Post Script: Winter 2010

Miniature golf with a nautical theme (we tend to stay as close as possible to water and boats) Kissimmee, Florida.

Addison & Ken at a nautical flea market in Ft. Lauderdale

We had lunch with Jack & Peggy at the marina where their boat is berthed in Lake Worth

The Toews girls on LOS GATOEWS taking a break from homeschooling in Lake Worth, Florida

Susan & Barry with Ken at their new mobile home in Florida before they rent it out and set sail on SWAN

Since Ken is retired and Heidi is taking a break from a temporary job, we were able to get away in January and drive down to Florida and visit several boat crews that were in the southeast coast area. The Perkins (our frequent companions and mentors in Florida last winter, Barry and Susan) had just bought a mobile home on Nettles Island, part of Hutchinson Island. They started their winter boat trip to the Keys the week after our visit. While visiting with Barry and Susan we also had a mini-reunion with Chris & Kevin Buckley from upstate New York. The six of us had all been together in Nettles Island last April.

The next day we found the Toews family on their catamaran and visited with Mike & Debbie and their three girls. The Toews had been in the Bahamas with us and also in Onset last summer. They are planning the next stage of their adventure which may include more land time and college courses for Debbie. On the same day we had lunch with some Canadian friends Peggy & Jack, who were in the area on their boat. They had summered their boat in the Bahamas and were back in Florida and heading north.

We also had a quick visit this day with John and Alida of VOYAGER II. We crossed the paths of John and Alida several times in the Chesapeake and going north last spring, talked with them on the radio a lot, emailed them, and almost had them visit us in Massachusetts, but never met them! Them have a mobile home in Ft. Lauderdale and keep their boat in Virginia.

The next day, after lunch and a walk on South Beach in Miami, we backtracked to Ft. Lauderdale as our friends Addison and Pat Chan had driven up there from Marathon where they are living on THREE PENNY OPERA. We had a great visit with them and two of their friends, at a nautical flea market(the friends had a booth), and later that day at dinner.

We spent our second week in Florida at a condo in land-locked Kissimmee. We did miss being on the water and watching sunsets everyday, but not having anchor watch sort of made up for it. Since we had never been to the Florida west coast, we took a side trip from Kissimmee to Tarpon Springs one day and hung around the docks there. We also visited Maitland, Florida (they have a great Audobon Center there with birds of prey) and rode bikes on a bike trail in Winter Garden.

SUMMER SAILING

Dinghy dock in Cohasset Harbor at start of Maine trip, Ken & John


View of Damariscotta from our mooring, storm brewing


RISING TIDE squeezed into Damariscove; eventually there were 4 boats here for the night

RISING TIDE and crew went on a few cruises this summer, after getting a well-deserved bottom cleaning, bottom painting, and refinished teak trim on the cabin, cockpit and toerail.

We sailed to Marblehead and spent a few days there, visiting family and friends. We watched fireworks over Marblehead harbor, walked through Old Town, and unfolded the bike to travel to the West Shore to our old neighborhood.

The next trip was an invitation to join a group from the Hull Yacht Club (thanks Tom and Jean!) to sail to Provincetown for a BIG lobster feed on the beach. The lobsters were brought from Hull--76 total I believe--and there were about 10-15 boats. We anchored off of a quiet beach near the lighthouse within sight of the town, and had some other fun activities including a Sunday morning pancake breakfast on one of the powerboats. The weather was perfect with good wind and lots of sun. Hopefully there will be a repeat of this next summer.

Shortly after P-Town, RISING TIDE sailed for Maine with Ken and John Campbell on board. They did day trips up the coast to Boothbay Harbor. Along the way there was one planned rendezvous with Dick McLeod on his Egg Harbor SUNDANCE, and another with friends we met in North Carolina, Mark & Julie on the Tayana 37 RACHEL.

John left for home on the end of the first week and I joined the crew. We had a hurricane bearing down on Maine, most unusual, so decided to sail up one of the long rivers in the area. We headed for Damariscotta and it was a perfect place to be in a storm. It’s less than a day’s sail from Boothbay and has a small supply of free moorings for visitors provided by a boatyard there. There are lots of small shops, restaurants, pubs, and you can get to two grocery stores after a 10 minute walk.

We spent 3 days in Damariscotta, largely out of the storm as we had hoped, and were able to meet up with both the Cassidys (sailing friends from our Catboat days and on, who now live in Maine) and the Olneys (friends from Cohasset who moved to Maine) while there.

For the middle of our second week in Maine, we had planned to take aboard Susan & Barry Perkins, new friends from Massachusetts who we met in Florida last winter. They wisely waited until the hurricane had moved on and we picked them up in Southport. Just before Susan & Barry arrived we ran into another couple from our winter trip, Susan & Tom Maddigan, who were also just arriving by car to spend some time sailing with some of their friends. Small world!

With our extra crew we sailed for Damariscove, an island not far from Southport. It is an uninhabited island most of the time, with just one former coast guard building used intermittently by two families. The harbor in Damariscove is narrow and deep and provides good protection. The island was settled long ago, before the Pilgrims settled Plymouth, as a fishing and trading post. Even though Ken did not like the sides of the harbor being 10 ft. from our anchorage, we spent the night and the next day went on an interesting hike through the south end of the island on well marked trails.

The weather cooperated throughout the Perkins’ visit and we were able to sail, anchor several times in pristine coves, dig mussels, buy bargain-priced lobster, see seals, transit Townsend Gut, and get them safely back to their car.

At the end of our loosely planned two weeks in Maine we were expecting another storm, this one a tropical storm that never got strong-enough winds to be a hurricane, but nonetheless needed watching. We headed back southeast, and ducked into Princes Point just north of Portland where friends--the MacLeods--were able to get us a secure mooring for a few days. Barb & Dick also fed us, let us sleep in their guest room, and helped us to get to a car rental place to get a vehicle and attend a wedding in New Hampshire that we had double-booked for this last weekend in Maine. Even though we tested their hospitality, they held up, and we enjoyed spending some quality and quantity time with them!

We eventually sailed back into Cohasset on Tuesday evening of the third week, arriving when the tide was out (an especially low moon tide) and probably had only inches under our keel as we entered the harbor. But we made it without any problems. New England is definitely a great place to sail in.

Our cruising for 2008-2009 has been everything I thought it would be. Ken and I have great memories and pictures from all these travels and we have accomplished what we set out to do, after day-dreaming about it for a long time. Now that RISING TIDE is back in her harbor, we have talked with a broker about selling her and maybe taking a new tack next year with a motorboat (gasp! a stinkpot!). At any rate, the broker, John Proctor, can be reached at lawsonyachts@aol.com,
if you know of anyone looking for a seaworthy 37’ sailboat.

We’d love to hear from any of you who are taking cruises this fall and winter and we hope you keep us “in the loop” with your plans and travels. We’ll be staying close by the fire and working on some new day-dreams.

JUNE 7 - 19 THE FINAL 500

One of the Victorians in Cape May, NJ, now an inn



Dock at Fishers Island, NY



Dacey onboard and posing in front of the Statue of Liberty



Atlantic City Life Guards at the beach (note the fog rolling in on the right)

Jun 7 Leaving Annapolis with our friend Ann Dacey (from West Virginia) we found good weather for the first few days. We also reconnected with ANDROS, a boat from upstate New York that we first met in these waters back in October. There is a new boat, PAVITI TERN, that was in Annapolis and is going the same way we are, destination Westport, MA. Mike, the skipper, is single-handing, and his boat is a 1930s classic sailboat.

June 11 We have arrived in Atlantic City, the best stop before we sail overnight for Block Island. From here we plan to clear two of the shipping lanes outside of New York City before dark and then will just have to pass through one more in the night.

But first, we need to get good weather to leave for a 160 mile trip to the northeast, and even though it is sunny and warm, the wind is coming from the north and then from the east, and that is not good. We ended up in Atlantic City for four days.

Dacey and I are making the best of our visit to the Jersey shore. We took a self-guided tour of the Victorian houses in Cape May the day before we got to Atlantic City, and have been to the casinos, the boardwalk, and the beach in AC. With Ken and Mike (PAVITI TERN) we’ve found some good seafood and beer near the Aquarium docks and there are groceries across the river near the St.George Thoroughfare. There is also a good anchorage there (St. George Thor.), within sight of the casinos but out of most of the traffic.

June 15 We finally left Atlantic City with a east-south-east wind and sailed overnight under a pink half-moon (it came up at 12:45 am and then got covered by clouds at 2 am). We avoided the traffic in the shipping lanes, but we couldn’t get to Block Island due to the wind changing to be more north east as the wee hours passed. At 8 am Ken decided to re-direct to New York City. It might have been dark on the second day before we reached land if we had continued the way we were going. But even going to NYC it took us until 6:30 pm to get just outside the harbor and anchor off of Sandy Hook, in northern New Jersey.

June 17 To get some rest and to catch the best current we slept in and started through the passage to get through New York Harbor in mid-day. It was mostly cloudy but there was almost no traffic (except the Staten Island Ferries which seem to go every 15 minutes!) and we were fascinated by the sights, passing the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the whole east side of Manhattan, La Guardia Airport, etc. This was definitely an interesting day, even though this part of the trip was unplanned. We ended up anchoring for the night off of Long Island, in a shallow cove all by ourselves. Dacey has found her niche as a wonderful ship’s cook and she prepared another delicious dinner for us.

June 18 This was our best day for sailing of all the days Dacey has been on board. We had a good wind, Long Island Sound was flat, and even though it rained most of the day, we made good progress and sailed between the Connecticut shore and the Long Island shore until we got to Fishers Island. We really like Fishers Island! It looks like a small Cape or Maine town, just a couple dozen boats in West Harbor, and friendly people on shore. We got to stay for the night at the fuel dock as they had just closed, and a passerby offered a ride to wherever we needed to go. Dacey can connect up with a sister who is driving through Connecticut this evening if she takes the ferry to New London. We’ll miss her, but she has been onboard for 12 days and she has a family party to get to in Massachusetts.

Fishers Island has 200 year-round inhabitants and 4000 summer residents, we were told by another friendly islander that gave us a ride to the Pequot Inn after Dacey left. Some of the summer people have filtered in at this point, enough to make the Inn a “happening” place on a Thursday night. The bar/restaurant reminded me of a ski lodge and yacht club dining room combined.

June 20 We motored into Duxbury Harbor at 8:15 pm today, completing our 8 month trip in drizzle but good visibility. We plan to get RISING TIDE hauled out and
paint the bottom in the coming week. The weather is threatening to be a full-blown nor’easter for a few days so we are happy to be in a snug harbor. The past two days took us through Newport where we stopped for one night but didn’t go ashore. The weather in this period was very foggy and we had to cross ferry lanes to Block Island but by mid-day today it had cleared. We couldn’t stop in Mattapoisett as we had planned (Onset as a second choice also was scrapped because of the impending storm). The current in the Cape Cod Canal was favorable and we made good time from Newport to Duxbury.

We’ll be reassessing our future trips as we adjust to mostly shore life for the next few months. We had a good boat to take this voyage in and we (the crew) held up, for the most part, through good and bad weather. The last three weeks were the most challenging mentally as we approached the end of the journey and had difficult weather conditions to cope with. Gone are the days of consistent warmth and no rain, returning us to New England’s ever-changing weather. As we put our socks and shoes back on and pull out the slickers from the hanging locker, we end our trip and wonder what the future will bring.

MAY 28 - JUNE 6 The “Rising Tide Awards”

Crab buyer on the docks, Oxford, MD, with blue crabs



Crab lunch in Oxford, MD with all the fixins'



Kids getting briefed before their trip on a "pirate boat" in Annapolis


AWARDS

Most Memorable: sailing in light air across the clearest water ever, the Bahama Bank east of Bimini, for a day and a half in crystal clear water, seeing only a few boats in the distance and sand, starfish, and small silver fish below us

Best Harbor or Anchorage: Faber Cove near Ft. Pierce Inlet, FL

Best Food: tie for conch salad in George Town, Exumas (all freshly made while you watch) and fish fry in Green Turtle Cay, Abacos, put on by the church youth group

Best Marina: Bohicket Creek Marina, South Carolina

Best Laundromat: free one, for boaters, at Charleston Maritime Center, SC, where we watched preparations for an outdoor wedding while we did the wash

Best Live Music: Bahamian Junkanoo bands, they perform at Christmas and New Years in Nassau, as a parade, and various other times of the year as individual bands (we watched one in George Town, Exumas)

Most Feared Waters: Alligator River entrance at south end of Albermarle Sound, NC

Worst Guidebook: Pavlidis’ “The Exuma Guide”, 2007 edition with numerous references to “this may change after 1999.…”

Best Guide: Explorer Charts (with annotations for groceries, laudromats, fuel, etc.) for the three different areas of the Bahamas

Most Likely to Go Back To: Eastern Shore Maryland to explore some more; but if we “win the lottery” we’d fly to the Exumas to see the annual April “Family Regatta“, the locals’ sailing festival and races that we missed this year

Good Samaritan Award: Brian on GOTTA LIFE who saw us aground, anchored his sailboat and came over with his daughter sounding the surrounding water, in his dinghy, to pull us off in the Matanzas River, near St. Augustine

All-Star Support Team: Mike Powers for keeping Belva and Ken Sr. up to date with our blog, Captain John Campbell for sending engine parts, etc., Steve Ward for phone advice and providing parts, our son Pete for forwarding mail and taking care of our house

On-The-Spot-Help When You Need It Award: Barry and Susan Perkins on SWAN who returned again (and again) to Key Biscayne while our engine was disabled and helped us to move RISING TIDE between anchorage and sea wall as needed

Best Local Business: Sun Electronics (solar panels and related products), Miami

Worst Local Business: West Marine, various locations

Encouragement Award: Frank and Linda Cassidy, veterans of this route (and much further travels) who got us interested in the Bahamas in the first place



May 28 We have just a few places left to visit that are new to us before we retrace our steps through Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. We crossed the Chesapeake to Oxford, Maryland on the Eastern Shore, in the Choptank River. We also visited St. Michaels, Maryland, which was not far if we stayed in the Choptank, slipped into Broad Creek and then anchored in San Domingo Creek. Both towns are full of older 1700s and 1800s buildings, restaurants, boat yards, and crab fishermen. Oxford is a little smaller, and St. Michaels has a museum on the waterfront with several buildings and quite a few boats in the water and on land that they are exhibiting.

One of the boat yards, in Oxford, has an interesting method of building and repairing wooden boats. They use Kevlar rope instead of frames and it is set in a perpendicular routed groove in the wood planking and fiberglassed over. This yard, Cutts and Case, also has a lot of wooden boats in their yard, and they even have the power boat FOTO on display. It’s the boat the famous photographer Morris Rosenfield used (around the mid 1900s?).

We thoroughly enjoyed the area, and were treated to a lot of bird activity (one swan flew by at the same time each morning just before sunrise -- they make an unusual sound as they fly) and we learned a lot about the oystering and crabbing in the area.

June 2 (Tuesday) Our friend Ann Dacey is coming from West Virginia to join us for our last week of sailing. We positioned ourselves in Annapolis today and plan on completing a few projects while we are here, before she arrives on Saturday. The weather is very warm today, and the wind is light. The forecast is for thunderstorms each afternoon this week and by Thursday it should get cooler.

We are anchored in Back Creek which runs alongside Eastport, which is to Annapolis as Cambridge is to Boston. We can walk across Eastport in about 15 minutes and cross a bridge into Annapolis. Both places are interesting, and Eastport has a good share of funky houses and local restaurants/bars. When we bought RISING TIDE in 2003 it was at a marina in Back Creek.

June 5 Lots of rain today. Nonetheless it is laundry day and we loaded up our dinghy with laundry bags and headed to the main harbor in Annapolis. We’ll bring the clean, dry clothes back in plastic trash bags to keep it dry. The nice thing about doing laundry while cruising is you often get in a good place where you can go have a drink at a pub while the laundry washes, check out some of the shops while it dries, and then since you’re already “in town” you can stay and have dinner out. If there are at least 2 washers and 2 dryers this can be done with a minimum of time actually spent in the laundromat. Since we have still been wearing mostly shorts, tank tops and no shoes, two loads every two weeks just about does it!

We walked quite a bit today, probably 3-4 miles. We used the bus system in Annapolis for part of our traveling, but the traffic was backed up so we found walking was actually faster as the Friday afternoon influx was jamming the roads. A single-hander on a wooden sailboat (PAVITI TERN) from Westport, Mass. joined us in our travels today after we met him in the laundromat.

June 6 We’re getting ready to leave tomorrow for Chesapeake City near the Delaware/Maryland border.

MAY 16 - 28 GETTING CLOSE TO HOME!

Too bad we left before the BBQ at Oriental, but we heard all about how the pigs are raised and the pork is cooked



Our new friend Dave from VAL DE RI cooking out at Welcome Center, Dismal Swamp Canal (Dave and his crew also shared the storm anchorage with us in the lower Alligator River)



Fresh flowers and fresh thoughts, Irvington,VA

May 16 The climate in North Carolina is ahead of Massachusetts so there are good vegetables at the farmer’s markets. We are always looking for fresh food for the boat and got some good vegetables and herbs in Oriental at their Saturday morning market. Then we headed north, figuring we are only 4 days from Virginia. Wrong! The weather brought the whole area a vicious wind and heavy rain, and the wind didn’t let up for 3 days. We had to backtrack from a bridge that couldn’t open due to the high winds and then didn’t open until May 20. We waited it out in a “wilderness” area with no phone coverage, no homes, and not even any boat traffic to watch as a distraction because everyone held up wherever they were until the bridge was working.

May 21 Once we were moving again we made sure we got to Elizabeth City, NC, one of our favorite stops from our trip south. The city offers free docks for 48 hours, a welcoming cocktail party, and a rose for each woman at the party! The city has a compact downtown, right near the docks, and larger stores about 2 miles away, which is doable with a bicycle. I wonder how many other towns anywhere offer as much. Being at the dock fosters the exchange of information between boats and we met some new people there that we will be keeping in touch with.

The next night after Elizabeth City we also had a free dock at the Welcome Center on the Dismal Swamp Canal. The state line for Virginia is just 2 miles from here.

May 25 We headed up the Rappahannock River in Virginia, planning a stop to visit people we met in the Bahamas. It’s a pretty sail to Irvington, although it was 15 miles up the river. The creek in Irvington branches out into about 6 or 7 other creeks and it is interesting to explore. We did this in a dinghy, but there is enough water to go way up with a sailboat. There is little commercial activity, and lots of homes and boats. You can walk to town from one of the marinas, about 2 miles, and there may be another closer way to get there, from a launching ramp in one of the creeks. However, it turned out our friends did not live in this part of Irvington! They are back down the Rappahannock and up another creek. We did get there in another 2 days and stayed at their private dock. We feel that we now know the area well and it is very worthwhile to wander this area’s deep creeks and coves.

May 27 We left our friend’s dock in Indian Creek and headed north once again. We passed the Potomac River. To go up the Potomac from the mouth is 107 miles to Washington DC and you evidently can get up there and stay at a marina or anchor. Sounds like a good side trip for another time. We continued across the state line into Maryland and entered the Patuxent River. We anchored in Solomon’s, another creek system which branches out once inside and has MANY marinas, mostly with sailboats, and not that obtrusive to the creeks and natural areas. Where we are anchored (Back Creek) there is wifi out over the water, compliments of the Holiday Inn, also not that obvious from the water but offering amenities to boaters. We went ashore late our first night here and had drinks and dessert at their bar.

We’re planning some side trips to the Eastern Shore of Maryland and a few days in Annapolis before we head out of the Chesapeake area. The weather swings from cool (we ran the cabin heater while waiting for the Alligator River Bridge) to very hot so we want to time our stay to enjoy some summer weather but not get too much heat and buggy conditions. The cruise is winding down!

May 7 - 15 Unexpected Benefits

Scene from Charleston, SC, historic district with settlement around 1680



Typical scene from a tranquil anchorage, this one in SC, with shellfish warning



After our overnight sail from Charleston SC to Southport NC (see sign overhead)


May 7 We made a return visit to Beaufort, SC, today, a quick one as we were allowed an hour at the dock after refueling. It was enough time to walk around, get some fresh bagels for tomorrow’s breakfast and a few items at a kitchen store we had visited last time. We also got a paper, as we still feel out-of-touch with the news since returning from the Bahamas.

The remainder of the week was spent motoring on the ICW in great weather, making our way to Charleston. We met up with former Cohasset residents Julie and Bob Motley there. They live in that area now and have a restaurant right in Charleston, near the marina we stayed in, Charleston Maritime Center. They gave us a short tour of nearby James Is. and Johns Is., we ate at a seafood restaurant and caught up on their news and ours. Another treat in Charleston was getting to bike ride through the historic district streets on Sunday morning, Mother’s Day, before the tourists were up and about.

May 11 After a 22 hour motor-sail from Charleston through rain and close-by thunderstorms that lasted for hours, we arrived in Southport, NC at 8:30 a.m. We cut off several days of the ICW and we escaped the hot weather of South Carolina. Southport is a great place, with a close downtown, interesting historic plaques all around, and a funky mostly-outdoor restaurant called the Provisions Company that has great seafood (Southport also has several other good places to eat). We pigged out there; you never know when you’ll get a good meal again! We watched another thunderstorm approach and bring lots of rain, but the thunder and lightening went another way.

May 13 We had a very bad start to this day. We were anchored in a creek near Topsail Beach, NC, and we had bow and stern anchors out. We had done this to avoid being blown into the shallow edge of the creek, even though it meant that we had the wind pushing us sideways all night. We really had a quiet night, with very little wind, but in the morning the wind doubled in intensity and we still had to get up two anchors and avoid the sides of the creek. It resulted in a fire drill that threatened to go on and on. We’d get up one anchor and then not quite the other before we are aground and had to put out the anchors again and winch ourselves with the anchor lines to get back into deeper water. Then repeat. Eventually some combination of winching and anchoring worked and we got out of there.

This was followed, thankfully, with an uneventful trip to a very wide, deep anchorage that is part of the Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune for that night. We have, by the way, seen lots of great wildlife on this stretch, including lots of nesting osprey, dolphins playfully jumping clear out of the water, egrets, and other stately wading birds.

May 15 We have a free dock in Oriental, NC, for the day and night, complements of the town. Our plans from here are to cover the rest of the state in the next week and pass into Virginia over the Dismal Swamp part of the ICW.

So upon reflection, which seems to happen when writing the blog, I am seeing a pattern of surprise benefits from this trip, bubbling to the surface. Ken and I are definitely learning to work as a team, even with rocky patches now and again (see May 13 and read between the lines). We have had wonderful health since leaving Massachusetts, staying outside most of every day and eating very little processed food. We are entertained by the simple things, and haven’t missed the TV shows we used to watch or constant updates on the stock market. We are meeting wonderful, lively people who we hope to continue to see, maybe getting them to visit us back in Massachusetts. We are learning about the stars, the birds, and the fish that inhabit this part of the world. And my favorite, the times we travel with our feet or bicycle wheels, off the boat and getting exercise or supplies for dinner. There are a lot of people who don’t have cars and who we now traveling among when we hit the streets. We smile and nod and consider it interesting being car-less for eight months.

In Charleston we decided to walk the margins of a soccer field and connecting streets to get a substantial load of groceries back to our boat. Oh yeah, we were pushing a shopping cart…..…and passing motorists looked and you could tell by their expressions that they wondered if we were homeless and had our possessions in the cart, or if we had stolen it. (We did return it!) This was Ken’s idea and he wasn’t the least reluctant about it.

Enjoy the warming weather wherever you are!

APRIL 26 - MAY 7 BOOKS & TUNES

Remains of mansion Dungeness, Cumberland Is.



Ken on ocean beach, Cumberland Island



Pirates at the Shrimp Fest, Fernandina Beach

Apr 27 Fernandina Beach, Florida, was our “home” for a week, a surprise since we had just planned to spend 24 hours. Our engine did not start on Monday this week and we needed in the end to send out the starter to have it worked on -- again -- and we borrowed a generator to help keep the batteries charged for the last few days of the week. So one additional week in Florida while the weather continued to be perfect. Tough! Fernandina Beach is a large town, on Amelia Island, with great restaurants and shopping. They also had their biggest celebration of the year while we were there, the Shrimp Fest. By the time we left we were on first name basis with several of the locals and we had a front row seat for the Fest fireworks set off over the river where we had a mooring.

One thing we did this week was squeeze in additional time for reading. We have books we brought from home, some we traded with other cruisers (a favorite in that category is An Embarassment of Mangoes, about Canadian boaters who sail to the Bahamas and beyond), some we get from “take one/leave one” libraries at marinas and laundromats. We got a few new books too, mostly tied in with where we were at the time. A mystery based in Cape Fear, NC is one, and two autobiographies, Pat Conroy’s The River is Wide and the 1930s book Cross Creek based in rural Florida. Our down time on the boat is usually spent watching birds/people/boats with binoculars, or planning and executing “happy hour” or reading -- not necessarily in that order!

Apr 30 We took a side trip by dinghy (3.5 miles each way) to Cumberland Island. The Cumberland Island National Seashore maintains the grounds of an old estate, Dungeness, built in the mid 1880s, and several trails. You can also access miles of beautiful unbuilt ocean beach there.

May 3 This is our first full day in Georgia and the start of several where we will be careful of the shallow ICW here. We need to travel between the slack at the end of low tide and the slack at the end of high tide, before it starts getting low again. We passed the Georgia islands Cumberland Island, Jekyl Island, St. Simons Island, Sapelo Island, St. Catherine’s Island since leaving Fernandina Beach. There is no one on the Georgia ICW right now that we know, and in fact, very few boats traveling our speed and direction at all. The wildlife is the best -- dolphins, alligators, eagles, many birds that we can only guess at identifying, wild horses, sounds of sheep last night on a deserted island next to where we anchored (that we did not investigate!).

When we need extreme down time, at the end of a day spent in the fresh air, navigating shallow rivers and canals, we have our tunes. Our son Justin set up 500+ songs on an ipod for Ken before we left. The music is a combination of bluegrass (my suggestion), sea chanteys, female singers Ken likes, and lots of music Justin listens to and thought we’d like. It’s very eclectic and fun. We have added some Bahamian CDs to our mix of entertainment. KB, Ancient Man, Peanuts Taylor and Trez Hepburn are now brought out when we have enough energy for foot tapping and more energetic moves.

May 6 We crossed into South Carolina today and passed Daufuskie Island and anchored near Hilton Head Island. Last night we spent a night at a marina and after a short walk were in Thunderbolt, a suburb or Savannah. There was a great marine store there and a friendly restaurant, Tubby’s Tank House (don‘t you just love the name)! There have been thunderstorms the past two afternoons, just like in July at home.