Summer 2017

Summer 2017

Summers are always work time for us as you all know. We are back in Morehead City at our slip and have a car so we can run errands, pick up supplies and get things done. It’s nice to be familiar with the area and know what resources you have available.  But we’ve spend so much time in Vero, that we are getting to feel that away about it too.

We still enjoy the beautiful sunsets

We have lists of things to do. A list of things to do before going to the yard.  A list of things to do in the yard. A list of things to do before leaving the yard. A list of things to do as soon as we get in the water. A list of things to do back at the marina. A list of things to take with us when we go to Mt. Airy. A list of things to take back to the boat. The bad thing is we hardly ever get all the stuff on the lists done. Oh, we keep working on them but they just seem to grow. Have we mentioned that having a boat is a lot of work and money? Well, it is.

Guess what Lauren did this summer? She bought a house!! Yes, so proud of her. She has been very thrifty and saved her money and has been thinking and looking for over a year. She started looking last year but didn’t find anything. So she started thinking about it this year while we were in the Bahamas. We actually changed our plans so we could be in the area to help her. She wanted on old house, Circa 1900’s and we knew she’d need our advice. Even if she didn’t want it. We had been thinking about spending spring in DC, but put it off for a year. We said unless Trump did something really stupid, DC would be there next year. 

 

So we went down to look at lots of houses, mostly old money pits. She did put in offers on a couple, but they didn’t work out. If a house stays on the market over 3 days in Wilmington, there’s something wrong with it.

 

We went to see one house on a dead end street and drove down to the end. We went by a house and Lauren said I love that house and if it was for sale I’d buy it. So a few weeks later she got her daily update from her realtor and THAT house was for sale! She called and told her realtor and told them she wanted to see the house today. They weren’t showing the house that day so she made an appointment to see it the next day. We all looked at the house online and fell in love with it. It was perfect for her! It was built in 2013, not 1913 like some of the houses she looked at.

We met her at the house the next day and we all loved the house. It was a great size for her and Roux and she loved the location, yard and layout. So she made an offer immediately. And found out there was already another offer, four more showings that day and 8 the next. So she upped her offer immediately. Lauren’s head was swimming. We didn’t think we find out anything for several days since they’d probably wait to see how high the bidding would go. I told Lauren she should write them a letter letter telling them how much she loved the house and about her seeing the house and falling in love with it weeks earlier. Of course, she thought that was silly until her realtor suggested she write a letter. And then it sounded great! 

So, the next day she got a call from her realtor and we got the house! Her apartment was for sale and she had to move out by the middle of July so she got everything rolling and she signed the papers on July 7^th! We met her at the house that day to start cleaning it up so she could have new floors put down. Then we cleaned walls, cleaned floors, cleaned cabinets, cleaned baseboards, cleaned bathrooms, cleaned stove and refrigerator and Shay and Lauren painted two bedrooms and her bathroom. Then we moved all her furniture and stuff into the new house. Then we got rid of all the stuff in her apartment that she didn’t want and cleaned it up. We were exhausted. Shay and I are getting too old for that stuff.

Yeah, she's smiling now, but wait till she starts paying a mortgage and taking care of all the problems herself!

And its official!

 Let's get rid of this sign!

Here's the key!

Here's the lock!

Open the door!

Come on in!

Cleaning baseboards

He hates to paint and he ended up doing 2 bedrooms and a bath!

And she paints too!

And Roux keeps an eye on everything.

We slept in the living room a couple of nights, but at least we had a nice bed!

The outside looks very nice

 
She still has lots of stuff to unpack and put away. You can see that Roux is exhausted !
 
And our room looks beautiful! Lauren calls it the guest room.

We left her with lots of boxes sitting around but she would have to figure out where stuff went. Since she’s out of  school for the summer, she had time to think about it and get it organized.

As usual we have teak work to be done, general boat cleaning and waxing, and stainless to be cleaned. Shay has been wanting to some major engine room cleaning in the engine room or basement, as I call it, since we bought the boat. And this is the year we are doing it. We’ve done major cleaning of the engines, wall, floors, and shelves. We’ve done some touchup painting. Some reorganizing of tools, parts and other engine “bits and bobs” as our British friends David and Emma would say. That meant that we moved all the storage containers in the engine room. Most of the big heavy storage boxes came out and went into the front head and V-berth.  Then we did the engine and floor cleaning.

About the time we were getting ready to paint, our niece, Emily called and asked if they could visit. Of course they are always welcome, so we put everything back in the engine room so they could use the v-berth and head. Then I cleaned the boat and got it ready for company. We had a great time with Emily and Joey and they were easy guests. They entertained themselves during the day and spent time with us each night. They spent a day at the beach, a day fishing, and a day exploring Fort Macon, the aquarium and the towns of Beaufort and Morehead. We had a great time catching up with them and were sad when they left.

Emily and Joey. Y'all come back!

Back to work and bring all the boxes out again. We did some painting in the engine room and then, got a call about some work to be done at Shay’s moms. She was having a new floor put down in the only bathroom and we had invited her to come to visit us. We had been trying to get her to come to Morehead and that seemed like a good time. So, bring everything back into the engine room and cleanup the boat again to get ready.

We did a quick trip back home and then back with Jean and Shay’s Aunt Shelby. They both had visited us in Marathon several years ago and we were glad to have them back. We had a great visit and lots of fun. We all went to the beach for a walk, but as the pictures show, it was a dreary rain day so we didn’t get to stay long. We all went down to Wilmington to see Lauren’s house. She had gotten a lot of stuff organized and put away and it looked great. She and Roux are getting settled in.

Our dreary beach walk

 

Beautiful fish

Not so beautiful

These are real

This one is not real

So glad you came to visit. Come back soon

Jean, Shelby and I went to the Pine Knoll Shores Aquarium. We had a great time and enjoyed seeing the fish in the large tanks, the small tanks, and the otter exhibit. The otters were very playful. Well, all good things must come to an end so we had to take them back to Mount Airy. Y’all come back soon!

Shay got Roux a new toy

Yes, mom I understand the rules, now throw it!

We made several more trips  back to help Lauren with projects. She had a fence installed for privacy and to keep Roux contained. She had an outside storage building installed and Shay built her some shelves for her stuff. Another time we fixed the fence so Roux couldn’t get out anymore. Yes, she crawled under the building and got out until Lauren figured out where she was getting out and put something in front of it. We also got her a lawn mower and Shay and I worked in the yard, mowed and blew off the driveway and walk. The house looked great when we finished. She has a beautiful house and I hope she has many happy years there and makes lots of great memories

We went back to the boat to get ready for out haulout. Last year, we were out of the water for about 6 weeks. We had planned to spend September on the hard or on land but had to extend it for 2 more weeks because of the weather. We certainly didn’t want to go back in the water and then have to take the boat out again. That would be expensive!  Shay and I spent the time back in Mt Airy and enjoyed having more time to spend with everyone. So, same plan this year.

Let me tell you what we do to get ready to haulout/hurricane storage. I added on the hurricane storage because we do extra work to make sure the boat is ready for a hurricane when we leave it so we don’t have to come back and get it ready in a hurry.

We take off the canvas top, scrub it, get it dry then fold up and put in V-berth. Then we take off the fly bridge side curtains, scrub, dry, fold and put them up front. Next we do the same for the cushions for the fly bridge. This takes more time because it takes a long time to get these dry. They have foam inserts and that takes a while to dry out. Then we make sure the fenders are clean and dry and bring them inside. But this time the V-berth is full, so the fenders went in the front head. We also cleaned our 2 throw rings and put them in the front head, so by this time it was full.  We do the same thing for the outside chairs except we tie them to the rails outside. We brought the heavy glass table top inside and propped it up against our bed. I don’t know how many times I stubbed my toes on that thing!

We were very fortunate that the weather was nice so we could get all the cleaning and drying done without rain. You can’t wait to the last minute to do this stuff cause the rain might mess things up. Needless to say we were exhausted by this time.

Leaving the dock

We left MCYB heading to the yard and it looks like it’s just in time, since there’s a hurricane that may head toward us. The boat got a good washing and then parked in the yard. We headed back to Mt. Airy for a nice long visit.

We had a great time back “home”. I spent lots of time with daddy and as always enjoyed it. Chelle and I had a girl morning by getting a pedicure and foot massage. Chelle, Billy and I went to daddy’s  and had a great visit and lunch.

A man and his dog

I spent lots of time at Jean’s house and enjoyed being her. Got to see sisters/brothers in law, nieces/ nephews spend time with them. Chelle, Billy, Peggy and I got together several time for good visits. Chelle and I went for several long hard walks together. We must love to punish ourselves.

Even though we were there for several weeks there were still people we wanted to get together with but couldn’t. Hopefully, we can next time. We did have several great meals at our favorite, Chilie Rojo.

But all good things must come to an end and its time to get back to the boat and get it ready for our travels south. So we headed back to the coast to get back to work. On the way to the boat we kept adding things to our lists. Things to do before we went back into the water, things to do as soon as we got back to our marina, things to do before we headed south.

So we got back to the boat to spend the night in the yard. That can be bad, if the weather is hot and humid and you don’t have air. Or if its buggy. Or rainy. Or… well you get the idea. It’s not an ideal place to spend the night. But ours was great. A cool, bugless, non-rainy night.

The boat looks  beautiful

Back in the water and back to the marina to start on another list. The get the boat back together list.

Glad to be back in our slip

The boat is dirty since it’s been sitting in the yard getting wet and collecting dust so we’ve got to do a first class cleaning job.  Plus all the stuff we put in the V-berth and head have to go back outside. So, we spent hours cleaning the outside of the boat. Then we spent days cleaning the windows. They are covered in dirty and waterspots. The dirt we can get off pretty easy, but the waterspots were a pain. We cleaned them with a window cleaner, then several different waterspot removers to see which worked. Well, nothing worked good but finally after hours of spraying, rubbing, and scrubbing they were looking better. So, we cleaned them again with window cleaner and put RainX on them. They look so much better. I need to do a better job of wiping them off after it rains or we wash the boat. That would help a little. Then we put the outside sunscreens on. We had taken the canvas and flybridge windows to get them restitched, so when we got them back we put them back on.

We’ve  got the cushions and other things back outside and it looks like it ready to head south. Soon, but not quite yet. We put new panels in the three front windows of the fly bridge. They look great and will stay clear for a long time, we hope. We have done lots of “stuff” to the boat and it’s been a busy time.

We’re going back to visit family one last time before we head south. Lauren will be there for the festival and Jason and Travis are coming up for the day. It will be great to see them all before we head south.

 

We had a great time on our last visit back home. We got to see all the kids and all had a great meal at our favorite place, yes Chili Rojo. We had a big table full and had a great meal. We also had a great time at the festival. There are booths of crafts, food, and lots of shops open along the main street. Great time was had by all. I took a short trip to daddy's and got to spend the night with him. That's always a special time.

 

But as always, our time was too short and if we didn't get to see you, we're sorry. Back to the coast with George and Pam. We did more last minute provisioning and chores. People keep asking us if we're ready and we tell them we won't be ready when we leave our slip. We told all the marina folks bye and left for warmer weather. Yes, its been cold here! In the low 50's. We waited too late again. The cold weather caught us again!

 We have a great weather window for an outside passage to Wrightsville Beach. That will take us a long day instead of 2 days inside. We're leaving on 10-20-2017 at first light. It's been a great summer. Bye Vic, Gigi, Galen, Cassandra, Kirsten and all our other Morehead friends!

  

Fernandina Outside to ...

We left St Augustine at 6:45. It was cold, 58 degrees! We said what's going on, then remembered "global warming".

Castillo De San Marcos

Cross

Bye, St Augustine, till the next cruising season.

 

We had a stressful day traveling toward Fernandina Beach. We went thru a lot of shallow water and had to go very slow lots of times. We knew we would have skinny water but this is ridiculous.

We had a lot of current when we got to St John's Inlet and it was another stressful place. There was a tug and big barge turning around in the middle of the inlet. Guess he wasn't having a great day either.

Glad we weren't trying to do this. Lots of current made his job lots harder.

See the current?

This dry dock usually has a boat in it. Usually a busy place.

 

Working here

We had planned to go all the way to Fernandina or Cumberland Island but decided to stop earlier to avoid more shallow water along the way. Shay said he was tired of the stress.

Its not good when the crabpot is out of the water. Not for the crabbers or us.

We've not stayed at Alligator Pass before but it looks ok. Its low tide so it will only get better. At least we can see what we're going into. We got to the anchorage at 2:30. We traveled 7hr 45minutes at 6.0kts and went about 47nm. We had a windy day and are glad to be here.

Shay and David checked the weather reports and it looks like a good weather window, so it looks good to go outside at St. Mary's Inlet and head north. We have several inlets we can go into depending on how the weather is. We have calculated how long it will take us to get to them and when they have slack tide so we could enter them with little or no current. The farthest we are looking at is Georgetown, SC. That would take us almost 1.5 days with no stop. Of course, we can't stop out in the ocean.

We are anchored at Alligator Pass a little south of Fernandina and it will take us a while to get to the inlet. We left the anchorage at 8:15 and had no problems with skinny water, since it was high tide. It was good to not worry about shallow water.

Easy trip with a high tide.

 We saw several boat victims of Hurricane Matthew still washed ashore. Like I said before, sometimes they are not worth the expense of getting them back in the water and running again.

We passed by Easy Living, a boat we traveled with from Great Sale Cay, Bahamas back to Fl. Fernandina looks like the marina is open again and they are having a Shrimp Festival this weekend.

Easy Living

Shrimp Festival

Shay says we've seen this boat before, I don't remember it.

Fort Clinch at the entrance to St Mary's Inlet

We started out the inlet at 10:00am and it was very calm and easy. We saw lots of shrimp boats outside, I guess they were stocking up on shrimp for the festival. Boy, they will be fresh!

Heading out St Mary's Inlet. Next stop...not sure.

Getting fresh shrimp for the festival!

Looks like a great day for an outside passage!

We had an easy trip and saw 8-10 dolphins off the coast of GA. We usually see a lot of dolphins in this area.

Sunset, we've been traveling about 12 hours and more to go!

He went zoom-zoom by us!

Even the tug boats pass us!

We passed by the Charleston Inlet about 6:00am the next morning.

We are passing Winyah Bay, the inlet at Georgetown, SC. We have decided to go on at least to somewhere in NC. We saw more dolphins, lots of flying fish and finally a sea turtle. When I think about how big the water is, and how small the turtles and us are; I think its amazing that we ever see one. But we usually see at least one on our long passages.

We have decided to go all the way to Beaufort Inlet since the weather is good. They ocean is not dead calm but it is definitely acceptable. We'll keep going as long as it stays like this.

We have seen lots of big cargo boats, fast fishing boats and small fishing boats when we were near major inlets like Charleston; but not a lot of boats like us.

Great travel weather

It's good to have the help of the moon on a night passage.

Shay got a VHF call from Red Head, Jeff and Karen. They were several miles behind us and heading into Beaufort Inlet like we were. After talking to him, Shay decided to change our course a little and go thru Frying Pan Shoals, instead of around them. It will make our trip shorter since we won't have to go so far off shore. Jeff and Karen have gone thru several times and had no problem. The only negative is that the markers are not lighted and we will be going thru about 9:00pm. Shay changed our route and made sure he was very precise when he plotted our course thru them. Red Head caught up and passed us just before we got there, so we followed them, Thanks Red Head. You looked good in the sunset tonight!

We got to the Beaufort Inlet sea buoy at 8:00am. It was a cloudy morning. We were welcomed to the inlet by dolphins and that's always a good thing. There were lots of fishing boats going out and several shrimp boats near the inlet. It was good to see the Cape Lookout Lighthouse off in the distance.

We're getting close!

 

Dredging in the inlet

Pilot boat going out to bring in a big freighter

Our last bridge for a while

We got to the MCYB at 9:10am. We didn't have anyone on the dock to welcome since all our usual greeters were at work or away from the dock. But we had no problem getting Escape into her slip and getting a line on the dock. After that we took our time getting the lines on and getting plugged into power.

We left at 8:10am on 5-7-2017 and got here at 9:10am on 5-9-2017. We traveled for 49 hours at an average speed of 7.5kts for a total of 364.14nm. Yes, we traveled a lot faster than we usually do. We knew the ride would be easier if we used the stabilizers and they work better when we are going a little faster than usual. And we wanted to make sure we traveled in a good weather window and we wanted to get as far as we could while it was good.

Our good Mt Airy friends, George and Pam are coming down tonight to stay a few days and then take us back to get our car. So Shay worked on getting all the salt off the outside and I worked on getting all the dust from the inside of Escape.

They got here around 6:00pm and we visited for a while and then off to dinner at Cox. No, its not fried chicken night, but its always good, Shay and George had chicken stir fry and Pam and I split a filet mignon meal. We were all very pleased with our choices. We stopped by the grocery store to get supplies for breakfast and then back to Escape.

Its been a long trip and we are ready for bed. It's great to be back. We saw some of our dock family that night. It's good to see them.

It was so good of George and Pam to come down and stay for a few nights then take us to Mt Airy to pick up our car and visit. Thanks guys! Come back anytime!

We had a good visit with George and Pam. We took a waterfront walk and had some great meals. We always have a great time with them. We headed back on Thursday and had dinner at our favorite place, Chili Rojo. It was a great meal and one we had been missing since Christmas. Yes, we have not been back since Christmas. That's a long time, every though we have been on FB, talked on the phone and texted back and forth.

We spent time with daddy, Shay's mom, and other family and it was great. Just too short. Well, we'll be back soon. We spent Mother's Day with his mom and got to see lots of family. Good times.

We left Monday morning coming back to boat. We've got lots to do this summer on Escape and need to get started. We'll be back soon!

Bad Bunny, John and Kaye have spent time at our marina several time. This is a special time for them as they are leaving today for the beginning of a whole new adventure. They are heading to Bermuda and then on to Europe for years. Good luck guys and keep us posted!

John in his "Captain Pose"

Bye Kaye! Miss you!

Here's a synopsis of our cruising season. We left Morehead City on October 31, 2016 and got back on May 9, 2017. We were gone over 6 months. We traveled at total of 1697.63nm at an average moving speed of 6.62kts. That's faster than our usual 6.25kts. We used a total of 838.51 gallons of diesel  We got 2.025nm/gal or 2.33sm/gal and used 3.23g/hr.

On the way to Wrightsville Beach we fueled up and bought 244 gallons and paid $1.89. That's the first time we have paid more than the time before since we bought the boat 6.5 years ago. Well, all good things must come to an end and our cheaper than before gas has ended. The first time we bought fuel it was $3.35 and we got a 10% discount so we paid 3.03. We both thought it would only go up. Boy, were we wrong and glad of it!

I'll post a couple of times during the summer so check back!