Hi all! Things have been going pretty good since I last checked in. You probably read that we had company aboard. I really like it when new people come aboard. I am so cute and a novelty to them that they love to play with me. I know that has worn off my people. Although they do still play with me but not as much as I would like.
We had three days of that noisy motor thing again. I guess I am getting somewhat used to it but I still stay up in the forward bed to get away from it. Now we are someplace where they don't have to make the noise and I really like that.
I was just hanging out and I had this funny feeling that I was being watched. I looked around and to my dreaded surprise there was another one of my kind looking down from the stairway.
My people were saying something about Tiger being our neighbor and I should be nice to him. Well, I will be nice as long as he quits staring at me and doesn't come inside to eat my food. A girl has to have her privacy you know. Now I have to keep looking around to see if I am being watched. I keep looking up in every room I am in. I just never know when he might be up looking in through the hatches or companionway. I think I am ready to move already. Oh, maybe we can be friends!
We left St. Augustine on Monday morning. My brother Dave left the boat for the Jacksonville airport around 6:00 AM and we left the slip at 6:50 AM. We wanted to make Vero in three days on the ICW and the total distance is 174 miles. We had really good current with us heading south. We were making 8.4 knots for the first couple of hours and then started slowing as the current slowed. We were around 6.8 knots most of the rest of the day. There were only a few other boats heading south at that time.
We were behind a boat named Bamboushay that all of a sudden turned sideways in the channel. Sandy was at the helm and immediately went to reverse to stop our forward movement because she thought for sure they had hit bottom, and sure enough they did. There draft is one foot deeper than ours so we didn't have any problem with that area, also we stayed to the green side of the channel which was recommended for that area. Bamboushay was able to back off and get going again.
About 3:15 PM we had the anchor down in Rockhouse Creek which is just north of New Smyrna Beach and just inside the Ponce De Leon inlet. There was a smaller sailboat that had beach during low tide next to the anchorage. I figured they did it on purpose to clean the bottom. The boat was about 25 feet. When high tide came in around 8:00 PM they moved out to deeper water and anchored.
On Tuesday morning we started off at 6:55 AM. There is a bridge that was 3 miles away that opens on the 20 minutes starting on the hour and we wanted to make the 7:20 opening. We made it there with several minutes to spare but they were doing maintenance on the gates that stop road traffic and didn't get the bridge open until 7:50. So much for timing. We had good current this day also although we were not going as fast. We made our second anchorage of Cocoa around 2:50 PM. The weather had continued to be good with the sun shining and temperatures around 75.
On Wednesday we again left just before 7:00 AM and had no problems making the third leg to Vero Beach. We arrived around 2:20 and went into the fuel dock to get a holding tank pump out. While at the dock we got our mooring assignment. We were to go to mooring ball 28 and raft up with a boat named Chanticleer. The mooring field was very crowded with most moorings having either two or three boats on them. Vero is the place to be for a cruisers Thanksgiving get together.
We were looking for our mooring and the boat named Chanticleer. We had to zig-zag between other boats and came to the area where we thought we needed to be. Low and behold there was a Chanticleer boat on our starboard and another one on our port. This could only happen to us. We couldn't see the number on the mooring ball from where we were so we had to pull forward of the two boats to see that we wanted the Chanticleer on our port. We hailed the boat and the couple on it helped us raft up to them. We then talked for about an hour with them and found out they are from Texas also. From the Houston area. They are also heading for the Bahamas and them plan on doing the thorny path south to the eastern Caribbean.
When we came in to the mooring field we saw that the boats Destiny and Song of Pogo were here also. We had been in several anchorages and marinas with them since North Carolina and were offshore with Destiny for 30 hours. We had gotten together with them, Jimmie and Bess and Otis and Marty for dinner in St. Augustine. Our cruising plans are all similiar so I'm sure we will see them in the Bahamas too.
We plan to stay here for a week or so to do our major provisioning and we are still waiting for the pet import papers to arrive from the Bahamas. Once all that is done we only have to head down to north Lake Worth and wait for a weather window to cross the Gulf Stream and over to the Bahamas. I will keep y'all informed.
We stayed in Fernandina Beach for a couple of days. We stayed out on a mooring ball and had to dinghy to the marina. The current that runs in the river is very strong and with the wind blowing it was a wet ride to shore. The little town of Fernandina is very nice. Lots of little shops where you can get pretty much any curio or trinket you want. We left on Saturday and backtracked north into Georgia. It was only five miles to the anchorage off of Cumberland Island.
The southern end of Cumberland Island is a National Park which was given to the U.S. by Thomas Carnegie. There are lots of hiking trails through the forest which is made up of many varieties of trees. From old live oaks to palms. The live oaks have moss hanging all throughout. We also visited the ruins of the Carnegie vacation mansion, Dungeness. The home and other buildings were built in the late 1800's and early 1900's. The house had been empty for many years when it burned in 1959. There are many wild horses roaming the island that you can get pretty close to without spooking them. We also saw several armadillos that didn't seemed to be spooked either. After visiting the ruins we walked another mile to the beach on the Atlantic side of the island.
From Cumberland Island we headed south to St. Augustine. It was a two day trip so we stopped at a marina in Jacksonville Beach for the night. We arrived at the marina early so I was able to hose the boat off with fresh water. The first time since coming in from the ocean. The deck was pretty crusted with salt. We were also able to fill the fresh water tank. The St. Augustine Municipal Marina now has three mooring fields. They charge much less for a mooring ball than a slip.
We picked up a mooring and got to work doing chores. I was able to change the oil in both the main engine and the generator. We also took the bus to the Publix supermarket and were able to restock the galley with a couple weeks of food. Once the chores were complete we visited the town. We stayed here a week in April on the way north and saw the town then but it is always fun to walk around in the shops. We had planned on staying in St. Augustine for a week because my brother Dave is flying down on Friday the 19th to visit for a few days.
On Monday the 22nd we are planning on heading south to Vero Beach. It will take us four days down the ICW to get there. Once there we will do some major provisioning to prepare for our crossing to the Bahamas.
From Dowry Creek we proceeded down the Pungo River, across the Pamlico river, through another canal and out into the Neuse River. The winds were very strong from the North and the seas were very choppy with some waves as high as four feet. We stopped in Oriental at the Whittaker Pointe Marina. This is the same marina we had stopped in on the way north in May. It is a very nice facility and has a courtesy van to drive. We were the only transients at the dock so we used the van a lot. We went into New Bern, which is about 25 miles away to the Super WalMart and Harris Teeter grocery. We stocked up on things we were out of, especially meat and fresh produce.
While there I had to get my stuffing box restuffed. It was leaking a couple drips a second even when sitting at the dock. I had to pump the bilge every 8-10 hours. Just tightening it would not solve the problem so I had Deaton Yacht Services put new GFO stuffing in.
The weather turned bad with heavy rain for a couple of days and cold winds. This gave me a chance to continue with the Crazy Ivan problem we are still having with the auto pilot. While going through the system I discovered that the Rudder Angle Transmitter, RAT, that figures, was not installed very well. It was on a flimsy piece of plywood that could wiggle around. I took some starboard, which I got at Deaton Yacht Services and really secured it so it does not budge. So far it has been working good.
When the weather cleared we headed out from Oriental on the ICW. We wanted to go outside in the ocean from the Beaufort inlet to the Masonboro inlet. That would have saved us two days on the ICW. The waves were still pretty high and confused to we did the ICW. The first night we stopped at Dudley's Marina in Swansboro. They had us tied up to a bulkhead and in the morning when we went to leave the current was flowing so fast we were pinned to the bulkhead. It took 3 guys on the dock to push the boat off. We scraped down the pilings but it didn't cause any damage. After 47 nautical miles we stopped in Wrightville Beach. The current there was running about 3 knots with the flow going with us. There is a bridge that only opens on the hour just before Wrightville Beach. It was like a zoo with about 20 other boats trying to maneuver in a small channel with the current while waiting for the opening.
We stayed one night in Wrightville Beach and then did a short 25 miles to Southport Marina in Southport NC. We had planned to go out the Cape Fear River inlet to Charleston the next day. The weather was looking really good for the next five days so instead we stayed at the marina two nights to give us time to set the boat up for an ocean passage. We had to put everything that could fly around in heavy seas away and strap the big items down.
We left on Tuesday and instead of heading for Charleston, SC we headed for Fernandina Beach, Florida. The route is 270 miles and I estimated it would take us 48-54 hours. We had left at 0640 and arrived in Fernandina Beach at 0840 on Wednesday. This saved us about eight days on the ICW. We put our new AIS, Automatic Identification System to the test. It was well worth the money. Going past the Charleston inlet at 0400 we were able to easily track cargo ships coming out and going in. We had one incident where I was tracking a ship that was inbound to Charleston from the south. His track was straight for us as we were heading in a southwesterly direction. The AIS gives us the name of the ship, destination, heading, turning rate, speed and other information about the ship. I called him on the VHF radio to make sure he saw us on his radar. He confirmed that he did and would go to our stern. Well I could see on the AIS that he kept turning towards us as we continued southwesterly. At night the distances are very deceiving. It looked like he was right on top of us and in the dark all I could see was these huge red and green bow lights coming right for us. I was shaking in my foul weather boots. I radioed him again and he assured me he could see us and would go to our stern. I could also see him on our radar and he didn't come any closer than one mile distance to us but at night that is plenty close enough.
There were two other sail boats, Destiny, with Jim and Bess, and Aruba II with Andre, whom we had met at the Dismal Swamp visitor center traveling along with us. It was nice to know that when we are 30-40 miles offshore there is someone else out there too. We talked quite a bit on the radio to pass the night away and help stay awake. Andre has sailed quite a bit and always solo. He sleeps for 20 minutes at a time while the auto pilot is steering.
We arrived at the St. Mary's river inlet around 0500. I didn't want to do a night entry, even though I had been through this inlet before and it is an easy inlet to enter, so we hove to for an hour and a half outside and just north of the inlet to let the sun come up. Once in we tied up to one of the mooring buoys at the Fernandina Harbor Marina. We will stay here a couple of days to rest and make plans for continuing.
Here is a short video I took while we were about 30 miles off the coast from Savannah Georgia.
Wow! so much has happened I don't know where to begin. We were at this place, my people called it The Swamp. There were lots of boats really close together and other people were walking across ours. I wanted to jump from boat to boat but the woman wouldn't let me. I had to be satisfied with just sitting in the back place and watch. When the other people would come by they would all say, "What pretty blue eyes you have", well yeah, I'm a Siamese. Some would come and touch me and I would smell them. The ones that smelled good I would lick. Some didn't smell too good though. From my seat I could see lots of trees, in fact the whole place was trees. I wanted so bad to go out and climb them and pretend that I am the queen of the jungle. Ah, dreams are good.
We left there and went to this place where we were tied up at a park. All I could do there is dream about running in the park. I saw some of the same other people that I saw at The Swamp place. We didn't stay here very long. I heard the woman say something about getting some wine and then leaving. We did stay overnight though.
The next day we had some men people get on the boat and we weren't ever by land. They looked really official and looked all over the boat. At first it scared me but when one of the scary looking man people said, "Ah, you have a kitty on board", I knew we would be OK. We kept going and they got off, I don't know where they went or how but they got off.
We stopped for awhile at some dock and it rained and got really cold. I'm glad we were at the dock so we could have heat. I don't have that nasty long fur like my sister to help keep me warm. It is like icky, she licks it and then barfs. I just laugh.
After a few more of the regular days with that loud thingy they call a motor running we had a really long period of moving. I thought it would never end and my people were mostly up above. Every time they would come down below I would scream really loud, to be heard over the motor thingy, and then rub all up against them to get attention. We finally stopped and now it seems to be a lot warmer. Hmmm, wonder why that is!
We are currently located at Northwest Creek Marina near Near Bern, NC for the summer. We will stay here and do our summer maintenance chores on Xperience. In the fall we will head back south, most likely return to the Bahamas for some of the winter months.
