On Thursday at Marsh Harbor was the Junkanew. It was supposed to start at 6:30P. It finally started about 8:00P with the small children. We gave up at 9:00P but there was apparently much to follow with the end about 2:00A.

On Friday we provisioned the best we could and had cocktails with Bonnie Lass. Our plan was to leave early on Sat but a head problem required we disassemble all of the head plumbing and the manifold to clear the blockage. With all of the cleanup we were finally ready to leave by noon.

We are now anchored west of Lynyard Cay and ready to cross over to Royal Island tomorrow, weather permitting.

Bringing this Blog up to date has been low on my priority list and getting worse as the task got longer with each passing day. I actually did a lengthy update in Indian Harbor Beach but lost the Internet connection before I could post it and all was lost.

I have now decided to do just a summary to get up to date and then be more responsible with frequent updates.

We left Louisville on Jan 25th and went to our friends Steve and Theresa's in Cape Coral Florida. Their new house is just like a resort with screened pool and hot tub, power boat and sail boat on the backyard canal dock. We did a club race on Saturday with Steve's Merit 25 and eked out a 4th place...not up to either of our standards.

Monday the 28th we drove back to the boat and found all was well. The only glitch was they were rebuilding the dock and Restless was the only boat left on that dismantled dock. I spend the rest of Monday and Tuesday installing the new Tank Tender System (for monitoring levels in the two fuel and water tanks) and the 3M Water Filter at the sink for drinking water. I also fired up the water maker for the first time with a bucket of water to check that everything worked and we had no leaks. So far so good.

We spend most of Wednesday and Thursday stocking up on provisions, roughly $1200 worth of food and drink. The water line sank lower and lower, but everything is more expensive in the Bahamas if you can find it, so we kept loading it on.

Our two month slip rental ran out on Febr 1 so we fueled up and anchored just off Dragon Point at the lower end of the Indian River. I noticed the boat was handling sluggish, dirty bottom, heavy load??

The next day we motored to Vero Beach and picked up a mooring for a couple days. Sunday was the Superbowl and there was party at the local bar under the bridge. It seemind like the whole anchorage was there! Carol was kept awake with the crunching noise coming through the hull. Fish munching on barnacles I was told.

On Friday the 5th we made it to Lake Worth. On that days run down the ICW (the boat was a knot slower than normal) we were passed by a Hardin 45 named Stardust. With that short conversation we learned that they were also planning a crossing to the Bahamas in the next few days and we could "buddy boat" with them. Herb and Nancy showed us the layout of stores in North Palm Beach and we did the final provisioning before crossing. We had some 25kt S winds in advance of a cold front. Even so I was able to dive on the bottom with my new Hooka. The hard growth on the AutoProp and shaft was about �" thick. It took about 40 minutes with a putty knife to get most of it off. That improved the max RPM by 500 RPM and 1 knot of boat speed.

We made plans with Stardust to leave at 11:00PM on the 7th but Herb called in the afternoon and said they were not leaving since the winds were still 15+ offshore. The next morning we conferred and left at 11:00AM. It was a relatively easy crossing with winds from the south at 10 to 15kts. We made Great Sale in the Northern Abacos by 1:00AM with an average speed of 7.2kts.
The next day we left early to make Green Turtle Cay before the next front approached with forecast winds of 25 to 35 Kts. However when we reach Green Turtle it was low tide. We need the tide to come up at least a couple of feet before we could enter Black Sound Harbor. We anchored off and recon'ed in the dinghy to survey the channel and mark the last two mooring balls. At 11:00PM in the darkest night you have ever seen, we made it through the channel with one bump. Most of the boats in the harbor were awake and shining lights to help keep us from hitting them.

After the blow we moved to Treasure Key on the 14th. Treasure Key has a very protected little harbor and is rated on of the best 10 beaches in the world with its 3.5 mile white power sand beach. Photo attached.

On the 16th we moved to Marsh Harbor for the next frontal passage which was yesterday. We did some re-provisioning here in the large supermarkets and the first laundry for 3 weeks. Friday, after our mail comes, we plan to move near to Little Harbor so we can crossover to Spanish Wells and down to the top of the Exuma's just before the next cold front arrives.

Regular updates to follow, hopefully!

This posting finds Carol and me at our home base in Louisville, Ky. We have been here since early December when we left Restless at a Marina in Indian Harbor Beach, just south of Coco Beach, Fl. We left the boat there to come home over the Holidays and allow me to put in some full time work days.

Our plan is to return to Florida late next week and visit some old Chicago sailing friends in the Ft Meyers area. Then back to the boat by the 28th so can leave at the end of the month when our slip rental runs out.

I have been putting off this posting since it is tough to start in the middle. Our friends Mike and Cathy from Sapphire told us about SailBlogs only after we reached Annapolis so we have been putting it off waiting for clean time to start, so this is it.

We left Chicago on August 3rd after some crazy months of selling our house, downsizing, renting a house, moving, deciding to buying a townhouse in Louisville, moving again, launching and prepping the boat, moving our daughter Ashley to college in Nebraska, and going to a school reunion. A few days later we left Winthrop Harbor, IL and started cruising (actually motoring).

Our route was to be up Lake Michigan, down Lake Huron, through Lake St Clair, and across Lake Erie to Tonawanda, NY and the entrance to the Erie Canal. Then through the canal, down the Hudson to New York, outside New Jersey, up the Delaware Bay and down to Annapolis (by Sept 15). Now while every cruiser knows that you can spend years preparing the boat to go, but the boat will never ready. When we left, everything on the boat worked, even if everything was not installed. In the first month of continuous use things were breaking faster than I could fix them. Failed engine fuel pump (towed in), leaking water heater (replacement lost), intermittent refrigeration, broken life line gate, leaking hatch, fowled speedo, failed windless solenoids (twice), on and on. Finally things settled down and I could work on some of the new project list that was growing steadily!

The Erie Canal is jewel that most cruisers never see. The west end is at Tonawanda, NY near Niagara Falls and Lake Ontario. It is a 3rd generation ditch now 125' feet wide and 12' deep (most of the time) that ends at the Hudson River at Waterford, NY. You pass under countless bridges and through 34 locks including the Waterford Flight which is a series of 5 locks with a lift of 169 feet which is twice the lift of the Panama Canal. For days we could motor for hours and not see another boat. In fact we did not see another sailboat from Tonawanda to Brewerton, a distance of 186 miles. Along the way there were towns every few miles with free dockage, sometimes even free electricity and water. The downside of this was of course the mast had to come down and be stored on deck since the max bridge clearance was 14'. It also created a new challenge of boat handling in turbulence of the locks with an extra 10' of mast over hanging the bow and stern. Fortunately there were no "incidents". Facilities to step the mast are limited. This is the crane used to lower the mast. Best to not inspect it to carefully prior to pulling the mast!

Since we left Chicago a month later than planned, we had to move steadily to keep to the goal of arriving in Annapolis by mid September. We planned to spend some time there doing projects and seeing our friends Greg and Susan prior to the boat show.

Moving every day made it difficult to meet other cruisers and start the socializing. You can be moving the same direction for weeks, only a day or two apart and not see other boats with the same agenda. We saw the ketch Sapphire in Put-In-Bay, Ohio but never had a change to talk. Weeks later we caught up to them at the east end of the Erie Canal and starting traveling loosely together. Other than a couple of weeks for side trips we moved all the way to Florida together. They have been diligent about keep their Blog current since before they left so check them out at
link

We spend a month of fantastic weather anchored in Back Creek at Annapolis through the boat show in October. Shortly after that the cold weather descended and we were constantly trying to stay ahead of it. We moved down the Chesapeake to Norfolk and entered the ICW at mile 1. For every place we stopped, there were dozens others that looked interesting to stop and explore. You could spend a year cruising the Chesapeake alone and only see a portion of it. Down the ICW into Pamlico Sound and a weeks stop at Oriental, the sailing capital of the Carolinas. We left the boat there at the Oriental Marina for a week while we went home on business. It turned out to be perfect time since that is when Hurricane Noel went up the east coast and passed just outside of Cape Hatteras and inland Oriental. All we saw were 20kt winds and high tides, secure in our berth and relaxing at the Tiki Bar.

We left Oriental and rejoined Sapphire at Beaufort, NC (Bofort not to be confused with Bufurt, SC). It is amazing the number of expensive waterfront homes there are through North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida. We stopped for short stays at a number of interesting places, Wrightsville Beach, Charleston, SC, Beaufort SC, Cumberland Island, etc. We definitely need more time to explore these and other places on another trip when we seen less rushed. To make better time and avoid shallow spots in the ICW, we made outside overnight sails from Cape Fear to Charleston and Port Royal, SC to the St Mary's river. Even while planning to bypass the shallow spots we ran aground numerous times in the middle of ICW channel.

A very interesting stop was the cruisers potluck for Thanksgiving Day at St Mary's, GA. There were approximately 110 boats and 300 people with food for many more. Ashley, our daughter visiting from college brought more cool and windy weather which lasted until the day she left to fly home. She had hoped to get a tan to take back to Nebraska but not when the highs were in the 60's. At that point we continued south from Fernandina Beach, past historic St Augustine where we said goodbye to Sapphire for a while and on to Indian Harbor Springs.

That brings us to next week and our return to the boat. I have a few projects to complete such as installing a drinking water filter, a Hart Tank monitoring system for all of our water and fuel tanks, and a vibration isolator for the wind generator. I also need to get the SSB Email working with my new General Ham License and the Water Maker running. We plan to get down the coast to Lake Worth, and await a weather window to cross over to the Bahamas ASAP! We look forward to seeing many of the boats we met on the way from Annapolis and many new friends as well.