Basin Eatery had live music which we could still hear when we got back to the boat. It was almost enough to drown out the sound of the phantom shallow depth alarm that had been beeping away in our heads whenever it was not sounding in reality. Thirty-three miles later on our fourth day, we crossed the border into South Carolina where we anchored on the ...

Everyone has been telling Ashley and I that sooner or later while traveling on the ICW we will run aground. Some people we have spoken to had in fact run aground several times and stressed that a TowboatUS membership, AAA for the ocean, is well worth the expense. Many of the books we have read also say that if you have never run aground you just haven't been sailing long enough. Regardless of this advice we were beginning to feel a little overconfident in our ability to navigate the shallow waters of the ICW. The markers have seemed straight forward so far and it has appeared simple enough to keep the boat floating rather than stuck in the mud. Well today perhaps a little bit of complacency caught up with us. We were making good time heading south in the area near Camp Lejeune, and I may have been paying more attention to the scenery and pelicans than to the channel markers. The Red Right Returning rule generally applies while southbound on the ICW, simply meaning keep the r...