Back South
     While the rest of the country is gripped by bitter cold, Nico and I are back in Florida, waiting for a weather window to cross to the Bahamas. I didn't realize it would be such a challenge! The Gulf Stream runs north with a current of about 2.5 knots, sometimes more. If the wind is blowing from the North, then the current flowing against it develops lumpy, big waves. I remember crossing from Bermuda over thirty years ago, clipped to the rail, being terribly seasick. So this time we are waiting for more favorable conditions but the weather has been mostly brisk northerly winds with quite a bit of rain. However, we had a delightful time in Vero Beach, staying with Melanie Snowberger, Willie's girlfriend, visiting with Nico's brother Philip, and getting the boat ready. Willie was out at sea. Now we are anchored by Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge which has a short walk to miles of unspoiled beach. It's a favorite spot for seabirds and turtles. Humans have to get here by boat and they regularly close the beach during nesting times which helps keep it a refuge.

Home for the holidays

Willie and Melanie



Bon Voyage Dinner



Touching up the bottom paint before going back in the water at Ft. Pierce.



Rafting up in the popular Vero Beach Marina



On the "road" again along the ICW



Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge



Driftwood on the beach



The other side of the beach where we anchored

Cumberland Island, Georgia  - November 8 and 9, 2018

     One of my major goals for our trip was to return to a magical place called Cumberland Island. Ever since I heard about it from an acquaintance who was lucky enough to be descended from the original owners, I wanted to go. We took the kids about a dozen years ago, hiking and camping on its 20,000 acres - 9,000 are designated wilderness. It has 17 miles of undeveloped beach and a resident wild horse population. If you ever want to know what our southern coast was like before humans developed it, try to visit this National Seashore. Originally settled by the Timucuan tribe, the Spanish had a mission here until the English built defenses in the 1700's. Then, in 1803, the widow of a Revolutionary War hero, General Nathaniel Green built a house called Dungeness. In the early 1900's the industrialist, Thomas Carnegie, bought the land and built a huge mansion. His family built homes around the island. Eventually most of the land was given to the US government to form this park. There is a beautiful inn here called Greyfield and John F. Kennedy Jr. was married here in a church built many years ago by free African Americans.



The vegetation is mostly huge live oaks and palmetto. There are miles and miles of hiking trails like this.



All the roads are dirt. Many people travel by bike.



Not a house or condo in sight.



There were shore birds everywhere and, unlike most I've encountered, they had little fear of humans. They just kept probing for dinner as we walked up to them.



It is an amazing walking beach.



There are dunes...



..and miles and miles of marshes teeming with wildlife.



The ruins of Dungeness. In the evening Nico and I came ashore as the last ferry was leaving. It was like all the wildlife knew the day trippers were gone and they all came out. We saw armadillo, raccoon, many horses and tons of small deer.



It's hard to think they are wild. They look like they are part of the estate.



A mare feeding her youngster, who looked like a yearling.



They are the same size and shape as Mongolian or Newfoundland horses.



We even saw a piebald deer. It wasn't an albino since it had brown eyes and brown spots on its legs and one on top of its head.

Charleston, SC 2/28/18
     I have not posted in a while because we have been in the same spot for the past week. Initially we planned to stay in Charleston for a few days while Nico flew home for some business. However, our steering cables needed to be replaced and the transmission, which was acting up, finally gave up the ghost. Since it was replaced just last winter it is  now traveling back to Massachusetts for some warranty work while we stay tied to the marina dock without a functioning engine. The good news is that we are in a fabulous city, at an excellent marina and we have good friends who live here. A big shout out to Karen and Peter Lawson-Johnson who have lent us their car, their lovely guest room and their hospitality during our extended visit.
     This has given me the opportunity to learn more about life in the South. I have especially enjoyed learning about the colonial period and comparing it to New England. More significantly, I have learned how the incredible wealth of this area was a result of the institution of slavery which sets it apart from the former northern colonies.



This is the town house of a wealthy Huguenot plantation owner. He had hundreds of slaves planting rice on a nearby plantation. In town there were between 10 -15 slaves that kept his household running.



The interior details were exquisite.



     This is the home where George Washington stayed for a week. The privy is on the left (they found some great artifacts in it, including false teeth with a gold bridge), the kitchen and slave quarters are between it and the main house and the carriage house is on the right. In other parts of town people have converted the outbuilding into separate homes or have extended the main house to incorporate them.



The kitchen, which is located in a separate building due to fire hazards. The slaves slept above.



Everywhere I looked there were beautiful houses and gardens to look at. This is the doorway of my brother-in-law's (Philip and Ellen's) former house.



Most of the older homes, like Peter and Karen's, are one room wide with a large porch facing south to catch the breezes in the summer.



A private garden



Ancient live oaks are treated with care.



Former warehouses and shops, located by the waterfront, are painted pastel colors, reflecting Caribbean influence. This area is called Rainbow Row.



This is Cabbage Row, the setting for Porgy and Bess.



There are a few reminders of a not-so-great period of history - such as protection from the slave revolts. I saw beautiful furniture with bullet holes that came through the windows fired by Union soldiers. We also went to a museum that was one of forty private slave marts that cropped up after public sales were banned.




Spanish moss in the graveyard.



The city has seen its share of natural disasters, especially the terrible earthquake in 1886, tornadoes and a series of hurricanes, most memorably, Hugo. This has resulted in houses held together by metal bolts, funny angles and many that are being lifted up a floor to avoid constant flooding.



This is the inn where Nico and I spent two nights of our honeymoon when we drove to Florida so he could rejoin his ship, the Coast Guard cutter Steadfast.



You would not see kids playing like this in Maine this time of year. It is late October and the temperature has been cool at night (in the 60's) and warms up during the day (70's and even 80's).



Our neighbor at the marina. She is over 240 feet long and the largest single masted sloop in the world. Her mast towers over the city and the sheer size of her sails and hardware is amazing. Look her up on the internet - her name is M5.



As you can imagine, we have been enjoying the regional food. This is my breakfast of shrimp, grits, eggs and fried green tomatoes. No lunch needed that day. Nico had a chicken fried pork chop, eggs and grits.



When Nico went back to Maine for business I had to fend for myself. We are still waiting for our transmission so we will continue our exploration of this lovely, little city.

10/16/18 Hurricane Damage

     For those of us who live in Maine, we see terrible pictures of the hurricanes down South but they don’t seem real. It’s hard to relate to the force of these storms when all we are familiar with are nor’easters and ice storms. Hurricanes do damage that last for years. I remember going on a field trip in college and having my professor of Ecology point out effects of the Hurricane of ’38. Hurricane Harvey dumped so much water on Texas that it actually put a dent in the Earth’s surface from the weight of all that water. Now that I have been through the remains of a hurricane with winds of 75 knots - not the 130 that hit the Florida panhandle - I have a whole new respect for the sheer power of wind and water during these storms. As we travel down the coast of North Carolina I have seen the damage that Florence did a month ago. The trees are brown. Just about every house is missing parts of the roof or siding. Everyone along the waterway has a dock and just about every dock is destroyed. And then, there are the boats that weren’t as lucky as we were. Here are a few pictures of what we have seen.

10/12/18 Traveling Through the Swamps and Hurricane Michael

      After leaving the Chesapeake we have entered an entirely different environment characterized by the swamp. Swamps are miserable to try and walk through but when you have the luxury of gliding through in a boat, not worrying about snakes, they become beautiful in their own way. The Great Dismal Swamp was named by a disgruntled Revolutionary War era surveyor who was trying to determine the Virginia/North Carolina border. George Washington, however, saw the value of the wood, especially the cedar for shingles, and bought a huge amount of land in the area. The job of digging the canal to get the wood products out was horrific work, mostly done by slaves using shovels in chest high water. The water was brown from all the tannin in it. I learned that ships liked to take on this water for long voyages because the tannin kept the water from spoiling. The canal was very narrow and only 6 feet deep. We occasionally hit logs that were submerged. I heard a story of one boat that got stuck hitting a submerged SUV that someone had stolen and somehow dumped in the canal. We also got to go through two locks in the process which was new for us. One hazard was hitting branches. Our VHF radio wasn’t working well and we discovered later it was because we bent it over when we hit oak branches. At the Great Dismal Swamp Visitor Center and Rest Area, the only highway rest stop that I’ve spent the night in a boat, we hiked the trails and learned more history about the area. The only bright side for the slaves digging the canal is that they learned the lay of the land and it became an important component of the Underground Railway. Recent research has also determined that there were communities of runaways living on slightly higher “islands” in the swampland until after the Civil War.

    Our first lock experience


The vegetation




Lots of duckweed


Cypress Trees

 
The water was brown from the tannin 

     The canal soon became a small, twisty river through the cypress swamp and then joined a larger river before entering Albamarle Sound and heading to the Outer Banks, characterized by sand, wind and waves. We stopped at Kitty Hawk and walked to the Wright Brother’s Memorial. After seeing photographs of the flight I was so surprised to see Kill Devil Hill, once a giant sand dune, covered with grass so it would not blow away. The memorial was a massive 1930’s Art Deco structure.

The sculpture at Kitty Hawk

    
Kill Devil Hill


The monument

 
     
     The next leg of our journey had us scuttling back to the ICW for protection from Hurricane Michael. We traveled down the Alligator River - yes, there are alligators in it - and through another canal called the Alligator/Pungo River Canal. We entered the canal in the early morning and once again enjoyed the beauty of the swamp. The birds were amazing, especially hawks, buzzards and hundred of swallows. I’ve seen so many eagles on the trip too.

We bought crabs off a boat

Alligator River Canal
   
  Now we sit in a well protected creek called Slade Creek, waiting out the storm and admiring  the uninhabited swamp around us. This morning we heard coyotes yipping. We also found a green tree frog that has probably hitched a ride since the Dismal Swamp area. He is hanging out in a container with air holes and some Romaine lettuce until we can release him in a good spot. The wind is blowing 20 to 30 mph but it hasn’t started raining yet. We are ready for it.

Update - We were NOT ready for it. The forecast predicted winds of about 45 knots. We took off our jib, rolled up the bimini, took off all the gear on deck and anchored with twice the usual amount of chain. We had fun waiting for it to hit, reading and watching movies. Then, after dinner, the speed kept creeping up. First it was gusting to 40, then 50, then amazingly, 60 knots! At that point our alarm went off indicating that we were dragging our anchor! Nico lept on deck, started the engine and tried to motor up to relieve the pressure on the anchor but the engine wasn't powerful enough to combat the wind. I got out our second anchor, Nico set it and thankfully it held. It was attached to 150 feet of nylon line so I spent over an hour on the bow shinning a flashlight on the line, checking for chafe and blowing a whistle if Nico was in danger of running over it as he tried to keep pressure off it by motoring. It was blowing a steady 50 to 60, gusting to 75!  I learned later that 75 knots is like 85 MPH. Waves crashed over the bow, covering me as I clung to the staysail. At one point the second anchor, a Danforth, started to drag but caught again just a few feet from the shallows. Finally, after what seemed forever, the wind gradually started to abate. Although it had been raining, at this point all the stars were out.
     Nico stayed up the rest of the night, keeping an eye on the anchor, finally napping at 5:30. As soon as it was light, however, we hauled up the anchors and moved back to our original spot. We slept until 11:00.


The wind speed before all hell broke loose


Our chart plotter showing how we dragged