January.
We left MN on Jan 6 ... with a winter storm chasing us all the way to Louisville KY. Our first stopover.
We arrived in Brunswick, GA on January 11, with all our possessions jam-packed in the suburban. Our timing was perfect ... had we arrived any later, we would have missed the coldest winter in GA in 150 years!
Staying in cheesy motels at night, we travelled to the Brunswick Landing Marina boatyard every day to perform a variety of unexciting, and sometimes unpleasant, boat projects. All required work before we could get the boat back in the water. Kinda a depressing start to our next great adventure!
February.
More than once, we had to take a sanity break from Brunswick, and we would bail out to Savannah, our new favorite city, where Craig (aka Michelle's boyfriend, but you can call him Captain Nelson, Army Ranger, Platoon Leader, and all around good guy) graciously opened his home to us, in the beautiful historic district of Savannah. It was a lovely respite ... esp. when the weather was too cold and rainy to work on the boat (or when the weather was too warm and sunny not to enjoy this city!).
Craig's place. Restored 1880 bldg.
Add Savannah to your 'must see' list.
Finally on February 8, Maja was ready for splash down ...
Our first sunset onboard.
Now, the real work of living aboard full time began. First priorities were getting the head and holding tank to work (goes w/o saying) and learning to dock a 40-ft boat by ourselves. Many times, we joked that we'd probably be the first boaters to go from a 40-ft yacht to a 27-ft one! More than once, we sincerely missed the ease of handling Xanadu, our 27ft Catalina in Lake City, MN.
Fortunately, for me, Dan is a man of many skills and many tools (thanks again to dear MN friends who started us off with a huge box of Dewalt tools). Dan immediately got to work tearing out of old holding tank and designing a new and improved version. We definitely celebrated the day we got to use a real toilet again! (Well, not exactly a "real toilet" by homeowners' standard - but a definite upgrade for us!). This project taught us that patience is a key attribute in getting things done on a boat. Nothing ever seems to fit right the first time!
Our first major boat project....many more to come!
He works long hours every day, and never complains (he sure didn't get that from me!).
One of the best side effects of the freezing temps in GA was that we hung out in the boater's lounge every night, where the heat was always on as well as the 2010 Winter Olympics. Becoming a frequent fixture there ended up being the best way to meet other long-time cruisers who were also stuck in GA b/c of the cold weather. We met so many wonderful people who have been living aboard for 10-20 years, and they had so much helpful advice to share with us newbies. Every night, we'd have to get a map just to figure out where in the hell these people had been sailing! We no longer had to struggle to figure out problems we were encountering on Maja ... we just had to ask Earl or Lynn or Art or Ed or Bob or have Clyde (our resident electrical engineer) come by for a beer! They had all "been there ... done that".
March.
The weather really took it's sweet time about warming up in the south. Everyone kept telling us that they'd ordinarily be golfing by now, but we were still sleeping in our knit hats!
Fortunately, St Patrick's Day rolled around, and we learned that Savannah had the 2nd largest celebration in the US (after NYC). Having an insider in that city, we had to go ... esp. since Michelle travelled south to be there. We may be old, but we still pub-crawled into the wee hours of the morning (just taking a bit longer to recover the next day!).
Knowlands in Savannah
That's our guy in the front row, middle!
March also brought our first real guests aboard Maja. Our son, James, came down to Florida during his spring break from his teaching job (year #3, teaching 2nd grade with St Paul Schools) to visit his friend, Ryan Bruns. Both of them came to GA for our first sail of the year! It was also Ryan's first time on a sailboat, our first time to anchor out under a full moon, and our first time to be w/o a car as James drove the suburban back to MN when he left!
James and Ryan
The boys wanted to sail out of sight of land.
All 4 sails up.
First time to get the dinghy int the water ... zoom zoom!
April.
Two days after James and Ryan left, our good buddy, Robert Ewing arrived, also on his spring break from school. Loaded with provisions, we left the marina for our first offshore trip -- 50 miles south to Cumberland Island.
Robert's first night on Maja
Can you ever have enough beer?
Cumberland is truly a magical spot that you should add to your "must see" list. Live oaks, Spanish moss, age-old mansions left from the years when the Carnegie's used the island as their personal summer retreat.
Ah, yes! the beach!
After Robert returned to MN, we had time to get our taxes done and a few more boat projects before shoving off again. This time we left for a 2-week cruise -- heading back to Cumberland Island and St. Mary's, GA and into Florida to visit Fernandina Beach.
Capt Dan - happy to be underway!
Anchorage at Cumberland Island. Bad weather moved in so we stayed 5 days instead of 2!
Dungeness mansion ruins at Cumberland Island.
Plum Orchard. Life was good to the rich!
Cumberland is famous for the wild horses that populate the island.
Leaving Cumberland Island, it was a short trip over to St Marys GA, the 2nd oldest permanently inhabited town in the U.S. (#1 honors go to St Augustine, FL). Or rather, it "should" have been a short trip, but we had our first engine breakdown about 500-yds from the anchorage so it took us a bit longer to complete the trip! This experience showed us that we can survive a minor crisis on board -- we learned that having unlimited tow insurance from BoatUS is a good thing; we learned that tow boat captains are truly remarkable people (a lesson we would repeat several times throughout the summer!); and, we learned that marinas are incredibly gracious when you come in under tow!
St Marys ended up being another town that we thought we'd visit for a day and ended up staying 4 days as Dan figured out how to make the repair, how to find a replacement part, and how to get a temporary replacement part made (since it would take a month to get the new part!).
St Marys is definitely one of the most boater-friendly places we would visit along the east coast. One person after another stopped by Maja to see how the repairs were going, to offer help, and to point out places of interest. To put a positive spin on this experience, as we were leaving St Marys on a Thursday, we heard that the annual Shrimp Festival in Fernandina Beach FL started on Friday. So off we went, intending to spend 2 days (and stayed 4 days ... the start of a pattern we would follow the rest of the summer!).
Fernandina Marina
Maja on a mooring ball in the harbor.
The Festival was 4 days of people and food, booths and art displays, fireworks and pirates (the location of Fernandina made it a popular pirate refuge, back in the day).
May.
Ah May! Finally the warm weather arrived! Of course, as our luck runs, the warm weather gave way to HOT HOT weather in a matter of days. But after the winter we had, we all vowed not to complain about the heat as we set up doing outside boat projects -- varnishing the teak being one of my personal favorites.
Our daughter, Michelle, graduated from the University of Minnesota, Humphrey Institute School of Public Affairs, with a masters degree in Public Policy and Economic Development. She decided to skip graduation and head for Savannah as soon as classes were over since Craig would be deploying in July. Her arrival was exciting for two reasons.
Reason #1: We got to take her sailing, of course! She came down to Brunswick with her new puppy, Molly, while Craig was in NC for training. All 3 of them came down again, when we got to take the boat offshore, go dolphin watching and anchor out for the night.
Day at the beach on Jekyll Island with Michelle and Molly.
Craig, Michelle and Molly (a dog onboard was fun!)
Reason #2: Michelle needed someone to drive her car back to MN since she planned on travelling with Craig to MN during his leave (prior to deployment). Who better to ask than a couple of retirees with no set plans and lots of time on their hands! So even though we had a refrigerator full of food and had announced to our dockmates that we were going to head north to the Chesapeake, we proved our flexibility by piling into her car and heading northwest instead!
Beautiful drive thru the Smoky Mountains
Our regular stopover in Louisville KY where Dan's cousin, Sheila Yule, always makes room for us at her home.
Since this was an unplanned trip back to MN, we decided to play the 'SURPRISE' card to the fullest. Our first destination was Rochester, MN where we surprised our nephew, Steven Schalau, at his high school graduation party. The look on my sister's face as we walked up her driveway made the 1000 mile trip totally worthwhile!
Schalau family
Our next stop was Webster, WI, where the annual Memorial Day bocce tournament and campout at Jim Garfunkel's home was in full force. Our timing was perfect as we walked in on the gang at the 10th Hole restaurant just as they were ordering breakfast, a weekend tradition. As the commercial says, the shock value of greeting our closest and dearest friends so unexpectedly was indeed priceless!
Jim and Dan
Deb, Marianne, Nancy, Renee
Nothing beats MN/WI weather in the summer!
June.
We spent the month of June in MN. The Devereaux's have a wonderful guest room, which became our home base. We took side trips to Breezy Point Resort to join Craig and Michelle, went down to Rochester, up to Webster WI, and over to Eagan where we helped James get his house ready to sell.
The highlight of the month was being in Mpls for Collette Devereaux's, our goddaughter, high school graduation.
Proud family of the graduate.
The Devereaux flower garden should be on everyone's 'must see' list.
Of course, we couldn't leave MN w/o seeing the Twins play in their beautiful new stadium.
Craig and his dad, Dewey, joined us.
The final surprise of the month was Jim's decision to drive us back to Georgia and spend the month of July cruising with us up the East Coast. Ahh, life is good! With 6-months of retirement under our belt, we've yet to regret this decision!
Honda generator purchased from Tim Ryan. Many thanks Tim !
July.
What a month! So much was packed into our time with Jim, that its hard to decide what to skip over. Every day was truly an adventure ... some planned, some totally unanticipated! In the end, we traveled 750 miles this month ... from Fernandina FL to Norfolk VA.
After spending a week in Brunswick tending to boat projects (such as, who ever thought we'd get by without an air conditioner on the boat as both the temps and the humidity soared into the 90s?!), and Dan taking an emergency trip to visit his Mom in a Tampa, FL hospital, we were finally ready to cast off the dock lines after the 4th of July holiday. We started our trip by heading south, taking Jim to our favorite places: Cumberland Island, St Marys and Fernandina Beach.
Jim and Dan enjoying the new A/C!
After getting used to being on the boat again, we plotted a course north. Our plan was to sail offshore, using the advantage of 3 crew members to sail overnight and make giant leaps up the coast. However, when our chart plotter/radar quit working and had to be sent in for repairs, and storm-after-summer-storm greeted us each day at 5pm, like clockwork, we played the flexibility card once again and decided instead to go up the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW).
The ICW is a marvel of the Army Corp of Engineering. It provides an inshore waterway of rivers and canals that allow boaters (commercial and recreational) to move up the east coast, protected from the weather on the Atlantic Ocean. However, unlike sailing offshore where you basically just plot your course, turn on the autopilot and watch for other ships, cruising on the ICW requires constant attention to the map, the GPS, the channel markers, and the all-important depth sounder. Any depth under 5.5 ft means Maja has run aground! We frequently sweated through water that was 6 ft deep (causing the alarm on the depth sounder to buzz every 10 seconds)!
Channel markers help you stay in the deepest part of the channel. Depending on the direction you are travelling, the red marker is on the left and the green marker is on the right. One of our most frequent questions to each other was: "Is that channel marker green or red?". Generally, followed by: "And which side should the red marker be on?" Get your markers mixed up, and you'll run aground (something I learned on our 3rd day out!)
Gotta love technology! The GPS shows your location as well as your route. Just follow the dotted line!
Bridges are something else you don't encounter offshore! On the ICW, they come in all shapes.
Some open on request. Some open every 30 or 60 minutes.
We love the 65-ft bridges the best!
What the ICW does have going for it is the scenery! And anchorages and marinas where you can stop every night ...something else you won't find offshore. We saw dolphins every day. Beautiful homes line some parts of the waterway while other stretches are pristine, reminding us of the BWCA. Marshes. Forests. Low country. Birds. Alligators. Oh my!
I cannot lie about the weather ... it was HOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOT, and it seemed to get hotter the further north we travelled. No sense talking about it b/c everyone was hot. All you could do was sweat, and wish for rain or wind or at least some cloud cover ...but there was very little of that. July is not the month to be on the ICW, but at least we had every marina/anchorage to ourselves! And yes, there is water all around you, but it frequently is either full of jelly fish or polluted or something we just want to motor through.
In addition to the A/C, the sunshade on Maja was a saving grace. Unless the wind piped up, we had it on every day we travelled.
Ah yes! One of Jim's best ideas on this trip was to stop at any marina with a pool! And the earlier in the day we stopped, the better. This also gave us a chance to explore some of the neat places we were passing: Savannah GA, Hilton Head SC, Beaufort SC, Charleston SC, Georgetown SC and Myrtle Beach SC.
Myrtle Beach. Time to say goodbye to Jim. Sad Day.
On our own again, we continued to slog up the ICW, never believing we'd actually make the end at Norfolk VA. But, you fall into a routine ... up early to travel in the cool hours of the morning, trying to knock 50 miles off the trip each day. Each section of the waterway is different, and there is such novelty in not knowing what the next stretch will be like. Some parts are flat and wander aimlessly, while other parts are tree-lined and so straight that you can turn on the autopilot and let the boat steer itself. Some sections involve running down a wide river where you can actually put up the sails, and some stretches include very large, shallow sounds that can be treacherous if the wind and current are not in your favor.
Wide and straight water. Love it!
Large and deep water. Get the sails up!
We stopped at marinas in Wrightsville Beach NC, Beaufort NC, and Oriental NC. Other nights we anchored out ... continuing our pace of moving every day.
City dock in Beaufort, NC
Sunset at anchorage. Never got tired of sunsets or dolphins!
At Elizabeth City NC, we entered one of the most exciting parts of the trip: the Dismal Swamp. What a name! Don't let it fool you! It is actually a wonderful canal conceived of by George Washington that runs for approx. 50 miles before bringing you to Norfolk VA, the end of the ICW.
Entering the Dismal Swamp Canal. Perfectly straight and 6 feet deep.
There are two locks on the canal.
In the middle of the Dismal Swamp, there is a Visitors Center for both motorists and boaters! The Visitors Center is just like what you'd find on the interstate, except that there is a parking lot on one side and dock for boats on the other side! How cool is that!
August.
We made it! On August 1, we passed the "Mile 0" sign indicating the end of the ICW. And, WOW, there's never a doubt that you've reached Norfolk! It was definitely a daunting new reality to leave the shallow, protected forest of the Dismal Swamp and enter the huge Norfolk Harbor, full of commercial vessels and giant Navy ships of all shapes and sizes.
Our personal favorite.
Norfolk marked the end of Phase 1 of our trip -- 750 miles to reach the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
We headed for Salt Ponds Marina in Hampton VA.
Nice to be securely tied to a slip for awhile.
With a pool just a short walk away!
Time to relax and celebrate how much we accomplished in the last month.
We used August to relax and regroup and visit with friends from Brunswick who are also at this marina. We also needed this time to leave the boat and visit family. For two weeks, Dan flew down to Florida to see his Mom. In July, she gave us a real scare as a series health problems landed her in the hospital. She ended up needing a pacemaker, which resulted in an infection and a return to the hospital. Dan wanted to be with her as she was discharged to help with her rehab. And while Dan was in Florida, I flew to Ohio to visit Michelle at her new home in Loveland OH, where she landed a job in the City Manager's office.
It's hard to describe what it's like living off the boat. You certainly revel in the many conveniences we once took for granted -- flush toilets, long showers, endless water, refrigeration. ice on demand, a car -- but you ultimately begin to miss your home, small as she may be, and wonder when you'll start moving along again.
September.
September arrived with a bang, in the form of Hurricane Earl ... our first experience with a hurricane. What a mix of emotions ... Are we confident enough to stay on the boat? Are we too scared to stay on the boat? Should we try and move the boat to a safer spot? What's the worst that can happen? What if the worst happens?
Even though we don't frequently trust the weather service, in the end, we followed their prediction that Earl would move offshore so we stayed on tMaja. It took us 3 days to get ready for the big event; and in the end, we were very thankful that it ended up being a non-event. Little rain and not any high winds.
The big news for September is that Dan and Renee Devereaux came to visit for a week. We decided to meet them in Solomons, MD, so we spent the first week of September sailing from Hampton to Solomons. What fun to be sailing again! The Chesapeake is a huge body of water and most of our travel days involved sailing 40-mile passages up the western shore of Maryland, anchoring at small coastal towns along the way.
Zahnizer's Marina, Solomon's Island, MD
We had beautiful weather every day during their visit!
Dan and Renee.
September 16 marked our 32nd wedding anniversary! The best part was being with Dan and Renee.
While we were anchored at St Michaels, a local crabber came by and gave us a basket of crabs! Oh my! That's a lot of crabs! We spent that evening drinking champagne while Dan K. and Renee went to work on the crabs.
By sunset, we gave up on the idea of making crab cakes, and decided that Crab Caesar salad would go perfectly with steak for dinner! I now understand why crabs cakes are so damn expensive! And I'll never eat another crab cake outside of the Chesapeake. Up here, the crab cake is made entirely of fresh crab -- no fillers -- and nothing tastes better.
Renee enjoying our 5ft bow sprit
We traveled about 150 miles during their week on the boat ... from Solomons, across the bay to the Cambridge, MD on the eastern shore, to St Michaels and back to Solomons. Solomons is a very cute coastal town, and we found it hard to leave there after the Devereaux's headed their van towards MN.
But we had friends waiting for us in Annapolis, so we had to break the Solomon spell and move on! Most places that we visited this summer we would have liked to stay longer, and Annapolis was certainly that type of city. Just about everything you could want is built around the harbor, and the city bus is free.
Looking downhill to the harbor.
Huge mooring field in Annapolis.
After 3 days, we once again forced ourselves to move on because we wanted to visit Tom McNally in Baltimore. And we really liked Baltimore! In fact, we had planned to stay here 3 days and ended up staying 9 days! Part of that was due to weather, and part of it was due to a steering problem ... but chalk up another town we really want to visit again. Baltimore was as far north as we'd travel on the bay.
Baltimore has a huge inner harbor which is a boaters dream. Water taxis take you everywhere.
We tied to the city pier and could walk one block to go dancing at night!
Tom was our personal tour guide
The Baltimore Yacht Harbor graciously let us stay for 2 days at no charge after our steering chain broke as we left their fuel dock.
October.
Leaving Baltimore, we made a 60-mile run south to Deale, MD to visit friends from Brunswick, Ed and Connie Dooley. We stayed at their marina, and we just may make this our summer base in 2011. After a 4-day stopover, the warm weather motivated us leave in order to visit Washington DC (and check another destination off Dan's 'bucket list'). It was a 2-day trip up the Potomac River, and what a site to see as we entered Washington Channel!
Yes, that's the capitol in the distance!
It was amazing! We anchored for a week in the Washington Channel, with the Washington Monument in the background. We could walk to the metro, but we didn't need to because friends from Brunswick (that place sure came in handy!) live in the DC area and did the driving for us. Plus, a friend from college, Michele Kraftschik (who also met us in Solomons) lives in Alexandria so she was our personal tour guide. We'll definitely be back!
November.
Time to get moving south as the weather started to get cooler. We left Salt Ponds Marina, Hampton VA on October 23 and arrived back in Brunswick GA on Nov. 10. We got caught in bad weather in Elizabeth City NC and had to hole up for 5 days, but other than that, we moved along every day, making good time and mileage, getting the return trip done in 19 days.
Fall is in the air!
We basically retraced our steps back down the east coast via to ICW. Our autopilot was not working so any overnight passages would require us to hand steer the boat. However, by the time we got to Beaufort, SC, we were so tired of the constant stress of traversing shallow water, and we really dreaded the worse part of the ICW ahead in SC and Georgia (as both states are not fully funding the necessary dredging), that we decided to go offshore from Beaufort, SC to Brunswick, GA.
It was a 125-mile passage that took us ~20 hours. It was a long, dark, cold night and not very much fun because hand-steering meant that we had to stand at the wheel the whole time, staring at the GPS to stay on course. Gives new meaning to the term "tedious"! But, going offshore did cut 4 days off our return trip, so that was worth it in the end.
Sunset at sea.
Sunrise at sea.
It was quite a homecoming when we arrived in Brunswick as many boaters we knew from last winter had returned. Nice to be someplace where everyone knows your name! The weather was great so lots of boat projects got done, and then we rented a car and drove to Ohio to celebrate Thanksgiving with James and Michelle.
December.
We had hoped to be on our way towards the Bahamas this month, but another good plan bites the dust as we take time to replace our autopilot, add an outboard motor crane (to lift the dinghy motor from the dinghy to the stern rail), install a new water tank, and replace the diesel exhaust riser and mixing elbow. On the plus side, we were in Savannah to welcome Craig safely home from his 6-month deployment to Iraq/Afghanistan.
Yah!
What could have been a lonely Christmas, away from family and friends in MN, was greatly warmed with news that our good friend, Jim Garfunkel, is coming to GA to spend the holidays with us. Yahoo!
Merry Christmas to all.
Dream big.
May we find a way towards peace in 2011.
4 comments:
Great Christmas letter! We have enjoyed following your adventures! Happy New Year
Barb (Roberts)
lovely recap :)
Great Story :-)
great overview of the year. It was nice to check in on what you have been doing since meeting you in Annapolis. Our plan had been to be in the Bahamas by Christmas as well, but we are currently still in Stuart FL - put in new autopilot, new roller furler, AIS, and doing many more "boat projects" to get ready to go over. Maybe our paths will cross in the future. Bob & Janice s/v Tsamaya
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