Month: April 2019

Monday April 29, 2019
West Sayville, NY

We are HOME!

Last Thursday was a very big day. After an incredible 7 months of living aboard our Gemini catamaran, we tied Mavis to a dock and left her there. We unloaded the tons of things we had packed aboard for our trip down the coast and over to the Bahamas and then… Just like that… We went home! We slept in a real bed and we took real showers. Cindy did loads of laundry and didn’t even need any quarters! I sat at my desk, flanked by huge monitors and enjoyed being able to start the process of getting caught up on things. Freed from the responsibilities of being the captain, I found myself able to concentrate and get business and technology tasks done much more effectively than I could on board.

We got to see our family and friends! While we maintained contact electronically with our loved ones, there’s just no substitute for being in the same place with your people. We still have people to catch up with and I’m looking forward to it.

Before we left, I knew this trip would change us. Any time you take yourself out of your comfort zone and live life in radically different ways, you can expect your thoughts, opinions and perspectives to change. We learned a great deal about ourselves as individuals and as a couple, as parents, as entrepreneurs and as adventurers.

We learned that we love cruising but that life on board isn’t always easy. It’s not all sunsets and rainbows out there. But an adventure without challenges and some adversity isn’t much of an adventure, now, is it? Being out on a boat and vulnerable and exposed to the wrath of nature is also really humbling. And being a tiny ship on the ocean surrounded by absolutely nothing and no one really drives home how insignificant we are.

After leaving Annapolis, MD where we had spent a few days, we sailed up the Chesapeake Bay and into the C&D Canal where we stopped for the night in Chesapeake City. The next morning at 4:30am we were underway to finish transiting the canal and to sail down the Delaware Bay to Cape May. We spend the night in Cape May and left thinking we would try to make it all the way home despite a forecast of seas building to 6 to 8 feet. Once the seas started getting to around 5 feet, things got uncomfortable enough for us to consider plan B. We ducked into the notorious Barnegat Inlet fighting breaking waves and the full strength of the ebb tide. Once inside, we dropped the anchor and departed the next afternoon for an overnight sail to Fire Island Inlet. We arrived, right on time at the FI Sea Buoy and waited about 20 minutes for enough light to safely transit the newly dredged inlet. And just like that we were home and sailing under the Robert Moses Bridge, passing the Fire Island Lighthouse and Atlantique. Willow seemed to recognize her “home beach” as we sailed by.

It’s nice to be dirt-dwellers again! Here on land everything is incredibly easy, convenient and safe. I don’t have to worry about the weather and where we will be and there’s no chance that we will “drag our anchor” and return from the store to find our house not there!

I’m really enjoying sleeping late instead up being up and underway before dawn each day or sailing around the clock. It’s also nice to be in the same place for a while. On our trip down and then again on the return, it would sometimes be difficult for us to remember where we spent the night before. It’s hard to explain the strange feeling of having to look at a chart to try and remember where “home” was just 24 hours ago. It seemed sometimes like no sooner would we remember and laugh about it before we were untying the lines or hoisting the anchor to sail on.

I’m much cleaner since being back home! I turn on the faucet and an unlimited supply of water comes out. The water that comes out of the tap is clean, clear and even drinkable! And with the flip of a lever that water gets instantly hot. Instead of taking 5 minute, 5 gallon shower every few days, I stand in the stream of hot water from multiple shower heads for 20 minutes, wasting over 100 gallons of water in the process. But I do this completely aware of how incredibly fortunate we are and how even the lower middle class in this country live like royalty. We carry only 60 gallons of fresh water in our tanks aboard Mavis… And here, in one shower I would have depleted it all. Yesterday, I took two of these ridiculous showers. I flush the toilets without any regard for pump-outs or being at least three miles offshore. I’m not concerned about running out of electricity. Everything we need is a convenient car ride away. When out cruising, if there was a supermarket within a few miles of where we docked, we considered ourselves lucky and got walking!

I think we learned a great deal about living off the grid and being self-sufficient on this trip. We also learned valuable lessons about what we “need”… and what we don’t — both for life in general, and specifically for a cruise like this one… (we brought too much on board and we have too much in general.)

We travelled comfortably on board for over 3,000 miles and Mavis safely carried us over oceans, bays, gulfs, seas, sounds and lagoons. She took us up and down rivers, canals, creeks and cuts through swamps and in and out of lots of inlets. And now, after all that travelling she’s just sitting here tied up at the marina and ready to go on her next big adventure. Her hulls are dirty and stained with the brown ICW mustache we had to scrub off in Florida. She’s overdue for a waxing and It’s been a while since her decks were properly scrubbed down. Her sails could use a washing as well. That mustache is a badge of honor and it will stay until it’s warm enough to get in the water and scrub it off…

The last seven months on board have changed us forever in ways we may not even fully understand.  I’ve developed confidence in my seamanship for sure.  But I also feel better prepared to to take on challenges of all kinds.

We have met interesting and amazing people and made many new friends.  We’ve become close with with people of all ages, from all walks of life and from all over the world.  We’ve been influenced by the local cultures of small towns, little cities, and the out-islands of the Bahamas.

We’ve discovered new ways to overcome the challenges of operating our business on the go.  We’ve also experienced just taste of what real freedom can be like and we want more.  We are determined to design an extraordinary life.

We’ve grown closer as a couple and as a team.  Living and working together in a 476 square feet for months at a time can stress any relationship but we made it work wonderfully.

I’ve developed a much greater appreciation for the sheer size of the eastern seaboard of the United States.  A trip down I-95 at upwards of 70mph doesn’t let you experience the incredible diversity of culture and life along the coast.

But I think most importantly, we’ve confirmed our conviction that anything you can dream you can have, be and do. I wanted to have a cruising catamaran.  I wanted to be a captain.  I wanted to go on a grand sailing adventure.  Mission accomplished.  Our next adventure is already starting to take shape in my mind.

Thanks to everyone for following along.  There were some challenging times when the words of encouragement we got from our friends and supporters really helped get us through.

Capt Frank
S/V Mavis
Gemini 105mc #816
www.sailingmavis.com

Friday, April 19, 2019
Annapolis, MD

When I last updated the blog, we were in Georgetown, SC after another overnight offshore passage from Hilton Head.  Since that post a little over two weeks ago we have covered about 550 nautical miles and finished the official Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway!  We spent two nights in historic Georgetown waiting for weather.   When we are in port and not sailing we try to take Willow for lots of long walks to make up for all of the time she’s spending stuck on board while we are underway.   We explored the quaint little town. Georgetown harbor is an interesting scene.  There are a few marinas and some boats anchored out in the harbor.  We noticed many derelict boats and a few clusters of them where three boats were all tied together and anchored as one.  We later learned that some of the local liveaboards have taken to rafting up several derelict vessels and making themselves more comfortable…  It’s like adding on to your house.  I completely understand the desire to live a life free of property taxes, rent, mortgage, power and gas bills, etc…  But honestly, many of these people are essentially hobos in floating shanties.  After seeing so much of this in various spots up and down the coast, I understand now why the term “liveaboard” has negative connotations.

Georgetown has a really interesting southern charm and we enjoyed our stay there but when it was time to move on we departed, as usual, just before sunrise.  The plan was to motor up the ICW for a full day and anchor on the Calabash River just south of the North Carolina border but when we arrived at our planned anchorage we discovered that things were not as charted.  Where I expected to find 8′ of water and lots of room to swing on the anchor, we discovered a sand bar…  And where there actually was water deep enough for us to anchor in, we discovered that this was where the channel had been re-routed.  Anchoring in a channel is a no-no and we saw lots of larger commercial fishing boats coming through there so we decided to press on into North Carolina where we found an awesome restaurant at Shallotte’s Inlet called the Inlet View Bar and Grill.  This place had good food and excellent dockage.  After filling our bellies we turned in for the night and were underway again the next morning at first light.

On our way south we had stopped in the Topsail, NC area at a place called the Harbour Village Marina.  There, while walking Willow we met Penny who was out walking her dogs.  Penny is a warm and funny woman from New Jersey and we quickly hit it off.  The next day we had dinner with her and her husband Ken who turned out to be every bit as awesome as Penny was…  We had planned to visit them on our way back North but didn’t realize we would be in their area so soon.  By pushing into NC the day before it put us in perfect position to stop there for the night.  We quickly got a hold of Penny and made plans to get dinner together that night…  We had planned on going out with them but Penny instead prepared an amazing meal.  You could taste the love in every bite.  We enjoyed the company of our friends and talked about all sorts of things over dinner and drinks before it was time to say goodbye again.  Penny and Ken are very cool people and we’re so glad to have met them.

After leaving Harbour Village, we continued motoring northbound on the ICW.  Some foul weather was coming in and we wanted to make it to Morehead City, NC where we would get a slip.  As the sun began to rise I realized there was quite a bit of patchy fog around…  At times we found ourselves in less than 1/8 of a mile visibility.  Even in the narrow channel of the ICW I could not see the shoreline much of the morning.  For hours I would follow the course I had plotted on the GPS and strain my eyes looking forward until a navigational aid would appear out of the fog.  No sooner would we pass it until I’d start looking for the next.  This went on for hours until finally, the fog lifted and we had glorious sunshine…  For about an hour.  As the Southeast winds picked up, the fog started rolling in from the ocean.  For the rest of the day we motored in this soup.  We were in the middle of Bogue Sound and the winds were whipping up a steep chop.  There was noplace safe to anchor and very bad weather was coming so we motored on.  At one point I began hearing a large droning sound off our port quarter…  Soon a US Army Landing craft appeared out of the fog and slowly overtook us.  About an hour later another landing craft did the same.  When we made it safely to Morehead City, I radioed the Morehead City Yacht Basin where we had a slip reserved.  I was told to dock on their face dock behind the landing craft.  It was nice to be tied to the dock again.

We had planned on two nights in Morehead City but decided to take off the next morning despite some pretty high winds in the forecast for the afternoon.  The run from Morehead City up to Oriental was mostly in protected waters and only about 25 miles.  In a few hours we found ourselves back in Oriental, NC where we had broken down on our trip south and spent three stressful weeks having our new engine installed.  It was nice to be back in this friendly town that was familiar to us… And to Willow.  While out for one of our long walks she started pulling and I realized she wanted to go to the beach she had enjoyed swimming at in the fall.  It’s amazing what she seems to remember.

After two nights in Oriental I was pleased that Mavis roared to life when I turned the key.  We left without any drama and sailed to Bellhaven, NC where again, we had planned on spending two nights due to weather.  The next morning was every bit as windy and disgusting as it was forecast to be with a small craft advisory and a gale warning already issued… But we really wanted to keep moving.  We had such great momentum established and I was very much looking forward to being done with the ICW and getting into the Chesapeake Bay.   We decided to make a run for it despite the challenging weather.  As soon as we pulled away from the dock in Bellhaven I wondered if I had made a mistake.  Getting the boat to turn into the wind required almost full throttle and For the first hour or so of our run for the day we were headed directly South into a 30 knot wind.  Very steep chop had formed on the Pungo River and the waves were smashing into our hulls and sometimes washing right over them.  The windshield was covered in spray and the ride was pretty unpleasant but once we reached the canal things smoothed out completely.  The Alligator River/Pungo Canal runs mostly East/West and the trees on the bank protected us from the winds.  For a few hours we motored through the glassy canal oblivious to what was going on on open water…  But as soon as we exited the canal into the lower Alligator River we again found ourselves in very steep chop and uncomfortable conditions.  Fortunately the wind and seas were behind us now so we opened up our headsail just a bit and turned off the engine.  We surfed at 7 knots northbound for hours on the brown waves of the Alligator River…  They literally looked like chocolate milk.  We needed to go through a swing bridge that would not open if winds were 35 knots or more.  I had seen 38 knots in the lower river and I was very relieved when the tender opened the bridge for us.  We immediately turned left to make our way into the Alligator River Marina.  Now, with the winds and steep waves off our port side, Mavis’ bow was swinging wildly back and forth as I struggled to keep her lined up to enter the narrow inlet for the marina.  The waves were about 3′ and very steep and as each one passed underneath us our bow would move 30 to 40 degrees back and forth.  After our 5 minute approach I was exhausted from turning the wheel back and forth so many times…  There were very daunting looking rock piles on either side of the entrance and I was relieved when we passed through them and found calm waters and protection from the winds inside the marina’s basin.  After taking showers and enjoying a dinner of the marina’s famous fried chicken we were finishing up a glass of wine and about to turn in for the night when we heard the drone of very large engines and saw spotlights darting around the marina…  Two US Army landing craft had entered the marina.  One pulled in alongside us and amazingly shoehorned itself in between us and the boat behind us on the face dock.  After the excitement of the Army invasion, we turned in for the night and found them gone when I got up at 5 to ready the boat for departure..

From the Alligator River marina it was only about 35 miles across the Albermarle Sound to Coinjock, NC.   The Coinjock Marina is famous for it’s 12o0 foot dock which runs along the ICW and for it’s prime rib dinner. We didn’t stop in Coinjock on our way south because we had taken the alternate route through the Great Dismal Swamp.  After getting set up on the dock, we took Willow for a walk.  She got to play with one of the marina’s dogs…  A young retriever.  Both dogs had a ball chasing sticks and running around like crazy.  For dinner, we hit the restaurant.  The Captain’s Cut Prime Rib lived up to the hype.

The next morning… At dawn (of course) we departed Coinjock and sailed into busy Norfolk.  We had to deal with several drawbridges and a canal lock but soon we were in Norfolk, passing lots of Navy ships, cargo ships, tugboats pushing barges and all sorts of other commercial traffic.  Norfolk marks Mile 0 of the ICW and it felt good knowing we had conquered the ICW but it was not time to rest on our laurels just yet.  We still had about 400 nautical miles ahead of us… The entire Chesapeake Bay, the C&D Canal, the infamous Delaware Bay and a 130 mile stretch of Atlantic Ocean before we would be back in the Great South Bay.

I had initially planned on sailing from Norfolk to Deltaville, VA which would have been a full day of travel but once out on the bay and underway I decided it would be better to continue overnight up the bay and go straight to Annapolis.  Doing it this way, it would save us about 2 days.  There are lots of ships transiting the bay overnight.  We encountered several tankers, 4 container ships and a few passenger ships.  The bay was choppy and the winds were strong but would change direction every few hours.  I motored about half the time on this overnight but sailed whenever I could.  Instead of stopping in Deltaville, Solomons and then Annapolis we arrived in Annapolis about an hour after sunrise and picked up a mooring ball about 400 feet away from the Naval Academy.  We really love this city.  It’s got history and charm and it’s a real sailing town.  Tonight will be our third night here.  The weather isn’t cooperating and it’s frustrating me.  We are so close to home but are presently under a tornado watch and gale warnings… And  it’s raining.   Tomorrow isn’t expected to be great but there’s a chance we can finish up the Chesapeake and make it to the C&D Canal where we can anchor in Chesapeake City for the night…  If not we will stay one more night here.

I’ve learned that while we were gone the Fire Island Inlet was dredged.  They just finished and the Army Corps of Engineers completed their survey but the Coast Guard has not yet put the buoys that mark the inlet back in place.  This inlet is tricky and I wouldn’t think of approaching it from sea without the buoys on station.   I called the Coast Guard and they advised me that they need a day or two of good weather to get them put back in.  I am hoping this happens in the next few days.  If they’re not back in place before we leave Cape May, NJ we will have no choice but to sail 40nm further east on the ocean and enter the Shinecock Inlet.  From there, we will have to travel back West 30 miles in a shallow channel that will require several drawbridge openings.  Fingers crossed.

That’s it for now.  Sorry for the long update.  I’ve been busy keeping the boat moving.  We are a few days away from home.  We just need good weather and hopefully some buoys in the Fire Island inlet and we’ll be wrapping this cruise up.  We’re looking forward to being home but I think it’s gonna take us a while to get accustomed to being dirt-dwellers again.

Thanks for coming along!

Capt Frank
S/V Mavis #816

I’m sitting here alone in the cockpit on yet another long offshore overnight sail.  As planned, we’ve been avoiding lots of the Intracoastal Waterway and are doing much more offshore sailing than we did on the trip south. In fact, we have taken a good chunk out of the return voyage to Long Island already. As of this moment, we have sailed about 2200 nautical miles since leaving Long Island at the end of September.

Cindy and Willow went to bed hours ago so it’s just me and Mavis now.  The winds are too light to move us along at an acceptable speed so we have been motoring since leaving Hilton Head some 14 hours ago. The mainsail is up but isn’t doing much. It’s dark. Very dark. There’s no moon and we are many miles out off the coast out of sight of land. I can see the sky is light in the area of Charleston but can’t see the shoreline. The light of the electronics and instruments cast a red glow throughout the cockpit and our navigation lights project a tiny pool of light around Mavis’ hull but other than this it’s complete darkness except for the sky which is full of stars.

I’m wishing I was able to see better right now because I just received a report that a container ship lost 16 shipping containers off it’s decks near here last week. Some of them have been found floating just below the waterline. Hitting one of those could easily hole us. I keep thinking about Robert Redford in “All is Lost.” and don’t want to end up that way. I’m keeping watch but I’m really only looking for other boats. The chances of us encountering one of those loose shipping containers is fortunately very small. There’s a whole lot of ocean surrounding our tiny little boat.

A never ending parade of small waves roll by, gently rocking us. The conditions out here are really very calm with seas of about 2 feet. It’s like a calm day on the Great South Bay. In fact, I sort of keep forgetting I’m not in protected waters. The droning sound of the engine is remarkably hypnotizing and relaxing. I’ve pulled the throttle back to 1800 RPM and we are slowly putting along at around 5 knots. Any faster and we’ll arrive at the inlet too early. I’m hoping to safely and comfortably slide into Winyah Bay at the first signs of light and ride the flood tide into Georgetown.

We have about another eight hours or so before we reach the inlet. I’ve made myself a pot of coffee and gotten comfortable in my helm seat with my laptop. There’s not much to do but keep an eye on the gauges, manage our fuel and make sure the ship is on the course line I plotted. I haven’t touched the helm since we got out into the ocean. The autopilot is doing an excellent job maintaining course. Every few minutes I scan the horizon 360 degrees looking for the lights of any vessels that aren’t showing up on my screen. I see no traffic within 25 miles of our current position. Sometimes I go out on the deck and strain my eyes into the darkness… It’s impossible to see anything at all.  If we were unlucky enough to encounter one of those shipping containers I wouldn’t see it until we hit it.  It’s been hours since I’ve seen another vessel. A few ships were leaving Charleston as I passed by but they quickly went out of sight and dropped off my screen long ago.

We spent a few days in Hilton Head after another offshore overnight passage from St. Andrews Sound, GA. Arriving just as the terrible weather that was forecast began to roll in, we tied Mavis up at the Skull Creek Marina as the winds really picked up. We could feel the temperature dropping rapidly as the cold front came through. We had a few unseasonably cool — actually cold days in Hilton Head with temperatures dipping down into the lower 40s overnight.  We were glad to be at a marina so that we could take advantage of the unlimited supply of electricity and run our space heater. Even though it was rainy and cold, we were very comfortable on board. After running the engine to enter the inlet and arrive at Skull Creek Marina, there was plenty of hot water on board for me to take a much needed shower before heading out for dinner with friends.

One of the reasons we wanted to stop in Hilton Head was to visit our friends Chuck and Reneé.  These guys are really cool and they share our love of travel and adventure.  We did drinks and dinner out one night and they also had us over for a delicious home cooked meal.  During dinner we were discussing the strange fact that even though we have travelled up and down this coast for almost 2200 miles already we haven’t seen a single alligator.  As soon as dinner was over Chuck had us in his car and we went to a local park with a body of water that is crawling with alligators.  He was determined to show us an alligator but probably because of the ridiculously cold weather, the alligators that normally line the banks basking in the sun were not present.  We did see lots of signs warning park visitors not to feed the gators…  And I saw a big pile of what I’m pretty sure was alligator poo…  but no gators.

I was resigned to the fact that I would not be seeing any alligators that night.  The sun was down and dusk was waning quickly when I saw a set of eyeballs and a snoot in the water.  As I reached into my pocket to grab my phone to take a picture this enormous alligator flipped its tail violently and swam into deeper water where he floated…   Judging by the size of the creature’s head, we estimate he must have been 7 or 8 feet long.

Cold is quite a strange feeling. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt it. Having spent the winter in bathing suits and flip flops I think we got a bit thin-skinned. We still have many hundreds of miles of northbound sailing to do. I’m sure we will toughen up along the way. The weather is funny this time of year… Couple that with the fact that we are constantly changing latitude and it makes it difficult to know how to dress sometimes. People who live up north have a routine they do twice a year. In the spring, all of the sweaters, coats, and winter clothes get put away and the shorts, swimsuits and summer stuff comes out. We kind of did that on our way south. Because we took longer getting south than expected, winter was nipping at our heels all the way to South Florida. But when we arrived in Stuart and realized it was going to be in the mid seventies to low eighties every day, we put most of our cool weather clothing away into bins in our closet. Drawer space aboard Mavis is limited so we only (barely) have room to keep the stuff we actually wear out. Leaving northern Florida we already started to feel the difference in temperatures so we again did the switcheroo. I begrudgingly put away my swimsuits and shorts and replaced them with long pants. I’ve even been wearing socks… And underwear sometimes! It’s weird. As we continue north we are hoping that spring arrives and temperatures up north begin to warm up. I’m hoping to get back into shorts and flip-flops soon.

There’s not much else to report. The crew is happy. We continue to enjoy this grand, crazy adventure we are on. Cindy is still taking millions of photos and we are appreciating seeing every single sunrise and every single sunset from aboard our happy ship. Willow has been dealing with the long offshore passages very well. She still refuses to go to the bathroom on board. We are also really starting to get excited about being home soon. By the time we arrive we will have been on board about seven months and travelled about 3,000 nautical miles yet sometimes it feels like we just started our journey.

****

 

 

Update:
We arrived safely in Georgetown, SC this morning, entering the Winyah Bay inlet on schedule at dawn. We’re expecting a full day of rain tomorrow so we’ll hang here until Saturday morning before continuing north. We are only about 50 miles from the North Carolina state line. Georgetown is a quaint little town but the gnats and noseeums here are ridiculous. You can’t be outside more than a few seconds without a swarm of them forming a cloud around your head. I’ve breathed a few in and I’m pretty sure I ate about 200 of them with my fish dinner. Protein is protein, I suppose. We are otherwise happy and comfortable on board thanks to screens and Deep Woods Off!

Capt Frank
S/V Mavis

#816