St. Augustine...it's finally warm!

December 14 - 15: St. Augustine, FL

We are finally in Florida and finally it's warm! Yahooo! We were getting pretty tired of all the layers of coats, hats and gloves. This trip was supposed to be about being in warm weather during the winter. Once we got into Florida, things started improving quickly.

St. Augustine is a beautiful city...full of history and incredible French and Spanish architecture. We were especially lucky to be there so close to Christmas because the place was decorated to the hilt with Christmas lights. Fantastic! We took a ton of pics, some of which I wanted to share with you.

The anchorage just before the Bridge of Lions. They had a wicked 4 knot current there, so we opted to stay in the city marina.

The beautiful city marina.

Flagler College, (previously the Flagler hotel). Mr. Flagler developed the town into a tourist attraction years ago, when he built the first rail line from the northeast to Florida...and eventually to the Keys.

Another hotel, fashioned after the Flagler architecture style.

The Alcazar Hotel, across the street from the Flagler. He built this structure to house all the entertainment venues for his guests such as ballrooms, pool halls, a huge indoor swimming pool, etc. Today, it houses the Lightner museum of artifacts and the city hall.

The courtyard garden at the Alcazar. Breathtakingly beautiful.

Inside the Lightner museum.

This is the Castillio de San Marcos Fort, built in the 1500's by the Spanish, eventually taken over by the English, home to Indians for a while...it has quite a history.

Bill inside one of the sentry posts. Amazing to be standing in the same spot as so many troops from the past.

The interior courtyard of the fort. We were able to go in several of the rooms to see how the troops lived, stored their powder kegs, how they assembled the cannon balls and loaded cannons, etc. It was a fun step back in history.

Even the cannons were extremely ornate.

Had to include this pic of the Fountain of Youth as discovered by Juan Ponce de Leon. We got to drink some of the water, but didn't seem to make any difference. The site has an interesting story behind it. Turns out Juan was quite short at about 4'11" (and he was taller than the rest of his Spanish crew). When he landed in Florida, the Indians who lived in the area were quite large. The chief was 7' tall and 300 lbs. Juan figured the Indians looked so healthy that it must be the water. But it didn't really have any special properties. Unfortunately, the Europeans who came and settled in the area brought their nasty diseases with them and eventually killed off all the Indians. Talk about ruining a neighborhood!

There's so much more to St. Augustine, but I don't want to bore you with all the details. You just have to visit yourself someday...and try to do so during the holidays for a special treat.

Our first overnight passage!

December 5 - 8, Charleston SC to Brunswick, GA



Thanks to our friends at our home port in Lake Erie, we had a gift certificate to stay at the Charleston City Marina for a couple days. It's a great marina, right downtown. We walked to the shopping district and enjoyed the sites and sounds of Charleston on Friday and Saturday. We thought we might stay through Sunday, but a weather window opened and our trusty captain Bill made the decision to head out to sea. Yep folks, this was going to be our first overnight passage in the Atlantic Ocean. We would travel 156 miles from Charleston to Brunswick GA, at times being 20 - 25 miles offshore.

Just the two of us.
In the dark.
In the ocean.
With no one around.
No radar.
No working cell phones.

ICE CREAM FACE!!!!!!


Actually, the trip turned out great. In fact, it was an experience of a lifetime. I don't have many photos (duh, it was dark), but I thought I'd share a few highlights from the trip.


Some of the beautiful homes along the waterway as we headed out from Charleston. We sailed right past the spot on Sullivan's Island Beach where we got married. So cool to see it from the water.


1pm - 6 pm
We headed out of Charleston with our hearts in our stomach, but determined to get this experience under our belts. It was sunny and cool but not cold. We headed offshore, turned to starboard and headed south. We decided we'd each take 3 hour watches. My first one was from 3 - 6 pm. As the sun was setting around 5 pm I saw two dolphins next to the boat. Cool. I walked up on the weather deck to get a better look. The next thing I knew, I saw about 8 more dolphins jumping in the water and headed toward the boat. "Bill, get up here and see this!" He grabbed the video camera and got lots of great footage of the whole group of dolphins swimming with us. They were literally inches from the boat, weaving in and out in front of the bow wave. You could even hear them squeaking. Sooooo cool! We agreed this had to be a good sign!

9 pm - midnight
I took a nap while Bill had his watch from 6 - 9 pm. The sun had set but we had a new moon which illuminated the water a bit so you could watch for any debris in the water. When I first came up I could still see a few lights on shore, but they were far away. There was one boat off to our port side but it was moving off in a different direction. Bill went down to get some rest and I was all alone. It's weird how different the water is in the dark. You become much more aware of the sounds around you. "whoooo, whoooo." What the heck was that? Guess it must be some kind of seagull or something that I can't see. "kerplash!" What's that loud splash? It was different from the other waves splashing against the hull. Could it be a dolphin? Or a whale? Or a MONSTER!!!!!! I started laughing to myself. Girl, you got yourself one ACTIVE imagination. But you know, now I can see why the sailors of old had so many tall tales to tell. When you are out on the open sea in the dark you really do start thinking that something strange is going to come up out of the water and swallow your boat. At the end of my watch I wasn't really that tired but I was kind of cold, so I woke Bill up and he took over duties.



Here's a shot of our sleeping quarters in the aft cabin along with all our gear that we'd put back in there after Donna left. Bill said it looked like a hamster had settled in there. We had to curl up in a little ball to sleep. But it was nice and warm!

3 - 6 am
Bill got me up for my watch and warned me that it was REALLY dark out there. Turns out the new moon set (just like the sun sets) so now we had NO light. In fact, you couldn't even see past the bow of the boat. This made Bill very nervous, but I tried to have faith that we'd be protected. On the up side, the darkness provided the best gift possible...a sky that was covered with a million, bazillion stars. I mean, I've NEVER seen anything like it. It was absolutely breathtaking. And at this point, there were absolutely no other lights or boats or anything in sight. It was so dark that you couldn't tell where the water stopped and the sky began. It just looked like you were surrounded by stars. My favorite part was to lean out and look straight up at the huge sail against the backdrop of the stars. It looked like we were sailing in the Milky Way, just like they describe in children's books. No movie or special effects group could ever replicate the scene. The cool air on my face, the sound of the waves lapping against the boat as it sliced through the water and the blanket of stars stretching out in all directions. Words do not do it justice. I wish all of you could experience it some day. It was pure heaven.

Around 5:30 am Bill came up top to join me. I went down for a nap from 6 - 7:30 so I missed the sunrise. But he took the pic below. He also had a group of dolphins join him again! Lucky bum.


Sunrise over the Atlantic.


The rest of our trip into Brunswick, GA was a little "sporty" as Bill would call it. The wind kicked up quite a bit so it got really rocky. We trimmed the sails and made our way into the long channel into Brunswick, docking around 3 pm...26 hours from when we had started. What would normally take us 4 days on the ICW, we were able to do overnight. Yahoo! I asked one of our dockmates to take a picture of us right away so we could remember the moment. Who am I kidding? This was an experience I'll NEVER forget!

Donna joins our trip

November 30 - December 3: Southport, NC to Georgetown, SC

After a whirlwind trip home for Thanksgiving (like George Washington, I believe I slept in a different bed every night!) we finally returned to Charleston on Saturday, Nov. 29 and drove the 3 hours back to our boat in Southport, NC. We had left the heat on since the temps were getting into the 20's at night and we didn't want any of the hoses freezing. No problem, the boat survived just fine. It really felt great to be "home" again. Funny how that transition occurred without me even noticing. Before, when I went home, I felt I was coming back to "the boat." But this time it was definitely "home." Only took me about 5 months to get to that point...guess I'm slow to make transitions.

Speaking of which, I don't know if I've written about this on the blog before or not, but the dragonfly is an image that I keep bumping into...sometimes literally, with the real thing hitting me in the face or sitting on a life line and staring at me for an hour while we were underway..or figuratively, through tattoos on people I met (3 so far). Anyway, since they kept coming to me, I decided to look them up. After all, I'm a big believer in signs. Turns out the dragonfly represents "transition." Wowsers! That's what I initially said this trip would be all about.

When I was home, my sister Barb gave me a pair of dragonfly earrings. I took them off at Pat's house before bed one night then could only find one of the earrings in the morning. We figured her new kitten must have gotten hold of it. I went on to Sue's for two nights, traveled back to Charleston then to Southport. After I unpacked, I layed down for a few moments. When I got up, Bill noticed something glittering on the bed. IT WAS MY OTHER EARRING! Weird, huh? I figured my little dragonfly friend was trying to tell me that this is where I'm meant to be. Ok, enough of the whoo whoo...let's get to back to the travel log.

On Sunday, I drove down to Georgetown to pick up my sister Donna to join us for part of the trip. (Thanks to her daughter Maureen for bringing her 1/2 way up from Charleston.) She really, really wanted to be on board for this part of the journey since we'd be passing directly in front of her condo on the ICW. She'd never seen the boat so didn't know what she was getting into. The other sisters warned her that the aft cabin would be VERY cramped quarters. Thanks to their exaggerations, Donna was pleasantly surprised. She loved her "little cabin" and looked quite cozy all tucked in with her reading light and good book.

Having a glass of wine to celebrate Donna's arrival.

We were all excited to get started on the trip on Monday morning, but Mother Nature had other ideas. The wind was gusting up to 25 - 30 knots! Bummer! Donna only had 3 days to spend with us and we were hoping to get to Charleston. Oh well, as I've learned on this trip, the weather rules. We made the best of it but stopping in the sales office at St. James Plantation to see if we could tour some of their condos. The resort is enormous and very posh. We got to see several condos which were HUGE! (Of course, keep in mind that I've been living in a 42' x 13' box for the past 5 months.) No, even with that factored in, the condos were very, very nice. We're keeping the information as reference as we look at other properties along the way. Although I don't think anything could beat the home we have in Waynesville. Oh well, once again, I digress.

On Tuesday morning we got up super early, determined to get underway come hell or high water. Ummmm, did we factor in falling water? Turns out it was raining hard and freezing cold. But hey, we're hardy sailors, we can get through anything. We headed out and after about 1 mile we were stopped dead in our tracks due to construction on a bridge. About 5 boats circled around waiting for them to clear the way. One of the boats reminded them that they were not supposed to start work until 8am and that he had contacted the Coast Guard and they were in violation of Code blah, blah, blah and would be facing a $60,000 fine. Wouldn't you know, the crew started to skedaddle and get things moving at that point. We later nicknamed that guy the mayor of the ICW for the day! I have a feeling he must have been a lawyer in his previous life.




Even though Donna was a newbie swab, we let her take the helm while we were tucked under the dodger to avoid the rain. :-)



Finally, after a few hours we reached Donna's condo. The rain had slowed down to a light drizzle so it wasn't too bad for Donna to go out on deck to get a pic.


Donna's condo is to the right of this pic.


Donna told us that by the time we'd reach South Carolina that the sun would come out. And wouldn't you know, she was right. Not that it warmed up a whole lot...but getting rid of the rain was a HUGE improvement.

We spent the night in Bucksport, SC which was really cool. It's a very rural area with just a small marina and nothing else around that we could see. The lady that ran the place was ready to close when we pulled in, but she helped us to get settled and even served us a shot of scotch to warm us up. (We were chilled to the bone by that time.) We hooked up the heater and strolled up the dock to meet our neighbors. The boat in front of us was a 70' Hutchins, a VERY luxurious motor yacht. It's one of only 3 in existence, each custom made. They had a crew of 3 guys and one girl, taking the boat to the Bahamas for the owner. We asked if we could get a tour and were not disappointed. The boat is constructed of beautiful mahogany wood on oak planking. It had crew quarters as well as the master suite and 2 guest rooms. The galley had a FULL SIZE refrigerator! The guy said it took 5 years to build and a lot of scotch to make all the building decisions. It's a real piece of art. Unfortunately, I didn't get a still picture of it. I think Bill got it on his video cam.


Morning in Bucksport was very foggy. Ice was on the docks and the boat!

The next morning was cold (AGAIN) but without rain. We waited until some of the fog settled down then headed south to Georgetown. We decided that was the best place to rent a car to take Donna back, since I couldn't talk her into taking one more day off. The trip went down the Waccamaw River through a beautiful wooded area called the Frances Marion National Wildlife Refuge. Lots of trees with Spanish moss hanging off of them...just like being in the bayou. We got into Georgetown, got a rental car and I drove Donna back to Charleston (about 1-1/2 hrs) then came back to the boat.

Sure enough, the next day we made Charleston with ease. And wouldn't you know that it was THE most gorgeous day of the trip! I wish Donna could have stayed. It was warm enough that I sat on the bow of the boat with just a throw over my legs to keep me warm. The homes were really neat all along the ICW. We ended up anchoring just before the Ben Sawyer Bridge which is the entrance to Sullivan's Island...a noted landmark for many reasons, not the least of which is that it was the site of our wedding almost 6 years ago. We had a toast to old and new memories as we watched the sun set into the water.