Stuart to St Pete

Storms over Stuart

We ended up having a great few days in Stuart. One of the highlights was a visit from friends, Todd and Mai, whom we met several years ago on a dive trip in Indonesia. Over the years we’ve kept in touch on FB and have both moved from CA to FL. It was wonderful to reconnect!

Originally, we’d thought that we would stay in Stuart until Tuesday or Wednesday, letting Alberto clear through, the wind/seas calm down, and the lake come up – then we could decide whether we’d go through or around Florida to get home. But then we had a very serendipitous encounter and we found ourselves fleeing Stuart on very short notice!

Sunday evening Martin and I took advantage of 20 minutes of rainlessness to enjoy a brief happy hour on the flybridge. While up there, some folks came walking by and introduced themselves – they were from St Pete and one gentleman, Mark, is a friend of Jim’s as well. We got to talking and he told us that he’d just come through the lake and that there was plenty of water but that there’s a railroad bridge on the east side of Lake Okeechobee that’s going down for repairs. He was told that passage through would be challenging to impossible over the next couple of weeks. Whoa!! I’d read on the Waterway Guide that the Ortona Lock was undergoing repairs in a week or so and would be down but we still had plenty of time to get through before that. I’d heard nothing of the Indiantown RR bridge.

Monday morning we called the bridge and sure enough, we were told to “come through today or be prepared to wait hours to try to get through once work starts on Tuesday”. Yikes.  Martin and I aren’t the best at spontenaity, we like to have a plan and try to stick to it which, unfortunately, doesn’t work well with boating in general. But we managed to come to a decision and act quickly – it was helpful to have Jim with us too! We wanted a mid to rising tide while going up to the Stuart Lock and it happened to be high tide when we made the decision to go so we had to act fast if we wanted to catch a falling highish tide. We managed to return a rental car, check out of the marina and cast off within 45 minutes – we’re so proud!

The rest of day couldn’t have gone better! We made the first lock just as it’d released folks to the east side and passed right through -raising up 14.6 feet

Entering locks

Unhappy reptile in the lock!

Then we got to the infamous RR bridge and it was open so we passed through there. Indiantown Marina wasn’t responding to phone calls or the VHF so we figured we’d tie up to the dolphins at the Mayaca Lock. We got there around 3:00 and they were just locking a few boats through coming east. It was pretty blowy but we figured we could push on and make it to Roland & Mary Martin’s Marina before nightfall so decided to keep going through Lake Ochechobee. And the lake was dis.gust.ing. It was pretty windy and as NOAA said, it was “moderately choppy”. We had, quite literally, black water spraying up over the bow and all over the boat for a few hours. B needed a good rinsing when we got in. Amazingly, it didn’t rain one bit the entire day which we were happy for – we’d been worried that we could have gotten hit with a squall that day.

Looked like a big ol’ milkshake!

We arrived at Roland Martin’s around 6:30 and tied up to the dock. After attending to Blossom for a bit (nasty dirty) we cleaned up and enjoyed dinner at the restaurant there.

No, none of us had the gator for dinner 😊

This morning we awoke to welcomed, sunny blue skies, it was nice to have the break. We weren’t sure where we’d stop for the day, again, thinking we could pick River Forest, La Belle, Calusa Jack’s or Ft Myers depending on our speed, weather and dockage availability.

River Forest

We played a sort of “eye spy” game as we cruised along through Florida. Our tally was: 1 hawk (who flew very close by the boat and was gorgeous), several cows, herds of horses + a donkey, 1 bald eagle, several osprey, anhingas, 2 raccoons, 1 wild turkey, 2 turtles, 2 manatee, 1 live gator sunning, 1 live gator swimming, and 1, I kid you not, enormous headless gator body being eaten by half a dozen buzzards!!  It must have been killed by a propeller?  

Ft Myers

We made incredible time and found ourselves arriving into Ft Myers around 5:15pm. The municipal marina had space for us so we decided to stay there for a night or two. The marina is right next to downtown and we were well protected on the inside dock. We’d definitely stay there again. We weathered a rainy gray day and then woke up to blue skies and a calm wind on Thursday – a perfect day to go home!

West coast of Florida

Mellow trip w/ Martin on watch

The trip up the coast was largely uneventful. Seas were wonderfully calm and somehow we managed another transit day with no rain or storms. My first engine room check I did notice that we were low on hydraulic oil. A bit of searching and we found the starboard stabilizer cylinder was leaking. Martin locked the fin and we continued on – the seas were calm and we didn’t really notice we were down a stabilizer.

St Pete in the distance – almost home!

By the time we arrived in the bay it was dead calm and amazingly beautiful. The water looked like velvet. The best thing was that we were in and tied to the transient dock at 11:55pm so we made it back to St Pete in May – if only by 5 minutes 😊 

What a morning view!

The next morning we had our inspection (to get our permanent slip assignment. We gave B a thorough wash down and moved to her new home. Et voila!

Blossom at the fuel dock (thank you Diane for the photo!)

Blossom in her new home

The trip was a bit of a frustrating with the rainy, windy weather but it was great to be back aboard and to get Blossom back to Florida. We can’t thank Jim enough – he’s the best and we so appreciate his help getting us home!

And now it’s summer time… Blossom will spend part of the summer in St Pete and part in River Forest while we’re traveling (River Forest is our hurricane plan for the season). It’s only a 36 hour trip so we can bring her back and forth as weather permits.

Boat Business: A few leaky issues:

• The sump pump for the condensate on the AC compressors is leaking a little bit. Another task for St Pete.
• The fresh water faucet on the foredeck has a slight leak.
• The starboard stabilizer cylinder has sprung a leak. We lost a bit of oil on the trip up. We spoke with an ABT tech and he'll be coming Tuesday.

Charleston to Stuart, FL

We’re getting closer to home, one passage at a time, one storm at a time!

While we love Charleston, we'd spent a rainy week there and were itching to move on. I’d been glued to the weather and there were early warnings of a possible tropical disturbance developing in the Gulf later in the week. So we decided we should leave and get further south even if the conditions were a bit bumpy. And they were! We left Monday morning and pushed through beamy/head seas – conditions which make Blossom hobby horse. Conditions varied over the 52-hour passage as we crept along the coast with it calming down significantly the last 8 hours or so. No one got sick though and having 8 hours to rest between shifts was a God-send. I even managed to take a shower and only bruised one side of my body 😉

A Brown Boobie took a rest on our bow the first evening. He spent an hour grooming his feathers and I think he was planning on spending the night. Unfortunately, we turned a bit east and it got too bumpy for him to hold on.

Very pretty bird

When we left, we weren’t really sure where we’d be stopping, just that we wanted to make it to Cape Canaveral or further south.  We decided to stop in Stuart though we probably could have gone another half day to Ft Lauderdale. Part of the reason we stopped in Stuart is that we’re eyeing Lake Okeechobee. It’s possible to cut through the state through the lake if it’s high enough. That would cut our trip short by about 250 miles and we wouldn’t need to wait for the seas to calm down after the storm… It looks like we might have made the right decision – the lake has been coming up every day and central Florida is looking at getting 6-10 inches of rain over the long weekend. (Yikes!)

Sunset Bay Marina had a slip available for us which was great – I was worried it would be hard to get a slip over the holiday weekend. I think we got lucky as the marina is pretty darn full! It’s weird being back in Stuart – we lived here for 7 months back in 2014 while commissioning Blossom and haven’t been back since. We ended up arriving at dead low tide and were warned off passing through the crossroads area of the ICW. So we dropped anchor and waited for the tide to come in. After chatting with Sea Tow and a couple boats passing by we decided to drop Petal and do some sounding.

Martin and Jim checking depths

By now it was mid-tide rising and the guys saw plenty of water. We passed through with 1.5 under the keel at it’s shallowest. Boating in Florida is an exercise is navigating shallow water!

Going through the Roosevelt Bridge – just ahead of some wet weather!

We’ve never stayed at Sunset Bay though we’ve eaten at the restaurant there several times. It’s a pretty marina and it’s just a 5 minute walk into the cute downtown area from there. We pulled in to a dock filled with Nordhavns and Krogans and bumped into our water maker technician and later, the commissioning manager who commissioned Blossom.

As usual, we're enjoying one of our favorite aspects of cruising - the community! We passed by a Nordy on our way down here from the west coast of Florida and had a great chat on the radio. Then we met an awesome couple on another Nordy here at Sunset and found we had a number of cruising friends in common... It's such a small community of friendly, interesting people!

We’re happy to be here and able to ride out the weekend in comfort. The storm has in fact developed into a subtropical storm and is currently the first named storm of the season - Alberto. Hopefully it won’t strengthen beyond a Tropical Storm before it hits landfall on the northern Gulf coast. With crazy rainfall expected throughout Florida, we’re assuming the lake will be nice and deep by early next week when we hope to cross.

Boat Business:

• Our 9k gen died on the passage down. Martin found that a breaker had failed. The same thing happened in 2014 so we had a spare.
• Jim replaced the filters in the air handlers and sneezing seems to have lessoned on board. I’m still finding yellow dust in nooks and crannies…

Charleston

I loved being in one of my favorite cities again! 

We exited the inlet at Beaufort around 1pm, having left our anchorage at 6am. The first half of the passage was bumpy but thankfully it calmed down for the remainder of the trip. It took us 28 hours total.

Martin taking us out of Beaufort

I was disappointed that even with a patch on (scopolamine) and an electric pulse/acupressure bracelet, I still suffered from sea sick symptoms. They were mild - headache and lethargy but dang, I really hate that this happens.  We all took 4 hour shifts so it was really nice to have 8 hours off. It just happened that I got the 4-8 shift and then realized I got to see sunset and sunrise – the perfect shift!

Sunset over NC

We caught a fish! 

Our bow is 10 feet high, he must have come aboard on the first half of the trip 😊

Blossom performed like the champ she is. We had no issues at all. We traveled in comfort with the gen on and AC running – we had so much spray coming over the bow and hitting the windshields that we figured any open doors or portholes were just going to leave the boat coated inside from the salty air.

We got in comfortably ahead of the front and settled in for a few days. Check out our neighbor for the first few days – Aviva. Man oh man she’s a big girl. With a squash court inside apparently!

We took a couple photos as she spun around on her way out…

We enjoyed spending some time in Charleston, eating at a couple great restaurants and enjoying some down time after 7 days of moving.  Now there’s a slight break in the weather and we’re heading out to get as far south as we can before another front starts up the coast of Florida. We’re hoping to run until Thursday and make it down to Ft Pierce or Palm Beach before the seas pick up and get snarky.

See you in Florida!

Boat Business:

• We have a minor leak in the 20K generator strainer. It’s minor so we’ll deal with it down in Florida when we can get a hold of some o-rings.

Irma and a Change of Plans

Once again, I’m very behind on our blog. Well, our cruising season ending up taking a bit of a detour this year!  Here’s the scoop:

We returned the end of August from a (Fabulous!) vacation in Bordeaux, France. We stayed with friends aboard their boat and had the most amazing time...

 The water mirror in Bordeaux

 Boats in Bordeaux (that's the color of the water - solid silt!)

 Wine school and workshops...

 Yes, even cheese classes!

 Voyaging down the Garonne. Talk about current and silt!

 The French seaside village of Royan

A brief tour de Paris

As soon as we got back there was talk of Irma. We did a bit of sightseeing, like visiting the National Air and Space Museum in DC (which was amazing!!).

Blackbird and the Space Shuttle Discovery in the background, pretty darn cool

We decided, however, to stay in port as we watched her track and tried to make the best decisions as to what to do. It’s not an easy task when you don’t really know where it’s going to go until you’re about 3 days out. With a new home in St Pete, FL, a mother in SC and a boat on the Chesapeake, we were fearful that one or more would be a target of such a monster storm. We ended up renting a car and made sure my Mom was safe, returning to Blossom in case we needed to prepare her for high winds.

Then Irma moved west and we had a pretty miserable weekend as we waited to see what she would do to Florida. We crossed our fingers and I got little sleep but in the end, the storm spared our new city the worse of it as it passed the Tampa area as a Cat 1. My heart breaks for the folks who weren’t so lucky. News and video from the islands and southern parts of Florida and Puerto Rico are distressing to say the least.

As we were waiting to see what Irma would bring, we were also watching Jose, close on Irma’s heels with early models hinting a possible northern landfall. And thus, I reached the end of what little resiliency I have and we decided to pull the plug on our 2017 cruising season a bit early. I take full responsibility – the stress of having two homes and family spread over 1000+ miles, all potentially in harms way was too much. The idea was that if we could get Blossom out of the water and safe, we could better focus our energy. 

Blossom on her way to her hibernating home for the winter

I found a marina in Baltimore that could haul Blossom out and put her on the hard, in a storm-rated, heated shed. Initially they said we could stay until mid-Oct, when the winter boats would be coming in. Then they said that there was room and we could stay for the winter if we wanted. Anyone who’s hauled a boat knows it’s a harrowing experience so the thought of doing it once and letting her be was appealing. Though we’d played with the idea of bringing Blossom down to Florida this fall, the logistics were proving difficult because of our schedule and so we made the decision to end our season.  

We raced through 3 days of moving to Pleasure Cove Marina, hauling the boat and prepping her as best we could. Then we drove the 1000+ miles to St Pete.  We found our home in good shape and still with power and internet. We lost one sickly tree and had a messy yard - we were incredibly fortunate. I'm happy to be back in Florida for the rest of the season so we can board up if necessary and be properly prepared if the Gulf kicks up another storm this year.

We’ll be returning to Blossom for a few days in early October to finish prepping her. In defense of mold, mildew and all things stinky means I need to give her a proper vinegar wash down and put our anti-mildew packets in all the lockers. Martin has some work he’d like to do while she’s above ground and can access strainers and the like. We’ll post a final blog entry once that’s been complete.

Stay safe everyone!

Boat Business:

• Oil changes. Martin changed the oil on the main, wing, and both generators
• Bathroom sinks. Though Martin had done much investigative work, our sinks were still draining way too slowly. This time, we disassembled the drain in the sink and oh, let’s not in to detail. Suffice it to say, the sinks are clear and draining easily now! Give that man a beer…
• Windshield Wipers. Blossom needed new ones so Martin replaced them.
• Lines, Balls and Fenders. Impending storms motivated us to purchase a few things… We now have another gi-normous 3ft ball, 2 large horizontal monsters and 4 exceedingly expensive 1 inch storm lines. I don’t want to “bring it on” but if we’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, we’re better prepared.

Guests Aboard

A beautiful evening at anchor

Look at that shine!

[Once again, I’ve fallen far behind on our blog. This entry is from early August.]

We returned to Blossom the last week of July to find her looking spectacularly shiny and sparkly! We had hired a local detailing company who came very highly recommended to wax and detail Blossom. They were almost finished when we arrived – we flipped her around as soon as we got in so they could finish off the hull.  Wow – she’s pretty 😊 

We were only back for 12 days but packed a lot of fun into that time. Our friends John & Steve came up from the DC area on Saturday and we had a wonderful time enjoying happy hour on the flybridge and dinner at Sam’s Waterfront.  Sunday we played pickle ball and provisioned for the week ahead. We only recently realized the marina will provide a shuttle to where we need to go so we took advantage and did a “heavy provisioning run”. The boat was bursting with wine, beer, juice, laundry detergent…the essentials.

The following Monday we welcomed our guests, as my Aunt Lori and Jim arrived to spend the week with us. We had such a fantastic visit with them!  We enjoyed a day at the marina and took the opportunity to introduce them to our two favorite games straight away - Mollky and pickle ball... 

Lori, Martin and Me

Lori & Jim at happy hour on Blossom :)

An evening aboard (Martin is sporting his new flamingo shirt)

And then set off to St. Michael's for a few days of R&R...

Driving from the fly bridge

Ladies in Charge

We couldn’t have asked for better weather. It was warm and sunny except in the evenings when huge storms skirted us so we had dry views of distance lightening. We walked the town, pounded crabs with mallets, kayaked, toured in the dinghy, fished, and enjoyed the Wednesday night beer can sailing races from the flybridge.  

A picture is worth a thousand words so they say, so here you go... :) (Thank you Lori & Jim for the photos!)

On way to town

Me and Martin, being dorky tenticle twinsies :)

The ladies kayaking

On our way to the crabs

The restaurant provided instructions but there was a couple sitting next to us that provided additional and very helpful instructions :)

This is how it's done

Let the fun begin!

Jim learns the ropes

And away he goes!

We had an amazing time with them and boy, Blossom felt lonely when they left later that week!

It seemed impossible that time could go by so quickly but suddenly we found ourselves prepping for another trip back to Florida where work was in full swing.

 Gratuitous sunset photo

 Boat Business: 

• Sparkly. We’re really pleased with the wax and detail work we got. Blossom is so sparkly!

• AC and Dehumidifying. We came back to a warm boat this time. It seems that the 50 amp  breaker we’re using for AC had popped. We had closed all the blinds and had the window screens on so the boat was fine but it was too damp for my liking. Since she kept reasonably warm and not hot, we decided to set up the dehumidifier and fans when we leave again. That way, if the AC goes off, at least she’ll stay dry inside and there’s less to worry about with the big AC pump off.

• Updated the Maretron screens to the latest software version. This included functionality that Martin had requested to Maretron last year, so he was very happy!

• KVH Satellite Phone. Dead again! Twice in less than 4 years isn’t a very good track record. Their customer service has been stellar but I wish the reliability of the product was better. We need to get it up and running by this fall. Martin has arranged for a swap "in-place". The replacement unit has arrived and Martin will be installing it this weekend.

• Martin changed out the charcoal in the gray tank vent filter.

• Fly Bridge Fridge. We don’t normally have this fridge on unless we have guests aboard. We used it this week and it was fantastic to have drinks and ice up top!

• Blossom’s Bottom. We hired a diver to clean the bottom and check our zincs. We had noticed that she was running a bit hot during our run up. The diver confirmed that we had algae growth on the keel cooler, but very few barnacles. He did pull a few big barnacles out of the thruster tubes. Probably missed at the last cleaning when they were small. She ran much cooler when we ran her up this week.