Family Christmas in the GA Mountains

December 24

After much discussion about where to spend Knowland family Christmas this year (e.g. Bahamas, Miami, Palm Beach, Minneapolis....), Craig came up with the award-winning suggestion that we travel to the mountains in NE Georgia.  He had trained in this area as an Army Ranger and found the mountains very beautiful (in spite of the nasty training he was doing!).  What a great choice!  We rented a log cabin thru Cedar Creek Cabins, and James (and Brody) drove in from MN, Michelle flew in from OH, Craig drove over from Ft. Benning, and we drove up from Ft Pierce FL. 

Amazingly, all of us arrived within an hour of each other! 

Cedar Creek Cabin - "Celebration"

The Christmas surprises started immediately.  Craig and Michelle arrived with a tree tied to his car ... because what's Christmas w/o a tree?!  Michelle flew in from OH with a tub of Christmas decorations, and James arrived in the Prius stuffed with two more tubs of Christmas decorations, tree lights and a tree stand (and considering that James had just moved into his new home a week ago, we are still amazed he could find all this stuff in his storage unit!)

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So nice to see our decorations again!

Christmas with the kids is really the best time of year ....

The cabin was perfect for us!  Three bedrooms on three floors, so everyone had their own space, which really promoted sleeping in late!  Hot tub on the deck.  Pool table downstairs.  We brought a turkey and trimmings, and Michelle and Craig brought a Honey Baked Ham (so good!), sweet potatoes and green bean casserole, and James brought Kahlua, cappuccino machine, Christmas serving dishes, nativity, and a bunch of yummies from Renee Devereaux (yes, we had her famous fudge for Christmas once again!!!).

Christmas Day

It was a truly wonderful Christmas ... complete with sleeping in, staying in sweat pants all day, eating, drinking, relaxing, watching football, and cherishing this great moment. So many blessings in one place.  I think we've found a new tradition. 

We seldom get so much time with the kids all in one place (sigh) XXOOX

Monday, December 26

This proved to be our best day for exploring the outdoors, so Craig took us to Helen, GA for a hike to Blood Mountain on the Appalachian Trail.  The mountains were beautiful and the trail quite an adventure (even though quite different from our seaside lifestyle!).  The weather was cool, crisp and clear ... who could ask for more?

 

 

Back to the car by sunset ...

Beer stop in Helen before heading back to our cabin for leftovers.

Tuesday, December 27

Rain was predicted for our last day at the cabin, so we stayed up as late as we could on Monday night(JWK = 4:30 a.m.!).  The rain held off, but the temps dropped into the 40s so it was another day for staying in sweats -- something everyone agreed was a positive characteristic in family gatherings at Christmas!  We started off with White Russians in the hot tub and ended up with champagne and beer as we played several of the games under the tree (Cranium, Sequence, Mexican Train, Chicken Foot) ... which was after our Clint Eastwood DVD marathon!  It was hard to let this day go as it was our last one together.  The best gift of all.

Wednesday, December 28

Check out and move on day.

James and Brody - looking forward to a new home in St Paul.

Michelle and Craig - looking forward to a wedding in May.

Our wonderful family - looking forward to next time.

And we're off!

James had a marathon drive straight back to MN, with just a few stops at a road side rest to get him safely home.  Michelle and Craig headed to Savannah for a couple of days, and we stopped for the night in Jacksonville, something we can do now that our good friend Mikel Wheeler lives there!

Thursday, December 29

After completing our final shopping in Jacksonville (10 cases of beer = check; 3 cases of Woodchuck Hard Cider = check; 1 case of champagne (in case of visitors in the Bahamas!) = check; 1 case of wine = check), we arrived back in Ft Pierce around 8pm, wishing we had three strong kids around to lug all these cases down to the boat!

Upon our return to the marina, we also learned that there was a two-day weather window for crossing to the Bahamas on Friday (tommow!), and everyone is taking it.  Everyone but us as we aren't ready to take off right away the tomorrow morning (geezzz, it took us all day on Friday to find places to stow all the beer!).

There is another cold front moving in on Monday (winds > 25 knots; seas >10 feet) so we won't be able to leave until next Thursday or Friday.  It looks like we'll be celebrating NYE by ourselves this year since our friends here have moved on.  But we've got champagne on board for toasting to a happy and healthy 2012!  Wishing in our hearts that we were with friends at the Devereaux party in Minneapolis ...

Dec. in Ft Pierce - Two People Died Here

December 5

No shit!  Since moving over to H Dock for our one-month stay at Harbortown Marina, we've learned that two people in the marina have died in the last 3 weeks.  One body has not been found and one body drowned.  My bet is on the narrow finger piers used to access the boat slip.  Not only are they skinny, they move ... as in swaying side to side as you walk the narrow plank.  Add to that the absence of any ladders on the dock, and you are gonna die if you fall in the water at night.  Creepy ....

We were tied to the fuel dock for 1.5 days waiting for the wind to die down before making our approach to the slip (the Harbormaster's suggestion after two other sailboats made spectacular crashes into the pilings!).  

We're always nervous when coming into a slip (esp. one with fixed pilings and finger piers -- called such b/c the pier only partially extends into the slip) because you never know what to expect, no matter how much you rehearse ahead of time.  We worried most about lassoing the stern pilings -- they are responsible for stopping our forward progress, and you basically get one good shot at grabbing the piling before it moves out of reach -- when the hardest part ended up being the narrow fairway in the marina (the fairway in the channel of water you navigate to get to/from the slip ... kinda like the lane in the parking lot).  The fairway was less than 75 feet wide ... and Maja probably takes up 48 feet with the bow sprit and dinghy hanging in the davits off the back ... so we knew it was going to be a tight turn into our slip, allowing for wind and current.  That worry was confirmed when our dinghy crunched into the piling on the opposite side of the fairway!  No harm no foul, and the rest of the docking went perfectly.

How's your lasso?

It is no easy feat to steer a big boat into a little spaced marked by pilings in the water!

So ... Harbortown Marina, Ft Pierce Florida ... our home for the next month.  The marina has very nice facilities, so this will be a good place to hang out.  Our friends, Ed and Karin (s/v Passages), are here and they have a car!  And, we've also discovered a small contingent of boaters from Brunswick, which lead to some nice happy-hour reunions!

Peter and Claudia (s/v Now or Never!)

Except for Dec 9-12, we had great weather and were able to use the bikes every day to explore Ft. Pierce.  We are not in the downtown area, but it's only 1.5 miles away.  We are within walking distance of a West Marine, Publix and Dollar General (what a great combo!).  And, we can ride our bikes to a huge marine warehouse store - Marine Connection.  And I mean HUGE.  They have everything from tiny nuts and bolts to huge engines, davits and windows. 

We got a new seat for the helm.

Our list of boat projects had gotten down to just a few before "the rain" came.  It rained for 4 days straight ... pouring rain ... flooded streets ... time to find out where we have leaks on the boat.  Definitely, the butterfly hatch we love so much in the cabin is a serious culprit.  Before it was a minor nuisance, but with 4 days of water pounding the boat, we were walking on towels, and everything inside the boat was damp.

We managed a few shopping trips and dinner with Ed and Karin, but mostly everyone was holed up on their boats.  Kinda boring even with cable TV ...  I even broke out the playing cards and started playing "Solitaire" ... (something I'm addicted to on the ipad, but find it to be a lot of work with real cards!). 

Decorated the boat for Christmas!

We leave here on Dec 23 for family Christmas in Helen GA.  First, we'll drive to Tarpon Springs and see Dan's mom.  We also hope to meet the previous owner's of s/v Maja and get a spare starter from them.  Then, we'll have one long day of driving to Helen GA where we've rented a log cabin for 4 nights.  Michelle will fly into Atlanta, and she and Craig will drive in from Ft Benning.  James and Brody will drive down from MN (one week after moving into his new home!).  Craig did Ranger training in this area and recommended it because of the beautiful mountains.  We found nothing but beautiful rentals in this area ... and our final choices were not driven by number of beds or baths, but rather by the requirement of a a pool table and outdoor hot tub!

Leaving for Ft Pierce (12/4)

Sunday, December 4
Beautiful day, 75 deg, 15knots of E wind ... BIG sigh of relief to be underway again.  A moving boat is so much different than a moored boat!  Even though I'm in the same corner of the cockpit with the same book ... it must be the motion and the changing sceneray.....

Don't get me wrong, we love Vero Beach ... we did stay here 2 weeks and thoroughly enjoyed biking to the beach, going to the Farmers Market, the Art Fair, the muesum, the memorial park.  Vero is a lovely and affluent town that provides boaters with a free bus that stops at both the dinghy dock and the main dock house ... so what's not to like!

yummy fresh goods at the farmers market.

Bikes were an added treat

Poinsettias growing in the front yard!

The long stay in Vero was worth it for the mail we were able to get and for the visit we were able to have with Clyde and Sherry (m/v Morada), one of our first friends in Brunswick.  They recently bought a mobile home in Vero Beach, so while their boat is for sale in Brunswick, they are in Vero getting the new home ready for a long-term rental this winter.  Lucky for us that our paths crossed here at the same time ... we haven't seen them in a year, and they've been missed!

We spent our last nite in Vero with them and their friends on m/v Emoh.

BBQ burgers and Mexican Train late into the night!

We finally settled on Ft Pierce as our next destination after much debate over the pros/cons of leaving Maja at various ports along the east coast of Florida when we leave at Christmas.  Ft Pierce is just 20 miles down the ICW from Vero Beach, so we had hoped to get a little further south, just for the warmer temps when we return.  But the choices got increasingly more expensive the further south you go.  Our first choice was a mooring in Miami (Dinner Key Marina), except that we would need to shut off and empty the refrigerator, so no provisioning for the Bahamas until we got back. To leave the boat hooked up to shore power (and securely tied to a dock), we needed a slip in a marina.  And once you stay in a slip for a week, you may as well pay for a month.  So, that's what we are doing! 

The couple we met in Vero Beach, Ed and Karin (s/v Passages), recommended Harbortown Marina as they are also hunkering down here through the holidays.  Staying in Ft Pierce has answered our other lengthy debate -- Where to cross to the Bahamas this year?   Ft Pierce has a short, nice inlet to the ocean, so we can get offshore in less than 30 minutes.  AND, leaving from Ft Pierce also answered the question of where we would enter the Bahamas this year.  Leaving from Ft Pierce means we'll repeat our same path as last year, and shoot for the Abacos and clear Customs at Green Turtle Cay.  We hope to get back to Ft Pierce after Christmas at the same time as Ed and Karin so we'll have them as a 'buddy-boat' for the crossing.

So, that's 3 big decisions we've finally put to rest!  Whew!

3 on a mooring in Vero Beach

After s/v Passages left Vero, we next shared our mooring with two other boats.  Now, that was tight quarters!  Our new "mooring mates" were not nearly as friendly Ed and Karin so we were happy to move on after two days.  All I can say is that I'm glad we met Ed and Karin first as I probably would have avoided Vero Beach in high season again after our last experience.

s/v Maja on the end.

As we were leaving Vero, we got a call from our friend, Mikel Wheeler, who recently moved to Jacksonsville and was looking for a day trip on this beautful Sunday.  So we talked him into driving down to Ft Pierce and spending the night with us.  What a treat to have company again ... especially with the Vikings on TV!

Mikel's 3rd visit to s/v Maja in 2011!