(To view Album click here)It sure was a culture shock returning to the land of plenty after 3-½ years of cruising Latin Countries. Especially arriving in Key West a major tourist place and therefore very expensive. The days of reasonable prizes are over. It was actually pretty funny as we were sitting at the bar of a restaurant, we felt as if we were on vacation. Vacation from vacation or what, we don’t know, it just felt that way. We walked through town, visiting museums and other tourist stuff, but every day at four thirty we had happy hour and raw oysters at the Half Shell Bar, that sure was a treat. As we left we unfortunately had to part with Echelon our buddy boat for the last few months, they are wonderful people and we sure will miss them.
It was a perfect day of sailing all the way to Marathon. Did we just sail over 6000 miles to finally find perfect sailing weather? Along the whole keys nothing but great weather for sailing and spinnaker up every day.
The Keys never impressed me much, driving by car, nor now by boat, until we stopped in Islamorada to pick up our mail. To get to our mailing service, we had to take the dinghy 4 miles along the north side of the keys, now that was very impressive. This side of the islands is so much more beautiful with many little islands, shallow, crystal-clear water in the prettiest green colors. We picked up our mail, (last mail received was 4 months ago) and headed back to Paradise, hoisted the anchor and sailed on to Key Largo.
We’re used to sail in deeper waters and used to anchoring in depths of 20 to 30 feet, this had drastically changed. From the Dry Tortugas it’s been sailing in 12 feet of water and anchoring in 7 to 8 feet. The very big Key Largo anchorage showed nothing deeper then 7 feet, we draw 6 feet didn’t venture all too far into the bay moving around rather slowly. The water was very clear but also warm 85 degrees, not too refreshing but still fun to swim around. We spent two days exploring Key Largo, but due to a weather change we decided to head for more protected Key Biscayne.
Another great sailing day later we anchored in still very shallow water in Key Biscayne and headed straight to shore to do some provisioning. We also went to the Library for email and received a note from Breathless that they were in Key Biscayne. I sent her one right back that I would call her in a few minutes. 10 minutes later we found a phone: “Where are you! Where are you!” she answered. First I thought that I had called the wrong number, but Lucy was at her computer when I sent her the email and she knew already that it would be us calling. The next day we moved into Crandon Marina and once again were neighbors with Breathless. It was a happy reunion they showed us around the area and even helped us to buy a cellular phone. We fell right back into civilization. We also met Alex for a couple of hours at the airport he was on his way from Puerto Rico to Guatemala. He took us to an incredibly good Argentinean Restaurant and spoiled us to a wonderful steak dinner.
We knew that Mike and Carey Cummins moved to Florida, didn’t know exactly where but called them anyway. The very next day they drove 2 ½ hours from Cape Coral to visit us. We haven’t seen them in over five years and had a lot of catching up to do. The very next day we had another happy reunion with Peter, Shawn and Chase from Belle Mouette we had met in El Salvador. Their boat is now in Fort Lauderdale. We had a great time with them as well and of course swapped a lot of adventure stories.
Key Biscayne is across Miami downtown and accessible by a long bridge over the ICW. It is a very beautiful island and even though lots of people live here, it seems more like a peaceful park, with beautiful bike and walking trails. For a couple of mornings Lucy and I went for either a walk or a bike ride. Lucy also told me that manatees frequently come into the marina. We never saw one, but the same two dolphins came by every afternoon. One time I stuck my feet into the water and splashed around to get their attentions and sure enough one of them came within inches of my feet, that was really exciting.
We finally had both computers fixed and as weird as it was we received them both back at the same day. The Toshiba has a new motherboard and the IBM a new Adapter. Unfortunately only one week after the Toshiba was fixed it went into scan disk and took two days of scanning but finally was OK. We still had some problems with the IBM and Steve our computer guru offered to have a look at it. Steve and Sid took a couple of hours to fiddle with that one. Then when we went back to hour boat, both computers where in the same case and just as I was stepping down below the handle of the computer case broke and both computers tumbled from about 4 feet down into the salon. The Toshiba screen shattered and the IBM didn’t open at first, but was working later. That was an expensive drop, especially since we just put 800 bucks into Toshiba (we never got that one fixed after that).
Another goodbye and we were on our way to another adventure, this time the Intra Coastal Waterway. The Intra Coastal Waterway is 1,090 miles of “toll-free canal” from Norfolk, Virginia, to Miami, Florida. The official name of this passage is the Atlantic Intra Coastal Waterway, or the AICWW, but most cruisers know it as the “Waterway”, or simply “ICW”, (later we renamed it to “The Ditch”). It is an area of great variety, both on water and land.
KEY BISCAYNE – LAS OLAS July 2nd, 34 miles, 11 Bridges
We left the marina with mixed feelings and were a bit nervous about not knowing what’s ahead of us. We had butterflies in our stomachs when we crossed our first bridge ever (the very first really was the Bridge of the Americas at the Panama Canal but we don’t count that). We knew the bridge was tall enough but looking up the stick and seeing the bridge approach the optical illusion made my hair stick up. But no sweat, there was plenty of room between our mast and the bridge. It was exciting following the ICW along Down Town Miami and we marveled over the very beautiful and clean city. Another bridge approached and then our first draw bridge. In the Chartbook it said that this bridge only opens between 08:15 and 10:00 and then from 16:15 on again and we arrived 5 minutes too late. Still a bit upset over the dropped computers we weren’t very happy about this one either and very disappointed turned back to find an anchorage until 16:15. On our way back, we heard a boat call the bridge and it opened, so we figured it out, way cool. We couldn’t turn around fast enough and headed for the bridge. Sid got on the radio said the magic word and the bridge opened for us too. It really was neat to see the opening and closing of the drawbridges.
The ICW took us along high-rise buildings, areas with megabuck houses and a total of 11 drawbridge. Some open on demand, others on either every 15 or 30 minutes. A couple of bridges later we felt like pros. The day was so fun we forgot about our computers and just fully enjoyed our new adventure. You should have seen the rich houses just before Fort Lauderdale, there sure is a lot of money in that area. In Las Olas we picked up a mooring buoy, (which was $20 a night, not the 10 as the chart book said) run by the City of Fort Lauderdale and offered a very nice facility with great showers, laundry room and computer room with free phone access. In the evening we sat on deck enjoying this very different view of being surrounded by land and high-rise-buildings, quite different.
It sure is a different way of traveling and it takes our constant attention. There is marker after marker to be followed, traffic to be watched and then of course keeping an eye on the depth. It’s not as relaxing as on the big and deep ocean. One hand on the wheel, one on the throttle, on eye on the markers and one on the depth finder.
LAS OLAS – NW PALM BEACH July 3rd, 34 Miles, 22 Bridges
This really was fun going under those drawbridges and the scenery was just absolutely incredible. The ICW in this area is only about 100 feet wide and just fascinating. Some areas were heavy overbuilt others just mangrove areas and no matter where it was it was just beautiful. We anchored for the night in a beautiful part in the north of Lake Worth.
NW PALM BEACH – STUART July 4th, 31 Miles, 11 Bridges
Very excited in what we’d find on this day, we headed further up the ICW. We thought that the previous houses were megabuck houses, you should have seen these. They were the size of hotels and had giant mega yachts parked in front of them and most of them were closed up for hurricane season.
Jupiter was our favorite area with very clean water, which enhances the beauty of this area even more. We also followed a very long mangrove swamp and just before marker 990 found this very beautiful anchorage (not charted in the book), with just a sand-spit between it and the ocean beach, we’ll definitely stop here on our way down.
While cruising it’s never a good idea to have a deadline, since you never know if you will be there on time. We had a deadline to be in Stuart to celebrate 4th of July with Tom and Sue from Unbuttoned (we had met them in Puerto Vallarta). To get to their home we had to go up the St.Lucy River, which also goes to Lake Okeechobee. As we entered the river crossing of the St.Lucy River and the ICW, which also leads into the ocean, we noticed a lot of shoaling and kept an eye on the depth. Sid checked on the chart on the depth of the St. Lucie river, which showed 8 feet, no problem for us, we draw 6 feet and so we turned into St. Lucie River. We didn’t even get to the first marker which was just a couple of feet away from the ICW, as we heard and felt a lout thump, thump, thump and before we could do anything about it we were hard aground on a sandbar. We were stuck in 4 feet of water, with a 15 degree heel, the tide on the beam and rushing out like a rapid and it wasn’t even low tide yet. We also had a full moon, which meant an extra low tide, in other words we were in deep shit. We hurried getting the dinghy from the davits; Sid hopped in and pushed the bow towards the ICW down current, while I put the boat in gear and pushed the red know forward. It took us about 5 minutes when a few more thumps set us free and floating again. Our adrenaline was rushing; it sure is a bad feeling to be stuck. The Stuart area is very shallow and dry at low tide and has no suitable anchorages at all. We had to head another 5 miles up the ICW to the next anchorage. This one had a channel going towards a boatyard and as we tried to head into that one, the depth meter showed shoaling to 4 feet and we made a fast U-turn. We didn’t want to risk another grounding so I took the dinghy into the anchorage and ask one of the many boats for direction on how to get into the anchorage. The trick was to head into it almost on a parallel course a few hundred feet before the marked channel. We found the hidden passage and the whole anchorage was just about 7 feet deep and we headed VERY SLOWLY into it and anchored safely. Now the problem was we were much further away from our friends then the just 5 minutes from where we would have been up the St.Lucy River. We immediately got the boat ready for rain, since the sky was filled with heavy clouds, then hopped into the dinghy and took off to find our friends. We didn’t go far as two small fishing boats waved us over. Can you believe it Sid got pulled over for speeding in a manatee zone, just what we needed our dinghy wasn’t registered either. They ordered us to get it registered first thing the next day and let us go, wow, got away with that one.
We didn’t know where our friends lived, Sue gave us Lat/Lon to her house and we followed the GPS. We guest that we had 11 miles by now and we still were miles away from them. The GPS showed us at least another 10 miles to their house. So we called them; we’re still not used to the cell phone but they sure come in handy! Sue had given us the wrong waypoint and we went too far. One of their friends was visiting in a speedboat and came to our rescue. It was really great to see Sue and Tom, we met all their friends and had a great time celebrating 4th of July. Since it was such a long drive (later we found out 14 miles each way), we decided to head back before sundown, but didn’t think of the firework traffic. As we headed out to the river hundreds of other boats were underway for the display and the water was lumpy and bumpy and we had to go right through the middle of the madhouse. After we had passed the busy area, we didn’t encounter another boat and had a smooth dinghy ride back to Paradise and even were able to see the fireworks from underway. We also found out that the 28 miles round trip could have been a 4 miles walk from the anchorage to their house!
STUART – VERO BEACH July 7th, 28 miles
Getting out of the anchorage was going to be a piece of cake, we knew how to get in and we’ll just leave the same way, NOT. We tried to follow our trail, but hit bottom and were stuck again. We lowered the dinghy Sid got in it and pushed us back into 7 feet of water. Up with the dinghy and headed further on a parallel course to the ICW and thump, stuck again. Down with the dingy Sid hopping in and once more pushing us off. On the third attempt we came through without touching bottom.
The rest of the day was uneventful other then the beautiful scenery through mangrove and swamps with dolphins playing around the boat. The Vero Beach Marina is in a hurricane hole and is very protected and pretty. The people at the marina were super nice and let us tie to the dock on Sunday morning and wash the boat down. We were docked for a couple of hours, and the harbormaster couldn’t stop talking us and watched us work the whole time. They ran out of gas the previous day so I guess we were a welcome sight, nobody else came by that day.
VERO BEACH – MELBOURNE July 9th, 40 miles
We had another beautiful day on the very scenic ICW. Towards one o’clock the sky got darker and darker, we had just barley time to get all the cushions down below, close hatches and canvas, when 32 knots of wind and a horrible down poor of rain hit us. Approaching Dragon Point the entrance of Melbourne has a shoal area to the right, a wreck to the left and a green marker next to the point. On the point is an incredible sculpture of a huge Dragon. The guide advises to get closer to the green marker and so we did. It also showed a depth of 13 feet all the way into the anchorage, but as we were by the entrance marker, the water disappeared and with a loud thump, crunch, crunch, Paradise bounces over rocks, what a horrible sound and landed high and dry with a 20 degree list in the mud. I never want to hear that sound again, it was just horrible. Of course the tide again was on its way out! Sid immediately pulled the sail out, nothing we didn’t move one inch. Next approach was bringing the dinghy down, Sid hopped in and tried to push us, spin us around but nothing worked, we were stuck. Sid just amazes me over and over again. He lowered the anchor into the dinghy, went out and set it, got back on the boat and pulled the anchor in with the windlass but still no movement. Now he tied a line onto the anchor chain brought it back into the cockpit and together we winched that line in and pulled Paradise back into deeper water. Luckily there was no water in the bilge and so we anchored a little stressed but safe in the anchorage and didn’t dare go under water to check the damage. This was a very horrible experience. We do have a forward seeking depth finder, which works great in deeper water, but working with just a few inches it doesn’t work so well.
To get our minds off this horrible experience, we went ashore shopping and bought two bicycles at Wal-Mart.
MELBOURNE – ADISON POINT July 10th 26 miles
Still a bit shaky and nervous from the previous day we left Melbourne and headed to Adison Point with no bad incident, what a relief. We arrived fairly early in the afternoon and decided to do a bicycle trip. It took us three miles to find the first store a Wal-Mart. Since we weren’t too happy with the new bikes, we exchanged them for better ones. Wal-Mart had no problem on that, didn’t even ask why.
The second day we drove the bikes to the NASA Space Museum where we had a great time, especially in one of the rides. Since the ride was spinning upside down, they told us that we just had to wave our hand if we didn’t like it and they would stop the ride. They also had a TV outside, where the other tourists could watch our faces inside. During the ride I had a real blond moment and waved to the people outside. As soon as I raised my hand, I thought: oh, no!……… and yup the ride stopped. I was sooooooooo embarrassed, what a dummy! The guy just laughed and let us ride it two more times.
Early on the 12th we got up at 5AM, hopped into the dinghy motored to the other side of the bridge just on time to watch the 05:04 space shuttle launch, that was awesome. I’ll never forget the roar of the detonating engines, the vibration in the air and the speed the shuttle took off, just incredible.
Later we drove the bikes to the Kennedy Space Center and spent an interesting day learning all kinds of things about space stuff, makes you wanna be an astronaut. Unfortunately we picked the wrong day for the visit, since it was a shuttle launch, they had the park open since 1AM already and the park was packed. Due to that all the special tours were booked and we weren’t able to see the launch area other then on the shown videos. We still had a good time and learned a lot and Sid even got into trouble for feeding the crocodile. Well, he was going to feed the bass in the pond, when all the turtles and one crocodile ate the popcorn instead. Two security guys came over and told him not to feed the croc, well, there wasn’t a sign on the wall, how should we know, besides we entertained half of the park and who would have ever guessed a crocodile goes nuts over popcorn.
ADISON POINT – DAYTONA July 13th, 56 miles
At 8AM we lifted the anchor, called Adison Point Bridge for an opening and headed for Daytona. It was a beautiful sunny day, not too hot and dolphins were all around us. Past Titusville about 10 miles ahead we had to turn into a canal to the Mosquito Lagoon, which is part of Cape Canaveral Refuge. This was by far the prettiest part of Florida. We saw several Manatees playing in the water and beautiful pink spoonbills, which in the color reminded me of mini Flamingos, except for that bill. The trip took us along the shore of the park, just unforgettably beautiful. Then we headed into a smaller canal along mangroves. Sid mentioned that we had to follow this for about two hours then it would get a bit tricky. As we reached that part at Oak Hill, the sky went dark and darker and a pretty busy thunderstorm headed our way. We took everything and anything that could get wet down below and headed into the storm. The wind blew with 38 gusty knots and the rain was so thick that we couldn’t see the channel markers anymore and just at that point the depth finder acted up and within seconds we were stuck on a 4 foot pile of mud again. Wind still howling we lowered the dingy, Sid climbed in and pushed us off, but the wind pushed us right back onto another one. We got off that one too and realized that the humps actually were in the middle of the ICW, where they shouldn’t have been. The wind gave up and we could see the markers again and headed further up the canal like nothing ever happened. Yeah right, we must just be getting used to getting stuck on mud by now. Florida sure has plenty of water, just not deep enough! Sid had the idea that we should bill Florida for dredging the ICW, but he changed his mind, he thought they would bill us for destroying the environment!
Approaching the first bridge in Daytona Sid called for an opening. A few minutes later they opened and we headed for the bridge, but our engine quit just before we headed to the entrance, just enough time to do a quick U-turn. Immediately we pulled the sail out, because there was very shallow water on either side and we didn’t feel like getting stuck again and headed back where we came from. There was an anchorage just about one mile further down, but as Sid checked the chart he saw that the area had cables running through the anchorage. No way are we going to get hooked up on a cable and found a very small 8 foot deep whole on the opposite side of the channel instead. While I kept an eye on the depths Sid went down below and fixed our problem, the fuel pump vibrated off the bulkhead, released the ground wire and stopped the fuel pump. We had three more miles to go to the designated anchorage and as we arrived all we found was 6.2 feet of water. The tide was still going down and would leave us high and dry, so we moved and eventually found a 7-foot hole we didn’t have to worry about.
Later on unwinding from the stress we realized that this was not just Friday the 13th but also, that we hit bottom on channel marker 13. This was a really long and stressful day, so stressful that I thought the canal with the manatees was yesterday.
The next morning Sid worked some more on the engine, to make sure all was right and we spent the day with a West Marine visit a lunch in the marina and relaxing on the boat.
DAYTONA – ST.AUGUSTINE
July 14th, since we had a long 54 miles in front of us, we left extra early at 6AM. The weather was beautiful and the scenery incredible. This stretch took us along marshlands, mangroves, swamps and also a huge sand dune near Fort Matanza. As soon as I saw the dredge I didn’t feel good about it. At this point Sid was down below doing his house-frau duty, washing the dishes and only saw that huge sand dune and wasn’t too jazzed about that one either. The river made a big right turn along the dune, we followed it and in the middle of the ICW we hit bottom again and were stuck. Later we heard that they had just dredged this area three weeks prior, obviously without any success. We pulled off again with the jib out, the wind was blowing 15 knots and it didn’t take much to get us off and we did find a passage through that area. A few miles further up the river we called Crescent Beach Bridge to open for us, which he started to do, but there was a problem with one of the gates on the street and the bridge would not open unless that gate was fully down. We were stuck in front of a broken bridge and couldn’t go any further until the bridge tender called his boss, who would assist him to stop the traffic for us. He told us to park for a while and he would call us when the bridge was fixed again. He also gave us directions to were we could anchor, NO WAY are we going back through those sand dunes again to get to the anchorage. Another person called us on the radio and gave us direction to anchor right behind the bridge, between the two piers. He was standing on one of them. Since he started to ask us all kind of questions about our cruising history we told him to stand by and we would come ashore and talk after we’ve anchored. We did that and to our surprise, this friendly guy Jack invited us up to his house, pulled a couple of chairs out and we talked. A few minutes later his lovely wife Chris came out and joined us. One hour later and a few more boats waiting, the bridge was still not fixed and we didn’t’ even care anymore, we had a wonderful time with Chris and Jack. Chris even spoiled us with clams on the half shell, crab cakes, a bottle of wine for her and I and rum on the rocks for Sid. Then the bridge keeper finally notified us that the bridge was fixed, some two hours later. We were almost disappointed and not ready yet to leave and instead spent another fun hour with Chris and Jack. This really was a treat and we made new friends. We'll definitely stay in touch with them. We even said a thank you to the bridge keeper for braking down and he was a bit surprised that someone would thank him for that.
The rest of the trip was uneventful, although we had to drive a slalom course through a very scenic marshland reaching all the way to St. Augustine.
St. Augustine is the oldest continually occupied European settlement in North America. Ponce de Lion was the first to land on this continent and claimed it for Spain in 1513 and called it Florida, which now is the entire United States, but the State of Florida kept the name. While other Spanish explorers found gold and silver in Mexico and Peru sailing the golf stream to get back to Spain this was a place which was a protected stop from Pirates. Although Francis Drake burned the village and wooden fort to the ground in 1586 (if you ask me this Drake guy was a mean dude).
There is indeed a lot of history in this very charming small town and it amazed us how proud the people are of their town and how clean they keep it. It’s mainly a tourist town and offers a lot to do. We thoroughly enjoyed being tourists for a few days and visited pretty much all the sights such as the alligator farm, which is the only one featuring all 23 species and even two albino crocodiles. The old weapons museum was pretty interesting as well and we bought quite a few bottles of wonderful wine after our wine tasting at the Sebastian Winery. We had some fun live entertainment at a local bar, climbed the tall lighthouse and enjoyed the incredible view over this ancient city. We also learned that the lighthouse keeper used to bring a full bucket of oil weighing 35 pounds up to the top for the flame every two hours, what a job. Strolled through the old towns shopping alley a no car zone. Rode our bicycles from one end of the town to the other and enjoyed delicious dinner at restaurants locals eat at and drank the awful sulfur tasting water of the fountain of youth Ponce de Lion was after when he discovered the big island of Florida.
Unfortunately too many boat people are giving us cruisers a bad rap and marinas are not very happy to accommodate us any longer, unless you take a slip. The marina here charged 7 dollars per day just to tie the dinghy to the dock, although the use of laundry and bathroom facility was included. It was way worth it, since we had a lot of laundry to do while at the same time enjoying a hot shower. St. Augustine was worth a stop.
ST.AUGUSTINE TO JACKSONVILLE Julie 19th, 28 miles
After leaving the St. Augustine area, we didn’t see one house for almost 20 miles, just marshland and nothing but nature, very beautiful. The other nine or so miles took us along a narrow part of the Tolomato River, one side was built with one house after another, the other side seemed to be a national park. The water depth was almost never under 15 feet and as we crossed under the bridge to our destination the Beach Marina in Jacksonville Beach we were relieved that all went well. Sid called the harbormaster and received instructions where our slip was. We headed into the marina but didn’t get very far WE WERE STUCK AGAIN, SUCKED INTO THE MUD! Can you believe this, we didn’t either, this marina supposed to be OK for a 6 foot draft boat. We were stuck all right and this time neither sail nor dinghy could get us off until a sport fisher pulled us off. The marina gave us a temporary slip until the tide was up, then we moved into a permanent slip.
This marina is rather on the expensive side, get this it would cost us 595 bucks for 10 days, but if we rent the slip for one whole month it’s only 435, figure that one out. I don’t have to mention that we rented it for one month. We had access to a gym (we never used), laundry facility and choice of showers at Gym or marina.
On the second day we met Sid’s cousin Nancy, they haven’t seen each other in over 30 years. It was great meeting her and her partner Kathy, both very nice ladies.
We had planned to visit Aunt Alice in Baton Rouge from here and also heard from the Aquapro dealer that we could have our dinghy fixed in West Palm Beach. We rented a car for a week, drove all the way back to West Palm Beach dropped off the dinghy for repairs and then drove to Baton Rouge. Aunt Alice used to live in Bakersfield, but moved to Baton Rouge one year ago. It sure was great to see her and also to meet her in-laws, what a fun bunch of people. We spent a whole week with her and finally headed back to Jacksonville via West Palm Beach to pick up our dinghy, spending the night with our friends Sue and Tom in Stuart and had a whole 3000 miles on the car when we got back to Jacksonville. In the mean time Nancy had taken care of our two kitties. We weren’t even home for 10 minutes when we decided to keep the rental car for another week. Our friends Bob and Kari had a car for us to use as long as we’re in the States so we decided to go visit them in Knoxville, Tennessee, pick up the car and then checking out marinas along the coast where we would feel safe in case of a hurricane.
First we drove to Savannah, Georgia and visited every marina there was. Savannah sure is a very beautiful city, every street is overgrown with huge trees overgrown with Spanish moss. Kind of like driving through tree tunnels and the houses look like the ones in those pretty Christmas Villages. Unfortunately all the marinas were full and it didn’t look like any thing would open up soon. Our next stop was Beaufort, SC. The Port Royal Marina seemed very nice, but the town is a bit more of a tourist town and had not much to offer on boat stores and even places we could eventually work for a couple of months. Charleston was on our plan too, but every marina we ask about how safe it was in a hurricane, said that Charleston seems to get hit every year. Now what? Crazy us decided now to drive all the way up to New Bern, NC, and check that marina out as well. We had left Jacksonville at 3AM and finally arrived in New Bern at 6PM, long day. The Fairfield marina was just what we were looking for, but unfortunately at least 20 minutes out of town and very remote, too remote and also had no floating docks. The Sheraton Hotel Marina is right in town and offered much more. We found our home for the hurricane season. The prices of the marinas are half of the ones we just visited in SC and Georgia and in case of a hurricane, there are rivers we could head into and hide out.
The next day we drove to Knoxville, Tennessee and on our way out of Kinston along side the road we noticed this sign above a house reading: “EAT HERE, GET GAS”, no way will we eat there, they must serve beans only. As we got closer we realized it was a gas station as well.
We hadn’t seen Bob and Kari in years, which turned this happy reunion into major hangovers the next day. We had four fun days with our friends but then it was time to head back to Jacksonville to our cats we had left alone with Nancy for two weeks already. Besides Tropical Storm Barry was close to landfall in the Gulf of Mexico, which meant for us to settle down for hurricane season.
We left Knoxville with Bob and Kari’s extra car, a 300ZX which they are letting us use during out stay in the US. We decided to drive the car to New Bern and leave it there, but we only drove 60 miles out of town when the transmission broke. I tell you if it isn’t one thing it’s another. We left the car in Knoxville to pick it up on a later date and drove back to Jacksonville.
My drivers license had been expired for 4 years and since we heard that it was easy to get one in Tennessee, I tried to get one there. Well, it wasn’t so easy; I would need to do both written and driving test. Then I tried Jacksonville and after a two hour wait in line and 5 minutes at the counter I was in the possession of a Florida driver license, that was too easy.
As we were getting ready to leave Jacksonville to head further up the ICW, Sid checked the batteries and started the engine to make sure all was working well. We’ve been having some battery problems and gave the engine a hard time starting. The engine started after a long cranking time, an awful knocking noise caught our attention. Sid took the engine apart and found water in the cylinders and the anti siphon was plugged as well. Sid called around to see what it could be. The verdict was dirty injectors, someone also mentioned it could be a rod or valve, in which case we would have been stuck in Jacksonville for the summer, not a very pleasing thought, since this was not the most protected marina in a hurricane. Sid took the injectors out, had them rebuilt, put them back in and started the motor right up. “Yes, we were out of there!”
During the extra week in Jacksonville waiting for the injectors, we had a chance to talk to several boaters about the ICW from here on north, and what we heard didn’t make us happy. The ICW hadn’t been dredged in years and at Jekyll Island the depths was just 5 feet, not enough for us.
On the 19th of August we exited the ICW at Mayport and sailed straight up to Beaufort, North Carolina. We had a great start, a wonderful sail, favorable wind, calm seas and lots of dolphins. Later in the afternoon, about 50 miles off shore, the coastguard gave a thunderstorm and waterspout warning with 30 knot winds up to 30 miles off shore. No problem for us, we were by now 50 miles out and we never even looked back until we heard this loud rumble behind us. A huge very busy thundercloud was moving rather fast towards us. We actually could see it move on the radar. We got everything down below and prepared for a heavy rain, but just as it got to us, the whole cloud fell apart and disappeared. For the rest of the day we watched several more thunderclouds building up and within minutes dissipate a very interesting phenomenon.
There was a new moon and the night was pitch black, the waves started to build up and the wind started picking up as well, why does this only happen during nights?! It was a lumpy night and it didn’t stay dark for long, we were surrounded by the most incredible lightning show. The lightening was so intense, there was not one second of darkness at any time and lasted for hours and hours, while the sky above us was filled with twinkling stars.
At one time there were lots of fishing boats around us and this awful fish smell filled our cockpit. Then I notices Crystal chewing on a flying fish, which flew right into the cockpit. The water stayed pretty sloppy and knocked our autopilot out. For many hours Sid tried to fix the autopilot, but no success, which is a sailors nightmare, that meant less rests for the both of us and we still had two more sailing days ahead of us.
The weather didn’t get any better the second night. We had to adjust the sails constantly, keeping us both awake. At 1.30 AM we ended up in a monster thunderstorm which the radar showed the cloud was 16 miles across, throwing darts all around us with loud thunder, gusting winds up to 38 knots, torrential rain and stayed with us for 2 ½ hours. During those long 2 ½ tiring hours we had several flying fish and anchovies fly right into the cockpit. I saw some of the flying fish fly by the cockpit about 10 feet above the water, really weird. We still didn’t have the autopilot and it was tuff to steer the boat in the very unorganized water and towards the morning we both had tennis elbows, I call it rudder elbow, we were sore. Luckily the weather calmed down and we got some rest after all. Later in the afternoon I played with the autopilot and wouldn’t you know it worked again. The rest of the trip went without any problem and both of us had a chance to catch up on lost sleep. At 23:30 we entered the very calm entrance to the ICW in Beaufort, North Carolina, anchored the boat and had a goodnights rest.
The next day we made our way up the ICW to New Bern, wondering if we would get stuck one more time. The 37 mile beautiful trip was uneventful and very happy we arrived in the Sheraton Marina in New Bern our new home for who knows how long.
The marina is wonderful and belongs to the Sheraton Hotel. We have the use of the hotel facilities including room service, cable TV, gym, swimming pool, great showers with boom box, shuttle service to airport and all for $230 monthly rent.
New Bern, settled in 1710 by Swiss and German adventurers, is in Craven County and is the second oldest town in North Carolina with tree-lined streets rich in history. New Bern was also North Carolina’s first state Capital. It is situated where the Trent and Neuse rivers meet. History abound around every corner with over 150 landmarks, some dating back to the 18th century. This is also the place where in 1898 a New Bern pharmacist invented the famous Pepsi-Cola. This lovely town is full with friendly faces, offering true southern hospitality. Pride is shown by everyone, every time I enter a store the owner proudly tells me the history of this special town. Every second Friday of the month, the stores stay open until 9PM and you’ll find musicians and other attractions on the street. Festivals are held at least ones a month, the most famous one is the ghost walk in October, which attracts tourist all around the country. During the ghost walk all the historic houses in town (150 of them) are ghostly decorated and ghosts will hunt the porches and streets. Other Festivals are Strawberry, Blueberry, Watermelon and October Fest, including other artist fairs. Kind of funny, because every time I walk through the town, it seems like a ghost town, the streets are empty and it’s so quiet. Every Saturday morning a farmers market is held by the riverfront and I’ve already been invited to join the Alpine Club held every month. This is going to be a very interesting stay here and I have a feeling we’ll be very busy.
Paradise is settling down for a while and that while could be an easy year. We’re not done cruising yet, we’re just taking a brake for a few months. We’ll even get some jobs so that we can buy more boat toys faster like wind generator, new batteries, bigger solar panels, new computer and printer, air-compressor, handheld depth finder and do some needed boat repairs like fixing the mast and replacing the rigging, the list goes on and on.
Sid’s mom lives near Pine Hurst, which is another reason we’re settling here in North Carolina for a while. We’ll spend as much time with her as we can.
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