Our old patched fuel tank is on the left, and the new on the right.  The new boards in the dock replaced a section crushed by a sailboat during hurricane Florence.  Our little Honda generator in the distance gives us electricity because the real electricity has not yet been repaired.

Irish Eyes is hanging in the Travelift slings at Sailcraft Services.  We had her hauled out to inspect and clean the bottom before setting off for Florida.

The Waccamaw River north of Georgetown, SC is a pretty place with cypress and gum trees growing out of the still brown water.

In Beaufort, SC we had to wait almost three hours for the Lady’s Island Swing Bridge to open for us.  They give priority to the cars.  It was almost dark before they finally opened to let us through.

We spent one night in the Marineland Marina in Florida.  The change in the trees from South Carolina’s Waccamaw River to here is striking.

These are two pictures of the temporary bridge on the Southern Boulevard in Palm Beach.  It is near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.  In the first picture the bridge is closed and in the second it is open.  It is quite a contraption.  It clangs, bangs, and creaks as it opens and closes.

We bought bananas in Vero Beach, and Bill fixed us banana tarts, juice, and tea for breakfast.

Hello from Miami Beach.

We enjoyed both our Christmas together and our children and grandchildren’s New Year’s visit.  After they left, it was time to think about leaving home for the trip south.  We had already had snow… nine inches of the four-letter word… that was enough of that!  After packing our car with everything Bill thought we might need plus my clothes, we left for New Bern, NC on January 11.

The first thing we did when we arrived in New Bern, was to get the Honda generator out of the car and started.  Florence had left our dock without electricity or water.  The generator gave us electricity for heat, and a motley collection of collapsible water jugs, a dock cart, and a trip to the marina’s wrecked laundry gave us water.  Thankfully, the sailboats that were resting on top of the dock after Florence had been removed, and our dock was repaired and once again walkable.  The marina staff, faced with a herculean task, had been working hard to get everything back in pre-storm condition.  Hopefully, they will be finished when we get back.

Some of you may remember that our boat’s aluminum fuel tank developed a leak last year, and that two good palm tree mechanics (Bill and I) had repaired the tank in the Bahamas with epoxy resin.  Not completely trusting our repair, Bill ordered a new tank.  Although delivered late, it was waiting for us when we arrived in New Bern.  It was perfect.  We installed it, took the old one to the recycling center, and cleaned up the resulting chaos in the boat.

It was cold in New Bern.  One morning our thermometer showed 34 degrees inside the boat.  We had lots of blankets and a 12V ElectroWarm bunk heater, so our nights were warm even without the generator running.  On the coldest morning, Bill, the tough one, went outside, started the generator, and went to take a shower.  I got out from under all our blankets, started the electric heater, and went back under the covers.  The boat warmed up quickly, and I could at last venture out of my warm bed.

Bill worked on boat projects while I shopped for all the things we either forgot to bring or needed to buy.  Some things I bought from the stores in town, and the others Amazon delivered to the marina.

With 80% of our To-Do List accomplished, we said, “Enough”, and took Irish Eyes to Sailcraft Services in Oriental, NC for a quick haul out, underwater inspection, and bottom cleaning.  We also had them re-machine the drive pulley for the refrigeration system and install the last three folding steps on the mast.  Those three steps alone would have taken Bill and me a whole day to do, but they knocked out the job in under an hour.  In less than 24 hours and with only little damage to a Visa card, we were away and headed south.

The weather forecast was for a gale to pass over the NC coast.  We elected to go a very short distance and anchored in Adams Creek near the west shore to wait out the southwesterly blow.  And, blow it did.  We had a rocky night, but by late in the afternoon on January 25 things were back to normal.

The next morning was our coldest morning.  The condensation inside the boat was frozen, and the deck outside was slippery with a heavy frost.  With lots of layers; two pairs of long underwear, two pair of pants, probably four shirts, a down coat, a balaclava, a woolly cap, gloves, chemical hand warmers, and (for me) wonderful fuzzy lined UGG boots, both of us were warm even outside in the open cockpit.  Inside the boat our “bus heater” kept the interior toasty using the engine’s heat.  That was great because when we stopped to anchor, the boat’s interior was always cozy and dry.  While the boat cooled during the night, we always ate our breakfast quickly in the morning and got underway again.  If Bill had his way, we would travel from 6 in the morning to 7:30 at night.  I instead set the schedule at absolutely, positively no more than 7:30 to 5:30, and frequently I allowed less.

We stopped for one night at the Myrtle Beach Yacht Club to visit my sister and brother-in-law and to have dinner at their house.  He is French and a chef, and thus a French Chef, and she has been his understudy for years.  It is always the best meal of the trip.  Besides that, we got a real shower at the yacht club.  Real showers are few and far between on these trips.

Three days later, after crossing the Charleston Harbor, we arrived at the Wappoo Creek Bridge.  It had a new opening schedule, and we had a forty-five minute wait.  The US Coast Guard seized the opportunity to board us for a safety inspection.  Both the young officers were friendly and polite.  They did not find anything amiss on Irish Eyes, but before the bridge eventually opened, they returned to retrieve a pair of obviously expensive sunglasses one of them had left behind.

Our next bridge experience occurred at the Lady’s Island Bridge in Beaufort, SC.  That bridge also has a new opening schedule.  It does not open from 3pm till 6pm.  Unfortunately, we arrived at 3:15.  We anchored the boat for the long wait.  At 6 as the sun set and the nearby Beaufort City Marina closed, the bridge finally opened.  We went through and anchored in the shallows beyond the city marina’s mooring field.  It was pitch dark.  Beaufort, SC did not seem as boater friendly as it had been in the past.

The farther south we got the warmer the temperatures became.  We made it through all the Georgia shallow spots including Hell Gate and the Creighton Narrows without a problem.  Bill, once again the tough one, steered us through the notoriously shallow Little Mud River and across the Altamaha Sound in the pouring rain while I stayed dry below and encouraged him.  We anchored near Lanier Island, Georgia for a couple of hours while the tide rose before heading off for Jekyll Creek, probably the shallowest of the Georgia spots, at high tide.  We made it through Jekyll Creek and anchored in dark.  Bill put up our TV antenna, and we watched the Super Bowl.  I am not sure why he did it; neither one of us is a football fan, and the game was a near scoreless bore.

On Friday, February 8, we arrived in Vero Beach, Florida.  Bill had ordered boat parts and other things from Amazon, Defender, and McMaster-Carr, so we should have had had packages waiting.  Wrong.  He mis-addressed some of things and never actually hit the send key on others.  Some went to Kingsport, and others were never sent.  We ended up getting only a spare bilge pump, a winch handle, and new flags.  To avoid the South Florida weekend small boat traffic, we decided to stay until Monday.  We used the down time to take showers with unlimited hot water, go grocery shopping, do our laundry, and enjoy a couple of restaurant meals.  Sunday afternoon we went to the nearby Vero Beach Art Museum.  Displayed among the paintings and other art objects was a beautiful hand embroidered bed covering.  Bill said I should make one too.  I do not think I have enough years left to take on that project.  I’ll just knit.

After Vero Beach it was one day to Hobe Sound where we anchored behind Jupiter Island, its golf courses, and Tiger Wood’s house.   When we shut the engine down, Bill found one of our three house batteries hot, hissing, and smelly.  He pronounced it dead and disconnected it from the other two.  The next day we took the boat into the north end of Lake Worth to go to the nearby Palm Beach West Marine store and get a replacement.  That did not work out.  The wind and waves in the anchorage were too much for us, so we turned around and left.  A new battery was put off to Miami.

From Palm Beach south there were the drawbridges, lots of drawbridges, most with twice an hour opening schedules.  It was a frustrating game of rushing south, waiting for an opening, and rushing on again.  We were surrounded not by the quiet marsh land and wildlife of the waterway to the north, but by zillion dollar houses and concrete and steel sea walls that reflected then re-reflected the wakes of the large boats zooming by.  Yuck.  But, it was only three days and none were long.  We got to Miami Beach yesterday and anchored with another anchored sailboat and a large yacht among some nice houses, palm trees, a park, and highway.

It’s time to have some fun and get ready to go to the Bahamas.