As you know, we headed out of the St. Mary’s inlet on Saturday, with fair winds and high spirits. The forecast was for 4 days of east wind at 15 knots. Perfect! We sailed merrily along all afternoon and as dusk approached and we were preparing to sail through the night, we were commenting on what great sailing weather this was and how happy we were to have the right wind to fly us all the way down the Florida coast. Our plan was to make to Fort Pierce and do some resupplying there, and then keep going all the way to the Florida Keys. Our goal was to make it to Marathon by Thanksgiving. There wasn’t a lot of wiggle room in that schedule, but we had days and days of east winds, right?

Wrong. An hour or so after dark the wind just shut off. Like somebody flipped a switch: one second the wind was ON, the next second it was OFF. No wind. No wind at all.  The sails started flapping and the boom starting swinging in the waves. There was a decent swell and chop built up from the previous few days of strong winds. What to do?! What do you other sailors out there do in that situation?

Wait and see if the wind comes back? Maybe it was just a momentary lull. We waited. We motored. We waited some more. We sat becalmed,trying to decide if we should keep going through the night motoring in rocky seas, or duck into the Jacksonville inlet and sleep at anchor. We were out there to sail, and motoring in a wavy ocean in a sailboat just seems silly (Although we saw two other sailboats pass by us during the afternoon when there was still perfect sailing wind, with no sails up and motoring. They were on a perfect beam reach. WHY?!?! I can understand motoring on the ICW, but out at sea in choppy waves with great wind?!? Why not at least stick a sail up for stability?!?)

Anyway, there we sat, cursing the fickle nature of the wind. I got really frustrated with the situation, at a level that does not bode well for my future as a sailor.  How dare the weather forecasters be wrong? Why would the wind bail out on us like this? We had made a whole plan and now what?

Change of plans, that’s what. Sailing sure is an exercise in constant improvisation. We finally opted for going into the Jacksonville inlet, and we anchored literally just inside the jetty (the equivalent of pulling off the side of the highway)  and went to sleep. The next morning there was still NO wind, even though the weather report still said there was 10-15 knots. Cap’t K. checked the engine fluids and the leaking stuffing box situation, and found ANOTHER leak. A new one. A hose in the engine cooling system was leaking. More water coming into the boat…..yikes!

Again we weighed our options and decided the most prudent thing to do was get on the Intracoastal Waterway and make it to St. Augustine, the next major town, where could stay put for a day or two and do repairs. In St. Augustine we got a new hose to replace the leaking one, and this afternoon Cap’t K contorted himself into all kinds of uncomfortable positions to replace it.

 

In order to do the repair he needed to close the seacock (an opening that goes outside the boat) so that water wouldn’t gush in while replacing the hose. The seacock was stuck and took a LOT of effort and creative problem solving to get closed. A lot of swearing was involved too. Rum was even required to calm down Cap’t K. afterwards. With me standing there cute and holding the flashlight and rum and passing over tools, Cap’t K. successfully repaired the leak.

One leak down.

One more to go.

The stuffing box situation is going to take a bit more planning and set up to accomplish. We are researching it. The leak is still manageable, so we have a little time.

So here we are in charming St. Augustine. If this isn’t one of the cutest cities in the whole US! If you haven’t been here, you can’t even imagine what you’re missing. It’s like being in Old Spain. We love this town. So much, in fact, that we just got this wild idea to maybe just stay here for awhile and get jobs. We already found several possibilities we are looking into.

And meanwhile, Thanksgiving is approaching and we are definitely not going to be in Marathon by then. So we just had the bright idea to RENT A CAR, and DRIVE FAST to St. Petersburg, FL to have Thanksgiving dinner with our friends Rich and Mimi. St. Petersburg is our final Florida destination, as we have been planning on parking it there for awhile to work and make some money. But now that we are so smitten with St. Augustine, we are having second thoughts. We have never been to St. Petersburg before and we at least want to check it out. But it’s still a long way away by boat. So we are going to drive over there and scope it out beforehand and eat turkey with our friends!

 

 

Hooray for Farmer’s Markets!!! We got a bunch of fresh organic veggies, whooo hooo!!
We were more than pleased with our excursion to the Fernandina Farmer’s Market this morning. After over a month of eating whatever we could find in whatever random mini market or grocery store that happened to be within walking distance of a dinghy dock, we have been craving some quality fresh organic produce. That has been overall one of the bigger sacrifices of moving onto the boat — we have more limited access to food and that has often translated into eating less healthy food than we would have otherwise chosen. For some people, this is no big deal, like the two guys we talked to a few weeks ago who were just about to venture out on a one week ocean voyage. I asked them if they were all stocked up with food, and they said “yeah, we got some bologna and rice, and lots of beer…what else do we need?” Well, I need vegetables. And fruit. Preferably fresh and not canned! And preferably not shipped in from South America. Last year when we were in the Florida Keys all winter I had the hardest time finding even local citrus fruit. (I know there was a killing frost in some parts of Florida last year, but still…) Usually when we have hit a town that happens to have a farmer’s market, it always happens to be the day before we arrived, we almost never manage to land on the town the day of the market. But today was our lucky day! We were like two kids in a candy store….I was literally jumping up and down and squealing and drooling. What a great market — they had all the bounty of produce of a northern market in the middle of the summer — and it’s November! Fresh greens, tomatoes, zuchinni, potatoes, and onions. Local honey and grass fed beef. Fresh baked goodies galore! We even got a couple of potted herb plants that we are going to try growing on the boat. And live music to top it all off. We even got a big container of fresh squeezed orange juice to celebrate our arrival in Florida!

So here is another suggestion to anyone cruising down the east coast. Try to time your passage through Fernandina Beach, Fl on a Saturday so you can catch the Farmer’s Market. It’s well worth it, and it’s only a few blocks walk down the charming historic main street to get there. Fernandina Beach seems like a great town, if it only weren’t for the obnoxiously smelly factories on the waterfront. But otherwise it’s adorable, and they even have a shrimp statue!

Today is a great day. The wind has died down but has not died, it’s a lovely 10-15 out of the NE. It’s sunny and warm and we are in good spirits, except for the disgusting fact that our toilet is not really flushing. Damn. Oh well, another day, another thing to fix.

We are about to set off for our two day passage to Fort Pierce, we are just hanging out awhile making food for the voyage with our new produce and waiting for the tide to change. We’ll check in when we get to Fort Pierce. Bye y’all!

We just spent the whole week on Cumberland Island! It was a vortex of beauty we just could not escape from. We decided to take a little vacation from our relentless push down the coast and enjoy this great place some more. We almost left a few days ago….we went 6 miles over to Fernandina Beach and got some fuel, water, and a few groceries and were about to set out to sea again, when we decided to just turn around and go back over to Cumberland Island and stay another day or two. The wind wasn’t that great anyway. I almost feel guilty for just hanging out there all week, but then again, if we can’t even stop to enjoy the places we pass by as we are traveling, then what is really the point of all that we did to be in this position? By saying “this position”, I guess I mean the fact that we are “homeless and unemployed”, which gives us this freedom to be out here doing this. But that is also the reason for us to push on, and not hang out anywhere too long…for the truth is we are basically out of money and need to get somewhere to get jobs, create some income flow, sell some more stuff. But hey, if we had motored along the ICW to get from Charleston to here, we figured it would have taken us a week, so we just spent that time in a more enjoyable way! And, this place fits our budget — the fee for 7 days at the park is only $4, and there is nothing else to spend money on!

Anyway, we’ve had a super lovely time here. I could go on and on about how much I love this place, but I think I did that already in the last post.
Yesterday we managed to hitch a ride with a park ranger up to the northern part of the island (the island is about 18 miles long!) and then spent the whole day walking back, exploring along the way. We saw the Plum Orchard mansion, another one of the abandoned Carnegie mansions that was donated to the National Park Service for them to take care of. This one is not in ruins, in fact it just got a new paint job and looks very spiffy. We also saw a real live armadillo! I have never seen one before, and wow, are they strange looking creatures. So sorry I don’t have a good photo. But here is a really bad one just to show you I tried. Our camera has been in a bad mood again.

Cumberland Island was a perfect place for me to try out my new running shoes.
I just purchased a pair of these funny looking Vibram 5 fingers shoes to try out for running. I used to run a lot years ago, but during a marathon I ran in 2003 I developed knee problems that have been preventing me from running ever since. I have tried all kinds of things to be able to keep running…..including a long list of doctors and bodyworkers, custom made orthotics, knee braces, special running techniques, different shoes, etc. I had pretty much given up on running, but that has been a big loss for me because running provides a certain mental therapy and stress release that I have not been able to find in any other activity. I just feel mentally way happier when I can run. Anyway, I had heard rumors about these Vibram 5 finger shoes being a “better” way to run because it creates a different weight distribution through your skeleton and it puts less stress on your knees. It’s basically like running barefoot, and proponents claim that it’s a more “natural” way to run. I was a bit skeptical, but since I’ve tried everything else and nothing has worked, I decided to give this one last thing a try before calling it quits on running forever. Well, so far I am sold!! I ran and ran and ran until I couldn’t run any more and my knees didn’t start hurting at all! I can’t even tell you how happy I was to be running without pain, and to be running all over Cumberland Island was the icing on the cake! For anyone who likes trail style running, this place is, like I said before, A DREAM! There is no pavement anywhere. (these shoes are not meant for running on pavement, and who wants to do that anyway?) Soft trails through the forest AND a huge beach to run on — I was IN HEAVEN!!

My calves were VERY sore for a few days, as these shoes create a bigger workout for your calves than regular running shoes. I think I got a bit excited on the first day, and I had to tone it way down the next few days I tried running in them. But hey, three days of running and no knee pain!

Last night the wind picked up to a steady howl, with gale force gusts all night long. Wind like that is really loud on a boat, and we did not sleep well. In the morning we saw a bunch of fishing boats who had came in during the night and just anchored in the middle of the inlet to get off the ocean. It must have been pretty nasty out there if those guys came in like that. Guess we’ll wait one more day to leave! We are down to only beans and rice left on the boat, and so we came back to Fernandina Beach to catch the Farmers Market on Sat. morning before we head out so we can get some fresh veggies. The anchorage here is so yucky compared to the tranquility we got used to over on Cumberland Island! There are TWO huge, monstrous factories of spewing horrible smelling fumes all over the anchorage. And there is a strong current that makes the boat sit at a weird angle to the wind (which is still howling away) and it feels really sketchy and uncomfortable.

In other news, our boat has a leak. EEK! We are emptying the bilge multiple times a day and it has been starting to get alarming. The other day we took everything out of the cockpit lockers to get inside and take a look at what our friend Grant had suggested the problem might be: the stuffing box. Sure enough, we found our leak. The place where the propeller shaft enters the boat is leaking a lot, and we think that the solution is to replace the stuffing material. Not a project to attempt in an isolated anchorage. So we will keep diligently pumping the bilge until we get to a place where we can deal with it. For those of you who don’t know boats, and the terminology I’m talking about (Mom and Dad, I’m talking to you), our boat is not sinking. Just some drips of water.

Next stop: Ft. Pierce! The next few days we have east winds, and we are going on the ocean for a two hundred mile run.

Cumberland Island has been added to my top 10 favorite places in the world list. This is my dream island! We have passed two gorgeous days here and I would gladly stay longer. Lala has found her “happy place”. This place is one of the best stops on the entire ICW, and highly recommended to anyone making this trip. The anchorage is nice and calm and right next to a dock where you can bring your dinghy to shore. Once ashore you are immediately greeted by stately, majestic live oaks, and not just a few. There is a huge marvelous forest of them, and miles of nice paths to enjoy walking on. Since I consider live oaks to be some of the most fantastic trees in the world, I was beyond way happy to meander through what they called a “maritime forest” full of them. Beyond the forest are sand dunes that rise in powdery sandy hills up and over to a huge expansive beach. This beach is absolutely epic, stretching on for miles. Lots of shells litter the beach. Surf pounds in. A dream beach. With only a few people on it, and no development. The island is run by the National Park System, and places like this make me so grateful we have such gems preserved for us to enjoy through the park system.

Cumberland Island was inhabited for over 3,000 years by a group of Native Americans who are sadly completely erased from the planet. Almost nothing is known about them, except the fact that they successfully lived here for a very, very long time without leaving a trace except for a few shreds of pottery. I find it so tragic that we know nothing about these people who called this home for a thousand years longer than our present culture has even been in existence. They must have known a thing or two about sustainable living that we could learn from them. Once the Europeans came, the Island served a variety of functions until it eventually came into the hands of some of the wealthy Carnegies, who built huge mansions and used the island as a playground for the rich and famous. But only a hundred years later, those mansions are abandoned and in ruins.

Today most of the island is uninhabited, and Wild horses roam the island, foraging for food. We encountered several of them and they pretty much ignored us. The wide open beach would have been a dreamy place to ride a horse, but I’m not a good enough rider to ride an untrained horse bareback!

We think we are going to stay another day, so reluctant are we to leave this magical place too soon. More stories to come, stay tuned!

48 hours. Our longest time at sea yet. We left Charleston with the outgoing tide, and at 11:11 am, on 11-11-11, we were passing Fort Sumter and kissing in the cockpit while doing a whopping 7.5 knots. Life is good! And our sailing on that numerically historic day of 11-11-11, was stellar. Remember what I said awhile back about sailing being so much work? Well, sometimes it is, but sometimes it’s not! We had one of those days where we trimmed the sails on a nice close reach, put on the autopilot, and flew steadily and easily along at 6 knots for 10 hours straight, relaxing in the lovely sunshine. That’s my kind of sailing!!

Then we were becalmed. The wind just shut off and we were left there in the moonlight drifting. We didn’t even mind that much, it was so calm and peaceful just being out there in the magical full moon light in such calm water. After a few hours of drifting along VERY slowly, we finally decided to just anchor and go to sleep. We dropped the hook a few miles offshore, not too far from the Beaufort inlet, in 20 feet of water. Once stopped, the boat started rocking quite a bit in the gentle swell, so we snoozed for just a few hours and at dawn started off again, motoring slowly across “Lake” Atlantic. We managed to do a very slow spinnaker run in the faint breath of breeze for a few hours, going V E R Y S L O W L Y, and feeling v e r y r e l a x e d.

The creature of the day on Saturday were “mushroom” jellyfish. We passed through a whole migration of them. If you multiply 11 x 11 x 11, that’s how many jellyfish there were around our boat at any given time on Saturday afternoon. There were thousands of them, floating by on their own journey to who knows where. I call them mushroom jellyfish, because they look like mushrooms, especially the kind of mushrooms you see in Chinese take-out food that come in cans. But I’m sure they have a more official name than that.

We saw two beautiful sunsets and two beautiful sunrises. That is one of the best things of being out there on a sailboat, you see lots of sunrises and sunsets! Here is one!

Eventually the wind came back, and we sailed merrily along again until well into the middle of the night, when we were again becalmed. We motored the last few hours into the St. Mary’s inlet. We decided to go in there because I really wanted to go to Cumberland Island, and we realized that the easiest access to the island is from that inlet. St. Mary’s inlet is the border of Florida and Georgia, and we are feeling pretty stoked to have made it this far south! This leg of our ocean journey has been our most relaxed one yet, and it inspires us to do more! Now we are talking about just “skipping” Eastern Florida entirely and heading straight down to the keys from here on the ocean. Hopefully the weather will continue to be on our side for that! Recently we have been blessed with wonderful weather, especially compared to our journey south last year at around this same time, when we were dressed in 5 layers of clothing at all times and really suffering from the cold. This year the weather has been so much more pleasant and we are all that much more appreciative of it!!

We arrived into a nice anchorage just off of Cumberland Island just before noon, feeling happy and pleased with our trip. Now off to explore the island, which we missed visiting last year and have been looking forward to checking out for a whole year now!

After one of our typically long processes of decision making, we have decided to head out of Charleston today and keep heading south. We made some special arrangements with the wind, and it decided to be in our favor today after all. Our destination is Brunswick, GA, although we may opt out near Beaufort, SC if it sucks.

We would love to stay in Charleston awhile longer, but alas, we need to get to Florida and deal with Wee Happy and get ourselves set with some income ASAP.

We have enjoyed spending some time with our new friends Grant and Amelia from s/v Velocir this past week. They are a young couple sailing an Albin Vega, just like Wee Happy, and they had been following our blog last year while they were preparing for their trip. They departed from Annapolis about a month ago and are headed for the Bahamas. We met them in some creek near Myrtle Beach, SC and have been hopping down the ICW with them ever since. They are also sailors who sail, and we both had a great sail on the ICW to Charleston a few days ago. In fact, they even passed us with their big spinnaker up!! Apparently we are the first boat they have ever passed under sail, and as we know, wee boats are not always the fastest. We were impressed! Here’s a nice shot of them passing us:

Ok, Cap’t K is casting off, gotta go!

Thanks everyone on the camera suggestions, and glad y’all liked our psychedelic Way Happy shots! The camera does it on it’s own free will however, I can not choose when it happens. Here a few photos taken yesterday while walking around Charleston. Sorry, but no crazy effects. Just mediocre photos.

We had a lovely day walking all over the historic district of Charleston yesterday, although we did not find a new camera. The area within walking distance of the anchorage here is good for buying things like fine art, antiques, high fashion clothing, handmade straw baskets, and crappy tourist souvenirs, but not cameras.

Today we are taking care of some errands and business and staying put. We have been planning on doing a sail on the “outside” (ocean) from Charleston down to New Brunswick, GA, however the forecast is for 35 knots of wind on the nose tomorrow and NO wind for 5 days after that. What’s up with this pattern we’ve been encountering of either too much wind or no wind? Where is the happy medium here?! So we haven’t decided if we are going to wait it out or continue on the ICW. If there is anywhere I don’t mind being stuck for a few days, however, it’s Charleston! This is one of the most charming cities I’ve been to in the U.S!

We’ve got some bad camera karma going on here. As some of you know, we used to have two good cameras that we took awesome pictures with last year, but they have both died due to being in a “marine environment”. Right before we left on this trip we bought a completely waterproof camera. Not the most expensive one on the market, but we expected it to do the basic job. After less than two months it’s already majorly malfunctioning, and we are so disappointed! Don’t ever buy a Kodak Easyshare Sport C123! The light meter is going haywire, and the flash will not work at all. And we haven’t even gotten it wet in salt water! And due to the way they make cheap Chinese plastic electronics these days, there is no way to fix whatever isn’t working. And worst of all, we can’t find the receipt to return it.

The effect of the malfunctioning light meter creates some fanciful effects, however, and some of the photos add a lot to the general “Way Happy” vibe we have going on here. These have NOT been altered in any way in Photoshop, etc. They are exactly as the camera took them. Check it out:

Lala’s feeling WAAAAY Happy today:

So today we are going shopping for another camera while we are in the big city of Charleston.
Hopefully better photos will be appearing on our blog again soon!!!

We are finding the ICW rather beautiful and peaceful right now. We are even sailing, gliding along quietly at an easy 4 knots through lovely, open grassy marshes and tidal creeks. And we can’t comlplain about the weather, it has been quite warm and sunny for days now!

It is amazing to see the East coast at such a slow speed. We get to witness things that people in cars, or even powerboats for that matter, dont normally see, at least not in the detail we get at what amounts sometimes to walking speed. Things like terns wrestling with a fish they caught that is just a little too big for their throats. The reflection of trees on the water. Herons standing in silent, still watch, as if in deep meditation. Fisherman coming home in their little skiffs, skimming over the water to go clean their catch of the day. Empty mansions along the waterfront. Slow travel may be slow, but it has it’s rewards.

Today we stopped along the way to try to get some oysters, as it was low tide and we could see there were a lot around. We mostly found small ones, but we are looking forward to eating the bigger ones we picked!

Here is one of the oyster beds, and you can see some of the oysters clusters sticking out of the water.

We will be in Charleston tomorrow, and are looking forward to reuniting with our favorite city on the lower East coast!

– Capt’n K & Lala

Location:South Carolina

We are waiting out the big blow tonight in a comfy secure marina and we just finished watching a bunch of ridiculously scary Youtube videos of boats in extremely heavy seas and powerful storms. And I just want to fully own the fact that although to some people we may seem adventurous, in the greater world of sailing we are TOTAL WIMPS. We know it and dont want to pretend otherwise. What we just experienced out there in the swell from hell, although uncomfortable for us, was really quite benign and tame compared to what it could have been. We are just pansies.

So there. That’s the truth.

Here are two of the videos we watched, just to give you some perspective.

– Capt’n K & Lala

Location:A cozy safe marina