Norfolk, VA
To see as much of the world as we can,
Using the smallest carbon footprint we can,
Spending the least amount of money we can,
Making as many friends we can.
12 years ago...
We'd bought a boat back in December. We'd fiddled about a bit in January and February.
Now, it's march, and she's going into the shed to have the foredeck (and some other places) rebuilt. Water had intruded and rotted the balsa …
Getting from New Smyrna Beach to Jensen Beach was a job and a half.
While the passage had its share of challenges, let's begin at the beginning.
This was not a lot of fun. It was about 90 minutes of dangerous, heavy labor. And the root cause wasn't …
The George Musson/Coronado Beach (SR 44) bridge, mile 845 is broken. CA found out today when walking back from the grocery store.
That changes our plans.
We'll wait here until the bridge is fixed and we have a suitable weather window.
Here's Red Ranger waiting. If you squint, you …
New Smyrna is nice. We'd like to see the keys, though, so we're waiting on weather.
Here's the far distant forecast.
FRIDAY...South winds 5 to 10 knots becoming southeast in the afternoon. Seas 3 to 4 feet with occasional seas to 5 feet.
FRIDAY NIGHT...South winds 5 to …
Been there. Know a lot of people who've been there.
Engine doesn't work.
Not us. Two fisherman who drifted through the anchorage.
We heard the faint beep-beep from a 75HP, electric start outboard that wasn't starting. They were prepared. Had an anchor. Seemed to know what they were …
Waiting for weather in New Smyrna Beach. Weather is pleasant. Anchor is holding.
This is the SafeAnchor app on the iPhone. It shows about 60' of movement between where I marked the anchor and where we are. In the SW corner of the circle, there's a …
The dinghy's name is Scout. Scout's original fuel tank was pretty beat up.
The tank was ancient — came with Red Ranger almost a decade ago — which means some of the plastic had started to crack. And other bits and pieces were starting to fall apart.
The …
Context. We pulled into St. Mary's on day 2, tail between our legs, licking our wounds. It's warmer than Charleston, but still right cold. 4°C, I think. We'd really like to go ashore and hike around, but, we found dinghy problems.
Anchored at 30°46.255′N 081°28 …
We had some problems. Some we solved, some we didn't solve. We had some disputes; they're resolved now. I think.
In the morning, I found that when the dinghy's fuel tank is COLD, it doesn't leak. So we started the day by going ashore. We do love Cumberland Island.
Yes. I know it's 2022. But our Red Ranger seasons work from May to May, so we're in the 2021-2022 season.
(And. Phase III? Yes. Phase I was get to Charleston. Phase II was leave the boat for a long time to take the train to California. Phase III is …
The Feb 8-9 weather window was not open quite as wide as we like.
It was cloudy leaving Charleston, but flat seas and light breezes. After a few hours of motoring along, I realized we had a serious problem.
During my afternoon nap (CA's watch) I sorted it out. For …
We started replacing the running rigging back in September. See Home Handicrafts — Splicing for the start of this. We're not done, but we're close. Really close. And I'm getting better at splicing.
The start of this effort is an exhaustive enumeration of all the running rigging. Red Ranger is a …
There's another big Winter Storm pummeling the northeast. Which means cold winds and high seas down here.
This has just shown up in the AMZ450 forecast for St. Mary's, GA.
Tuesday Night And Wednesday North winds 5 to 10 knots. Seas 2 to 4 feet.
And PredictWind has similar details …
There's kind of stomach-churning lurch that happens. It's a sudden change in direction or speed that seems to catch you off-guard; it's a visceral thing. A twinge in your gut that something's not right.
We leave Mom's a day early to avoid crap weather between Schenectady and Hendersonville. We leave …
If we didn't still have a million things to do, we should leave right now. But. We still have water tanks to fill, laundry to do, and we need to take the truck to storage. So. Instead of leaving when the window opens, we'll leave tomorrow as it's starting to …
What is the truck question? To keep or not to keep, that is the question. And if we keep, where to keep to avoid the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?
Back in '12, we sold the truck. No problem until we needed a vehicle to commute to a job …
It got cold. Much of the northeast had a huge winter blizzard.
We had this.
Yes, that's 38°F, which is really 3°C.
It's not a blizzard with dangerous levels of blowing snow. It's just cold. Indoors.
The space heaters are running non-stop. While today's …
Our 2012 Walker Bay has finally become more liability than asset.
Here she is, waiting to get rolled up and ready to be unshipped.
The high-pressure air floor finally sprang a leak.
We talked with repair places and they were not optimistic.
So we started looking …
We're heading South to visit — if we can — a bunch of birding sites, looking for bird sightings.
The overall, vague outline is to get to St. Mary's, GA, during the weather window on Tuesday. (We'd like to go Monday, but we won't quite be ready; stay tuned for complications.) The …
Today (Jan 16) we're enduring a big winter storm.
We're enduring it from the relative safety of Hendersonville, North Carolina.
Red Ranger is tied up at Cooper River Marina, in Charleston.
We can't really continue our Southbound journey until we can get out of the snowy mountains and down …