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Home for the Holidays
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The first picture is Christmas Day at our niece Jilli and her husband John's house. Gordon stayed home because he tore a back muscle. The rest of the pictures are somewhat out of sequence as we took the first part of the trip beginning October 31st to the 4th of November but did not blog about it then. The first group of pictures are from the day before departing by rental car to return to the boat in Oriental North Carolina. The last pictures were from the first leg of the trip to Oriental NC. Read the captions, you can figure it out!!
Sorry for things being out of order. The narration is mostly from the first day of the first leg southward. The other days were thankfully un-eventful. Getting back in the routine of boat travelling and blogging. The struggle is real and will get better.
We are writing
the beginning of this year’s adventure heading to Key West long after our first
leg ended. As we write this we are at
the beach in Delaware in the middle of a raging blizzard. 10” of snow and 35 MPH sustained winds. The power went out several hours ago and the
temperature is plummeting, wind chill will be in the teens by morning. We were prepared and shut off the water and
blew out the water lines before we lost power. Tomorrow we are scheduled to
pick up a rental car and return to the marina at Oriental, NC – Grace Harbor at
River Dunes.
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| From 60 degrees to 30 and a blizzard! |
The story begins
on October 31, 2021. We left Indian
River early after sleeping over the night before so we would get an early
start. There will likely be some
differences in the way Rosemary and I describe the first day, but we sill agree
on at least four main points.
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| And then the sun came out |
The first is the
weather was rougher than we would have liked but was forecast to get better as
we headed south, which it did just not as early as had been predicted. The wind
was out of the West so that as long as we hugged the coast there would not be
much of a fetch and the conditions would be reasonable. I acknowledge that there were small craft
advisories in the morning but they were expiring as we left and we both
reviewed several sources for the prediction and it was largely in line with
what was predicted.
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| River Dunes 1/5/2022 leave tomorrow |
The night before
we left was cold, in the thirties cold, and the tubes on the dinghy were somewhat
deflated from the cold. I did not check
them and make adjustments in the morning in my haste to get underway. Big mistake, lesson learned. Somewhere off Ocean City Maryland the dinghy
came off the lift. Still attached at the
bow, mostly off the stern. The plug in
the transom is left out when on the lift so rain drains out and this means that
the dinghy is taking on water quickly at the stern. I had to go out onto the
swim platform and quickly lower the lift arms, loosen the straps, maneuver the dinghy
into position, raise the arms and secure the dinghy tightly. There were some exciting moments and we can
share the whole trip in greater detail in person, just ask.
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| Waterside in Norfolk, short run from Deltaville Va third day first leg |
This was a very
rough day in the water. Rosemary was
trying to hold onto my belt while I was on the swim platform but I told her to
get back on the boat because if I went in, who would call the Coast Guard? Eventually we were able to proceed. Shortly after that, we were in touch with
NASA as they were having a live fire exercise, off of Wallops Island. Sandy had checked the website as they list
when they are doing launches, and they were not doing any. I guess they don’t tell you when they are
going to be firing live ammo! Their
directions to us were to head East to coordinates they gave to us. Basically go 15 miles East into the ocean
where it just gets rougher, then you may start to head south again. By this time Rosemary is lying down on the dinette
seat with the dog bowl and Parker is right below her not moving.
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| Autopilot - No one visible at helm for at least 5 minutes |
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| Coinjock - rafting large boats - no vacancies! fourth day of first leg |
Lastly, as we
finally are able to begin to head South, we lost the auto pilot, then the power
steering…….After several attempts Sandy figured out that our batteries were not
charging, he was able to start the generator and gradually things came back
again. More lessons learned. It was a very, very long day, we arrived at
Deltaville, VA just as the sun was setting.
We were able to dock ourselves and begin the process of washing the boat
and walking the dog. What a day to begin
our trip!!
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| Waterside docked next to Most Interesting Man in the World |
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