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.
Remaining moored in the Garrison Bight Mooring Field. Our location is 24°34.704′N 081°47.151′W.
The weather has started to moderate.
Small Craft Advisories for the last five days have kept us out of the dinghy, and sitting on Red Ranger …
Steadfastly moored in the Garrison Bight Mooring Field. Our location is 24°34.704′N 081°47.151′W.
You can -- in a way -- see the waves rolling through here. There are whitecaps. Which means the dinghy ride will be a Splashwater Kingdom water-slide. Except salty.
We're still anchored at 24°51.762′N 080°44.516′W, not far from Lower Matecumbe Key. There's a little sandbar for a little sandbar party. But It's Monday, so not much party action.
We spent two days waiting for weather. We did mostly nothing.
We had two days of stinky weather. It was blowing 20kt or so, gusting higher. We didn't want to mess with the dinghy, so we played quietly while we waited.
We discovered more rat damage to the front hatch screen. And rat scat on deck.
We didn't observe …
Checking the weather. Again.
This is from Zone AMZ650, Jupiter Inlet to Ocean Reef FL. It starts a little south of here. As long as we stay close to shore, it shouldn't be too bad.
- Monday:
- North northwest winds around 10 knots becoming northeast in the afternoon. Seas 2 to …
Check this out.
This barge came out to inspect and refurbish the moorings.
On a nice day with flat seas? Looks like it might be a fun outdoorsy job.
Today? With 2'-3' waves?
What a nightmare for this crew. They pointed out that we had …
We had a pile of problems today. Problems stack up from small to large. A kind of inverted pyramid of trouble. This left us feeling discouraged.
Today's problem #1: it's rough. The Jensen Beach mooring field is exposed to the East and South …
It's rough on the mooring ball. Breeze is in the teens, and gusting into the mid 20's.
The sea state starts to change at 17kt, what they call Force 5 on the Beaufort Scale. The key indicator? "Numerous Whitecaps".
In open water, this can mean …
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 …
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 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 …
We're glad we decided to wait one more day in New Bern.
The wind is still from the N and cold. But it has moderated from Gale force and Storm force down to simply a cold wind. There are only whitecaps in the river under the gusts.
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