Still catching up on the past 2 months posts to sailblogs, so here is the next few weeks of our adventures, December 4th to January 10th, 2017.

As we headed north for the holidays we took our time and did some sightseeing in Charleston, SC. We stopped and did some walking through parts of the city and realized we would have to return after the holidays as there is just too much to see here! So add several trips to Charleston in the near future to our bucket list! :-)

Next we stepped up the pace northward and ended up in south Jersey visiting friends, Atlantic City, Ocean City, Mays landing, Tuckahoe, Marmora, Ocean View, Cape May and a few other places. I also attended Star Masonic Lodge # 65 my home Lodge, for the first time since moving to NY 25 years ago, a wonderful evening!
While there we also experienced something we did not plan on this year - SNOW! South Jersey got hit with their first snow storm!
We helped an old friend with some much needed house projects and then enjoyed the Christmas/New Years Holidays. We spent a week over the holidays with our daughter Trisha and grand daughters Lexi & Kaylee. (see pic) WOW, what a great holiday seeing them for the first time since we left Hop-O-Nose Marina this fall!! We all enjoyed a great holiday season with some Christmas shopping & sightseeing and other holiday fun things together.

While traveling we also were advised that Avalon's transmission would require more than just a seal replacement :-( We advised the guys at ACE Basin Boat works to get us a price on a rebuilt transmission, and also began the search on our end for a rebuilt unit.

Another rather unpleasant surprise - Captain Muttley(a true sailor) and Trisha's black Lab got carried away in all the celebrations and ended up in a major brawl! (Note: no alcohol involved!) We ended up at the local veterinary emergency room at midnight where our Captain received several staples to repair a severe gash in his front leg! After this incident we suspended his shore leave until he recovers! This delayed our return to Avalon by almost 10 days as we had to wait for him to heal and revisit the vet for a follow up to have the staples removed.
Before heading south we received great news from the veterinarian. When remov[ng the staples from Captain Muttley's injured leg, the Vet observed the main nerve in his injured leg would heal ok and had not been damaged as severely as originally suspected. :-)

We then got more bad news-Avalon's transmission was not available in a rebuild, we would have to have our unit rebuilt. We began the search for a Yanmar dealer who was capable & had the parts to do the rebuild, We finally found a company in Perth Amboy, NJ( East Coast Marine Transmission) who not only had all the parts for a complete rebuild, but would do the work in less than a month, and would provide a 100% warranty for 2 years! After a call to the guys at ACE Basin our transmission was removed and shipped to NJ within a few days!
At this time we then got hit with the 2nd major snow storm, a record breaker, 17"! A few days later we were making progress towards getting Avalon back into cruising shape and after a trip to the Vet we were finally on our way south!

On the trip south we got into the tourist mode and enjoyed several stops along the way. Our first stop was a nice visit with my sister Donna & her husband Chris in Annapolis, MD. Next were visits to Wallops Island Missile range, Assateague Island, and Chincoteague Island. We had visited these places some 39 years ago on our honeymoon! We retraced our steps from that time by viewing some of the wild horses, walking on the beach in Assateague and viewing the old lighthouse on Chincoteague. It brought back great memories! Where did 39 years go! We realized how fortunate we have been and that this retirement thing does have some great benefits! The next day we visited the Dismal swamp canal and state park in North Carolina, a place we plan to transit on one of our upcoming cruising trips. When we visited the canal it was frozen over with 5" of Ice a really unusual event according to the lock tender.

After arriving back in Beaufort we spent a few nice days enjoying the nice warm weather and getting Avalon back into shape to live aboard. When we went to our storage locker to pick up everything we had placed in storage before heading north, we got ANOTHER SURPRISE......RATS!!! The management at the heated PUBLIC STORAGE site in Beaufort had not done their due diligence in maintaining an effective rodent control program. Our locker & the building had been over run with RATS! Almost all our gear and possessions was ruined! Now if that wasn't bad enough we found out nothing was covered by insurance. Our homeowners policy had a rodent exclusion and the insurance policy PUBLIC STORAGE COMPANY required us to purchase refused to cover the damage! We are now looking at joining a class action lawsuit against PUBLIC STORAGE COMPANY because of their questionable insurance dealings!

Finally we got some good news, our transmission was completed! As the unit was slightly damaged(shift lever bent) when shipped, we decided to pick up the transmission in New Jersey-which required another road trip north! More about that trip in my next post......