We have finally departed for distant horizons
18 December 2010 | Jacksonville, Fl
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OUR FRIENDS
We had hoped to say we were in the Bahamas, and post some exotic photos by this time, but do to circumstances beyond our control we have only made it as far as Jacksonville, Fl. Our canvas work in NC took twice as long as expected and bad weather forced us to seek safe harbor for 3 days on our trip South. We ended up leaving New Bern on the coldest day of the year and spent the 3 days anchored in temperatures between 20's at night and 40's during the day. So much for tropical paradises.
The upside was we had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at our friend's Simon & Penny's home and we are geting to spend a lot of time with our 2 sons and grandson here in Jacksonville before we head further south. Our oldest boy Jon and his son plan on sailing to Miami with us and we expect to leave this coming Tuesday. The marina where we are keeping our boat while here had an early Christmas dinner for people in the marina. It was a great opportunity to meet some of the other live aboard boaters and other cruisers. There are two couples her from Germany and several boats from the Northeast trying to escape winter.
Don't forget to look at the pictures in the gallery along the right column, next time they will be tropical.
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We left Baltimore Oct 4th on a cold and rainy Monday for Annapolis. 20-25 mph winds made for a wet trip but fortunately it only took 5 hours and we were anchored down for the week. The Annapolis sailboat show is the largest on the East coast and we had offered to help set up and work the Seven Seas Cruising Association booth for several days. The SSCA is an all volunteer cruising organization with over 10,000 members world wide.
Volunteering for several days gained us exhibitor passes which allowed us entry into the show before official opening times, and more importantly allowed us to stay after closing. We soon discovered that the larger exhibitors had their parties on site after closing. No one seemed to care if you were with their group or not. Nothing warms a sailors heart more than free food and booze!
We left Annapolis the following Sunday for a leisurely trip to New Bern, North Carolina with stops every evening at quiet anchorages. Along the way we ran into our friends on Volantis at a few different places. We shared a marina with them in Baltimore for the 5 years we lived there. While we waited at anchor for a severe weather warning
to be lifted our friends on Volantis got hit with a microburst and recorded winds of 93mph. Fortunately they have a heavy boat and her sails were down at the time.
We are having some canvas work done in New Bern and expect to be here another 7-10 days, depending on the weather. New Bern is were we first kept our boat when we bought her. We are in a different marina which puts us far from town but close to an old sailing friend of mine. To keep me out of trouble, on weekends, I have been helping him with a major renovation on a house he owns. When it is done he will have to suffer living on the water with an open view to the West for sunsets over the Nuese River, poor guy.
When we leave here our plan is to head off the coast 20-30 miles and head South to Jacksonville, Fl. Both our boys live there and the oldest and his son will be sailing down to Miami with us. With decent weather we should be able to make it in 3 ½ to 4 days non stop. But this time of year the weather tends to be unsettled and cold fronts move in quickly and frequently, sometimes making it difficult or impossible to make headway safely. We are in no big hurry except to get to warmer climates asap. Our goal is the get to the Bahamas by early December, after that we'll just play it by ear and see where we end up. Ultimately we expect to be in Guatemala by June and spend hurricane season there.