Getting Caught Up: Southbound Journey Fall 2023

I lost a bit of blogging-steam over the last few months, partly due to the fact that we'd been retracing our steps and I find it a bit boring to talk about places I've already been and things I've already done, and partly because we've actually been super-busy with the stuff of life.  

Even though this post is old news, I'll go ahead and recount the journey and the happenings but just keep it brief. (Ha!)

After leaving Historic St. Mary's City, we stopped at one of our familiar anchorages near Reedville, VA.  We decided to stay an extra day this time since we'd never actually explored Reedville itself.  It was a picturesque little town, similar in character to other towns we visited during our tour of the Chesapeake. We had lunch at a small cafe and had a nice chat with a couple of the locals.

Lovely Architecture in Reedville, VA

Sunset from the Dinghy in Reedville

After two overnights in Reedville, we made our way to Deltaville. Notice I didn't say "sailed" to Deltaville.  Spoiler alert:  the trip back to Florida was dismal from a sailing perspective. Although we raised the mainsail a time or two, we never did better than a short period of motor-sailing.  Motoring all the way up and down the eastern seaboard isn't nearly as fun as sailing and I have to say that this season was disappointing in this regard.

Our plan at Deltaville was to have the boat hauled and pressure-washed, and inspect fittings, through-hulls and sensors below the waterline.  Unfortunately, the "premium" bottom paint that we had used didn't perform as advertised and we ended up having a LOT of scraping to do and needed to repaint the bottom. I have now been coronated:  "Barnacle Queen"! While I was working on removing barnacles (which seem to be attached by some sort of concrete substance), Steve was busy repairing dings to the keel, followed by sanding the bottom in preparation for painting.  We also waxed the entire hull.  Woo hoo! 

The colors in the photo below show the various layers of paint that we had to scrape and sand through:  blue was the top layer of paint, red was the middle layer, and black was the basecoat, so you can see that we were all the way down to basecoat it a lot of areas. The grey shows the areas that had been repaired. 

Starry Night's Keel Post-Barnacle Removal

I also cleaned and rebuilt one of winches, during our one-week wait for our haul-out date, and Steve worked on filling in holes in the helm area which were left over from removal the original bimini hardware when the new hardtop was installed. 

While we were in Deltaville, Jake became extremely agitated and was acting very strangely.  We didn't know what was wrong with him, but he was walking in circles all around the boat, wouldn't jump off the dighy on to the dock, and really seemed like he had lost his mind. One of the difficulties of our transitory life - especially in the small towns of the Chesapeake - is access to veterinarians.  Many of them only work a few days a week and I've been unsuccessful in finding any who will take new patients. After a day or two, we noticed that Jake's ears seemed to be bothering him and found signs of ear mites.  Thankfully, I had some medication on board and after a few days of treatment he seemed to be better. 

We did manage to have a bit of fun while we were there. The weather was already beginning to turn a bit cool, and the marina has a fire pit available for use. We had met some families with kids in the seven to nine-year old range and invited them to enjoy a campfire complete with s'mores. We enjoyed chatting with the parents, while the boys alternated between ingesting sugar and running around in the dark.

Our planned 4-day stop in Deltaville turned into two weeks but we finally launched on October 24th with a freshly painted and waxed hull.  Now the challenge was to make it to our Florida holiday destination by November 12th - in time to host Bridgette, who was planning to stay with us on the boat during a visit to attend a childhood friend's wedding. 

We had hoped to avoid the "forced march" scenario we had experienced last winter, where we needed to travel every day from first light until sunset, but with such a late start we decided we should go ahead and travel every day to preserve our buffer. We traveled daily for the next nine days, stopping at Hampton, Virginia; Buck's Island, Manteo, Ocracoke and Adam's Creek in North Carolina; and Little River Inlet and near Georgetown Inlet in South Carolina. 

Somewhere in Virginia

One thing that was new for us this year was that we were part of a great migration of snowbirds heading south for the winter.  Last year we left so late in the season (December) that we didn't appreciate just how many people flee the winter weather by boat.  We were in a veritable parade of boats for most of the time that we spent in the section of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) from Portmouth, VA to the Albermarle Sound in NC.  For the most part our fellow travelers were polite, and those with large power boats typically hailed sailboats as they approached, requesting to pass and slowing down as they did so.  Every now and then a fast boat would blow by one of the sailboats, leaving the sailor rocking and rolling, which sometimes resulted in a tense exchange between parties. 

Sunrise Leaving Buck's Island, NC

Once we reached Albemarle Sound we took the road less traveled by, choosing to stay in the sound rather than follow the ICW.  And truly, it made all the difference.  We were, by and large, by ourselves as we travelled between the NC mainland and the Outer Banks and it provided a peaceful respite from the narrow channels and high traffic of the ICW. 

On day six of the trip, it looked like we might get a bit of wind which would allow us to go off-shore for a 48-hour jaunt, which would expedite our arrival in Charleston.  We knew that, initially, the wind would be light but it was supposed to pick up later in the day.  Well, pick up it did, but in a slightly different direction than predicted:  right on the nose.  This made for a very long night of tacking back and forth, while hitting waves dead-on and making very little forward progress.  As the sun rose the next morning, Steve and I agreed that the best course of action was to cut our losses and go back into the ICW at the Masonborough Inlet.

The elements were more forgiving the next day, and we had a phenomenal current boost which gave us a SOG (speed over ground) of between 7 and 8 knots the whole day and allowed us to get much further than expected in a single day - all the way to Georgetown, SC.  Our next stop was Charleston, where we took a few days to visit with Bridgette and wait for weather that would allow us to take the offshore route to St. Augustine, rather than have to go back to Intracoastal Waterway. In particular, the ICW route twists and turns all the way through South Carolina and Georgia and adds many miles and a lot of time to get to Florida.

On November 5th, we set sail for St. Augustine.  The winds were predicted to be light, but at least would be in a favorable direction for a comfortable passage. The forecast was correct, and although we didn't really get to sail, it was a peaceful journey. 

Sunrise in the Atlantic Ocean Between Charleston and St. Augustine

All in all, our journey back to Florida was relatively uneventful.  We had several instances where we had difficulty finding deep enough water to safely anchor but these were just nuisances and nothing more.  Our entry to St. Augustine inlet was a little more exciting than we would have liked. It took a bit longer to get from Charleston to St. Augustine, and we arrived after dark.  We weren't too worried about that since we have been in and out of that particular inlet multiple times.  When we arrived, though, the channel markings and lights seemed to be sending us in an unusual direction. Without daytime light to see the colors of the navigation buoys and assess the depth of the water visually, it was a little bit scary.  I stood on the bow with a search light scanning the surface of the water, while Steve kept an eye on the charts and drove. Thankfully the gods of navigation were with us, and we found the way to our anchorage without incident.  The experience definitely cemented my commitment to ensuring we enter inlets during daylight, though!

We stayed two nights in St. Augustine to ensure we were rested for the remainder of the journey to Titusville, and of course to visit with our dear friends who live nearby.

Our last bit of excitement happened while I was at the helm after we left St. Augustine.  We were in the Mantanzas River, passing through an area which had significant amount of shoaling.  All of a sudden, I bumped ground - even though I was right in the middle of the area marked on the chart as the channel.  Thankfully, I had seen Steve in action when we'd bumped the bottom before and backed off the throttle immediately and put us into reverse.  Steve was down below sleeping, but came up quickly, "What's happening??" I was more than happy to hand over the wheel but was also pleased that I had responded appropriately. The fact that the contours of the bottom are always shifting due to shoaling keeps things interesting. 

From St. Augustine, we did a day trip to Daytona and proceeded the next day, November 9th, to Titusville Marina, which would be our home for the upcoming holidays!

Sunset at Titusville Marina