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It’s hard to believe that the last time I was at “home” was the day after Christmas.  In some ways, it seems like yesterday and in others…  Well, let’s just say that it’s been a LONG time and a LOT has happened. 

While we were away my mother went to the hospital and then into a nursing home (a really, really nice one, I might add) from assisted living.  I am very much looking forward to seeing her in a few days.  She’s doing well too. Thanks for asking.

We surveyed (twice) and purchased (once) a new boat and moved our “old” one to her, I hope temporary, home in New Bern NC.    Brenda and I transited much of the ICW together twice and three times for me as well as cruised the waters of the FL Keys and ventured into the Gulf of Mexico for the first time.

We learned, first hand, that sometimes you can very clearly see no-see-ums and that you can ALWAYS feel them.  That wasn’t much of a revelation as we’d been boating for, well, let’s just say that it’s been a long time.  And, I won’t even talk about mosquitoes but I will say that the bigger the boat, the more mosquitoes that will find their way down below and go buzz in the night.  Note to self: Put in the screens.

We saw many sea turtles, caught fish in the ocean and saw an amazing number of Portuguese Man of War jelly fish.

We experienced, and not in a a good way, the fury of a tornado, up close and personal and enjoyed countless sunsets over the water, and posted photos of nearly all of them, my friend Rodney would say.

Our younger son Christopher decided to move to San Francisco and did it within a week, I think.   He’s very happy there, much to his Mother’s distress.  Our son Rob continues to work on all of the details of his upcoming wedding to is betrothed Kandice and works every remaining free moment on their new home.

We  cleaned out 8 years of stuff from “old Pandora” and packed into a rental car, several times.   WE drove thousands of miles in those rental cars and I don’t even know how many hotels we searched for online for at the last minute as we moved between home, boat, other boats, friends and family homes…  Well, we moved around a lot and that’s not even including countless miles on the water under sail and power, mostly power.

We found and (thankfully) removed ourselves from what seemed like every sandbar and shoal on the ICW, sometimes twice.  And, I never even used my towing insurance.  “Don’t jinx it Bob”. Ok, I’ll instruct the jury to strike that from the record.

And let’s just say that our wallets have been smoking for months now from the friction of dollars streaming out and into someone else’s pockets.

OK, OK, I won’t bore you with all the details but such is the featureless grey life of the retired.

Oh yeah, and we didn’t see snow the entire time.  So there.

As I finish up this post we are transiting the channel to pass the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel and into the Atlantic for our run to Montauk point and into Long Island Sound and home.   Not the most exciting pix yet, I admit.  I guess you had to be there. After days of waiting for the winds to turn in our favor, it looks like we will be able to get home the nearly 400 miles remaining in our trip with a minimum of fuss and might even have a good sail for perhaps half of the trip.   Overnight the wind fell away and we are leaving for our run on calm seas. 

As we pass from the protection of the CBB&T I expect that we will be seeing some ocean swells but I don’t think that they will amount to much and will certainly be much less than what we were expecting to see as recently as yesterday morning when I checked the weather.

Before I break, a few photos from our run up through Newport News.  It’s plenty clear that your tax dollars are HARD AT WORK here.  Now that’s a smoking wallet.

How about an aircraft carrier?  And I thought that Pandora was beamy.   It’s hard to believe that this girl can cruise at nearly 50mph.Of course, you need tugs to get everyone in and out of port.  And don’t forget, my crew member Michael is a retired tug captain.  To me, tugs have always seemed to be a nearly perfect example of “form follows function” and are particularly easy on the eye. And in the “you can’t see me” category, a stealth battle ship.  Hard to imagine something this big being hard to see.   Shows up fine here.And all is not not grey in Newport News.  Here’s Highlander, the Fedship yacht once owned by publisher Malcomb Forbes.  Now she’s a looker.  Oh yeah.  Almost forgot.  The speedo is working again.  Thanks Pandora, one less item on the “fixit list”.  Who knew…

I guess that’s all for now.  See you in a few days, really…

It’s Thursday morning and we are motoring through one of my favorite spots on the ICW, the Great Dismal Swamp Canal that straddles both NC and VA. 

The scenery here is amazing and although I could do without the occasional bump (more like a good wack actually) on submerged logs as we motor along,.  For me, it is perhaps the most beautiful part of any trip on the ICW.

Here is what greeted us as we headed out early this morning from Elizabeth City.  What a great way to start the day.The river winds through bald Cypress stands for miles. We were visited by this beautiful dragon fly.Along the way we made time to stop, although briefly, at the welcome center.  What nice ladies behind the desk.  Southern hospitality and with a smile.  Pandora looked smart at the welcome center dock. There was quite a bit of wildlife along the way.  Turtles on every warm surface.  Notice the rope on this log, it was pulled out of the canal.  That’s the sort of thing that I bumped along the way.  Better out of the water.How about a water snake?   Want to go swimming?  Hmm… I’ll think about that for a bit.This is my first “springtime” visit to the Dismal and there were flowers everywhere and the sweet smell of honeysuckle wafted by on the breeze.

You see all matter of craft on the ICW.  How about this “live aboard”, Clam?  It’s bound for the Bahamas.  Need living quarters?  No need to do a major refit.  I’ll just bring along my camper.  Much simpler.  I shudder at the thought of this boat going across the Gulf Stream. 

Going through the locks is always a treat.  At first you are down at the bottom of the lock.And then it fills up and you are on your way.  Locktender Robert is wonderful.  I think that he looks a little like Elton John.   He wondered why Brenda wasn’t aboard.  Perhaps he was hoping or some sort of juicy story.  Sorry to disappoint Robert.  She just hates long deliveries.  Lucky for Michael and Jim.  Well, at least that’s what I hope they think.

Doesn’t Pandora look marvelous in the lock?  What a wonderful afternoon. I will never tire of this beautiful stretch of water. 

Tonight we leave Hampton Roads and will head out into the Atlantic to make our run to Montauk Point and home to CT.  I am very excited about being at our “land home” again after so many months away as it’s been since just after Christmas when we packed up to head south.

The weather forecast says that we will be heading out into some fairly rough water with perhaps 6’ seas at first, left over from the strong north winds of the last few days, but that it will improve fairly quickly.  I’ll vote for “quickly”.  We do expect to be able to sail after the first half day or so and be able to sail for half of the run. I hope that the front that’s coming through late Sunday with unfavorable NE winds, won’t arrive until we reach our destination.

I won’t be able to post until we are back in Cell Range on Sunday but, as always, I’ll be noting our location every 4 hours on “where’s Pandora”.

For the moment I’ll enjoy our run through the Dismal.  Yes indeed, it’s clear that you can be both dismal and beautiful, bumps and all.

FLASH ALERT:  I just spoke with Chris Parker, the weather router, and he advised us to stay local until Friday morning and leave at dawn.  This evening the seas and wind are still up and it would be miserable to head out now.  Still expecting to be in on Sunday, and we’d better be, as unfavorable winds from the NE will kick up late Sunday afternoon.   Such are the trials of passage making.

It’s Wednesday afternoon and we are motoring SLOWLY up the ICW toward Hampton VA.   The scenery here is pretty primeval and there isn’t a home for miles.   However, millions of mosquitoes love it here, a factor that I neglected to prepare for when we went to sleep last night.  The wind died down before dawn and we woke up to dozens , perhaps hundreds, making a feast out of us.  Not a great way to begin the day.  Did I mention that it was 04:00 when we realized that we were not alone?  I was killing the stragglers for hours.  I won’t make the same mistake twice.   Well, not tonight at least. Along the way we are passed by periodically by faster boats in the flotilla of “snow birds” heading north.With about two days between us and Hampton, we should be there in time to jump out when the wind shifts back to a more southerly direction, predicted to be as early as Thursday night.  Once the wind shifts we should be able to sail to CT with a good following wind.  Fingers crossed that it works out.  However, if we don’t have enough wind, we will just fire up the “iron wind” and motor the whole way.    We carry plenty of fuel and I will be sure to fill up prior to heading out.

As we cover the miles, a number of fairly minor things have been causing problems.  I expected this as it’s nearly impossible to pick up on all the details in a boat survey, no matter how carefully we went over everything.   For example, the forward macerator pump that empties the holding tank needs to be primed sometimes before it will empty the tank if it isn’t used regularly.  Unfortunately, I didn’t know this so when I tried to use it, I let it run too long and burned out the impeller and pump.  Good news, there was a spare on board.  All better now.

Also, the speedo unit that measures the boat’s speed through the water decided to crap out today.  I noticed that it seemed to be giving some odd readings while we were offshore cor the last few days so I calibrated it to take out the error in the reading, which was clearly not correct.  It seemed to work yesterday but today the unit didn’t work at all and showed a blank screen when I turned everything 0n for the day.

I guess that goes with the territory as this is a complex boat and besides, there are more than a dozen instruments and repeaters on the boat so I suppose that it’s only natural that something will crap out from time to time.  But wait, there’s more.

The owner mentioned that the engine hour readout sometimes doesn’t work  when you first turn on the engine and yet was still counting hours of run time for the motor.  The day of the survey it was working fine.   Alas, it must have been on it’s best behavior as it hasn’t turned on for the last two days.  I guess I should have made a bigger deal about it.  Oh well, hope it doesn’t cost too much to replace.

Well, that covers it for now and I suppose some little “hitches” are to be expected.   I will try not to think about all of those details for now.  The good news is that a lot more is working than isn’t.

On a more positive note, today I noticed that there were some photos on my camera that I had taken over the last week and had forgotten to download.   Just for fun, a few of the more interesting ones.

There is a lot of military air traffic as we worked our way up the waterway with copters and jets nearly constantly in view.  This little helicopter came very close to us.  Jim thought that it was military.  I sure hope that he was wearing his seat-belt. I mentioned in my last post that we caught a tuna.  Here’s a photo of it as it came up to be landed.  Looks pretty big?  Not really but a nice “action” shot, never the less.And, I can’t believe that I forgot about our turtle encounter.  We passed quite a few while we were offshore.  This one had a seabird taking a rest on it’s back.After a bit, he poked his head up to see who was coming by as if to say, “hey you bud, I was sleeping”   I’d guess that this turtle was nearly 4’ across.I sure hope that the wind will turn as planned so I won’t have to worry about replacing crew that runs out of “away time”.  Besides, Brenda tells me that the lawn needs to be cut.  It had better not grow much more before I get home next week.

For now, I’ll have to think “grass stunting” thoughts .  Given that our run north seems to be progressing about as fast as “watching grass grow”, I shouldn’t have any trouble with that line of thinking.

So, for now, inching toward Hampton and home.

It’s Tuesday afternoon and we are motor-sailing past Oriental NC on our way north to Norfolk VA where we plan on jumping outside again for the final run to the CT River and home. 

We decided to continue on the inside instead of waiting in Beaufort as it will allow us to avoid running around Cape Hatteras and also puts us further north instead of sitting for half a week on the HOPE that the wind will shift to a favorable direction as forecast.  And, as the wind will be from the north for the next few days, before turning back to the SW , it’s quite possible that we’d hit nasty conditions off of Cape Hatteras, favorable winds or not, and all that after waiting for a half week to find out if we’d made a good decision or not.

So, we just decided to keep moving and get ourselves another 100 miles north while we can and hope that the wind shifts as planned.  One way or the other, we want to keep moving and perhaps be back in CT a day or more sooner than might have been the case if we waited for the wind to shift in Beaufort.   I guess I have made my “wordy” point on that by now.  Hope so.

I guess we won’t know if it’s the right decision for a few more days so we’ll see.

Anyway, when we left on Sunday morning from St Augustine on our 400 mile “shake down cruise” to Beaufort, we did so on a boat that I had never even had the sails up on, even once.   I worked out fine but I was nervous, I’ll admit.

We were greeted by a nice sunrise in St Augustine which seemed like a good omen.  I decided to ignore the sailor’s adage of “red sky in the morning, sailors take warning”.   Also, to head out over 100 miles from land, right off of the bat, on a boat that I had never sailed, not even once…  The green line is our actual course, which followed the Gulf Stream, for maximum favorable current.   The black line is the point to point run.  I’ll admit that it made me a bit nervous to head that farm from land with a boat I did not know.  What does that say about my crew?  Hmm…  I did have more than a week living aboard.  Not convinced we were ready?  Me neither. But, it all worked out.  We practiced putting a reef in the main before we needed to if that’s any consolation.   

Good thing we practiced as we had PLENTY of wind in the Gulf Stream and put in and shook out both reef one and two multiple times.   I probably could have had up more sail but I was in the mood to be conservative.  Besides, we made the run half a day faster than I expected, cautious or not.  Fast boat. 

In consultation with Chris Parker, the weather router, we opted to head further offshore and catch the Gulf Stream even though it added perhaps 20 to 30 miles to our trip as we felt that getting the 2-4 knot lift from the current in the stream would ultimately make for a faster run.  However, in exchange for that, we “enjoyed” a pretty bumpy trip along the way.  On the bright side, my meal prep was not as complex as my two crew members lost their appetite.  Worked for me.

However that wasn’t until the second night when the wind piped up to around 25kts so we were able to make a nice meal out of the tuna we caught on day one.   Here’s Jim with the catch of the day.Overall, the run was very good even though it was quite hot and stuffy aboard with everything buttoned up against the spray that we were kicking up in the rough conditions.  Nothing major broke but it’s clear to me that this is a very powerful boat with lots of moving parts and it’s going to take a while to get used to her and all her gear.

Today, in the calm waters of the Neuse River near Oriental, we tried out the code “0”, a huge sail that’s more like a spinnaker than a genoa.  It’s on it’s own roller furling system so it’s “easy” to deploy and retrieve.   We were sailing down wind on a broad reach with wind that built to 15kts apparent.  This doesn’t sound like all that much wind but keep in mind that the boat was going over 9kts, down wind.

That means you have to add the speed of the wind we felt to the speed of the boat which meant that we ended up with wind behind us that was approaching 25kts.  The sheets that control the sail are quite small in diameter and sing like a guitar string when pulled tight.  Let me tell you, they were singing.  What a sail.   Quick, take it down… I was plenty nervous about how much the wind was gusting.   But before I doused it, I took a picture of our speed, over the ground, of over 9kts.   And, there was no current so that was our actual speed, according to the GPS.  The water driven log needs some calibration so the GPS was more accurate.  That’s screaming.  What a powerful sail and boat. Enough excitement for one day though.

So, our plan is to make the run from Beaufort NC to Norfolk by Friday so we can jump out as the wind fills in from the SW north of Cape Hatteras.  Tonight we’ll pick a spot on the ICW to anchor and head out first thing tomorrow for Elizabeth City, one of my favorite stops on the ICW.

I am looking forward to a good night’s sleep and a shower.

So, all and all, a “shakedown” cruise of nearly 400 miles turned out fine.  No major issues (that I’ll admit to in writing) except one little one with a head pump that seems to be leaking.  As my friend Christopher says “The more complex a boat is the more that can break.”  If that’s true, than I am going to be doing a lot of fixin.

I guess we’ll see about that.   So far, so good…

It’s Sunday morning early and soon we will drop the mooring, pick up some fuel and water and head out from St Augustine, bound for Beaufort NC, just south of Cape Hatteras some 400NM from here. 

I spoke with Chris Parker, the weather router, yesterday and he felt that Ana would be enough out of the way and the seas down enough to make the run on the outside to Beaufort.  He gave me a few way-points for the Gulf Stream to give us a boost in speed and also probably a better wind angle for our run north.

With the wind from the SW, and our course generally NE, the wind will be behind us and I don’t know enough about this boat’s sailing characteristics to be able to predict what time we will arrive at Beaufort Inlet.  However, the ideal arrival time will be Tuesday ,mid-day as the tide is flooding up the river between 09:00 and 15:00.  As they say, “It’s easier to go with the flow, than against it.”

We have to arrive in Beaufort by Tuesday evening as the remains of Ana will head off to the NE and back to sea and will bring northerlies that will make progress beyond Hatteras impossible until the winds shift back to a more southerly direction, perhaps later in the week.

From Beaufort, the run to CT is another 500 miles or so which will take three or four days given good winds.

Anyway, it looks like today will be the day that I get to sail the “new” Pandora for the first time.  Let’s hope that we don’t run into any conditions that are too exciting.  Having said that, we are certainly hoping for a fast passage and with the wind on our tail, we’ll have to have a good amount of wind to make time.

I am optimistic that Pandora will kick up her heels and give us a good run.  If last night’s dramatic sunset is any indication, we should have a good trip. Besides, I know my friend Rodney would be upset If I didn’t put in a sunset photo, so there it is.  

There was lots of excitement in St Augustine and I was very touched that the locals put on a parade to see us off.  These nice ladies waved as they passed our “reviewing stand”.   I wonder if they dressed up for us or if that’s the what they wear all the time.   Hmm…As is our custom aboard Pandora, we’ll be projecting our position every 4 hours with the SPOT GPS, so you will be able to see where we are under “Where’s Pandora”.   Unfortunately, I don’t have my SSB installed yet so I won’t be able to post any more blog entries until I arrive in Beaufort.  So, for now, you’ll have to be satisfied with “spots” on a map, showing our progress as we move north.

Wish us luck.