Fourth of July Raft Up

Our friends/hosts invited us to their yacht club raft up for the Fourth of July. Here's a short video of the afternoon...

Hurricanes!

We are moving north, in part, to stay away from hurricanes. Nice try! We left the boat in North Carolina in May, well before the official start of hurricane season and not one but two tropical storms came though the area. The boat did fine in our absence, I tied it down very well to allow for high winds.
Now we're tied to a pier at a friends house near Annapolis and we get hit with a Derecho, often called a 'land hurricane'. Winds were around 60 MPH at the boat and we were fairly exposed to the west, the direction of the storm. Rocked and rolled quite heavily and bumped against the pilings a lot. Did get one very minor dent in the stainless steel rub rail.
OK, none of these were real hurricanes, two tropical storms and a derecho. But still, it's early in the season. Predictions are for a lower than normal hurricane season based on cooler than normal sea water temps in the Atlantic, so lets hope no whoppers are in our future!!

We were going to join 4 other boats for a mini cruise of the Chesapeake Bay today. We've postponed one day. One boat can't get off their hoist because of a power outage, one boat had a power spike take out their electronics and we're concerned about having the same weather conditions as yesterday. So I have time to write blog posts.

Stay cool and keep an eye on the western sky.

Hangin out

Hellow followers, we're still here!

It took us 5 days to move up the Chesapeake Bay from Norfolk to Annapolis. You saw the first day in the video I posted recently. That was fun to sail/surf downwind. But the next day the wind switched hard around to the north. It's no fun to slog upwind into 4 to 5 foot seas. So we sat at anchor for a few days waiting out the winds. Finally got underway and still had a half day of fairly choppy seas.
Our destination was our friends Chuck & Mary's house just north of Annapolis. They have some spare dock space to generously share. We'll stay here a few weeks and spend time visiting with them as well as getting some of the endless projects done. The heat jumped off the scale last week so I added yet another project to the list, replacing the air conditioner. Installing the new unit was pretty easy but ripping out the old one was quite a chore. The unit is under the forward V berth. Gravity worked with me dropping the new 65 lb. unit in. But first gravity had to be overcome in lifting out the old, heavy, rusted unit. I got in some good practice at cursing.

Our friends here belong to a small yacht club and a week long cruise is planned for the Fourth of July week. We're looking forward to having a group to sail with and getting in some Chesapeake touring. This is a BIG bay!
Tentatively, we'll head further north sometime around the middle of July.

OpSail 2012

A Nice Sail Up The Chesapeake Bay

Escape from Lauderdale

Time out

We're back! On the boat that is. I picked up a 6 day job in Detroit while we were in Florida. We scooted north as fast as we could and made it to Oriental NC where we tied up the boat at River Dunes marina. It is a very secure place and as it turns out that was a good thing! We rented a car and drove to Detroit. Got to visit many family and friends. Thank you all for seeing us, hosting us, visiting us. Apologies to those we missed. I posted on facebook that we were arriving in Detroit. Another client of mine saw that and contacted me for a second job. Thanks facebook!! Always good to make a few extra bucks doing something I love. While away, not one but two tropical storms hit the marina. No problem! Boat is just fine. Glad I tied Freedom up extra well and secured everything. We got back after almost 3 weeks away. Took us a few days to get back into the swing of things. Tackled a few projects and now we're ready to get underway again. We'll cast off Thursday early morning heading north. Hope to get to Norfolk on Monday. A large group of tall ships will be sailing from Norfolk to Baltimore on Tuesday. We'll try to keep up with them as long as possible. Spot tracker will be on in the morning...

Landlubbers

We are temporarily living on land. We have docked the boat in North Carolina, rented a car and made our way back to Michigan. Ed has some work and we had some business to attend. It has been fabulous to visit with friends and family but I do miss Freedom! We have had a busy schedule and are having a great time!

Good call!

What a display by mother nature.

We dropped anchor north of Georgetown, SC around 7pm. Grilled some chicken and showered. Just after dark, the super moon rose in the east very brightly while lightning lit the sky to the west. We spent 5 minutes watching the show and then it was time to prepare for the onslaught as it was becoming obvious the storm was heading right for us.

We were anchored in a good spot but pretty exposed to winds. I let out an extra 50' of chain to improve our scope. Also made sure everything was tied down, took down the flag, closed up the bimini enclosure, etc. Soon, the first wind gust hit at 30 knots. We saw a lot of 30+ and a few 40 knot gusts. The boat was pitching back and forth and heeling over quite a bit. The lightning surrounded us. Many of the flashes were long and blindingly bright. The light show lasted at least an hour. Of course there was rain, heavy at times but thankfully, no hail.

We saw the radar picture of what the storm looked like over the ocean where we would have been if we sailed overnight. It grew much bigger! That would have been 'interesting'.

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Bok Bok Bok

We chickened out!

We were going to sail overnight to Southport NC. Reports yesterday were a slight chance of showers. Overnight they raised it to 50% chance of showers & THUNDERSTORMS overnight. We passed.

We took the ICW instead and anchored north of Georgetown SC. But you knew that because you're following our spot tracker, right?

This should only add one day to the trip. But we will use more fuel. That's progress for ya

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Fern to Charles

As in Fernandina Beach, Fl to Charleston, SC. Fernandina Beach looked like a great little town. A good place to come back to in the future.

We headed out of the St. Mary's river inlet around 8am Wednesday. Now we have some idea of wind against tide. The wind was blowing in around 15 knots and the current was flowing out of the inlet at around 2 knots. That built up some good steep waves. We were stuffing the bow regularly. But no big deal for our 30,000 lb boat, unless you get seasick easily.

The plan was to day sail to St. Simons Island; but once we got out into the open ocean, we decided to go all the way to Charleston. This is about 160 miles, a basic 30 hour run, give or take. The seas were a bit lumpy but nothing serious. We've done much worse on Lake Huron.

We spotted at least a half dozen pods of Manta Rays swimming just below the surface, very close to the boat. We're seeing far fewer dolfins now. Still no sharks; that we can see anyway!

We always fret about overnight passages but this was pretty tame. We made it to Charleston Maritime Center around noon, just in time for slack tide. Reports are that it has a strong, difficult current running so our timing was great. We refueled and tied up by around 2pm and spent the afternoon relaxing and getting a bit of laundry done.

Saturday we rode the bikes into Charleston. What a beautiful city, so well preserved. Such a stark contrast to Detroit where by comparison, there is almost no preservation.

Our stay this time will be quick as we need to take advantage of good weather and get moving again north. But we'll be back.

Saturday morning, the tide is favorable for a run out of Charleston harbor, past Fort Sumpter, and north to Southport, SC. This will be another overnight run of about 130 miles. We figure on arriving around early to mid morning. We have anchoring options moving up the ICW depending on how tired we are. We're in travelling mode now and hope to keep up the pace into Oriental, NC.

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Making tracks

We left Fernandina Beach this morning for St. Simons, Ga. But conditions are good to keep going to Charleston SC overnight. We'll just stay a day or two and then get going again. We want to be in Oriental NC Monday to park the boat while we drive to Detroit.

We'll loose internet soon off coastal Ga.

Spot tracker is on.

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Tales and Cocktails

We have met some great people on our cruise. We have learned a lot and had some fun. We ran into a great couple in South Beach. Jane and Ben taught us a new tradition. We managed to finish off a bottle of Sailor Jerrys while aboard their motor sailing vessel, Old Rosie ( we did not drink the whole thing in one night). The tradition on Old Rosie is to have the couple you finished the bottle with sign the label. They have a special place to hang these labels.

We ran into Old Rosie again in Fort Lauderdale and wanted to return the favor. They showed up, wearing their Margarita hats!
Yes, we did enjoy the margaritas AND finished a bottle!

No more lollygaggin

I picked up a very nice gig in Detroit the last week of May. So we're going to get as far north as reasonably possible and rent a car to drive to Detroit. Looking forward to the visit.

We left Ft. Lauderdale Monday for Palm Beach. Palm Beach to Ft. Pierce Tuesday, south of Cape Canaveral Wednesday, Canaveral Thursday, New Smyrna Friday, into Daytona Beach Saturday and north of St. Augustine Sunday nite.

We're passing through a lot of interesting places. St. Augustine looked especially interesting. We'll stop in some other time. The plan is to get at least to S Carolina by mid May and hopefully further north. I'm looking for a good place to park the boat for 2 weeks.

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Pavlovs Manatee

There is nothing tastier to a Manatee than fresh salt-free water. I have watched them push and shove to get a few precious drops. We have a saltwater anchor wash down hose. Yesterday morning as Ed was hosing the anchor and chain a big Manatee came swimming by. He was very unhappy that we had saltwater spraying through the hose. The big lug could not help himself, he kept coming back to verify that it had not changed to fresh water each time we turned the hose on. Pavlov would have been so proud.

Solar

We rented a car for a day to buy the solar panels and do some shopping. Got almost everything done in 22 hours then back to enterprise. We were concerned about overheating so we arranged for a mechanic to do some work on the cooling system too. I figured 4 maybe 5 days to complete the install and a few more things. We finished almost everything in 10 days, just in time for severe storms to come through, so we stayed 2 more days.

But now we have 240 watts of solar. We were running our generator almost 3 hours every day when we sat at anchor. This should cut that back to 1 hour every few days! Yea!

Posted by Ed aboard S/V Freedom

Ft. Lauderdale

We've been thinking of installing some solar panels and a good supplier is located in Lauderdale. So we decided to stop here to do the work. We went a few miles up the New River to the city owned Cooleys Landing, right downtown. The amazing thing about sitting here is the parade of megayachts. There are major repair facilities further up this narrow, twisting river. At least a dozen 100'+ yachts would pass by every day. Some beautiful machinery and some gaudy crap too. Amazing sights.

Posted by Ed aboard S/V Freedom

SoBe II

South Beach is amazing. I've never seen so many outdoor cafes. Must be thousands. The art deco architecture goes on for miles.

We met Wally aboard Gypsy Wind and Ben & Jane on Old Rosie. Wally wants us to go to Cuba with him next year. Wally would be great fun, but sorry we'll have to pass.. Old Rosie's name was lifted from a Bob Seger tune. It became apparent Ben didn't name the boat after his wife! The 4 of us took our bikes on a long ride all thru South Beach. A perfect place for bikes, a great day of sight seeing, dining and goofing off.

After a very quick, fun week, we decided we'd better get underway before we spend all our money on lunches & dinners! We stayed off the beach, too much skin. I don't like seeing women in skimpy bikinis cavorting in the sun.

Next stop Ft. Lauderdale, a short day sail up the coast. Got yelled at by the water cops for trying to use the ship channel while cruise ships were present and got yelled at again in Lauderdale for circling around while waiting for a bridge opening; got to close to where there were no cruise ships!



Posted by Ed aboard S/V Freedom

More of Chris Critters

In Key West the roosters rule the roost

Is this a seal?

Critters

Chris here. I have a few pictures to share of some of the critters we have seen along the way. I hope you enjoy them. Santa dogs in St Pete:
An Egret:

Some Ibus
Heron

Lizards