Holidays are tough without your family. Holidays are tough when the wind is blowing and blowing and blowing. Holidays are tough without pie! This was our first Thanksgiving as married people and I was planning to prepare a lovely canned ham with sides of boxed potatoes and canned peas! Enter Jimmy – who called and saved us from not just one, but all three of our holiday afflictions.
Vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…..
That’s the sound the macerator pump makes as it relieves our holding tank of its contents. Last night it continued on for much longer than usual. So we flipped off the switch and then noticed in horror as the TankWatch reported the holding tank was still at capacity. Oh, shit. Not again. It’ll have to wait until the morning.
Stella at anchor in St. George, Bermuda
Logan and I are always excited to sail up to a new island unknown to us, but neither one of us have EVER been more excited to see the glow of island lights off in the distance as we were on Sunday night. Bermuda was on the horizon and we were going to make it.
We are going to cast off the dock lines here in Hampton in a few short hours – it will be a busy morning no doubt.
Vicki says that we made it far enough north that the trees are changing colors and that’s TOO far north – and I completely agree. Before we got here, the idea of cooler temps and crisp fall air sounded exciting and exotic. That was before my toes and fingers went numb, my nose turned bright red, and my lips chapped. We woke up several mornings to temps in the 30s with stiff breezes blowing over the dodger. We wore almost every piece of warm clothing we have on board, but let’s just say that we have definitely added long underwear to our Hampton shopping list.
Our second overnight passage was an uneventful one – just the way we like ’em. Our motor stayed on the whole time except for the quick downwind sunset cruise we took on the second evening. We just couldn’t stand the engine anymore, so we turned a few degrees to starboard, let out the sails and enjoyed the sound of silence to remind us why we love sailing so much. Unlike our last passage, we had a full moon keeping the ocean lit up all night. There is something incredibly…what’s the right adjective here…special, inspiring, mind widening, groovy… about watching the moon set as the sun rises with nothing but blue ocean on the horizon. We got to the Beaufort channel markers just as the sun was coming up and dropped anchor here in Taylor Creek.
We are on our way north to meet our fellow Salty Dawgs! Our Spot should track our passage – we are headed to Beaufort, NC out in the Atlantic, then we will take the ICW up the rest of the way. Here we go again!!!
Unsweet tea with extra lemons please! Charleston has been good to us. The people are friendly, the food is delicious, the weather is super comfortable, and there is something going on all the time for us to check out – art walks, restaurant week, Greek festivals, marina happy hours. The Charleston City Marina/MEGADOCK is walking distance to downtown AND we picked up a couple of bikes to use while we are here in town, so we are totally mobile.
Well, not exactly… What is that terrible smell? Maybe it’s me, I haven’t really showered in a few days. Nah, I don’t smell THAT bad. What IS that smell? Maybe it’s that fishing boat we passed four miles ago, can smell travel that far? Nah, man I must be so tired I’m losing it. Then I hear it, “flap plop flap plop”. What the….? I grab the flashlight to investigate and right next to my seat in the cockpit is a flying fish that flew up onto the deck and was flapping around like crazy trying to get back in the water. And the little fella did! I sat back at the helm and tried to regroup from that bizarre experience and I hear that noise AGAIN! “flap plop flap plop,” this time from the other side of the boat. I leap up to investigate again and I’ll be darned! Another fish was flopping around on our deck. But this time, not for lack of trying, he couldn’t propel himself back into the sea. I run down to the galley and grab a spatula and then proceed to try and help flip him back overboard. There I am standing in the dark, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, holding a kitchen spatula, flipping flying fish off the deck and I started to laugh, “Wow, how in the world did I get here?” Logan and I both ended up flipping fish back into the ocean all night that night – probably at least a dozen made their way aboard from all directions. We added one more lesson to our bag, flying fish smell terrible.
Gillian, Stella and I have been itching to get moving for a while. We’ve been trying to make it south and east to the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, but so far the thorny path has won. So we are going to try a different path. Tomorrow (9/4/2013) we will pull up the anchor for our first multi-day passage.
We’re headed to Charleston, South Carolina. How we decided on that is a bit of a mystery even to us. Once we get there we will find out if the voices in our heads were right once again or if we really have lost it. History tells us it should be the former. Fingers crossed.