Feb 14, 2024

For Valentines day, Jim took me on a cruise! Ain’t that sweet? Oh, we don’t usually do much for the Hallmark Holidays, but we are on a 6 month cruise! Ok, we have to work for it; doing our own piloting, repairs, cooking and cleaning, but is the the only kind a cruise we really want to do. Happy Valentines Day to you!

The Super Bowl

The Super….Bowl. We don’t do the Super Bowl, but we got all caught up in Taylor fever. Actually, it came from a conversation Jim had on the dock in New Bern with the Hatteras across the dock. It went something like….

Miss Hatteras: The Mardi Gras parade is tomorrow.

Jim: We'll be gone.

Miss Hatteras: Oh. Were having a Super Bowl party on the dock on Sunday.

Jim: We’ll miss that as well as well be gone and I don’t watch the Super Bowl anyway.

Miss Hatteras: Well aren’t you lots of fun.

This lead Jim to thinking about if he was any fun which lead to us looking for a Super Bowl party (not really). But, we did turn it on during the 1^st quarter, seeing the first score and through Usher. Then we watched PBS. But, we did check in at the end and saw the overtime and KC win.

To be honest, we were OK with either team winning as they were both “western” teams. But, I always root for the farthest west team as I’m a western girl. And, our little secret, we also wanted SF to win as Taylor and Mr. Kelce already have everything so they didn’t need to win this too.

Now on to Mardi Gras

We missed the New Bern Mardi Gras parade, but it turned out there were festivities in Beaufort, NC as well. We heard them but missed them while we bought fuel and pumped the poop tank. One has to have their priorities right. We did walk into town to buy Toadfish cup holders and have a drink. By then the Mardi Gras had moved to the bars. Everyone was dressed for the occasion but us. We still had fun coloring with the revelers on the Group W bench.

So, us un -fun, folks celebrated Mardi Gras, the Super Bowl and are celebrating Valentines day this evening on our cruise. We are drinking Jim’s Christmas stocking champagne and I am making brownies! What could be better!

How to Travel

Jim and I are not good planners. We tend to drift in the wind, then hunker down and work. Thus, it is easy for us when we have a work list. Hunker down. But, we really dislike schedules when traveling. Thus, as soon as we start moving, we don’t know if we should wander, or make tracks.

We have a pseudo goal of being in Florida by early March and then leaving for Mexico not too much later. So, we’ve done a fair amount of hurrying up then stopping. I put together a “schedule” today so we now know how much time we can “waste” along the way visiting friends (definitely not a waste!) and seeing things. Although, we’ve spent so much time on this part of the coast, we’ve seen much of what we have wanted to see. Turns out we’ve got lots of time, so relax!

It’s All Ours!

This trip down the coast has been quite nice actually. It is still winter boating, so there are very few boats on the water. Thus, we have the waterways to ourselves, and empty anchorages. So very nice not being waked constantly by sport fish and center consoles, worrying about jet skis and wondering if there will be space in an anchorage or marina. It reminds us of boating during Covid but with restaurants.

Dolphins

Because there are so few boats on the water, it seems all the dolphins are coming to us! We see dolphins multiple times every day. It never gets old.

I looked up why dolphins do this. One thought: “Ships displace the water beneath them, which is called a wake. Dolphins can ride the wake to swim faster than usual or to reach high speeds with less energy. Plus, it’s super fun!“

The dolphins do look like they are having fun and do turn sideways to look at us. I will never get tired of this.

Skinny Water

In the Chesapeake, there is not a very big tide and we can mostly cruise along and not worry much. By the time one gets to South Carolina, there are 5 foot plus tides. This is due to the curvature of the coastline funneling the water into a smaller and smaller space. This with a shallow slope leads to big tidal swings. Couple this with half moons where the Sun and moon are working against each other, as opposed to with each other leads to low, low tides. I don’t know why they are extra low, nearly a foot below mean low water, but they are right now. The locals are talking about how super low the tides have been.

Some of the spots we need to travel through are reporting 2 feet of water at low tide! Thus, one MUST wait for close to high tide to get through as 5 + 2 is 7 feet (you knew that!)

This water level always adds some stress to our travel days. We are anchored just a few miles north of this low water spot waiting until tomorrows high tide. This waiting for the tide is a requirement traveling on the ICW through any part of the rest of South Carolina and Georgia on the ICW. We may go outside if the weather is good. It has not been, but there may be a window.

Friends

We headed to New Bern on our way south to catch up with George and Frances. We met them when we did the Down East Loop (the St Lawrence and Canadian Maritimes) in 2022. Since then, we have sync’ed with them in several locals, including Italy. And, their daughter Sarah lives two blocks from my niece Sarah in Corrales, NM! We were destine to be friends. They were in New Bern on their boat for a mini-vacation. They are going to cross with us from Florida to Mexico as they are much more experienced sailors than we are. We wanted to chat a bit about the upcoming trip as we’ve never actually traveled together, only synced up in various places around the world.

We’re visiting some other friends in Charleston for the next couple days. We’ll then continue to head south, visiting a few some other friends along the way. The goal is to be in Fort Pierce before the end of February.

I’ll leave you with 2 more pictures. First, we DO get off the boat when we can and take a nice walk. We NEED our exercise.