Adventures on Apropos

A day late, but delicious, none the less!  Open face turkey sandwich with stuffing and gravy - made me very happy! New crew, Frank, was dropped off in St Augustine yesterday by Maryellen, whom we will pick up in Stuart on Monday. Sorry, no pics - will have to get some for next blog. After lunch Maryellen drove back to Stuart and Frank and I wandered around town looking for a pub. We kinda failed!  I know there are several there but somehow they eluded us. We couldn’t get a Guinness but got a stout in a place claiming to be a pub. It had dartboards on the wall so I guess it counts as a pub! Temps this morning were in the low 40’s with wind from the north. Fortunately I think it got up to 60 by the time we arrived in Ponce Inlet (it’s between Daytona and New Smyrna Beach). It was a mostly uneventful day…but we did have to get 2 bridges to open for us - the bridge tenders were very pleasant.   We are at the Inlet Harbor Marina, where after I paid, I was disappointed to learn...

    There's no story here, just an awesome show put on by the dolphins in St Augustine!  

    Well, you probably think we sailed off the edge...but no, we did not.  Just a bit of a respite here in St. Augustine. We survived the anxious night (well, I'm anxious when anchored...Kathy assumes I know what I'm doing and all will be fine - she usually sleeps through my midnight escapades) at Sisters Creek - not sure I'd use that anchorage again! Between Sisters Creek and St. Augustine we finally were seeing true Florida ICW habitat, marshlands of previous days were gone.  Right before the St Augustine Municipal Marina one encounters the Bridge of Lions - even my little boat requires an opening of the bridge.  I got in line and notified the bridge tender that I wanted to pass through next opening then, fortunately, I had the foresight to hail the marina for mooring assignment.  Turns out we were to be in the north mooring field, right near the Fort, so notified the bridge tender that we did not need to pass through the bridge.  As the bridge only ...

    Perhaps our bumpiest day on record...and definitely our coldest!  At this inlet, the Cumberland River, we had to actually go out to the Atlantic then turn around and head back in to the ICW (if you cut straight across there is water only 1 foot deep). Layers, layers and more layers!  I had on a turtleneck, a sweatshirt, a fleece and my foul weather jacket! After getting through this we thought we would be good for a 2 pm landing in sisters creek...but noooooo!  The navy had other plans!  We were held up for an hour at Cumberland Sound waiting for a submarine to depart with its entourage. The wind didn't quit all day.  We checked the free dock at sisters creek, hoping for space but the boats were not well positioned so we didn't even try getting in there.  Had to try anchoring twice, first time I ended up in water too shallow (6' and getting too close to 4' and shore).  We moved up and dropped anchor at 14' but by the time the anchor was s...

  Now THIS is what you want your anchorage track to look like!  No straight lines (indicating dragging), just a nice arc around your anchor!       Another beautiful sunrise and we were en route to Jekyll Island.  Wind still blowing, fortunately mostly from behind us.   We've seen several bald eagles on the trip, like dolphins, we never get tired of seeing them.  This one was on the Mackay River.   It was still plenty windy when we arrived at Jekyll Island but there was plenty of help on the dock to get us fueled up, pumped out and backed up to free spot on the dock.  Shortly after we were settled we saw "Immrama" pull in for fuel and then moved to a slip across the dock from us.  This time we said hello and introduced ourselves.  They are on a nice looking MJM 40Z.   We arrived early enough in the day that we were able to borrow a courtesy golf cart and run into town for essentials (milk and bread).  We'd made arrange...

  We had a bit of light rain early in the day but mostly smooth travels from Isle of Hope to the Crescent River anchorage.  A few dolphin sightings but not so many as the previous few days. Crescent River was a nice anchorage - we were close to the boat that had been across the dock from us at Isle of Hope, "Immrama" (more on them later).  Our first location because it was to much in the middle of the river.  Moving up river seemed like a better option.   The wind was blowing pretty hard and didn't ever calm down.  I was trying to sleep but the wind was howling, the water was banging on the bow and, most distressingly, the anchor line kept hiking up the bow roller and every time the boat spun in the opposite direction the line would pop back to center with a THWANG!  I was concerned that this would wear on the line so got up at 1:30 or so and struggled to grab the line in front of the bow roller to tie it off to one side.  The wind was blowin...

  A view of Lady’s Island Marina (courtesy of Kathy) reflecting sunrise (no, it’s not on fire! A few final notes before moving on from Beaufort...       I made special breakfast on Monday, eggs Benedict!  Tasted wonderful but what a mess left for Kathy!   We got to share a really fun evening with Kimberly and Jeff, from Lady’s Island Marina. They joined us for cocktails, laughter, dinner and more laughter!  We will definitely try to rendezvous on the trip back north.  Our last morning we were met with a beautiful sunrise And onward to Isle of Hope... We actually have no pictures!  But, I think we hit a new high for number of dolphin sightings in a day! We arrived late afternoon and had to parallel park at the fuel dock...with a demon current and a little wind.  Big, fat catamaran sailboat in front, expensive Grand Banks behind.  Yikes!  Fortunately, we managed it with no yelling or tears.  After fueling up we moved over to...

  The anchorage at Fenwick Cut West was just lovely!  No dragging, not much wind, manageable current.  Sarah took a picture as we were hauling up the anchor.  An easy trip on Saturday to Beaufort, SC - Lady’s Island Marina, specifically. There are actually more shopping opportunities here than ‘downtown’ Beaufort. Also, the marina offers a courtesy car for the 3/4 mile trip to grocery stores (there’s a choice!), which certainly makes reprovisioning easier.  Our first night here we dined out nextdoor at Dockside - a very popular place and difficult to get in to (first come first serve only) but they have an arrangement with the marina to take reservations. It’s so popular that when we got there for 5pm reservation (before you make jokes about old people let me just explain that we hadn’t had lunch!) they had already sold out their special!  We both had swordfish, which was very good.  The generous portion made for an excellent addition to our lunch sala...

  Preparing for departure this morning I made a last minute decision to drive from the lower helm. We’ve not done that to date but with wind blowing like stink (guessing it was steady 15 with gusts to 20?), low temps (50’s) and having to cross Charleston harbor we opted for warmth and comfort.  Using the lower helm has its challenges - I removed the helm seat so have to stand and don’t have chart plotter at lower helm. I typically have iPad their that connects to garmin and lets me use all functions of the mfd (multi function display), but not quite as easily. To complicate things, I’ve been using the iPad to run aquamaps, which provides USAC soundings giving far more information on depth than the garmin. I use the garmin for navigation and controlling the autopilot (I almost never steer). When at the lower helm I found that I didn’t have the same aquamaps info on phone, split screen on iPad was useless for garmin functions (screen too small).  There really was no good se...

  So, before moving on to today’s journey, we’ll finish up on yesterday. Those of you who remember the blog postings of my last adventure will enjoy this one.  We were relatively comfy at anchor (A1 in pic)…had dinner and were relaxing and preparing for bed when I checked track on Navionics (didn’t save that one) and saw that we were dragging. Sigh.  It was REALLY dark (that’s what happens when anchoring ‘where the crawlers sing’) but at least a nearly full moon gave us some light.   We tried re-anchoring but with wind blowing like stink and a wicked current running added to prior failure I had no confidence in the set so ultimately decided to move on down the creek, cross the ICW and try again at anchorage A2 in the pic. The current must have been running contrary to the wind because we dropped the anchor directly at the green anchor icon and somehow the anchor dragged forward. It was all pretty much a nightmare but at 10:00 or so we thought we had a good set and sh...

  Don’t panic- it’s not us!  Heading south on the ICW one tends to see more and more abandoned boats - it’s always a sad sight.  We headed from Southport to Myrtle Beach Yacht Club yesterday - a trip roughly 4.5 hrs long. The trip itself was uneventful, which is how I like them!  At Myrtle Beach Yacht Club we were able to top off fuel and water. We walked next door to Clark’s for dinner. We had excellent service and enjoyed it calamari and she crab soup - the lava cake wasn’t too shabby, either! At the entrance to the harbor where MBYC is located, there stands this lighthouse - you can’t miss it! On the trip today from MBYC to our anchorage (which was supposed to be at butler island but turned out to be in Minim Creek - another story for another day) we learned something very exciting!  I never really knew where buoys came from, or where the go at end of life…today we saw this - it’s a buoy farm!  Apparently they grow buoys in South Carolina! And then we sa...

  This is the Figure Eight Island Bridge, just prior to where we turned off to anchor Saturday afternoon. A large go-fast boat had zoomed by prior to this bridge, leaving us to slog around his significant wake - the first irresponsible boater we’d encountered thus far. After we recovered we continued our slow pace towards the bridge. As I had done my homework, I knew that the bridge would not open for another 45 min but the numbskull on ‘Blackened Dolphin’ was clueless and found himself sitting there waiting for the opening. I just smiled.  We took our time leaving the anchorage at Middle Sound as we had a relatively short ride to Southport.  We took Snow’s Cut to Cape Fear River and at the end of the cut it felt like we were running a gauntlet - weaving back and forth around buoys. No time in there to get pictures! Arrival at Morning Star Marina was tricky…not much maneuvering room, a bit of traffic and a wicked current added to Kathy trying (and eventually succeeding) i...

  Not sure what happened…thought I was paying attention but it was a longer day than planned…looked over to shore and saw a giraffe - are we in Africa??? As a post script to yesterday’s Swansboro blog, we went to dinner at Boro last night and it was wonderful!  I had a swordfish piccata and Kathy had red drum fish - both were superb! We left Swansboro at about 8:30 today, planning for anchorage at Sloop Creek (which is in nowheresville, nc) but too much wind, no protection and too early to stop (1:00 pm) so continued on to Middle Sound anchorage (also found in nowheresville, nc) where there was too much wind and no protection but it was 3:00 so better time to stop! More dolphin sightings on today’s journey but I won’t bother you with another video.  Dinner tonight is ground beef with onions, shrooms, tomato, pasta and mozzarella. Not exciting but perfectly acceptable. We enjoyed it with a beautiful sunset

  We left Oriental just before 7:00 this morning...didn't realize how foggy it was!  We actually could see a quarter mile or so, so no big deal, turn on the running lights and radar and we were good to go.  Not a breath of wind, so, big surprise - more dead flat water! (not complaining!) We had several dolphin encounters today - this was the closest The fog cleared up when we entered Adams Creek but it remained cloudy for most of the day.  About an our from Swansboro in Bogue Sound we thought maybe we should move inside because even though forecast for Swansboro promised NO rain, it looked imminent.  We stood up and started to gather things to move down below and the heavens opened up on us!  In just moments we were pretty soaked - at least it wasn't cold and still virtually no wind, so no bumps in the road.   We have a slip at Casper's Marina in Swansboro...but no power.  That's ok - we'll have power in a different slip tomorrow.  We walked ...

  For Cathy Marsh - I finally found a way to compress the video I took of Apropos, so here it is:

  We headed out early this morning, about 7:30, trying to beat the SE Wind.  We were mostly successful - didn't hit chop until the Neuse River, about 11:00 or so - probably the bumpiest ride we've had to date.       This video was from Goose Creek...very pleasant ride.  We had to get past a few sailboats but then were able to maintain our 7 kt (8-9mph) average speed.   We couldn’t be any closer to the street without stopping traffic! Oriental seems like a pretty quiet place so far. We are tucked into the street side corner of the marine, facing the free town dock.   Across the street from us is a small pond with it's own Dragon!   Chip and Lynne Rice drove from New Bern yesterday to visit with us - we had a great time talking about old times at Fort Rachel and our various boating adventures.  Hoping to meet up with them in a couple of days in either Beaufort or Swansboro.  We somehow forgot to get pictures! Breakfast this...