My Little Buddy

Now that I have it, I wouldn't be without my little buddy. Thanks Rick and Darlene for getting me on to this little wonder of human ingenuity. Yep, it’s a heater. A propane heater made for indoor use, or better yet, for boat use. Yes it comes with all the usual precautions when using a fossil fuel burning device inside, but, I have been running it for the last three hours, its 10 deg C outside, and 28 deg C inside. Okay, a little warm even for me, but it is 12” away from the propane sniffer, and the carbon dioxide detector is 5’ above it, and all is well. Travelling home in this cold weather we have been having, would be a nightmare without it.

Walmart $69.98

It works well for drying out the foulies after a long wet days travel.

Its been a few days since the last blog entry, but in all honesty, there hasn't been that much to blog about, and internet has been a little scarce.

We left off arriving in New Smyrna Beach. The first morning there Serena woke up screaming. I swore someone had ripped off her arm, but no, it was a neck strain. The really bad kind. I get them once in away, so I know what she was going through. There are kinks, and then there are pulls, this was a pull. She managed to get dressed and go have breakfast with our friends Jim and Gail and their friends from Texas Bruce and Judy. We met Jim and Gail at the Dismal Swamp on the way down. They are great, and if Serena had of been feeling a little better, we would have spent more time with them. However, by the time we got back to the boat, she was in no shape to do anything except lay in bed, which she did for the next two days.

I know we were over extending our welcome by staying on the free dock for 3 nights, but this is off season, and nobody said anything to us. On the third day we went to the farmers market with our friends Rick and Darlene, who had arrived the night before, and topped up on some fresh veggies before we left to travel the 13 miles to Daytona Beach.

Daytona Beach was hosting Bike Week, so all night we heard the soothing sounds of Harleys and sirens. Oh goodie. Apparently the week went well, only 3 deaths, and they were accidents. We didn’t stick around to find out, we woke up and headed out. Coming to the conclusion that we had been in the US for a week and a half, and gone nowhere. At this rate we might get home by the fall. So, we decided to push on for the next couple of weeks into North Carolina. From there we are only about 4 weeks from home, so we can slow down and take it easy. If something were to slow us down, being close to Canada would make it easier on us.

We started out making good days, 64 miles from Daytona up passed St. Augustine, then 55 miles up to Cumberland Island, GA. That’s where the fun ends. The tides in Georgia are around 8’ and the currents associated with those tides will drive you completely insane. We made 45 miles yesterday, and that’s statute miles, for 10 hours of 10 deg C fun-filled driving. Today was a little better, but still enough to want to take a portable drill to my temple.

We stopped here at Matanzas Inlet on the way down, and toured this fort. It was one of our favorite spots, but on this day the wind and current were in our favor, so we pushed on.

St. Augustine. It is interesting to see this place, as the last time we were here we missed everything from Jacksonville to this bridge. The tall ship is from Spain, neat, but they start to blend into the environment after awhile.

Looks big huh? We were 200 yards away from this on the way down during the foggy day, and we had no idea that it was here until we drove by it on this trip. Freaky.

What's worse is that we crossed this shipping lane also in the fog on the way down, and watching this bad boy come flying up the channel made us realize that there is no way we would have had time get out of the way of one of these in the pea soup fog. Makes us wonder why an extra day at a free dock was such a bad thing that we had to travel 35 miles barely able to see the front of the boat.

How much water do you figure is at the edge of this channel. It is surprising how many markers down here are way out of the channel. 

This guy passed us earlier in the day. And as far as I could tell, he went aground pretty close to high tide. This would totally suck. He was obviously taking it in stride, sitting in the cockpit reading a book.

When we pulled into the anchorage at Cumberland Island, the horses were hanging out on the beach. The first time here we hunted for them for about 4 hours.

No this not for effect, its that cold. Serena has been spending her days down below cleaning, baking, and making me anything I needed, while I brave the cold driving 10 - 10 1/2 hrs per day.

So far the trip has been relatively uneventful. I noticed a note on Active Captain about Little Mud River being shallow. As luck would have it, we were transiting it at high tide, and the tide was 7 feet, so not a problem. However, interestingly, we had 10 feet of water, the tide was 7 feet of course, and Vita draws 4 feet. Now it doesn't take a genius to figure out that when doing the complicated math, that you run out of fingers. Glad I didn't try this at low tide. I read later that this is considered the shallowest spot on the ICW.

The trip out around Cumberland Island, through Jekyll Sound, was actually pretty good, even with the north wind. For the uninitiated this is probably the nastiest piece of water in the ICW, especially in a Northeast wind. In fact there are two, all be it longer, well traveled alternate routes to get around it. The problem is that in order to avoid the shoals, you have to go out around the sea buoy, which is a long trip into hell on the wrong day. We had a good trip, getting pounded by the wind against tide going out to the buoy, and then spending 2 1/2 hours getting back into the sound at 1.5 knots. 

Serena's newest triumph. Instead of bread, buns you can make sandwiches with. Totally awesome, yummy, and way more versatile than a regular loaf. As a bonus, they are tear-aparts.

So now we are anchored in a great little spot 25 miles from the Georgia/South Carolina border. We stopped here on the way down because we had heard there was free wifi, and it is some of the best wifi we have come across during the whole trip. We would have passed right by it with our previous schedule, but since the currents have been slowing us down, it made for the perfect stop. I got the oil changed in the engine, and enough time to update the blogs. Incidentally, it is a bit strange going from an oil change per season, to once a month. This last one was 16 days, and we were over by 8 hours. Now we are good for another 450 miles, so somewhere in North Carolina.

Next update, whenever possible! Have a great spring everyone.