Warm Christmas Wishes from Florida

Although we enjoyed seeing the old homes of South Carolina, the temperatures were still requiring heat in the mornings and sometimes before bed. Since Georgia has a well-earned reputation for poor dredging of the ICW, we decided to take to sea again and head directly for Florida. Since this was a longer passage than before, and we had a lengthy winding trip to the Ocean inlet, we decided to spend an entire night at sea and go completely past Georgia. We motored out of Port Royal, SC about 3 PM and were gently rolling in the ocean as the sun set. Because of the excitement of it all, neither of us slept too much although Kim had several hours in the helm seat. All went well and we arrived at St Marys, Florida just as the sun rose.

The temperatures have been in the mid to upper 70s and in the 60s at night. Shorts and bare feet have taken over and it really feels nice. We have been visiting with friends and family here and are about to have some work done on the boat prior to heading to the Bahamas.

We have seen several boat parades and Christmas decorations are everywhere; even on the boats here in the harbor. I leave you with some of our favorite shots and the entire crew extends our warmest Christmas wishes to you all wherever you may be.

The Old South and Fishin’

Welcome to the south. Beaufort, SC was our real introduction with warm temperatures, old southern mansions, hanging moss and southern friendliness. We took a day off school and did a walking tour of some beautiful homes that played an important part in the American revolutionary war. Since Beaufort was one of the few towns spared wartime burning and looting, we saw the original homes that were taken over by Union forces for their headquarters and hospitals.

We also spent a rainy day in Charleston which would have been nicer if the weather and our timetable were better.

Many of the anchorages along the southern ICW have been “interesting” to say the least. The tidal currents run 2 knots strong and reverse every 6 hours. We have resisted setting two anchors and the captain is always nervous to make sure the boat will be fine when the current reverses and the boat swings opposite to the direction of the initial set. Many nights I will stay up into the evening, waiting to see the boat turn safely and still remain firmly tethered to the bottom.

Once such night was up winding Awendaw Creek in South Carolina. A small boat was moving up the creek banks and stopping every 50 yards or so. A large flashlight came on pointing towards the mangroves and apparently searching for something. After 3 or 4 minutes, they would move another 50 yards and repeat the searching. I was a little nervous as they approached my spot since the creek was little more than 30 yards wide. I confess that I actually locked the doors and kept watching them. They seemed little interested in us although it was hard to miss our large boat even at night. Curiosity finally overcame any fear and I opened the door, stepped outside and lit up their little boat with my 2 million candle power search light. I asked what they were doing thinking they were hunting alligators or something. After their eyes recovered from my spot light assault, they came over to the boat and showed us the biggest catfish that I have ever seen. Apparently, they tie baited lines on the mangroves and come back and check them after a couple of hours.

Dear Reader, I may never eat catfish again.

The Passage

The outside sky is black. Emily is asleep below and will not awaken for another 3 hours or so. I am inside the pilothouse studying the instruments that have all been dimmed to the maximum extent or have been put into “night mode”. Kim is on the foredeck and the chain is being raised and clatters below down a long tube into the rode locker below. Even she is using limited light to rinse off the anchor and chain and keep her night vision that we may need as we sneak out of Cape Lookout Point in North Carolina just before 4:00 AM. We needed this early start to make it safely to our destination before sunset.

Since we touched the sandy bottom on the way into this anchorage, I am carefully looking at the two chart plotters to make sure we head directly towards deeper water. The anchor lifts free of its grip of the bottom that has held us safely overnight…and we are free. The transmission shifts into forward and we creep into the black night. The navigational markers that we are searching for blend easily into the lights on shore, but using RADAR and the chart plotters remove much of the confusion.

As we round the last navigational aid, we realize that most hazards are behind us and only 10 hours of open ocean separate us from our next anchorage. The first few minutes are the hardest. As the boat plows into the black emptiness, my mind starts to think of all the unseen objects we might hit. Will it be an empty metal container that has fallen off a ship at sea and is drifting just below the surface where it can escape my radar yet rip into my hull? Will it be a sleeping whale that just decided to use my route as the perfect place to have his slumber?

But as the minutes turn to hours, our mighty little ship keeps moving steadily where I have directed her. All the systems are working well and our confidence gains another notch.

I see the first signs of dawn at sea emerge. The first thing I see are the waves tops as the sun bounces off the clouds and reflects down to the sea long before it has actually decided to appear. The sea is calm this particular morning. There are long steady swells coming from Africa and it appears that our ship is moving across the chest of a great being as it slowly and gently breathes in and out. Then I begin to see the birds that have been awakened by our approach and take flight under our bow. Finally, the sky brightens and a great ball of fire erupts from the sea. No land is in sight.

Emily wakes up and joins Mommy and Daddy in the pilothouse just in time to see a pod of dolphins discover our boat and use our bow wake as an excuse to play. I have heard that they enjoy the pressure wave created at the bow but I would like to believe that they are safely escorting us South. I have no words to describe how cool that is.

Enjoy the video.

Tom

Dashing South

We made it through the Chesapeake, stopping twice quickly to see old friends that Tom used to work with back when he was designing nuclear submarines. After the visits and taking on more than 700 gallons of diesel fuel, we went through the Dismal Swamp route that brought us to North Carolina.

There are two routes south on the ICW from Norfolk, Virginia and we chose the Dismal Swamp route since it is frequently too shallow and current conditions allowed us to pass through with our 5 foot draft requirement. Even so, we heard about a dozen submerged logs get whacked by our 30 inch propeller along the 51 mile route. The Dismal Swamp land was owned and surveyed by George Washington and the entire canal was dug by hand by slaves. Edgar Allen Poe also wrote “The Raven” while staying in a hotel along this canal. Despite the few bottom bumps, the trip was enjoyable and we successfully made it through our first two locks of the trip. The first lock brought us up about 8 feet to fresh water and the second lock lowered us back to sea level just before Elizabeth City, NC. The only thing dismal about this part of the trip was the cold outside temperatures which required several additional hours of running the generator to keep the boat toasty.

We met two cruising boats with kids in the Dismal Swamp and we stayed with them at Elizabeth City during a period of high winds and unusually cold temperatures. It was nice to be plugged in and have unlimited heat for 3 days,

Since then, we have been moving quickly south making about 55 miles per day. We are now anchored in Cape Lookout (near Beaufort, NC) watching dolphins play and wild horses feed on the dunes on Shackleford Banks. Tomorrow, we awake well before the sun to depart here for an ocean passage at 4:00 AM. We will need to leave in the dark to make the passage and comfortably arrive at Wrightsville beach, NC in daylight. The captain plans to reward the crew with 2 nights “shore leave” at a nice marina there to stretch our legs.

All the boat systems are working well and our plan is to keep moving steadily south towards Florida and hopefully, we will find warmer weather.

Tom

Family & Friends

We enjoyed seeing the Inner Harbor in Baltimore having grown up near this area when this city was much rougher around the edges. We toured Fort McHenry, ate dinner at Phillips Crab house, had more crab in Lexington market and enjoyed the wonderful aquarium. We went to the aquarium on Halloween night and we left Emily on the boat and took Harry Potter with us. Sharing that night with John and Mary from Navigator made it all the more special.

A short trip down the Bay brought us to good friends Doris and Jerry who live on a creek off the Magothy River with their own dock. Despite the numerous verbal warnings from my navigation program that the “depth is too low”, we plowed though the mud right up to the dock and stayed for a week. We used their water and electric and spent most of the week trying to give money to them only to have them sneak it back on the boat. Good friends are priceless. Kim and I both saw several other childhood friends and it was nice to relive some old memories.

My Mother drove over from Ocean Pines, Maryland and stayed on the boat for most of the week and it was truly a joy to have her with us. She survived some marathon walking in DC and the Spartan conditions on the boat with true grace. I managed to see my brother Jeff and much of his family on Emily’s 8^th Birthday and they fixed a nice meal and made it special.

We are now working our way down the Chesapeake Bay towards some more old friends and finally, Dear reader, we will be entering the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW) and making a dash (as if that that word could ever apply to trawlers) for warmer waters.

Tom

A Bit of Wind

They say that cruising is 95% boredom interspersed with 5% intervals of terror. Well, last Saturday evening, we were tested by a little bit of terror. A frontal weather system swung through Cape May around 9 PM where we were comfortably anchored with about 10 other sail and power boats. Wind speeds continued to steadily rise from 15 to 20 to 25 to 30 knots…and I watched the live satellite radar image on my computer as the line of pretty yellows and reds (severe weather) marched towards our position.

I had marked our boats position on the chart plotter and set it up to draw a nice red dot on my chart every 20 seconds reflecting our current position as determined by GPS. As the boat swings back and forth on our anchor, it draws a nice red smiley face on the chart plotter as the boat swings about the anchor on the bottom. I could also watch the current position of the other boats anchored around me with my radar. Remember, it’s now pitch black and Kim and Emily are already in bed down below.

I started to see other boats dragging their anchors in the brief flashes of lightning and watching their positions on the radar. I quickly glanced over at my chart plotter and noticed a few red dots drooling down from the smiley face marking my boat too. I called Kim to come up as I started the engine. I could slowly run the motor in forward to take some tension off the anchor. It was working fine and I might have kept that up until the front passed by, except by now there were more than 6 boats dragging and I was terrified of having one drag into me and, even worse, get our anchor chains tangled. We quickly raised our anchor and I motored out into the harbor channel well away from the other boats who were now madly racing engines back and forth trying not to hit one another.

The front passed by within 30 minutes and we safely re-anchored in lighter winds using the chart plotter and the radar to find a safe spot in the harbor. There was considerably more room now since one sailboat landed on the rocks, one sailboat was forced into some abandoned pilings, and two other boats with tangled anchors were driven aground in the shallows. Kim and I were thankful that Emily slept through the entire ordeal.

It was calmer the next morning and we motored out of the Cape May canal and had a calm passage up Delaware Bay that has a reputation for being rough. I guess that we were tested enough for a few days… I really hope so. The entire crew wants warm weather and some more of that boredom we all signed up for.

Tom

Currently anchored in Chesapeake City waiting for another front to pass through…tonight!

The Big Apple

The trip to New York City was uneventful as expected since we had previously made this trip in July 2003 (just before the twin towers came down). We planned the trip through an area called “Hell’s Gate” for slack tide so that our boat would not be swirled around in currents. Large swirling eddies are caused as the Harlem River and Long Island sound both dump together into the East River that moves at more than 4 knots toward Manhattan.

We also anchored (for free) in Liberty State Park and had Lady Liberty watching over our boat during our stay. We toured Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty on one day and took a series of busses, and two trains to attend Sunday Mass at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. After the nice Mass complete with full organ and coral singers, we took the subway (yes, we are fearless) down to Little Italy and had a nice lunch before working our way back to the boat. On this day, we also toured the “Ground Zero” memorial and site and could not believe how it still looks like the initial stages of construction more than 5 years after the tragedy.

We are traveling in company with another Nordhavn 46 (same model as Emily Grace) that came all the way to New England from California (via the Panama Canal). John and Mary are down to earth and it nice being able to have a friendly face in every harbor and to confer with them on weather and passage issues. They have voyaged to the Galapagos Islands on this boat and are a wealth of knowledge on what really works when cruising.

We are now moving through New Jersey and finally truly heading south though waters that are new to us. Unfortunately, someone has turned on the wind machine and we are comfortably sitting in Barnegat harbor with 30 knots of wind whistling through the rigging while waiting for more benign conditions for our next passage.

Tom

Pushing South with the Butterflies

We had a nice stay in Connecticut and got most of the items on “the list” all taken care of. The washer/dryer was fixed by the captain and his assistant who could get both hands and one set of eyes on a few parts that eluded a normal sized worker. Kim was happy to be able to do laundry again on board and Emily was feeling pretty important helping Daddy.

The Bon Voyage party was enjoyed by all and it was good seeing old friends and co-workers. We also said goodbye to our trusty truck as we pushed away from Connecticut soil.

But we are not alone in our trip south. Over the past few weeks we have noticed Monarch butterflies flying overhead, landing nearby or sometimes even far out at sea. Sometimes it is one or two, and other times it is more of a steady stream of 10 or twenty. Like many observations with a seven year old aboard, such a curiosity becomes an opportunity for a home schooling lesson.

We found that Monarch butterflies have one of the world's most fascinating migration paths. Every fall, thousands of the black-and-orange butterflies fly west to their wintering grounds in California and Mexico, covering the trees there with their bright shimmering wings. For centuries, people puzzled over exactly where the millions of Monarchs that spend their winters in Mexico and California came from. But in 1937, a researcher began putting wing tags on the butterflies, allowing him to track some of the travelers. In the 1950s, he expanded the project, enlisting more than 3,000 volunteers across the country in his Insect Migration Association. For more than 20 years, the volunteers helped track the marked insects, contacting him whenever they found or saw a marked Monarch.

Many of our friends have been having problems visualizing the speed of our trawler and how we can go so far on so little fuel. In all this research I found that many butterflies travel more than 2000 miles and average more than 5 mph in this arduous migration. There you have it. Everyone knows that butterflies do not travel in a straight line. They flutter back and forth and up and down and they get caught up in storms. Therefore they must travel faster than that to average 5 mph on this 3 month journey. Based on this data and the fact that they will beat me south this year, I have concluded that even butterflys go faster than our trawler.

So next time you see a butterfly flitting past, Dear reader, you can think to yourself, the Emily Grace goes slower than that!

Tom

Home Waters Again

It’s nice to be back home at our slip at the yacht club in Connecticut. Even though we have a lengthy list of items to fix and buy while we are here, it really has a good feel to it. We were hailed as we entered Fisher’s Island Sound by a fellow trawlering couple from our club, who just happened to be out enjoying the fresh 22 knot breeze too. Several old faces said hi and Emily reacquainted herself with all the sea life hanging from the pier around our slip. We pirouetted around in the 20+ knot breeze and backed into the slip with a confidence that had been lacking just 12 short weeks ago.

Despite my dread of having to disassemble the washer (again) and troubleshoot a problem that had eluded the factory representative on Cape Cod despite the $500 I threw his way, we do have a few pleasant tasks ahead. We ordered a few goodies that await us here, like a new digital SLR camera, and we will have the Bon Voyage party that got postponed in the Spring and visit with many dear friends.

Emily survived her first series of tests and the 100 she received on her math test reflected more on her natural aptitude for the subject rather than the proficiency of her teacher. We skip a day now and again, and learned the term “wave days” from a fellow cruising homeschooler. Those are like snow days, but represent those days when the seas are just too rough to study without getting queasy or worse. We heard that Rhode Island had the wettest September EVER RECORDED and the Lego’s and Play Dough really got a workout.

We did manage to get 3 people and 3 full-size bikes ashore in one trip in the dingy at Block Island, but it was not pretty. Emily rode all the way to town and back and was in her glory. It was her first trip on roads, made possible by the light post-season traffic, and she kept up with Mom and Dad even on the hills. We celebrated with a dinner out at the Oar Restaurant and the Captain and Crew were all happy.

But the leaves here are just starting to turn and we expect to follow the Autumn color south. No pink antifreeze for this boat for a while. I’m pointing the boat south and will keep going until the butter on the counter melts.

Tom

Witches, Pilgrims and American History

We’ve been augmenting our home schooling lessons with some significant field trips that emphasize our nation’s history. We sailed straight into 1692 as we anchored in Salem, home of the House of the Seven Gables and strolled among witches and ghosts seeing the Salem Witch Museum and this nice town. Emily learned about our sad history where 14 women and 5 men were put to death just for being different or on unfounded accusations. This hysteria of the day imprisoned more than 150 people and overflowed into Boston.

From there, we splurged and docked at Constitution marina for two nights to see the sights in Boston. We managed to put our 50 foot boat into a 52 foot spot between two other boats with no damage to either the boats or the captains’ ego. Our slip was within sight of Old Ironsides that we toured and learned of this great ship and its contributions to our independence and freedom. We walked much of the Freedom Trail and also enjoyed lunch at Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market. We did take a guided tour which included the Old North Church, Paul Reveres’ House, the Old State House and site of the Boston Massacre, the Boston Common swan boats and much more. It was nice to see a busy city, but we were glad to unplug and move on.

Further south, we traveled still further back into history as we entered Plymouth harbor and the 1621 fall that saw the first harvest celebration with the Wampanoag natives. We launched our dingy and tied up right next to the Mayflower II (a replica that first sailed in the year Kim and I were born). After touring the little ship that brought 102 of the first settlers to America, we all felt a little better about the relative cushy life aboard our little ship. We took the local bus to the Plimoth[sic] Plantation and learned about life 400 years ago from present-day native Wampanoag and actors portraying the original pilgrims and their way of life.

We also attended church in Plymouth and had my cousin Pat and her husband Jeff out to the boat for a fish dinner. Pat, whose stomach gets queasy at the sight of a boat, showed great bravery as they boarded my tipsy dingy for the trip to the mother ship. They came bearing fine wine from the winery at which their daughter now works, an extra copy of the last Harry Potter book, and big hugs for all. The dinner made by Kim was enjoyed and Pat even survived a trip in darkness back to shore.

We have since moved to Cape Cod and had a nice visit with my Uncle Joe and Aunt Sally and we all spent the first night on land since we left the dock in early July. It was nice taking baths and using a toilet that does not have to be pumped. Kim did some laundry since our boat washer/dryer died (did I mention a cushy life?) and we have a part now on order. Their hospitality and generosity is unmatched and Emily dearly loves them both.

We plan to stay put here until the washing machine is fixed unless a storm now down off Puerto Rico decides to visit and encourage us to move to a safer spot. Cruising friends that we met this summer are planning to visit here and Emily is being tempted by the nearby beaches of white sand. We are looking at the calendar and returning to the CT dock by the end of the month may be too challenging for this wandering family. We'll see, Dear reader, we'll see...

Tom

Blue Angels and Maine Angels

We scoured the Charts looking for a good spot to wait for the remnants of Tropical Storm Hanna to hit us. Captain Tom found a nice spot near Snow Island, Quahog Bay (near Harpswell). I put 150 feet of anchor chain out in 10 feet low water and chafe gear was wrapped around the snubber line anywhere it could rub. A fellow Rotarian gave me a section of old fire hose which really worked great. It turned out to be nothing with a lot of rain and winds under 20 knots which is hardly blowing at all.

We stayed put for 4 days and all kayaked under sunny skies and watched young ospreys learn to fish. There is an air force base just north of where we were anchored and the Blue Angel fighter jets were practicing over our boat too. There was an air show and we had front row seats.

One of the locals rowed out in a sturdy boat just to float, watch the jets and to talk. She has lived on this cove most of her life and was a fisherman by trade. I think if I called her a fisherwoman, she would have taken offense. She shared where all the eagle and osprey nests were and welcomed us to explore her little cove complete with a reversing fall. We mentioned that we had eaten our fill of lobster while in Maine, but missed the ability to buy fish in the local stores or from the lobstermen. She agreed that most of the watermen focus solely on lobsters and much of the fish is flash frozen and shipped away. She rowed away after the Blue Angels were done dancing in the skies and Kim baked two pizzas in the gas oven for dinner.

The very next morning, she appeared through the rain and fog in her fishing skiff bearing a 25 inch long, freshly caught, bled, and gutted Bluefish as a gift. It was great and could not have been any fresher. We had plans to have Emily write a thank you note to the Maine Angel and go over and pin it on her dock the next day, when she and her husband passed by on the way to a picnic. We waved them aboard, gave them a tour of the mighty Emily Grace and we all shared coffee and cheesecake that we had picked up in Boothbay. They were very nice and really spent considerable time ogling in my engine room.

Next stops include Portland, Maine, Portsmouth, NH, Gloucester, Salem, Boston and Plymouth, Mass before we head to Cape Cod.

We will miss Maine, but the lobster pots will not be missed. I don’t think that the autopilot has been on continuously for more than ½ mile in all of Maine before I had to dodge the next pot buoy. We’ve put about 700 miles under the keel since leaving the dock in Connecticut and that number would have been much lower if we could have gone in a straight line. And finding swinging room to anchor between the buoys has been a challenge. However, dear reader, after anchoring, it is possible to attach a buoy to the tender cleat and drag it and its pot several hundred yards…don’t ask me how I know.

Tom

The Lawler Academy of the High Seas has started!

Well, things are going pretty well for this cruising family. We visited Boothbay and Rockland Maine and got re-connected with civilization. We had been buying staples (bread, milk, fruit, and vegetables) at little teeny groceries stores at premium prices and living off the goodies that Kim had packed into every nook and cranny on the boat. After six weeks of that, we were due for a replenishment run. We were thrilled to find a Walmart, Home Depot, Shaw’s Super mart and a Hamilton marine store all within a mile from the harbor in Rockland. My credit card is still smoking from the activity.

After stocking up, we snuck way back into Seal bay in Vinalhaven Island and had an entire cove to ourselves. I had purposely arrived early in the day and anchored our boat in the very center of an 8 to 9 foot deep spot at the end of a creek. Other boats came near, took one look at that big boat, and correctly deduced that there was no more room for them. We lowered the kayaks and paddled around exploring. We saw a mature bald eagle soaring above us and seals popping up every so often to see who had come into their backyard. Tom and Emily harvested mussels one evening and we left them hanging inside our dive bag in the water overnight to cleanse out any mud and grit. The next day we enjoyed them as an appetizer and they were really good. Emily found a few small pearls but I don’t think they are going to finance the rest of our trip. Attempts at harvesting clams were less successful.
We also decided to get a jump on home school and we broke out the Calvert School supplies. We did a few days at anchor and developed a routine as we started our passages south. Each day starts with the Pledge of Allegiance and then Dad does about an hour of Math. If we are moving for the day, after math is when we raise anchor, have breakfast and get the boat moving. Dad keeps the boat generally pointed towards the destination, while Mom instructs in Science, Mythology, Spelling, Composition, Geography, Art, Phonics, Reading, History and Poetry. Although Math is done every day, some of the other subjects are rotated throughout the week. Mom still has the lions share and also has to deal with a queasy pupil on days when the passage is a little rocky. Emily complains a little but is finding math easy so far. Composition will be a challenge, but most of the other subjects are being attacked with vigor. We are already substituting when we find the prepared material too lame. Calvert art, for instance, would have Emily tracing her hand and painting a rooster (something she did when she was 4). Below is the Lawler Academy of the High Seas art project. Family and friends are requested not to look too close since you may be viewing your Christmas presents…did I mention that the mussels were really good?

Tom