5-9-2013
This trip has been fantastic, but its time to go home. We
have seen amazing things, done amazing things and met amazing people! The turquoise
water, white sandy beaches, rough rocky coastline, brilliant sky, colorful fish,
graceful rays, scary sharks, abundant conchs, variety of shells, graceful birds,
prehistoric iguanas, and big turtles have been unbelievable.
But, I NEED to see family and friends. I NEED to spend time
with family and friends. I NEED more than a short phone call, or facebook
comment, or an email. I NEED hugs and kisses and up close and personal.
So now we are heading back. Shay has spent hours and hours
planning routes from different places in the Bahamas to different places in
Florida. He spends hours each day listening to weather on the SSB, watching
weather on the computer, and looking at different site on the internet to see
what will be going on at a certain place at a certain time. We don’t want to
have a smooth trip from point A to point B and then find out that its bad
heading to point C. Thank goodness; we have apps on the I Pad that will show
you the weather at a certain place at a certain time. So you can see what it’s
supposed to be like before you get there. But remember, this is only a prediction.
It’s not written in stone. Remember, we thought we’d have a smoother trip
coming to the Bahamas than we did.
As I’ve said before, where we go depends so much on the
weather. The weather affects the winds and the sea. We would love to cross to
the US with calm winds and calm seas. We won’t really know until we get out
there how it will be.
We offered to let FFF wash a load of clothes on our boat,
since we had plenty of water so we started a load. The washer filled with water
and didn’t do anything else. Emma was upset; she said she broke our washer. We
assured her she did not break it and Shay went to work on it. He found a broke
switch, removed it, and it started working! He’s handy to have around!
We worked on getting things ready for our trip. We put
together a “ditch bag” to take with us if we left the boat in a hurry. We hope
we don’t need it.
We had so much fun sitting around telling stories.
Yesterday, we were talking to FFF about a ditch bag and what should go in it. A
ditch bag is a survival bag. It should contain what you need to survive if you
have to leave the boat. FFF gave us some pointers about what should be in it. We
were talking about how much water to put in it.
David said you could rehydrate with saltwater, but not by
mouth. We asked him how and he said enema. He then told us you needed at tube
to administer the water. We all laughed until we cried when got started. David
said he could just imagine, a coast guard helicopter circling around while
someone is giving a saltwater enema, and saying, “Wait just a minute, he’s
thirsty!” Emma said she could just imagine someone at the “pub” saying in want
a drink and turning there bottom around for it to be administered. We told that
story to Richard and Connie and we all laughed until we cried again.
It was finally time for our guests to leave the boat, so we
could get ready for bed. We all hugged and told each other how much we would
miss them. We could possible see Richard and Connie this summer as they head
north. David and Emma will be traveling until after the first of the year! We
hope we can see them then. Who knows, maybe another Bahamas trip!
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| David and Emma, cheeky pose. We miss you all ready! |
So we got up at 5:00 am on May 8th, pulled up anchor at 6:00
am and were headed out the harbor inlet at 6:15. We were 15 minutes late. As we
were pulling up the anchor, we saw Emma in the dinghy, David on board FFF, and
Connie on Sea Salt. All waving good-bye. Emma followed us to the inlet, waving
and telling us good-bye and safe travels!
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| Last sunrise in Royal Harbor. |
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| Last look at FFF for a while. Who knows what adventures we will have with them in the future? |
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| Emma, following us out the harbor! |
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| A last look at her smiling face, for a while. |
Oh, I have a new piece of jewelry. Shay had Richard get me a
“seasick prevention” bracelet. Richard knows several people that speak very
highly of them. It wasn’t cheap, but if it helps, it will be worth it! More
about it later, when I see how it works. We are also slightly, medicated with
“anti-seasickness” meds.
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| Last looks at Royal Harbor. |
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| Beautiful! |
Seamantha, another boat from the harbor, left in front of
us. We called him and asked how he was going thru a cut between Little Egg
Island and Egg Island and he told us he had been thru before. We decided to
follow him and had no problems. Boaters are usually so helpful!
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| After we left Egg Island, we had a long time until we made another turn. 136 miles and over 15 hours! |
We called back on the radio later and Sea Salt said Emma had
gone thru 2 boxes of tissue and we had to come back! FFF has been such a
treasure on this trip. First of all David, the “weather guru” has been worth
his weight in gold! We can’t afford to pay him that, so he’ll just have to take
our sincere thanks! Emma has been a real treat! I have not seen her in anything
other than a great mood. She is always ready to do things and makes you enjoy
them that much better. As a couple, they were great travel partners. They had
lots of knowledge of-- weather (of course), traveling in general, the traveling
in the islands. They had so many ideas of place to see and things to do. Unfortunately,
we ran out of time to do them all. Sea Salt may be able to travel with them,
since they think their plans have changed. It will be their good luck, if they
can.
The following video was made as we were leaving Royal Island, 6:00 am May 9, 2013.
The weather looks great and the water is good. We were
fishing by 7:00. Shay asked what I would do if he caught a lot. I told him I’d
throw out the hamburger! At 8:30 am we caught a huge dolphin! Shay had to fight
to get him to the boat. He was about 4’. When we got him to the boat, we tried
to use the gaff, and he got away! We were so disappointed! We called on the
VHF to let Sea Salt know what we’d done and Richard said he had heard, if the
fish got away, it was the captain’s fault. Well, Shay was reeling and I was the
photographer, so I don’t know who to blame!
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| Fisherman Shay getting things ready. This was after we lost the big fish and the lure. |
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| Happy fisherman! |
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| 38" dolphin! Yes. And the one that got away was bigger! No kidding! |
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| He's too big for the cleaning table! |
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| He's getting better and better at cleaning fish. |
This video shows him reeling in another dolphin!
At 11:00 am we caught and brought in a 38” dolphin. The
other was a lot bigger! We were in over 6561’ of water and no land in sight.
Now what are the chances that our lure and that fish would meet up? We lost
another big one and let a small tuna go. At 2:30 pm we brought in another 38”
dolphin. So now we have fish in the freezer. But we’re not thru fishing!
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| Another 38" dolphin! My freezer is getting full! |
At 6:00 pm we had dinner in calm waters. It’s been a good
trip so far. We have been trading off sleeping or trying to sleep. It’s hard to
go to sleep on command. We both have rolled around on the daybeds on the
flybridge.
We passed Freeport, Grand Bahamas at 2:00 am on May, 9th.
We had cell service so Shay sent some text, letting FFF and Jason, our son,
where we were. David answered back, saying the weather had not changed. We had
downloaded weather the morning we left, but it was good to know that it had not
changed. We were getting a current against us from the gulf stream and slowed down
to 5.3 kts. We have been running 6.0 kts. We will leave the Bahamas soon. Sad.
This video is of sunrise May 9, 2013.
This video shows how calm the water was that day.
We traded sleeping times and both got some rest. By 12 noon
we were traveling 8.4 kts. The engine was still running at an RPM that should
have given us 6.0 but the good old gulf stream was pushing us and giving us
extra speed.
We started seeing some dark clouds in front of us and saw
several small water spouts. One actually came down to the water! It was scary
sitting there in the boat and watching them come and go. Thank goodness, they
all went away. The dark clouds moved away form us and things looked better. We
even got up to 9.1 kts for a while.
At 1:30 we had a visitor, or stowaway. A small bird flew
onto the boat! He would come in a sit for a while and then fly away and then
come back. He did that for hours. I guess we were the “mother ship”. We saw a small
bird leave the boat about 6:30 am on May 10
th. We’re not sure if it
was the same one or another. After we anchored in Beaufort, we realized he went into the boat! We found a present he left in the bathroom. At least it was in the correct room!
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| He kept pecking at the plastic, trying to get a bug on the outside! |
This video shows us traveling in the gulf stream, very calm water.
Sunrise May 10, 2013.
Its 3:30 and we are about 44 miles off Sebastian Inlet, FL.
We are running around 8.7-8.8 kts. Sometimes more, sometimes less. That means
we will get to St. Augustine earlier, since we planned to travel at 8.0 kts on
this leg. The water has been a little rough, not bad at all.
At 5:00 am the water is calmer, the wind waves have settled
down and the swell seems less. At 5:30 we are 45 miles out from Melbourne, FL. it’s
foggy and looks strange even thought it’s still dark.
At 6:00 am the welcoming committee appeared. Yes, dolphins.
Not the ones we caught yesterday, these are real dolphin, like Flipper! It was
a beautiful sight. A beautiful U.S.A sunrise and dolphins playing around the
boat.
At 8:00 am we are 50 miles off Cape Canaveral. We had
breakfast and Shay is messing with the cell phone. We think we should have
service, but so far, nothing.
We are still 50 miles and 8 hours away from our destination.
We did some calculations about the tides and currents and decided to slow down,
so we will be there with as little current as possible. We have it calculated to get there about 2:30
pm.
At 10:00 we started talking about changing our final
destination to Beaufort, SC. The weather looks like it will stay good, the
water is calm, and we are feeling fine,
so…
Well, we checked in with David in Eleuthera and Ken in
Baltimore and had them check on the weather. They both thought the weather
looked like we could go on. David did suggest that we stay near shore since
there might be squalls off-shore Friday night. We called our families and told
them the change in plans and changed our course.
We keep hearing warships on the VHF; they are having live
firing off the coast. We wouldn’t want to be in the middle of that. Shay
plotted their position and we will be far enough way, we won’t have to worry.
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| This may be a warship? |
We passed by the St. John’s Inlet, where Jacksonville is,
about 6:00. It is a very busy area. Large cargo ships and freighters were going
in and out constantly. The water is still calm, just a few little ripples.
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| Beautiful sunset! |
I went to bed about 8:30 pm. I heard a noise and thought it
might be the bird, again. Shay called me up on deck and I was amazed! The boat
was surrounded by dolphins. Not one or two or three. There were probably 40 or
50 dolphin. They kept swimming around the boat, jumping out of the water. It
was really amazing to watch them circle our boat. We have seen dolphin before
but never this many. It was definitely worth getting up to see.
When I got up at 11:30, Shay started working on the radar.
He said he could see boats lights with his eyes, but they didn’t show up on
radar. So he adjusted and adjusted and finally got it working better.
Thank-goodness.
As we passed by Cumberland Island we saw lots of lights.
Most were on the shore and leading into the inlet. But there is a hug structure
out in the ocean. At night it looks like an oil well platform. Or maybe a
spaceship? Don’t know what it is, but it
is well lit.
I started driving about 3:00 am and noticed the night was
suddenly dark. There were squalls off the coast, just as David had told us. The
only thing for us was the clouds took away the stars. It was already dark,
since we had not had any moon either night, but the stars helped a little. The
clouds went away and the stars did come back out, so at least I could see them.
It was so dark that you couldn’t tell the difference from the water and the
sky.
As we were passing the coastline of Georgia, we kept seeing
dolphins. I was sitting inside at the helm and looked out the door and there
was one swimming by. They love my boat.
Savannah was busy too, with freighters and cargo ships.
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| Coming into Savannah. We have to make sure we miss these big ships! |
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| Big cargo ship leaving Savannah. |
Finally, at 1:00, we reached the sea buoys at Port Royal Sound.
Shay said it was amazing. That we sat in Royal Harbor and charted a course and
even made a big change in it and we go here exactly when we planned to. It took
us 2 hours to get to the harbor. The inlet is that long and we were running
against the current. We could have gone slower to avoid the current against us,
but we didn’t want to take any chances with the weather, there was a chance of
thunderstorms later. The inlet was the roughest water we've been in.
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| Rocking buoy! |
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| And now it rocks the other way. |
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| The bird meeting place. |
We got the Beaufort, SC and anchored near the city marina.
This is our usual anchorage here. We had a lot of stuff on the flybridge so we
put all that away. Then we showered and ate dinner. We are tired and are ready
for bed. It’s been a long trip. We traveled 537.41 nautical miles in 82.65
hours. We had really great conditions, but that’s a long trip and we are glad it’s
over.
When we went to bed, Shay commented on how calm the boat was. There was very little movement at all. It was almost like being on land. He slept good, but of course I had one of my nights. I was still awake after midnight. Maybe the boat was too still and I needed a little rocking to help me get to sleep?
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| Looking toward Beaufort Downtown City Marina. We were anchored near the marina. |
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| Looking toward Ladies Island Bridge. |
We will probably spend tomorrow here. We need a few
groceries, but Shay wants to go to either McDonalds for a “hot and spicy”
chicken and sweet ice tea, both from the dollar menu. Or go the Mexican
restaurant we went to before. It isn’t as good as our favorite hometown
Mexican, Chile Rojo, but it’s a close second. Oh, yeah we want to get some of
the pimento cheese we have been craving since we left NC. The only place that
has it is Food Lion and they are not located in FL. So we will get pimento
cheese.
Happy Mother's Day! I got called from all my "children", Chelle, Jason, Travis, and Lauren.
Today was a frustrating day. We, and when I say we I mean Shay, worked all day on charting our routes for the next few days. That went ok, but when he tried to send them to the radar and fish finder he had major problems. The routes didn't look right when he went in to check them so he tried to delete them and ended up resetting the system. That of course caused more problems since we had to re-enter some of the settings. We tried to send them to the radar unit in the flybridge and it messed up so we had to reset it and re-enter settings there. It was a mess and took hours and hours.
We finally finished and let the dinghy down to go to shore. We walked about 2 miles to the Mexican restaurant and enjoyed our meal. When we left the restaurant, we realized the grocery store was not a Food Lion, so there would be no special pimento cheese. We did get some, but I don't think it will be as good as the other brand.
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| This is the place to spend the weekend. But, when the tide rises, the island disappears! |
Back to the boat and get ready for another moving day tomorrow. We will stop at a new anchorage, Steamboat Creek.
Sunrise May 10, 2013.
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