It’s our two year cruiseaversary!

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September 3rd marked exactly two years since we cast off the dock lines in Groton, Connecticut and headed out on this adventure. It’s been amazing, sometimes boring, and occasionally scary, but not once have we regretted doing it. In fact, with Covid currently turning cruising plans upside down for so many people, we are glad we left when we did. Although I feel confident that eventually things will return to normal, if we decide to swallow the anchor before it does then at least we will know we had a heck of a year and a half before it all went haywire.

Anniversaries being what they are, I’ve found myself reflecting on the past two years and how much easier the second year was compared to the first.

The first three months of cruising was hard. Books, blogs and videos can’t adequately convey the mental stress of each day being a new experience on the boat. For the first few months our brains felt like they were on hyper alert every waking hour. Every mile under the keel was an area we hadn’t seen before – a new route, a new anchorage, a new town. Not that we weren’t having fun. But there was certainly an underlying level of stress that was constantly percolating in the background.

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Wrapping up our stay in Cambridge.

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been here for six weeks already. It’s even harder to believe that in another week we’ll start slowly moving south. Our travel plans have been a bit topsy-turvey since Isaias messed up our timing, but we think we have a rough outline now.

Originally we were going to drive up to Connecticut for medical appointments while we were docked in Cambridge, but we had to reschedule everything when it was clear that Isaias was going to show up while we were away. With appointments moved to mid-September, the next plan was to leave the marina a few days early and park the boat on a mooring ball in Annapolis while we were gone. Then we had the bottom of the boat cleaned last week and based on the report from the diver, our hopes of getting another year out of our existing bottom paint were squashed.

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An old workhorse – our Origo alcohol stove.

At least once a month there are questions on the cruising forums or one of the Facebook pages about alcohol stoves. Invariably people will chime in about how dangerous they are, how slow it is, how it doesn’t burn hot, etc. I try to dispel the myths, but I figured it was time for a blog post on the subject. Perhaps it will help people who Google the subject but don’t necessarily participate in the forums or use Facebook.

We bought an Origo stove for our Bristol 24 and Pegu Club came with one, so we have been using them now for the seven years (wow!) we’ve owned a boat. Given that we did a complete refit on Pegu Club and touched virtually everything on her, it would stand to reason that if we weren’t satisfied with an alcohol stove we would have taken the refit opportunity to switch to propane or gas. But I can honestly say that the subject of switching never came up because we were 100% satisfied with using an alcohol stove.

So without further introduction, below are my answers to the questions that seem to come up most frequently: Continue reading “An old workhorse – our Origo alcohol stove.” →

Our first real weather event – Isaias

We had debated spending the summer in Vero Beach, FL, then Beaufort, SC, rejecting both because of the hurricane risk. Not wanting to travel as far north as southern New England this year, we settled on the Chesapeake with the rationale that it rarely gets hit by a hurricane. Well, by the time Isaias arrived in Maryland he wasn’t a hurricane anymore, but he was a strong tropical storm. And wouldn’t you know it? Cambridge, MD was right in his crosshairs.

Our friends on S/V Minx are cruising in New England and several days before Isaias’ arrival they had kindly offered us their slip located in a true hurricane hole in the upper Chesapeake. We debated taking it but the slip was 75 nautical miles away and we foolishly thought, “What are the odds?” Ultimately it turned out the odds were very good, but by the time we figured that out it was a bit too late to make the trip. With that option off of the table and the marina wide open to the Choptank River, we decided to take our chances in a local anchorage.

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July by the numbers.

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July saw us wrapping up our 2019-2020 cruising season with a short few weeks of travel from the Dismal Swamp Canal, VA to Cambridge, MD. We’ll be staying in Cambridge for two months taking care of some boat projects and making a few trips to Connecticut for medical appointments.

Financially it was also a quiet month which is good given that I’m still trying to psychologically recover from the watermaker purchase!

Here we go:

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A no-brainer.

After leaving Oriental we made steady progress north. We reluctantly decided to skip our beloved Belhaven, which is the first time we’ve missed it. Unfortunately Covid cases were increasing in North Carolina and from what we could observe on Facebook, Belhaven residents weren’t fans of masks. Sadly, if that attitude remains Belhaven will have to be a pass for us until Covid is somehow resolved.

**Looks like there’s no point in swimming for respite on the Pamlico Sound in late June – the water temperature was 100 degrees!**

We had a sporty ride across the Albemarle (it’s a large, shallow body of water so every time a gnat farts a nasty chop kicks up), spent several days sweating it out in the Dismal Swamp Canal, and rode out the Fourth of July weekend anchored at Hospital Point by Portsmouth, VA.

**The Saharan dust cloud turned the sky steel gray crossing the Albemarle.**

**Wandering on a path at the Dismal Swamp park.**

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A luxury worth every dollar.

When we left to go cruising one of the things that we didn’t have was a watermaker. A watermaker is a shorthand description for a reverse osmosis system. Basically it takes sea water, brackish water, or river water and turns it into drinking water.

We had put a deposit down on one at the Annapolis boat show the fall before we left, then Jeff was diagnosed with his CHF so we got our deposit returned because we thought we’d be postponing our departure. When we realized we could leave as planned, we decided to hold off on the purchase and see how cruising was without it. After all, you can buy a heck of a lot of water for the price of a watermaker.

Pegu Club’s water tanks hold 63 gallons, plus we have two jerry jugs giving us a total of 73 gallons of water capacity. We discovered that by being extremely careful with our usage, we could make 73 gallons last for around around 4-5 weeks if we weren’t swimming regularly, 3-4 weeks if we were. Government statistics state that the average person in the U.S. uses 80-100 gallons of water per day for indoor home use, a shocking amount when you think about it.
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June by the numbers.

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Not a bad month considering all of the time we spent at marinas and the cost for the engine work at Deaton’s. We splurged on a week at Lady’s Island Marina in Beaufort, SC which was a mini-vacation given how much we enjoy Beaufort, but then later in the month we found ourselves paying for four nights at the St. James Marina just south of Southport, NC due to weather. That’s the way it goes sometimes. No regrets though – it was money well spent.

As far as traveling is concerned, June saw us move from Beaufort, SC to crossing the Virginia state line in the Dismal Swamp Canal.

Here we go:

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Jim the Wizard Mechanic.

The anchorage in Calabash Creek is not a place you want to spend multiple days. Deep sea fishing charters speed by all day throwing a large wake. It’s tolerable for an evening, and that’s about it. Unfortunately, the forecast for the next five days called for heavy rain and thunderstorms. We stuck it out for one day and then called an audible.

Perhaps more important than waiting out the heavy rain was the fact that we also wanted a better wind direction for our trip up the Cape Fear River. Our first trip south we learned that high wind against the current on the Cape Fear equals 3.5 knots of speed at wide open throttle in a washing machine. Well, we can learn.

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Holy currents, Batman!

Little did we know that from the moment we left Beaufort, SC it would be an almost continuous slog against some massive currents. It seemed like no matter what we did or when we traveled, we were lucky to be making four knots which is damned frustrating – typically we like to see five knots or more.

The first day we fought the current the whole way, anchoring south of Charleston. We planned to go outside the next day from Charleston to Carolina Beach, NC which would have taken us a bit over 24 hours, but by the time we fought the current to Charleston Harbor we weren’t comfortable with the size of our weather window and continued inland, still fighting the current. Our friends on S/V Mer du Jour did go outside that day, telling us later that we made the right call given the conditions and slower speed of our smaller Pegu Club.

The next day we hoped to catch a fair current as we approached Georgetown, SC, but it was so strong against us that by the time we hit the area where we would get a boost, the period for the flood current had almost passed. Gah!

What the heck was going on? Continue reading “Holy currents, Batman!” →