December 1-4, 2000 -- Watch Out Beaufort, Here We Are! Today we looked at our list and discovered that for most of the things that we need to do, we need to buy stuff. So instead, we took the dinghy up to Beaufort to look around. The trip wouldn't be nearly as long if we didn't have to do it at no wake speed, after all it is less than 3 miles there! When we got there, we took a look around the anchorage and saw a number of boats that we have seen in previous anchorages, especially from Wrightesville Beach! In fact, we followed Spice Island Lady's dinghy 'Nutmeg' to the dinghy dock. Beaufort is a quaint little town and we enjoyed wandering around. We had Lunch at Ollie's By The Sea before heading back to the dinghy. As we were pulling out, the folks on Wavewacker called to us, so we pulled back in and talked to them for a little bit. We came back to the boat, and checked our e-mail. Henri called us on the VHF, and offered to take us to the store; we gladly accepted his invitation. We stopped by a boat supply store, then went on to Publix to pick a few things that we are a little low on. On December 2, After breakfast, we took the dinghy into the Port Royal Marina and then walked to the auto parts store. We attempted to find some replacement belts, which turned out to be a bust! The counter help was certainly a misnomer! There was no help to be found there, and it seemed they only had enough intelligence to continue breathing. We returned to the boat excited to start work on installing the fuse holders for our radars. We looked for the fuse holders, and they were missing. After checking every conceivable place, we called Henri to see if they fell out in his car yesterday. No luck. Next we called the Boat Supply store. As it turns out, I forgot to put them in my bag! Charlotte remembered us and offered to drop them off to us at the marina, since she was headed there after work. Once we solved that mystery, Mike set to work prepping for the fuse holder installation while I checked the battery water. At 2:00 PM EST, we decided to head into the marina to meet her. We hung out there for a little bit over an hour. Since we never saw her, we figured that she had been detained at work and we would simply get them tomorrow so we headed back to the boat. After we came back, we saw a brown paper bag sitting on our deck. We checked and it was the stuff we bought at the boat supply store. We must have just missed her in the time it took us to travel from the boat to the dock! We will definitely need to call and thank her tomorrow or Monday! While Mike installed the fuse holders, I performed domestic chores (read unloaded the dishwasher). Then, while I reassembled our lower helm, Mike fixed dinner. We spent the rest of the evening in quiet contemplative repose. Read, there was nothing good on TV. On December 3, we woke up to a rainy icky day. We decided that it was the better part of descretion not to get off the boat today, so we didn't! On December 4, after listening to weather, we decided to move to our staging area at the mouth of the Port Royal Sound. First we headed in to Port Royal to pick up milk and smokes. We headed back to the boat and put the dinghy away. We headed down the Beaufort River and dropped anchor just inside the mouth of the sound behind a shoal. While anchoring, I had a problem with the windlass control. It chafed against the gypsy! Fortunately, it didn't chafe all the way through and we were able to finish anchoring! We spliced the wire back together before settling in for the evening. The anchorage is, in Mike's words, a 'rolly polly anchorage' with the swell coming from the Ocean and the wind waves coming from 90 ° off of the sea swell

December 5, 2000 -- Sapelo Here We Come! We raised the anchor at 1154 GMT this morning. The winds were blowing out of the north west, less than 10 knots. We noticed, again, that there are just an enormous number of dolphins in and around the Port Royal Sound. It is just absolutely amazing! At 1320 GMT, while nearing the Sea Buoy we talked with the USCG Cutter Matrona. The boat was doing something out by the sea buoy. We think that it is the buoy tender out of Charleston. Anyway, they hailed us right after we made our turn to head further south. They wanted to ascertain our intentions when they noticed we had already turned! At 1339, we had the funnest panic event ever. Mike looked over to starboard and saw a whale. Of course, he shouted, "WHALE!" I turned in time to see the tail and the remnants from the whale's spout. Mike went flying inside to turn the stereo on (while thinking of Lynn Pardey beating pots & pans to scare them away) while I stayed at the helm since I was already there in order to perform evasive maneuvers if necessary. Mike turned on the stereo loud to provide additional noise to help keep the whales away. After all, as the Coast Guard says, "Running into whales is not good for either the whale or the vessel." As soon as we calmed down and were sure that there was no imminent collision possibility, we called the Matrona to find out if we should report the whale sighting. They told us yes, and we could give our report to them if we wanted to. I gave them the approximate position of the whale sighting and the direction it was headed. They then asked us several questions about what the whale looked like. I calmly explained that we really didn't get past the 'oh my God there's a whale' to see any thing else. It took the radio man several minutes to come back to us. He asked me to repeat my last statement. I refined it and explained that everything happened to fast for us to get a clear look, other than to determine that it was definitely a whale. At 1420, Mike asked me if we did indeed have a heating pad. He then went in search of it. From that point on, we were sailing by heating pad! Throughout the rest of the day, we had west winds between 10 and 15 knots. This placed the wind in our sail area which allowed us to maintain speeds above 8.5 knots for most of the trip. At 1816, we heard our whale warning announcement! At 1918, we heard our whale announcement again, but this time it sighted the position we gave and gave the official Right Whale sighting number of 1010! Then, we headed into the Sapelo Sound. We followed where the deep water indications were on the chart and almost ran aground. At one point, we had 3.1 feet of water under the keel! But, we made it over the low spot and dropped anchor at 1955 GMT. After we got settled, we called Sea Tow Brunswick to get additional information on the Sapelo Sound. They called us back on the VHF radio a little bit later and gave us some guidelines to try. They also suggested trying to contact a shrimper or fishing vessel on channel 09 or 10 when we leave tomorrow. He said that they are usually very helpful, when you can get a hold of them

December 6, 2000 -- Fernandina Here We Come We got up at 1000 GMT this morning in order to watch for a large shrimper to follow, and to try to talk to one of them to get some additional local knowledge. At 1100 GMT, we tried calling the shrimpers on VHF channel 9. We were now 3 hours out of low tide. On our third call, the Shirley Anne came back to us. He instructed us to stay approximately 100 yards off the green buoys. He assured us that we would have plenty of water. He also offered to give us Loran coordinates, which we gladly accepted. Unfortunately, we were unable to convert the Loran coordinates to latitude longitude coordinates. We can accept Loran-C, but not Loran. He then told us that he draws 9 feet, and can go in and out of Sapelo in all tides. With this knowledge in hand, and our course appropriately replotted, we headed out of Sapelo Sound. We never saw less than 4 feet under us! This was much less stressful than entering had been! The rest of the trip was quiet and uneventful. As we came into the St. Mary's inlet, we saw a sub leaving. We dropped anchor in Fernandina Beach at 1830 GMT

December 7 - 12, 2000 -- Fernandina Beach Today, we went into town and picked up a new kitchen faucet for the sink. It has been slowly dying since Port Royal. We checked the hardware store there, but we didn't like what they had. After we arrived from Sapelo, it was having problems turning off, so we went to the hardware store and got one. On our way back to the dinghy, we stopped and picked up our mail. After we got back to the boat, we realized that we were incredibly stupid when we came in yesterday, since we forgot to stop and get fuel. We looked around for someone who could baby sit the dinghy we didn't want raise it and put it back down for a short trip to the fuel dock. Unfortunately, the people on the two boats we know just arrived from a 2 day trip from South Port. Instead, I headed over to Second Wish who we had seen at a few other anchorages and asked if they could baby sit our dinghy while we took the boat into the fuel dock for fuel. They were happy to. We took the boat in, took on 250 gallons of fuel and headed back out again. In gratitude, we had Second Wish over for drinks. We had a great time with them, and look forward to the time when we share an anchorage again. On December 8, Mike woke up at 4:00 am when he heard the chain rattling. Thinking we had another problem with the windless, he rushed out into the cold to check it out. As it turns out it was just some chain moving around. Since he was awake, Mike set about cleaning the floor in the galley and getting ready for us to install the new faucet. After I got up, we installed the new faucet! Next, we walked into the Post office to mail stuff. On our way back to the dinghy, we stopped for lunch at Brett's Waterway Cafe. We walked in and saw Bill and Paula from Wave Dancer. We haven't seen them since West Palm Beach last year. We had lunch with them and caught up on each other's adventures. On our way back to the boat, we decided to head over and see Elysia since they were at Tiger Point Marina, just around the bend from Fernandina Beach. We had heard from Wave Dancer that a boat had dragged into the channel and was run over by a tug and barge a couple of days before we got in. One person was killed and one managed to survive. The boat was moved over to Tiger Point. Eric and Susan from Elysia pointed it out to us and told us that they had heard the boat did not have an anchor light on so it was not seen. We see this type of thing all of the time, some folks think that just because several boat always anchor somewhere that it is a 'designated anchorage' and don't use an anchor light. While it is true that an anchor light is not required in a 'federal designated anchorage' most places are not designated anchorages. We always use anchor lights and in areas of commercial traffic add additional lighting like turning on our spreader lights to light up the mast or some other type of lighting for light recreational traffic. On December 9, we heard Windom check in on the net heading towards Fernandina Beach. In fact, they would be in by around 1:00 PM EST. We didn't do a whole lot today, until the evening, when we had Britt and Elana from Windom, Eric and Susan from Elysia and Bill and Paula from Wave Dancer over for cocktails. It was great to catch up with everyone! On December 10, it was foggy and rainy so we didn't do anything! On December 11, we went into town to the dollar store with Eric and Susan. Then we went to lunch at T-Ray's where Bill and Paula and the folks from Sea Love joined all of us. Next, we headed to Standard Boat Supply where we found the final piece for our Sea Anchor system. Finally, we headed back to the boat. We flipped on the TV and listened to the supreme court arguments! Just as the supreme court closed arguments, we fell asleep. That evening, we went over to Windom for a cocktail. While talking with them we said something about having to turn on our anchored in fog signal again tonight. Britt said they had heard it the other day and at first thought that it was something on their boat making noise. They started looking around before they discovered it was us. In thinking back on it we have discovered that so far when ever we are anchored in the fog we are the only boat around us sounding fog signals, at least that we have noticed. This has always made us wonder why other boats don't do this as well. Normally it is a function on the middle to upper end VHF's to sound signals when attached to a hailer speaker or a separate hailer can be purchased that performs all sound signals required by the Navigation Rules. The next time we are in heavy fog we are going to have to ask someone we know why they don't sound signals. Anyway we figure that if you can't see us, you sure as hell are going to hear us, so we use them. We know there is radar, but some of the smaller (35 feet & under) sailboats and power boats just don't show up on Radar very well. There have been several times that we have called other boats, just to let them know that if we did not see them with our eyes we would not know they are there since they are lost in the wave return on radar. So far everyone has taken this, as good to know so they could beef up there return with additional or better reflectors. We expect that sooner or later someone will tell us to f**k off, but if our return was poor we sure would want to know, so we could do something about it. On December 12, we got up at 5:30 AM EST to see if we could leave. It was extremely foggy out, so we decided not to leave. We didn't feel that we could make the speed necessary to make it to West Palm Beach with several hours of fog at this end. Unfortunately, we had forgotten about coming in to Fort Pierce, which would have been a good option. Later that morning, Mike had a touch of a stomach bug, so it was a good thing we didn't leave

We got up this early this morning to see if we could leave. We decided that the weather was to iffy for us, so we stayed put. This turned out to be a good thing since I had what Mike had yesterday! On December 14, again, we got up early to no avail. The VHF weather has been predicting an oncoming front for days now, and since they keep saying it will hit in 12 hours, we don't leave. Instead, we dropped the dinghy and went into town. We walked to the convenience store and picked up milk. Then, we went to T-Ray's for lunch. We spent the rest of the day lounging. On December 15, we got up early again! Still the same forecast. Of course, if we had left two days ago, the front would have attacked with a vengeance! Instead, we took the dinghy in to town and went to the grocery store. On December 16, we slept in until 8:00 AM EST. When we got up, it was way foggy. After the fog started lifting, we tried to head to the St. Mary's to visit Lionheart. We figured that the fog had lifted completely near the boat, that it should have burned off elsewhere. We made it (what we thought) was almost to the sound when we decided the fog was to heavy to continue. Instead, we headed into the dinghy dock. We went to the Boat House looking for 2/0 gauge wire. They don't have any, but we did notice that they had fenders. So, we headed back to the boat. Lionheart called and said that the fog had lifted where he is, so we set out again and turned around again. The fog was still to heavy to see well on the Sound. We had a quick snack, and set out again. This time we made it all the way to St. Mary's. We visited with Lionheart and then headed into St. Mary's to have pizza with them. Afterward, we left and headed back to the boat. The sound ride was interesting. The wind had started to kick up, and because three rivers meet there, we had turbulence from the current, as well as wind waves! We were in a good foot and a half chop. This doesn't sound bad, until you stop to consider that our dinghy has a freeboard of about 18 inches as well! Fortunately, being an inflatable, even if a wave broke in the dinghy it would still float! The dink took it great with only needing to slow down to make the ride smoother. We got back to the boat and after a quick discussion, we decided to pull into the dock for the expected winds and thunderstorms. Once bitten twice shy. (See May 14 and 15, 2000 log) On December 17, the front that has been being forecast for the past 4 days finally came through and the winds have started! The highest gust was approximately 45 knots. The winds were consistently 25 to 35 knots for most of the day. We tried to go to the Boat House to buy more fenders, but they are closed on Sundays. We left them a message hoping that they would open for us as well as a few other boats here so we could buy some additional fenders. We then improvised with items we had on the boat. This worked well and protected the boat for the rest of the day. Around 2:00 PM we were both able to come inside. The winds had slowed down and the seas were less violent. During all of this I managed to equalize batteries! Around sunset, just as forecast, the winds dropped down to 10 knots. We looked at each other (exhausted) and decided that there was no chance we would be leaving tomorrow, we were just too tired

I woke up this morning to Mike telling me that he thought we could leave based on the TV news. I got up and we started listening to the VHF weather forecast. At 8:00 AM, we came up on the SSB to talk with a friend who has been listening to the weather south for us. We discovered at this point that the current high and the next low are moving significantly faster than expected. The 36 hour weather window had now dropped to just over 18 hours. While we certainly could have pounded our way for the last 18 hours of the trip, we decided that waiting would be better than going. We have resigned ourselves to staying in Fernandina Beach forever, which all told isn't actually a bad place to be. The people are friendly and the place is nice (except for the paper mills). We then set about doing some of the things that we needed to do. We called Rybovich and let them know that we are still delayed, then called to have our mail sent. Next we walked to the Boat House to pick up some fenders for the 20+ knots of wind that is coming tomorrow. After that, we headed over to the hardware store in an effort to find a replacement light bulb for one of our combo strobe flash lights. No luck there! After we returned to the boat, we did laundry and I equalized the rest of the port battery bank and the starboard bank and we cleaned up the outside of the boat a little bit

On December 19, the winds were calm in the morning, so we took advantage of that and stayed quiet. The winds slowly started building after noon, so we started checking our fenders. Around 7:00 PM, the winds hit 40 for about 15 minutes, before dropping below 25 again, where they would stay for most of the rest of the night. On December 20, The winds dropped below 20 early this morning. It looks like there will be a weather window for tomorrow. In preparation, we headed out to the grocery store, and to Wal Mart to get an electric blanket. We returned to the boat and continued getting ready to go off shore. On a whim, we invited a couple of friends to go with us. They have been stuck in St. Mary's almost as long as we have been stuck in Fernandina Beach. Unfortunately, they can't take advantage of this weather window because they are waiting on packages. They arrived around 8:00 PM, and we left the dock around 0313 GMT (10:30 PM) because of forecast winds on Friday afternoon. The first part of the trip was very cold! We stood shortened watches, so that no one would get too cold! By morning, things started warming up a bit. At 1350 Bob spotted a dolphin off the starboard bow. At 1509, Mike did his flipper call, it is now officially an offshore passage. At 1720, Mike spotted a school of dolphins with babies. At 2129, I spotted dolphins, in fact one did a flip at the bow. At 0413 on December 22, the Coast Guard reported a partially submerged vessel at 76 degrees 41 minutes by 82 degrees 01 minutes. They later clarified that it was a 60 foot tug that had sunk! At 0925, shortly before we came to the Lake Worth inlet, Mike flipped the raycor filters on our main engines. At 1230 GMT December 22, we dropped anchor in Lake Worth. After taking a nap, Brenda and I went to the grocery store to get a turkey for Christmas

We all took it easy today. The only minor excitement was when we moved the boat to deeper water which took all of 20 minutes. On December 24, we again didn't do much, though we did make reservations for Bob and Brenda to get back to St. Mary's on the train. On December 25, we cooked, we ate, we vegged! Christmas dinner was fantastic, and the company was great. On December 26, Bob and Brenda headed back to St. Mary's. After seeing them off at the train station, I headed back to the boat where we spent the day quietly. On December 27, the wind finally slacked off enough for us to get off the boat. We headed into Riviera Beach to hit the boat stores for some wire. On the way, we ran into Bob from Shamaal, Eric from Elyssia and the folks from Sonny. We had lunch with them before returning to the boat to change Ling-Ling's oil. On December 28, We went in to Rybovich Spencer via dinghy to talk with Bryan about our haul-out and the insurance work that needs to be completed. We will be hauled the Wednesday after New Years. This work will complete the storm damage we took, way back in May. After we returned to the boat, the wind shifted directions. We turned in a direction we had not been before and did not like how close we where to another boat. Since they were here first it is our responsibly to move so we did. Just a little, but it gets us some offing on the other boat. On December 29, we decided that we would try to find the noise that has been haunting us since Wrightsville Beach last year. We opened the aft stateroom up, and the noise refused to sound! So, we shifted gears and started replacing all of the old charging wires for the alternators. On December 30, we put up string lights in the main saloon. While they don't put out much light, we like them better than the old fluorescents. They add a nice warm light to the saloon. While Mike was fixing dinner, he smelled electrical wires burning. It turned out to be one of the circuits in a DC fluorescent light in the galley. We quickly removed it! On December 31, we finished replacing the alternator wires and started running our new 2/0 gauge house bank wire. We celebrated New Years GMT style at 7:00 PM EST! Bob and Sherri on Shamaal, Eric and Susan on Ellysia and the folks from Second Sally all gathered with us on Nightwinds. It was a very fun evening. Happy New Years!