Seeing old friends and stormy stuff

We pull anchor head through Watts Cut at mid tide we make it through the channel have a few more shallow spots but we are with the tide, heading for Charleston.  We are meeting up with our friends from Chesterfield Missouri, Denny and Shara Taylor.  They are on the east coast searching for a boat and happen to be in Charleston South Carolina to look at some boats.  We go have BBQ the first night they come and pick us up we have a nice evening visiting.  Next morning we get picked up at St. Johns Island Marina, wonderful place to anchor and they have beautiful facilities complete with restaurant and pool.  We go to another marina where we look at a Beneteau with the Taylors. Then we head over to the ferry landing and we buy tickets to go out to Fort Sumter, where the civil war began.  We board the ferry and get the tour and history of the Fort, it was worth the tour.  It is extremely hot and we are all done in and hungry when we get back to the van. The four of us head back to St. Johns Marina and have dinner at the restaurant there.  We say good bye to the Taylors they are leaving for Annapolis the next morning in search for their dream boat.  We hang out in Charleston the next day and take care of some business.  Next morning we head in to get fuel, water and ice.  Head out to Charleston Harbor put up the jib as our main is ripped beyond repair.  Yes we have to buy a new main sail it will be a huge expense.  Sailing across Charleston Harbor we run across a youth sailing school in their opti's.  It is blowing 12 to 17 and these little kids are out there having a ball.  We are looking to make the 6:00 opening on the bridge we are headed for then anchor for night.  Well we make it to bridge around 4:30 and we have to wait on the bridge meanwhile we anchor and wait as 6:00 approaches the skies start getting darker from the east and we hear rumbles of thunder.  We approach the bridge and the bridge master informs us that bad storms are approaching and that he will not open the bridge due to the storm that is about to hit.  Wind gusts of up to 40 we found out soon enough.  We turn back up the channel and it starts to rain hard we try to get farther but the storm is so bad by now that we can hardly see and the winds have piped up to gusts of 40 torrential rains.    We finally get an anchor down but we are in too shallow of water and the storm pushes us up on a sand bar.  Joe was smart enough to leave the motor running and in gear with the wheel hard over so we do not get pushed ashore.  I was hoping we do not have to call Tow Boat.  We are hammered by the storm for about 30 minutes then it starts to clear.  Bridge Master calls us and says he will open anytime we are ready.  We inform him that we are aground and we will be a while till we figure how to get off.  It took some doing and Joe crawled out on the boom, we pushed it all the way out and he was bounced up and down on it and he heard a pop.  He popped a rib out of place.  I could tell he was hurting but he kept working to get us ungrounded.  We finally got off the sand bar and we went through the bridge anchored just other side of bridge for the night in a very quiet place.  It has been a very interesting week.

Sail Problems

First day from Beaufort, July 20, we are heading north out of St. Helena Sound towards the Edisto River and Watts cut.  We know we have to make Watts Cut before low tide.  So we are sailing along have both sails up the wind is with us today. Pretty uneventful day until ...... we get to the entrance to Watts Cut.  The winds have picked up to about 15 to 20 during the day and when we go to drop sail we jibe and our main sail rips.  As we prepare to drop the main it tears more and more.  Nothing we can do at the moment.  Then we are trying to to furl in the jib and the spinnaker line gets wrapped in the sail and it is flapping and snapping like crazy Joe finally gets it unwrapped and we try to head into Watts cut.  It is now close to low tide and at the entrance we touch bottom we are afraid to just plow through the rest as we will have to wait for the tide to come in and we do not want to run hard aground.  So we turn around and head up a small creek where we know there is enough water to anchor for the night.  It is getting dark and it is time to quit for the day. We will assess  the damage when things are calmer.

Hangin with Mr. Kooper

In blogs past I introduced you to our cat Kooper.  We adopted him when he was 5 weeks old and he has been a pretty good cat. He has lived and moved around Illinois and moved to Florida to live with Tim while he was in college, then he moved back to live with us after college, so he has been around some. Those of you who are not cat people are probably thinking there are no good cats.  LOL.  Kooper is 10 now and has adapted to living on Draco rather well. Guess he did not have a choice in the matter either.  He didn't much like boat living at first and hid a lot where he could find hiding places. Hatted hated hated it when we fired up the engine and tried to make himself very small when we did.  During rough weather he has gotten sea sick a few times but now seems to have gotten the motion of the boat pretty well.  We have sliding cupboard doors for access to shelves, not in the galley, and Kooper looked at me one day and wanted me to open the door to let him in I told him no but if he could open it himself he was welcome to get in there.  Well he got scared one day and pushed open the cupboard door and crawled up on the shelf and hid in there everyday for weeks when we started up the engine.  We called it his hidey hole.  He started slowly coming out when we were at anchor and coming into the cockpit and checking out the boat.  Now he has the run of the boat and most nights when we are at anchor he just sits on the bow and looks around.  Actually he usually stays out all night.  We set anchor turn the engine off and yell down to Kooper that we are done for the day and he comes out of whenever he has chose to hunker down that day.  These days he lies under the table in the center of the boat. When we got back to Lady's Island Marina in South Carolina we docked up for the month and we have to watch him very closely so he doesn't get off the boat.  If you were on a boat for 12 weeks and got to a dock you would want off too.  It was good during the day but 2 nights after we docked he jumped ship onto the dock and we lost him.  We looked everywhere for the entire day but could not find him.  Last time I saw him he was on the boat about 2 A.M.  We were sick with worry and did not know if would ever see him again.  Next night we went to bed but sleep did not come easy because we were missing our little guy.  Joe got up around 3:30 A.M and went looking for him again.  I hear him come back and he has an orange fur ball in his arms, alive but hurt, tears were shed that we had our buddy back.  Kooper was unable to walk his back legs would not work.  We had to wait until the vet opened to take him in and get him checked so we kept him still and warm until then.  He was in bad shape.  It kept going through my mind that we were going to loose him.  Once at the vet's office they examined him, took an x ray and determined that he had a broken pelvis and that it would heal on it's own.  Thank God.  They sent us off with pain meds and said he would heal up on his own just fine.  We will never know how he got so badly injured. We are sure it ate up a couple of his 9 lives.  He did develop an abscess

on his side that the vet missed I treated it for a week and it finally dried up and went away. Now 4 weeks later he is doing great and we are hangin with Mr. Kooper again. 

Dumplings for Breakfast

Just got back from the local farmers market.  I invited a couple of the ladies here that do not have cars to get around to go with me.  Had to go today there is a lady there that makes homemade Chinese dumplings that melt in you mouth.  Guess what I had for breakfast?  Yummo! Not a conventional breakfast but nothing about cruising is conventional. Also went out to St. Helena Island to Barefoot farms and picked up a pound of fresh caught shrimp to cook for dinner tonight.  Shrimp season just started here so we can buy them pretty cheap.  We also have fresh fruits and vegetables readily available and locally grown.  I love the low country.
The other night we went to my friend Jude's house for Italian food. It was a wonderful evening with lots of wine and delicious food.  Jude entertained us with endless stories about growing up in an Italian family in Boston.  She has the full Boston accent and she is hysterical,we laughed for hours  I told here she should be a stand up comic.  Jude has two rescue dogs on was quiet and sweet the other would not come near us and barked the whole time we were there.  Oh well.
It has turned very hot and humid here now and it is hard to stay cool during the afternoon hours.  We usually find an excuse to go to the store or someplace in the truck to get into some air conditioning.  Guess is the price you pay for being in the south and it isn't even full out summer yet.  We plan on hauling the boat out sometime in July up in North Carolina to paint the bottom.  And work on the stuffing box.  That should be fun.  NOT!!!! Hope to see our friends in Carlyle and St. Louis very soon.  TTFN.

Never ending projects

The boat projects continue.  Joe mounted the solar panel on top of the dinghy davits today.  It was attached to the lifeline on the port side of the boat.  It limited our view while sitting in the cockpit and it was a hazard at times coming into a dock.  We have also finished installing the cleats and painting the anchor.  Teak has been sanded topsides and I am putting 5 coats of varnish on it to help preserve the color and I will probably put a couple more coats on it in September just for good measure.  We have the dinghy on land and Joe has cleaned it up and put some epoxy on the bottom scrapes.  All in all we have been moving right along with the never ending list of things to do on the boat.
Tim, Morgan and Zelda came up to have a picnic with u on the beach at one of the parks just north of here.  It was nice to see them again.  
To our friends and fellow sailors at CSA we hope that the Sailing for Veterans Regatta is a huge success this weekend.
To the A Cat sailors who were in Florida racing Joe has been following your progress online.  Some great shots of the racers.
TTFN

Wild Horses

I am sitting here in the cockpit of the boat listening to music and I was reflecting on the 3 days we spent at Cumberland Island.  Cumberland Island is right on the border of Florida and Georgia.  It was recommended to us to make a stop there on our way back up the ICW.  It was worth the trip.  Even before we got to our anchorage spot we spotted a wild horse out by the salt marshes,  and directly in front of the horse in the water were dolphins.  What a beautiful site that was to see them both together.  They were too far for me to get a photo.  After we got settled at the anchor spot we deployed the dinghy and went ashore, camera in hand.  Stopped at the park office and talked to the ranger.  He told us about all the walking trails that we could explore.  So we set off for a 3/4 mile hike across the island.  We were immediately plunged into the oldest seaside forest in the country.  All around us were live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, fan palms and wild plants growing so thick you had to stay on the path.  It was a peaceful and pristine place to stop.  Very rare theses days to find a spot as untouched by commercialism.  After 5 days on the boat we were ready for a break.  I told Joe I wanted to hike till my legs fell off.  Walking under the shaded canopy of the trees was relaxing.  We past camping spots where you could not see the next camp site as there were so many fan palms.  When we got to the other side of the island it open up to snow white sand dunes some 2 stories high.  We walked on a boardwalk walkway through the dunes and it opened up to a beach deemed a national seashore park.  We looked down the beach and there was a herd of wild horses.  I was so excited.  We hurriedly walked toward them.  They have been exposed to people watching them as they let us get closer I started taking photos.  Most of them were mares and there was a yearling and a foal.  What a treat it was to get to see wild horses ON THE BEACH.   Awesome.
Next day we toured the Carnegie Mansion on the Island. Most of the buildings were still there but the house was a brick skeleton, it had burned down many years ago.  And what happen to be in the yard area more wild horses.  It just could not get any better.   After our tour we went on the boardwalk over the salt marsh and ended up walking through the sand dunes again  then we made our way up the beach and back to the boat.  My legs were pretty tired we had walked almost 5 miles.  Next day we moved the boat to the north end of the island and next day we did some more hiking there.  We were hoping to see alligators that were rumored to be there but no such luck.  But we did see some wold spotted hogs and piglets.  Cumberland Island is by far one of our favorite places we have been to.  If you want to visit there you cannot get there by car you need to take a 45 minute ferry ride.  It is highly likely we will be stopping there again.
We are now in Lady's Island South Carolina.  Doing boat projects and hanging out in Beaufort.  TTFN

Daily stuff

Let me tell you what happened to us in Lake Worth.  Well you know we anchored there for the night. Same spot we anchored in on our way south.  About 2:00 in the morning we woke up and the boat was listing heavily to starboard, 18 degrees to be exact.  We did not panic we sat in the cockpit for a while and decided there was nothing we could do so we went back to bed. Braced our feet across the v berth so we wouldn't roll sideways and went back to sleep waiting for the tide to come up. As you can imagine we did not sleep much.  But we got up early pulled anchor and proceeded along.  There is always something.  It was a beautiful day and we had 8 bridge to go through we headed to Peck Lake.  Wind were high when we arrived we did not even deploy the dinghy.  We were both tired from the last 3 day so we just sat on the boat and read.  Next stop was Vero Beach, we stopped there before too, needed provisions.  But before we got there we turned left at the wrong bridge ran aground, storm coming with high winds,  someone in a dinghy stopped and try to help after we got off the grounding.  Then we went to the next bridge and turned there and moored up in the marina.  Stayed a couple of days, spent an afternoon at the beach,  got ate up buy no see ums, nasty little bugs you can't see coming and the are stealthy to they attack in the middle of the night.  My legs looked like I had pox. 

On our way to Titusville we had to come up the Indian River near NASA we encountered small Islands along here that we named Flamingo Flats,  pink flamingos everywhere, Pelican Perch.  Also we saw at least 14 Manatee on our way through too.  Some were right next to the boat playing.  That was most excellent to see them.  Onto to Titusville Municipal Marina for night just to get a break from the winds.  We normally would have grabbed a mooring ball but with NNW winds 15 to 20 you do not want to be in the mooring field.  Staying at the marina was a treat we had electricity for first time in 8 weeks, we have a small inverter to charge our cell phones and computer on the boat.  It is amazing what you can adapt to when needed.   So we got out the cofee maker, toaster and even the microwave worked. Joe needed internet to work too.  Winds were still strong the next day and storms were expected we pulled into New Smyrna Municipal Marina early the next day and again we have electricity two days in a row. Woop! woop!  Good thing to as it was 92 degrees and we needed a fan to keep cool.  Went out for Pizza, Panheads,  yummo! Next day we are waffling back and forth wether to leave or stay, storms again.  We check the radar 20 times and we decide to leave.  we waited until one storm cell passes we cast off and get ahead of the weather.  We got rained on once it cleared up and was a nice travel day.  Anchored up in Daytona Then to Fourt Matanzas Inlet.  We saw a bobcat on the beach when we arrived,  I took photos.  Next day we toured Fort Matanzas something we did not do on our way south.  It was pretty cool.  Now we just left St. Augustine and we are anchoring out tonight.  Saw a pod of dolphins near one of the bridges they had a brand new baby wit them it was sticking it's whole head above the water, so cute.  Dolphins have been plentiful on our travels. Tides were against us this morning so progress was slow.  We pulled over and anchored up for 2 hours to wait it out had lunch now we are under way.  Our next major stop will be Cumberland Island it is on the Florid Georgia border.  Meeting up with Mike Pitzer and Tom Baker on Diva.  We hope to jump outside and sail up to South Carolina and buddy up with them.  I will let you know how that works out. TTFN

Bobcat at Fort Matanzas Beach