Go West.

After we returned from Vermont we had a sleepless night thanks to high wind and heavy rain from Tropical Storm Ida. This makes for the third tropical storm in the past two months with Elsa, Henri, and Ida. What the hell? If we wanted this, we’d be living farther south. Sigh. Anyway, fortunately Ida had blown through by the time we were scheduled to officially haul out, so after a VERY busy few days securing Pegu Club for the winter and packing and re-packing the VDub, it was time to finally start our road trip and head west.

Our first stop was in Rochester, NY to visit Jeff’s family and wait for a slightly-delayed package that we had ordered while we we in Vermont. After spending way too much time charging our electronics in the campground’s bathroom, some research led us to ordering a Jackery 240 portable power bank and solar panel. It truly feels like a want vs. a need, but we’ve come to the realization that electronics – and the need to charge them – are simply a way of life for us now. They provide information and entertainment, and trying to figure out how to charge them as we drive across the country is not appealing in the slightest. An added bonus is that it’s small enough that we can use it on the boat after we get back.

While in Rochester we decided to take a day trip up to Buffalo to check out some Airstreams at an RV dealer that claimed to have them some in stock. An Airstream is far-off in the future, and we’ll definitely be buying used, but we wanted to see if our thoughts on the trailer’s length were on track. Well, we should have called because when we got there we were told that they didn’t have them on the lot. “But your website says you have them in inventory.” “Those are on order.” “Well, then they aren’t in your inventory.” Not that we needed confirmation that we would be buying used in the future, but this experience gave it to us anyway. It appears RV salespeople and dealers are as bad as most car salespeople and dealers.

The trip was not an entire waste, however, because we decided to regroup and head to Niagara Falls. When we lived in Rochester we went several times, and I even went there with a law school classmate after the first day of the bar exam to give us some much needed perspective. Seeing the falls never grows old though, and it had been awhile since we’d been, so off we went to be wowed once again by nature. Continue reading “Go West.” →

Escape to Vermont.

Our original plan was to haul out Pegu Club for the season on September 3rd and then head west on our cross-country camping trip. Hurricane/Tropical Storm Henri had other plans for us, however.

We had been tracking Henri ever since Chris Parker started mentioning him in his tropical weather e-mails. He showed up as a blob just south of Bermuda, and when we were first made aware of him I remember saying to Jeff that I hate it when storms develop in that area. Instead of following a fairly predictable path, they just wobble and wander around with the potential to cause trouble.

Sure enough, several days later Shenny had initiated its hurricane operations procedure and we were debating whether to haul out or not. After deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, we found ourselves out of the water a full two weeks earlier than we intended.

Pegu Club, hauled out for Henri. We were SO glad Henri didn’t damage any Shenny boats.

Fortunately, in literally he final hours of his approach Henri veered a bit east of us so all of the boats at Shenny, including Pegu Club, were unharmed. Less fortunate (I’ll never call it unfortunate because we avoided a direct hit), as one of the first of over 85 boats to be hauled out it was going to be awhile before the boats in front of Pegu would be put back in the water. Hurricane haul outs don’t include unstepping the mast, so leaving early to head west wasn’t an option. But living on the hard for several days wasn’t appealing in the slightest. What to do, what to do? It didn’t take long before we decided to go camping in Vermont for a week as a shake-down of sorts for the big camping trip. Continue reading “Escape to Vermont.” →

Mission accomplished!

A big goal that I set for myself this summer was to take Pegu Club out by myself. For some time now I’ve been confident that I had the knowledge to single-hand, and after cruising I also feel comfortable that if I was out by myself and something went wrong, I’d have a good foundation to try and figure out how to fix it.

In the nine years we’ve been sailing, Jeff and I have always traded responsibilities, so we both know all aspects of the boat from steering to working the lines, anchoring and docking. That’s always been important to both of us because we didn’t want to be in a position where if one person was in some way incapacitated (or one of us got annoyed and decided to toss the other one overboard – kidding, kidding!), the other person would be able to get the boat into port. We’ve heard of situations where something happened to (usually) the husband, and the wife didn’t know anything about how to handle the boat, requiring a rescue of some sort. That definitely won’t be us.

But feeling confident in theory and translating that confidence into action are two completely different things for me. I was still pretty nervous about actually doing it for one reason: docking. I’m at the helm 99% of the time when we bring her in and out of the dock (Jeff’s longer arms make it easier for him to quickly tie us off), so I wasn’t worried about that so much. It was the part where I would have to leave the helm and attach the spring line. Once she was attached, the rest of the lines could be done in a relatively leisurely fashion. I just didn’t want to break the dock or the boat in those seconds between entering the slip and attaching the spring line!

As an interim step, my Shenny friend, Sandy, offered to come along for moral support. She wouldn’t do anything unless I asked her – she’d just be there. So that’s how I found myself one day with the engine running, nervously casting the docklines off and backing out of the slip. Continue reading “Mission accomplished!” →

Two weeks, two vacations.

So how has it been to be boaters again rather than cruisers? In a word, great! We are so glad that we decided to come back to Shenny and Connecticut for a home base. We’ve been having a wonderful time hanging out with friends, re-visiting favorite places, going for daysails and the occasional weekend getaway, and we’ve been thoroughly enjoying the freedom of hopping into a car whenever we need groceries or want to go somewhere.

Yep, one of our first orders of business when we got back was to buy a used car. It took three days and a few near-misses, but we ended up with a FANTASTIC car – a 2014 VW Passat with only 36,000 miles on it, two owners, and zero accidents. It’s the fanciest car we’ve ever owned – it even has a sunroof! – and it’s going to be SO comfortable to drive across country next month.

But before we turn our sights to our trip west, first we had a long-planned two week vacation with fellow friends from Shenny. I’ll readily admit that up until the week before our departure we weren’t super-enthused about heading out for two weeks. We were still feeling a bit burned out and were searching for our mojo, but as the departure date drew closer we found ourselves getting more and more excited about it, and by the time vacation arrived we were raring to go! Continue reading “Two weeks, two vacations.” →

Cruising by the numbers – wrap up.

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I was going to do one more Cruising by the Numbers for the month of May, but we didn’t spend the whole month cruising. As a result, the cruising vs. non-cruising expenses started getting muddled together, so I figured I’d just post some random facts and figures instead. But first, here are May’s non-financial statistics from May 1 until May 21 when we pulled into our slip at Shenny:

Days under way: 12

Nautical miles covered: 644.07

Nights at anchor: 5

Nights on a mooring: 2

Nights in a slip: 12 (this included 4 nights at a free docks)

Nights underway: 1

Number of states: 5 (North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut)

As for cruising overall, we cast off the dock lines on September 3, 2018 and tied them again on May 21, 2021, totaling 993 days. Two things struck me as I went through the notes I’ve kept.

First: We were able to spend over nine months in the Bahamas. Many people never get to go at all, or, if they do, they spend a few days or a week. But getting to spend nine months there? How cool is that?? And, it’s entirely possible we will go down again in a few years. But if we don’t? What an adventure we’ve had!

Second: We acquired so much experience over the past three years. If you’re reading this and thinking, “I could never go cruising. I don’t have nearly enough experience,” just know that even though we had been sailing for several years before cutting the dock lines, our farthest trip had been 40 nautical miles, we had anchored less than a dozen times, and we had never sailed at night. Now? Well, you can see for yourself below. You can do it. At its core, each day is just more sailing.

Nautical miles traveled: 10,415

Days in the Bahamas: 288 (29% of the time)

Nights at anchor: 565 (57% of the time)

Nights on the hard: 45 (4% of the time). Most of that was 30 days at Shenny during the summer of 2019 when we traveled via automobile and airplane to visit family.

Overnights: 11

Three longest non-stop trips: 299 nautical miles, 294 nautical miles, and 250 nautical miles

Number of trips over 100 nautical miles: 12

Non-Bahamian squalls while underway: 2 – one in the Gulf Stream in Florida, and one off the coast of Virginia.

Number of tows needed: 1 – when we picked up bad fuel in the Abacos our first year, sailed to the St. John’s inlet by Jacksonville, and had a tow from TowBoat U.S. to Beach Marine in Jacksonville Beach.

Number of times the engine stopped unexpectedly: 4 – 2 times due to the above-referenced dirty fuel, 1 time from a dirty filter in the Exumas resulting in our anchoring under sail for the first time, and 1 time just outside the Ft. Pierce inlet when we were rolling around, lower on fuel than we realized, and the engine sucked in some air.

Number of times we felt unsafe: 2 – both in anchorages in Florida due to the actions of occupants of derelict boats (Cocoa Beach and Daytona Beach)

Number of Coast Guard boardings for a safety check: 1

Number of REALLY bad weather decisions: 1 – going south down the Jersey Coast in October, 2018.

Number of underwater dike collisions: 1 – that damn Reedy Island Dike in the Delaware Bay

Number of times we’ve been within 1 mile of the Reedy Island Dike since the collision: 0.

And scene.

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We’ve arrived at our slip at Shenny and with that, our full-time cruising adventures have come to an end.

Wait – what? Yep. We’ve been doing this for a touch under three years – 33 months to be exact. During that time we’ve been away from the boat for under six weeks. Cruising is great. It’s also not-so-great at times. We’ve learned a ton and seen some amazing places. But we‘ve always said that we’ll keep cruising as long as it’s fun. While it’s not un-fun (yes, I just made up that word), it’s time for a break.

What are we planning to do instead? We are going to spend this summer doing shorter trips, including a trip with Shenny friends to Martha’s Vineyard which will be a first for all of us. We’re really looking forward to it.

What about this winter? Several months ago we decided that instead of pointing Pegu Club’s bow south this winter, we’d put her on the hard at Shenny and be snowbirds on land instead of the water. We didn’t want to spend the winter in Florida, or really anywhere on the East Coast, and this California girl has been feeling the pull to spend more time there for quite awhile. So we’ve booked AirBnB’s in Palm Springs from November to mid-April.

We’ve bought a used car and we’re going to road trip across the USA (something I’ve done 3 times, but not since 1990), camping in National Parks along the way. Neither one of us has seen the Grand Canyon, and I’ve wanted to return to Bryce Canyon in Utah ever since I first saw it in 1990. Jeff will have his lifetime National Parks pass by the time we leave, and we are going to take full advantage of it. We’re very much looking forward to spending six months going on day hikes, eating Mexican food, visiting family and friends, and living on land in a few places vs. moving every week or two.

How about the Bahamas after spending a winter on land? That’s still to be determined. Maybe we’ll land travel out west again, or fly somewhere international. While I won’t say that we definitely won’t go to the Bahamas, it will likely be a few winters before we consider that option.

Is this just a prelude to selling the boat? Definitely not. We still really enjoy boating and we don’t want to stop. Wherever we spend our winters, we intend to move back onto Pegu Club in early May and spend the spring/summer/early fall living on her and sailing. We still want to explore Maine and Nova Scotia, and we’ve never been farther north on the boat than Rhode Island so there is still a lifetime’s worth of places left for us to discover.

If we only had a few years left on this planet, would we want to spend them cruising south every winter? Frankly, no. There are still far too many places where we want to spend months at a time – and not by traveling there on a boat. Traveling to the Bahamas on Pegu Club has been the adventure of a lifetime. Jeff and I will be sitting in rocking chairs one day playing “Remember when?” and boring people with tales about cruising full-time on a 30 foot sailboat for three years.

But cruising full-time is also undoubtedly difficult – more psychologically than physically. We both want to open the door and go for a walk without climbing into a dinghy first. Jeff wants to accumulate a few things and have somewhere to put them – even if it’s just in the trunk of our car. I want to run into people that I know when I’m out and about. We both want to look at the weather forecast solely to check if we need a jacket or an umbrella – not whether there is an upcoming system requiring us to raise the anchor and move somewhere else.

We want to keep sailing in New England, but living on the boat here during the winter is a non-starter, not to mention that I’m never again living year-round in a place with winter. Twenty-nine years was more than enough for me. So six months on Pegu Club (based in Shennecossett) and six months on land somewhere warmer than Connecticut sounds like the perfect balance right now.

Isn’t this summer still considered full-time cruising? Not in our book. If there is one thing that we didn’t understand until we started cruising, it’s that there’s a big difference between boating and cruising. People who haven’t cruised will swear up and down that it’s the same, but it simply isn’t. As long as we have a designated slip or a mooring that we repeatedly return to throughout the summer, we don’t consider ourselves to be cruising – we’re boating. And that’s fine with us. If we decide to head south again some autumn in the future, then we’ll be cruising again – not boating.

And the blog? I started this blog as a diary/scrapbook of sorts for Jeff and me to look at and reminisce on our adventures, and we both enjoy looking at old posts to see how far we’ve come. So I’m going to keep posting, but only when there is something that – to me – is worth putting pen to paper, so to speak. I imagine posts will be in spurts depending on whether we are out adventuring or just being couch potatoes.

So if you’re here for the sailing stories, check back periodically over the summer. Once the cool wind starts to blow, we’ll be going west for awhile, and the land stories will begin.

And just like that, the weather turned.

We had been at the marina in Belhaven for a week and had a one-day window to get up the Alligator River and across the Albemarle. If the weather was accurate, we’d be in Elizabeth City by the end of the day. If not, we’d be at the Alligator River Marina for at least three nights – if not longer.

Albemarle Sound is 50 miles wide (from east to west) and anywhere from 5-14 miles long (north to south). It’s deepest water is only 25 feet, but the route cruisers follow to get to Elizabeth City or Coinjock is generally about 10 -15 feet deep and 10 miles across. Because it’s so long and so shallow, any wind over 15 knots creates a nasty chop and tends to be a no-go for most boaters. On our first trip south we had 15-18 knots from behind and we surfed our way across, making a note never to cross it in winds over 15 knots (although we’d be willing to bump it up a tad once again if the wind was on our stern). Our forecast was for 15 knots from the northeast and dropping throughout the day, so with a reservation in hand at the Alligator River Marina in case it proved necessary, we set off with all of our fingers crossed. Continue reading “And just like that, the weather turned.” →

April by the numbers.

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We began April in the Abacos and wrapped it up in Wrightsville Beach, NC. This month’s spending was fairly high for us, with a big driver being the number of stays we had at a marina or on a mooring ball. We prefer to anchor out but with the exception of our two night stay on a mooring in St. Augustine and one night at St. James to time the current for the Cape Fear river, extremely uncooperative weather in areas with mediocre anchorages drove us to marinas. Had it not been for that, we would have come in right around $2,000 for the month.

Here we go: Continue reading “April by the numbers.” →

Will we ever make it to Norfolk, let alone Connecticut?

Of our three cruising seasons, this is the earliest in the calendar that we have headed north, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s been the most challenging as far as weather is concerned. Winter and spring are still battling it out, so the trip has been filled with starts and stops. Chris Parker has been saying in his emails that this pattern has been more reminiscent of early spring than of May. Great.

We are currently in Belhaven, NC and have yet to be able to travel for more than three days in a row before having to stop for weather. And believe me, some of those days have been less than comfortable. We had a particularly rolly, rollicking ride north on the Neuse River with the wind blowing 20+ knots – fortunately behind us. It wasn’t unexpected, but that doesn’t make it any fun.

Pegu Club going by Fernandina Beach, taken by our cruising friends on S/V Barry Duckworth.

We had hoped to hop outside when the opportunity presented itself, but so far those times have been so infrequent that it has made more sense just to keep moving north on the ICW vs. sitting and waiting for a window to maybe open up. At times my frustration level has been high, to put it mildly. I am SO OVER the ICW. Continue reading “Will we ever make it to Norfolk, let alone Connecticut?” →

Time to head back to the states.

After our driving tour of Eleuthera we turned our thoughts towards going back to the states. We had been in the Bahamas for almost four months, and we were increasingly fantasizing about Publix and other conveniences. This had been the longest stay of our three trips, and we agreed that next time we would keep it to three months. That seems to be about when we are ready for a change of scenery. The beaches and the water are gorgeous, but when it starts to feel like just another beach it’s time to go.

We wanted to cross back to the U.S. from the Abacos so we picked the best day to make the 55 nautical mile trip over from Eleuthera. Of course “best day” was relative. We were looking at a solid week of sloppy, rolly, crappy conditions so we chose the day that appeared to be the least sloppy, rolly, and crappy. We prefer not to have long days in those conditions, but at least if we know that’s how it’s going to be we can be mentally prepared for it. The forecast didn’t disappoint, but we sucked it up and anchored by Lynard Cay in the southern Abacos at the end of a long day. Continue reading “Time to head back to the states.” →