December 18 - December 25, Merritt Island, FL

Merry Christmas to all of you.  We've just reached the end of a lovely, memorable day.  Thank you, Roger and Marcy and Marla and Al, for sharing your grandchildren and children with us this holiday season.  We have missed our families but you have welcomed us and fed us and gifted us and made this day a lot of fun.  We are stuffed with Grandma Dorothy's ambrosia, Marcy's quiche and cinnamon coffee cake, Marla's unique sweet potatoes, Cathy's yummy cake and Al's well-carved turkeys, to mention just a little bit of the foods on which we've feasted today.



The Glover's loaner truck.  We are so grateful to have this set of wheels while we're here!

 It has been a busy week.  Both of us have been ill with a horrible cold (yes,Wayne did share his wet, headachy, cough and sore throat "gift" with me - and I could not find a single store to which I could return it).  We made it to Orlando last week and enjoyed a long-time tradition of cookie decorating with Wayne's youngest brother, Harlan, and his wife, Patty, and also got to see our nephews, Kyle and Mark.  We attended a fun dinner party with old friends, John and Peggy.  Peggy and I taught together in 1976-77.  Guests at the party just happened to include a former math teacher of Patrick's and her husband who was a customer of Thrailkill Bike and Mower, our Orlando business from 1976-1997.  Small world.  We had planned to spend the day on Tuesday with daughter-in-law, Maria, and grandgirls Jackie and Kate but Colleen was sick and very contagious by then so we just got to give them a quick hello and good-bye.  So difficult to do : (

Boat news - Bow thrusters are repaired and working well; aft cabin sump pump has been replaced; hopefully we've diagnosed and cured the problem of water getting into the front berth by redirecting the drain scupper on the anchor locker in the bow.  So....when we're ready to move on in about ten days we should be in perfect working order.

Chocolate chip cookies made; sugar cookie dough coming up next



A soup fest at Roger and Marcy's just before the Cocoa Beach Boat Parade




Cookie ladies, Patty and Colleen




The view from our "back door" on a beautiful winter day in Florida



December 12th-17th Harbortown Marina, Merritt Island, FL

We've been here nearly two weeks and really feel at home.  We've "decorated" for Christmas, planned for traditional Christmas cookie making with my sister-in-law, Patty, purchased and made a nice assortment of gifts and put Christmas lights on the boat rails.  That last item was so much easier to do than it would have been on our house.

The weather has not been Florida's best.  We've had some record breaking low temperatures and it wasn't until today that we had an entire day of typical Florida winter warmth.  We are both hoping that it keeps up for a while.  Wayne has managed to pick up a cold which I think he plans to give me for a Christmas gift.  I might have to return that one.

A few boat notes - we decided to get the broken bow thruster repaired while we were in port.  The forward berth is dismantled for the repairman to get to the bow thruster and we thought it would be returned by today but it turns out we won't get it back until midweek next week.  Oh, well, we're not going anywhere yet.  Don't plan to come and spend the night with us yet unless you're willing to sleep on the dinette, which does make up into a bed.

We also thought we had a heater problem in the aft cabin.  We called a repairman to check that and when he came the heater worked perfectly.  Maybe it was temporarily traumatized by the super cold weather.

Another issue was the sump pump for the aft shower.  Mr. Mechanical, the captain, got up from his sick bed to diagnose that and thinks he's got it solved.  Yippee!  I don't want to give up daily showers just yet.

We're looking forward to seeing two of the grandgirls next week as our daughter-in-law, Maria, will be visiting her dad in Orlando with Jackie and Kate.  We'll also be catching up with Wayne's youngest brother, Harlan, and his wife, Patty, and seeing our friends Peggy and John and Jim and Shaula while we're in the Orlando area.



So we show up in Florida just in time for a record breaking cold snap.  We LIVED in Orlando in '89.  We do not need to relive that particular cold weather.




This is very cool.  It's a live salad bowl from Rockledge Gardens, a wonderful plant nursery a little bit south.  You pick the assorted lettuce leaves to make your very fresh salad and then it grows back.




Marla gave us this goofy dancing tree to start up our Christmas spirit.  He is a big hit around here.




What's Christmas without poinsettas?




The tree has a nautical theme, lighthouse ornaments and a shell garland.




Here it is!



Monday, December 6 - Saturday, December 11 Harbortown Marina, Merritt Island, FL

We've been settled here in the marina for six days and are really enjoying ourselves.  We've had a visit from friends Pam and Richard from the Central Florida Cruise Club  we belonged to in Orlando and a chance to see Marcy's brother, Bim, and his wife and sister-in-law as well as many opportunities to hang out with Marla & Al and Roger & Marcy.  We celebrated a large-numbered birthday with Marla on Thursday and went to a Christmas party at her sister, Kathy's, house tonight.  This morning we called Roger and Marcy on the spur of the moment and said, "Let's go to breakfast" and they did!  We miss our friends in North Carolina but it is such a  pleasure to get together with these treasured  friends since childhood and to pretty much be living in the same neighborhood as they are.

Christmas is coming, as I'm sure you all know.  Before we left NC I did some Christmas baking and shipped presents to our three boys and their families.  Beyond that, we really hadn't considered what we would do about a tree (on a boat????), lights, gifts for each other (I guess that would be diesel fuel) or Christmas dinner.  I did take care of Christmas cards, composing our letter and addressing envelopes during the long hours we putted along at eight miles an hour through South Carolina and Georgia.  Since arriving here we've realized that we don't want to bypass Christmas so today we bought a TREE.......and ornaments.......and a tree skirt.......and lights!!!  Good grief!  How crazy is that?  We'll send a picture once we get it all decorated around here.

Thanks to those of you who have kept us updated on the wintery weather in Charlotte.  FYI - Wayne was in shorts and tee shirt and washing the boat on Friday afternoon.  We have had some cold weather here but our central heating system on the boat keeps us quite comfortable.

As for the boat, we are trying to find out how we were taking on water that was wetting our front berth as we were traveling.  We also want to solve the problem of a nonfunctioning bow thruster on the right side of the boat.

Wayne & Colleen relaxing at "home."



There are lots of things you are not allowed to do at Port Canaveral
Here's one.




And another




Yet another



And one more.



One of the Port Canaveral sights that we didn't expect to see.  He has GOT to be feeling a draft.



Marineland to Cocoa - Nov 5th

 

ICW at Palm Coast


We arose at 6AM to check the tide as our bow was beached to the shore and the boat was in a bow up / stern down position the same as I noted at my 3AM check.  High tide was to be at 6AM but at 6:45 the water was still flooding in from Matanzas inlet, just 2 miles north of us.  The result was to be a difficult undocking.  We would be pushed by the swift current into the dock or into John's boat as we departed.  A light drizzle had started and we had forgotten to zip closed the front vinyl curtains when we went to bed.  By the way, yesterday Dottie phoned from Charlotte and said that it as snowing there while we were walking to Publix with Pidge and John with no jackets and enjoying the warm FL sunshine.  So the little bit of wet on the flybridge was no problem to accept.  By 7:15 we made the decision to pull out.    As we backed off our bow was still beached on the bank.  We had no difficulty in pulling away, though, and John assisted by holding our bow off his dock.  We waved goodbye and headed south, not knowing how far we would get.   Our original destination from St. Augustine had been Cocoa and it was 95 miles away.  So we guessed our next stop to anchor for the night would be Titusville at the farthest. For those who don't know, Cocoa is just south of Cape Canaveral and Cape Kennedy NASA facilities and Titusville is just north of Cocoa.





Tugboat converted into a trawler parked at a home

We first passed Palm Coast, the monster development by ITT that has been ongoing for 25 years or so.  Right where the new Palm Coast Marina was recently dug out of the river muck, a "manatee zone" was marked with "Idle Speed - No Wake" from the start of the marina to the end of the marina.  It is obvious that the manatees know that they are to set up home in front of any new big dollar development of marinas and high priced homes and the state then installs the manatee protection signs.  We witnessed this phenomenon time and again as we headed south toward central Florida.  

Easy Livin' on the ICW - Daytona area

After Palm Coast we passed through the Daytona inlet area and saw many huge, beautiful homes as well as remote grasslands and tidal plains.  The flood plains


17 foot clearance and we are 17 ft 5 in tall.  No probleml

  that we have traveled these past weeks are certainly the fish nurseries for the Atlantic fishes.  With all the environmental restrictions of today, it is amazing at how much development has occurred on the waterway since my last passing 15 and more years ago.

1000 MILES !!!


1000 mile reward!

 Somewhere around the ICW mile 840 Wayne surpassed the 1000 mile mark aboard Cool Change.  This is for both  the trip from FL to SC and now the trip back south.  His reward , a kiss from the co-captain.

Lighthouse at Ponce DeLeon Inlet at Daytona





The many bridges at Daytona




Hundreds of pelicans roosting.  What a stink!!

  After Daytona the ICW became more remote as we moved south.  We encountered no boat traffic the entire day except for a short span in the Daytona inlet area.  We were pretty much on our own as we traveled the 15 miles of the Mosquito Lagoon just north of NASA.  We could see the VAB building and the shuttle launch pad from the ICW 15 miles away.  

Looking out to Mosquito Lagoon, the VAB is in the distance 15 miles

Seeing the VAB made us feel that we had finally reached central Florida .  We stepped up our speed a bit to assure that we reached Titusville for anchorage in the deep water, 9 feet, just south of that  town.  We reached Haulover Canal about 3:30 and were closing in on Titusville so we chose to attempt to go on 20 miles further and anchor at Cocoa Village.  Haulover Canal was named thus because it was originally a narrow spit of land separating the Mosquito Lagoon from the Indian River.   People would haul their boats over land from one side to the other.   The canal was dug in mid-century as the ICW was dredged to allow for river traffic, especially the barges that served petroleum to Florida's growing power plant infrastructure.




Bridge on the Haulover Canal




Exiting Haulover Canal -Visibility soon got much worse!



Exiting Haulover Canal began a somewhat harrowing navigational experience that demanded careful coordination between the nagivator (note the play on spelling) and the pilot.  We take turns being the nagivator.  The 3:30 PM sun was directly in our faces and aligned in the most negative of possible positions to our course from the canal to Titusville.  I could not see the markers at all!!  If I looked at the water, I was blinded to the plot on our GPS plotter when I turned to look at it.  So our solution was for me to shade my eyes and to look at the GPS plotter to keep us on the right course and for Colleen to stare into the sun with the binoculars to pick out the channel markers that confirmed that the electronic course and our actual course were the same.  This was absolutely necessary as we had high winds to our starboard side that were pushing us across the channel and off course.  Also a major problem was that the plotter many times shows us more that 50 to 100 feet from where we actually are and the waterway is only 100 feet wide before you are in 2 foot water.  So while the plotter shows us in the dredged channel, we could actually be ready to run aground.  A major problem was that Colleen could not pick out the markers from the many signs warning of the manatee area outside the channel.  These signs were set back in the shallows maybe 100 feet from the channel and looked like channel markers with the bright sun on the water ahead of us.  If Colleen mistook one of these for a channel marker we would be aground in no time.  We kept comparing our separate observations.  Well, we made it without running aground but it was a harrowing 30 minutes and she still loves me I am told.



Titusville swing bridge - the last that we needed to have open

 Once we got to Titusville we realized the we could make Cocoa Village before dark if we kept the speed at 11mph and had no delays.  We did anchor at Cocoa Village for Sunday night about 30 minutes after sunset.  We had just enough daylight to position ourselves between the many boats already there at anchor.  We were one of the furthest anchorages and very close to the channel.  We were exposed to the wave action generated by high winds all night.  The boat swung back and forth in very wide arcs all night on the 60 feet of anchor chain that we had put out and the waves bashed us a bit.  We slept through it very well as we are now accustomed to the sounds of water just inches from our heads at night.  During our travels this day we discussed staying in the Cocoa area for the month of December.  We made calls to several marinas in the area and chose Harbortown Marina which is very close to Cape Canaveral.  Marla, Colleen's friend from childhood, and Roger, my friend from childhood, and their spouses, Al and Marcy, are all excited that we will stay here through Christmas.  We plan to have great times in December with the four of them as well as our family that still lives in Orlando.  Al and Marla have loaned a pickup truck to us for our use while here.  How generous is that?  Now we can get groceries without backpacking ashore or hiring a cab.  It was near freezing here last night --- Florida??   But it is far better than the low temps in Charlotte right now.  We will see 75 degrees on Saturday though and it will be welcomed.
Wayne

Our address until January 10th should you want to drop by:
Harbortown Marina
Slip D29 - Cool Change
2700 Harbortown Drive
Merritt Island, FL 32952

Dcember 1, 2010 - December 4, 2010 St. Augustine, FL to just north of Daytona Beach and south of Marineland

We had a great time on our visit to St. Augustine.  We walked all over the city and enjoyed returning to some of our favorite places there - the living history tour of some old houses and the Spanish bakery, to name a few.  On Thursday the 2^nd, our friend Nick joined us for the day and we had lunch together and wandered around the streets for the afternoon.  Thanks, Nick.  We both enjoyed seeing you so much! 

The weather was pretty brisk, with some temps that were unusually low in this state (low forties at night, fifies and sixties during the days).  We were taking the water taxi provided by the marina in to the dock so that made our trip in from the buoy field much easier than it would have been had we been using our dinghy but we still had to deal with lots of chilly wind.  It turned out to be a good thing we did not try to use our dinghy as the engine that has run beautifully for the many years we've owned it, decided not to carburate properly and was flooding.  Wayne took the carburator apart and cleaned it as best he could with acetone.  It ran great for ten minutes.

On Saturday morning we untied ourselves from the buoy and made a short fourteen mile trip just past Marineland to dock for the rest of the day and for Saturday night at the home of Pidge and John, the sister and brother-in-law of our good friend, Dottie.  Along the way we really began to feel that we had arrived in the Florida of some of our best memories on the water.  We saw dolphins and palm trees and were so close to the ocean that we could see the dunes.  The air was cool but the sky was that lovely light blue that is so much a part of Florida.

Pidge had been forewarned that we would enjoy a trip to Publix and one of the first things she said after we got the boat tied up was, "We can walk to Publix if you want."  You betcha.  Wayne and I walked to Publix with Pidge and John after lunch and, of course, we picked up a key lime pie.  I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before but the two of us are suckers for Publix' key lime pies and carrot cakes.  Wayne was able to get proper carburator cleaner from John's hardware store, redid the job and we'll test the dinghy engine at our next stop.  We enjoyed supper with Pidge and John and some friends of theirs and are looking forward to leaving in the morning and making our way down to around Titusville.  We’ll need to change the bedsheets and wash clothes soon.  No hurry, though.

Our family has always enjoyed getting our picture taken in front of this lovely little statue of Queen Isabella.  Unfortunately, it's fenced off now.

Cool Change was pretty much the last boat in this field of boats in St. Augustine's harbor.

Nick and us

Look close.  That ripple in the water is a camera shy dolphin.

Cool Change at a comfortable anchorage for the night at Pidge and John's.

                     

November 28 - November 30 Fernandina Beach to St Augustine

On Monday the 29th the mechanic at the marina pulled Cool Change out of the water to take a look at the damage to our props.  Just watching the giant sling lift our 30,000 pound boat up overhead was a sight to see.  Bad news - we did have a damaged prop.  Good news - it can be fixed and we just happened to have two spares already on the boat, left by the previous owner.  So, within about two hours we were back in the water with the spare props in place and the damaged props sent out for repair.

We decided to wait to leave Amelia Island until Tuesday so we could catch a high tide and not worry about the shallow entryway to the marina and warnings of problem areas just to the south on the ICW.  While the boat was up in the air we inspected the hull and running gear for damage and barnacles and found no damage from the groundings on Saturday.  Our bottom paint has done a great job of protecting us from marine growth.  We did, however, find a few places where the peson who applied the bottom paint missed smalll areas around some through hull fitings.  We scraped away the few barnacles at those places and from the depth transducers and stainless drive shafts. We found the trim tabs to be completely coated with barnacles because there was no bottom coating on them.  The barnacles were easily removed.  We also found that there were live oysters growing on the trim tabs and the actuator cylinders.   The oysters were quite difficult to scrape off cleanly but Wayne was more determined than the oysters.

To our pleasant surprise, our close friends, Roger and Marcy diverted  from a business trip to visit with us just as the boat was coming out of the water.  Roger has offered to pick up the damaged props after repair and transport them to Cocoa to meet up with us.  Thanks, Rog.

We motored on to one of our favorite cities, St. Augustine, on Tuesday.  For $20 the city offers buoys that boats can tie up to near the city docks and we had arranged to have a space on one of these.  The hard part was Colleen trying to snag the buoy with a boat hook.  Wayne says he did not hear all the cussing and fussing I was doing as I tried to get hold of the buoy loop in bouncy seas and attach it to the cleat on the boat.  I told him he might need to trade me in for an agile 35-year-old before this trip is over.

We plan to stay here for three or four nights, motoring in to shore in our dinghy or using the water taxi that runs through the bouy field four times a day.

                                        "Captain" Colleen takes the helm

                                   One of St. Augustine's dock's regular residents

Part of the famous Bridge of the Lions, as seen from a bouncing boat

The real Captain

 - a good bit more relaxed than Colleen when it comes to driving the boat

Saturda,y Nov 27th and Sunday, Nov. 28th - On to St. Marys, Ga

On Saturday Nov. 27th we pulled the anchor at 8:10 AM at our anchor site in a creek just off the ICW near mile marker MM651. That means that the location was 651 miles from Norfolk, Va., the start point of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.  That also means that we had broken the 300 mile mark and had traveled 307 miles by water from our home port of Little River, SC. at MM345.  This anchorage was in the middle of nowhere yet near St. Simons Island.  As we travelled south we encountered almost no boats heading north and very few heading south, most of which were sailboats under power.  It was a beautiful but chilly day and we left the front curtains zipped closed all day except for when we needed a perfectly clear view with the binoculars to find and read the numbers on some channel marker.  Our destination was St. Marys, GA., the home of new friends Jane and Mark who offered a dock to us for that night.  Roger, Wayne and Michael stayed with them at their river home on the initial trip north from Florida to SC. after we bought Cool Change. 

Along the way we saw porpoises and we even caught sight of some wild horses on Cumberland Island.  In our travel we motored to the ocean inlet of St. Simons Sound and at  Jekyll Sound inlet we actually went into the Atlantic and rounded the first offshore sea buoy before turning sharply back west into the sound.  The ICW does this at 6 or 7 inlets to avoid the silting across the breadth of these sounds.  We seem to do a lot of the waterway every direction but south!

We stopped at Golden Isles Marina on St Simons Sound, MM675, to get fuel, pump out our holding tanks, and to fill our water tank back to the 70 gallon level.  This fill up gave us our first truly accurate information on fuel usage (see below).  There was a restaurant at the marina and we ate lunch and got our land legs back for a while.  We continued to wind our way down the ICW and through Jekyll Sound on our way to St. Marys.

We never made it to Jane and Mark's home in St. Marys.  We ran aground on a sand bar about a mile short of their place with a swift outgoing tide threatening to leave us stranded and darkness falling.  Not wanting to be laying on our side when the tide came back in six hours later, we powered off the bar and subsequently developed a vibration in the drive system (denoting propeller damage).  Once free we decided not to risk another grounding and headed back on Crooked River toward the ICW to anchor for the night where the river is 20 feet deep.  We again ran aground in water that we had just passed through on our way to the first grounding.  It was supposed to be 15 feet plus deep according to our chart.  We backed off this second bar, moved over 50 feet in the channel and proceeded to deep water and anchored for the night knowing that we probably did damage to our props. : (  Sunday morning dawned a cold 40 degrees and gusty.  We pulled anchor about 7:30 and proceeded out of Crooked River without incident.  We passed the submarine base at Kings Bay and travelled into Cumberland Sound right up to Fort Clinch, the north most part of Florida.  The day was turning to a mild day from the chilly start.  We called ahead to Amelia Island Yacht Basin, MM720, to arrange repairs on Monday and that is where we are right now.  Tomorrow the service center will lift our boat out of the water and repair whatever was damaged.  Hopefully only the props are damaged as we have a spare set aboard.  In the meantime we have visited Fernandina's old town shops and washed our laundry and ourselves thoroughly (boat showers do leave something to be desired) and walked extensively on land for the first time in days.  Monday we've planned an excursion to our all time favorite grocery store - Publix.  Yippee!!!

Statistics:
At MM675 we took on 172 gallons of fuel at Golden Isles Marina
Total Miles from Little River, SC = 330 miles
MPG = 1.99 including generator run time
Engine hours at start:  1076 port   1079 starboard
Engine hours st MM675:  1116 port    1119 starboard
Total trip run time:  40 hours
GPH = 4.3
Boat weight:  30,000 lbs. +
Length: 42 feet overall
Width:  13 ft - 4 in
Clearance
Height:  17 ft - 5 in
Power: 2 each 330 Cummins turbo diesels
Generator:  9KW Kohler diesel

Where is that buoy?  I don't want to go out any further into the ocean!  This is supposed to be a river.

Birds feeding on whatever comes up behind our boat whenever we are moving.  They fly along with us constantly.

The brown speck is a wild horse on Cumberland Island

Fort Clinch 

The submarine degaussing (static charge) facility at Kings Bay.

Friday, November 26 South of Savannah, GA to twenty-five miles north of Jekyll Island, GA

Last night's anchorage turned out to be a busy spot.  We had lots of local fishermen buzzing our boat in the evening and after dark the wind and waves picked up to slap the sides of the boat and swing us all over the little bay we were in.  Neither of us got much sleep but we have the comforting knowledge now that the plow anchor held through three tide changes and high wind and waves so we can sleep easy in such conditions in the future.  We dropped anchor pretty early today after deciding not to try to outrun some storms off to the west.  The rains came soon after we anchored but we are tucked in snug and warm and are just enjoying the occasional sound of raindrops on the cabin roof as we sit in calm waters.

Watching the rains developing on the horizon was quite a sight.  We are on very low marshland as we travel now and can see for miles all around.  Often there is no sign of civilization anywhere near us.

We talked to our Portland grandgirls on Skype last night.  We are so glad that technology is at the level to allow us to stay connected to our friends and family members while we're on this journey.  Thank you for staying in touch.  We've enjoyed hearing from several of you today.

                                Looking behind us, trying to outrun the storm

                    Several homes were on this spit of land, in the middle of nowhere

                      Ready to drop the anchor just before the storm reaches us

November 25, 2010 Beaufort, SC to just south of Savannah, GA

We pulled up the anchor in Beaufort and motored past Parris Island, the Marine training base and Hilton Head Island until early afternoon to an anchorage just a little south of Savannah.  Finally we're out of South Carolina - six days on the water and 240 miles. 

Fixing Thanksgiving dinner was a little bit of a challenge - very small oven and can't turn the oven and the stovetop on at the same time because it uses too much power but we ended up with a great feast.  No turkey because of the small oven but we baked a chicken together with stuffing.  Oops!  Forgot to pick up celery yesterday and can't make a quick grocery run.  We peeled and chopped up potatoes and cooked them in the microwave; then mashed them with LOTS of butter and salt and pepper and half and half.  Fresh green beans steamed in the microwave, chilled cranberry sauce, the apple pie we cooked yesterday and a little wine.  It was all delicious and we were pretty proud of ourselves.  All this in the middle of a river on a boat.

Our cruise today was beautiful.  We spotted an eagle perched in a dead tree and saw lots of sea birds and some porpoises along the way.

                           A little summer cottage on Hilton Head Island

                         Come on over to my house for mashed potatoes!

November 23 & 24, Beaufort, SC

We traveled from Charleston to Beaufort on Tuesday in chilly weather and dropped the anchor just outside the city docks and decided to stay for two nights.  We needed a trip to the grocery store on Wednesday to get our Thanksgiving fixins'.  It's a little more complicated to make a grocery run when you live on a boat.  This is the procedure - prepare the dinghy to launch; load up the shopping bags (don't forget the insulated shopping bag for the ice cream!); hop in the dinghy and motor to shore; use the car GPS to locate a grocery store; walk to the store (the Piggly Wiggly was about a mile away); get the groceries and walk back to the dinghy.  You can't hang around too long or the ice cream will melt and you can't buy more than you can carry in a backpack.  It all worked well, though.

We had a relaxing time quilting, watching other boats and the birds on the water, and enjoying the almost full moon.  We had to go ahead and bake the Thanksgiving pie and try it out because there was no room for it in the freezer.  It was very tasty.

Back to the boat with Thanksgiving groceries

                               Beaufort's waterfront featuring a long walk lined with porch swings