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.