If you are dreaming of living aboard or just want more of a flavor of the live aboard life in the Caribbean Islands go straight to the library or bookstore and read “An Embarrassment of Mangoes” by Ann Vanderhoof. This marvelous story captures so much of our own experience. I promise you’ll enjoy it and if you like to cook you’ll want to own this book just for the recipes!
I am writing this during my first watch of the night – it’s warm and calm, little wind, the coast of Florida is lit up to my right, and I keep my eyes on the distant lights of freighters and fishing boats. We are motoring the last 35 miles of the 350 mile trip from Charleston to Ft. Lauderdale. This should have been a 3 day trip but here we are on our fourth night. No wind or wind on the nose and current against us has been our Achilles heel on this “leg”. We travel close to the coast in hopes of finding a counter current, the motor groans on and on but we still travel between 3-4.5 knots. So frustrating, we wish we could step on the accelerator or sacrifice something to the weather gods, but we just have to grin and bear it. On the bright side, the water temperature is in the 80’s, the days have been sunny & with little wind to contend with we can kill the engines, throw a line out behind the boat and jump in and it feels fabulous. To test our patience even more, our slow speed will put us at the entrance to Ft. Lauderdale in the dark where we’d have to hang out and do circles until sun-up, so we decide to kill a few hours and divert to Palm Beach to refuel. The first thing we see in the harbor is the Hannah Glover (a tour boat that is anchored in front of our house in Salem Harbor all summer)! We join the rest of the local weekend boating crowd and anchor by Penguin Island, swim ashore for a walk and end up touring the John F. Kennedy bunker, built here during the Cuban Missile Crisis near his family compound. You just never know what you’ll come across on these walkabouts.
We have been sailing in the company of Marilyn and Ken on s/v DreamKetch’r. Having a buddy boat makes the trip even more fun, getting to know one another, comparing strategies, swapping books, etc. We chat twice/day on the radio and have crossed each other once or twice as we sail south.
Our prior leg brought us from Norfolk to Charleston. Three days out from Norfolk we decided to wait out the predicted sloppy weather in Charleston, S.C. This was a welcome rest stop as it’s always been a favorite city. The Charleston anchorage is in a river, which has a 3 knot current running, It’s pretty crowded so it takes a few spins around the anchorage to select our spot, far enough from neighboring boats, not too deep or shallow. We put down the anchor and go down below to catch up on our sleep. HONK -- about 3 hours later we are dragged from our sleep by a horn, the wind has come up and most of the boats are freewheeling in all directions around their anchors, including Dragonfly. Our neighbors were concerned that we’d collide so they fired off their air horn to get our attention. Well it worked, and after much analysis we decide to move to another spot. A few more spins around the anchorage and we decide to go to the shallower area, after all we are a catamaran with a shallow draft – our calculations show we should have about 1.5 foot of water below us at low tide, fingers crossed that we’ll be still be floating when we return from our walkabout in the city.
Great eats, great walks around the historic neighborhoods, wireless internet at the college library – who could ask for anything more! Charleston’s founding residents were very wealthy and they architected and built the most gorgeous houses encompassing both old and new styles/methods. Beautiful Federal, Queen Ann, Gothic,Greek revival houses line the neighborhoods, all surrounded by beautiful gardens in bloom. The single house is another notable design seen everywhere; it has one room on the street, with all the other rooms stacked behind it extending to the back of the lot, the door on the street leads only to the porch that has been placed on the side of the house to catch the sea breeze.
Cruising continues to be about meeting fellow cruisers. In a Charleston restaurant we met a couple from Newburyport and enjoyed a cross table conversation for much of our meal. We also ran into Bentley and Jim from s/v “Salty Paws” on the dock – we had met them a few years ago in Plymouth, MA and ever since I have tracked their travels via their website. They are an advertisement for the live aboard life, having made friends everywhere and full of cruising advice for the E. seaboard and the Bahamas.
Hampton, VA – the scene of the Caribbean 1500 rally to Tortola. Dragonfly motored past the docks at the Bluewater Marina almost 12 months to the day from last year’s arrival. So many memories and recognition that so much has changed in a year! Had you been with us last year as we tied up to the dock at the marina you would have heard my sigh of relief that our “new home” had made it with few surprises, felt our eagerness to meet our new traveling companions and felt the anxiety about the 1400 mile offshore leg to come. One year later and we feel like we’ve got this life aboard nailed. Provisioning? Spare Parts? Weather & Navigation? Meeting new friends? Mail Delivery? Staying on top of our finances? No problema! While last year we spent the better part of our week in Hampton preparing the boat for the passage, this year we visited as tourists, enjoying the IMAX film about the Mars Rovers at the Space Museum, visiting with Winston (Rick’s brother) and this years C1500 participants and organizers. The C1500 rally has grown from 50 boats to 73! I could only chuckle when one of this years participants asked for guidance as to best places down island to have visitors for the holidays; there I was rattling off airports, ferry’s and my favorite spots up and down the chain – how far we’ve come!
With only a month or so before we leave the states we figured we better get serious about finding charts for the W. Caribbean. The passage to the E. Caribbean is a very popular “cruisers highway” so obtaining accurate/current cruising guides and paper charts needed only a phone call, internet order or visit to a local boating store. This year’s route presents a lot more complexity. There isn’t any single cruising guide or set of guides that covers the W. Caribbean in comprehensive, accurate detail. We purchased one guide that present a certain amount of coverage of Mexico, Guatemala’s most popular cruising area and the Bay Islands in Honduras, but hasn’t been updated since 2001. We also purchased a very popular Belize/Mexico guide that is highly regarded for it’s overall knowledge of the cruising areas but also is somewhat out of date – comments from other cruises warn of changes in navigational aids, reef locations, governmental rules and regs and invalid waypoints.
Our research this summer resulted in a list of 20 recommended paper charts covering the area we expect to visit, some U.S. and some British charts. Again, the comments about these charts from well known passage makers were generally “these charts are not great but worth having”. Each U.S. chart costs $19 and each British chart costs $30. Well, we whittled the list down to 15 charts that feel we must have; our first call to Bluewater Books, a large supplier, turned up that the govt. warehouse is in the midst of moving and most non-U.S. charts are backordered.
Taking our list to the Norfolk Chart store we hoped to find some of what we need but the saleswoman gives us a disappointed shake of her head and tells us that she has very little available in the way of charts outside the U.S, she too is waiting for her orders to be delivered and is skeptical as to when she’ll receive them with the central warehouse is in transit. We all agreed that it was a strange decision to move the warehouse just before the cruising season begins. Rick’s pragmatic comment “well whatever charts we find may determine where we head from Florida”. Fortunately, after a thorough search of her inventory we find 8 of the 15 charts we need & leave happy to know we are GOING after all. We hope the remaining charts will be waiting for us in Ft. Lauderdale.
Norfolk made for another great stop, not because of the restaurants,or the museums but for the MOVIE theater that is an easy walk from the harbor. We caught two movies and enjoyed a spirited group dinner including Winston and his girlfriend Jenny- kudos to Jenny to endure dinner with 7 cruisers just before their departure south. Those of you who know Winston will appreciate his latest “look” in the picture gallery.
Well, my watch is over and I’ve come to the end of my long winded account of our travels. Free wireless internet has not been as easily found as we expected so I have not been able to update as often as expected. I was surprised to find that even Starbucks does not provide it free! Anyway, happy November and more from the Florida Keys!
