Virginia to Florida
It’s been a challenging start to the season.
With five hours to go before we needed to be at the airport for our first flight from Tauranga, we got a message from Air New Zealand, our flight was cancelled, and they couldn’t help us to reach our connecting flights and contingent bookings on time. It was Sunday and there were no rental cars available in Rotorua. Neighbour Doug to the rescue – three anxious hours avoiding traffic congestion, we made it to Auckland. Just.
And then - we were back in our other life. And it was cold. The daily temperature ranged from four to ten degrees, but the daffodils were poking their heads above ground, the ospreys were nesting and the frogs were singing.
We had hauled out in rural Virginia in October 2023, in one of the very few boatyards who could manage our size, twenty minutes from the nearest town Gloucester and its two hotels. Flying into Richmond, we picked up a rental car, drove an hour to Gloucester and checked into the better of the two hotels, it had a comfortable bed, a bath (tub) and although the selection of local eateries erred on the side of fast and fatty, we survived. Just.
Once we had cleared enough space to move onboard it was a luxury to be able to cook healthy meals, but not so the trek across the yard to use the portaloo and shower. We could and did hook up to the boatyard for water but not power, we are wired for the European 220v system, the US is 110v, so no hot water. However a $30 Walmart heater helped take the chill off and kept us smiling. It is our seventh year; everything is getting older and there are more essential items that need repairing or replacing – windlass, water heater, refrigerator, sails, bimini…the list was long, so three weeks in rural Virginia was spent ordering essential parts and then waiting for the Fedex and UPS vans to arrive. We drove hundreds of miles, along back country roads and highways, back and forth to Ordinary, Gloucester, Mathew, and Deltaville, replacing, repairing, installing, and provisioning, past trailer homes in forest clearings, we used the Baptist churches as signposts and were amazed and saddened by the number of abandoned houses - what were once beautiful homes, discarded and forgotten.
Reliable data has always been an issue so after following Starlink progress for the last year we had purchased a flat high performance kit, signed up for the mobile priority plan and brought it across in our luggage. We had to buy extra cable to run it from our solar panels to behind the TV and Skip’s installation is a wonder to behold, or rather a wonder not seen. And what a gamechanger, all you can eat data while on NOETA.
We weren’t totally friendless in Virginia and were amazed when Laura and Dan from Baji Naji, sailors we had met briefly in 2023, drove three hours down from Maryland to see us and have lunch. And the wildlife was a treat - the roadsides and forests were full of wild daffodils, at night deer leapt across the road, and frogs sang under the moonlight. In the daytime we were visited by bluebirds, cardinals, and chickadees, while eagles soared overhead, woodpeckers knocked and squirrels chased each other through the oak leaves behind us.
Then finally the last Volvo part arrived, our tanks and drums were full of cheap USD3.8/gal diesel (NZD1.70/L), our US cruising permit was still valid, the tide was high and we were off on a beautiful March morning. Back down the muddy Mobjack River and Chesapeake Bay then out into the Atlantic. It took sixty hours to reach Charleston, taking 3-4 hour shifts, we had a good weather window and hugged the coast to avoid the Gulf Stream effect, especially around Cape Hatteras, the sea and air temperature climbing up to 18 degrees. And then the port saildrive seized. One step forward, two steps back. The saildrive connects the propeller to the engine and is essential, luckily, we have two, but regardless, quite a setback. It turned out the probable cause was a lack of oil upon servicing, not good. But the boatyard accepted responsibility, thank you Steve, have a satellite office in Charleston, and I managed to find a second hand drive in California. No mean feat, as it appeared to be the only 150S-C drive in the whole of the USA, and at a reasonable cost of USD2,000 versus a new €5,000 one from Europe and a very long wait, we were already behind schedule so not our preferred option.
Anchoring in our old spot beside the WWII aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, we were back in the land of laughing gulls, airborne pine pollen, muddy rivers, and strong tidal currents. We had struggled the previous year to find good places to tie up our dinghy when going ashore and were thrilled when the local sheriff told us about a great spot across the river at the Marine Centre; only USD5 per day it is a short walk from the old town and a Harris Teeter supermarket. It was Saturday night and feeling quite despondent we cheered ourselves up with a few beers at the Blind Tiger, St Patrick’s Day revellers all around, bright splashing of orange and green amid the black tied dapper Hibernians. And it was warm, a balmy 20+ degrees encouraging the streets of pink azaleas, white magnolia and purple wisteria, a far cry from Virginia.
The saildrive was airfreighted across the US, the wind dropped, and the following week at daybreak, we headed up the Cooper River, past the naval yards and industrial ports to haul out. A beautiful sunny morning, snoseeums swarming, our intrepid skipper managed to get us alongside on one engine and all 50,000 pounds (25 US tons or 22.7 metric tonnes) of NOETA was safely craned up and on the hard, blocked up, by 1000.
The boatyard sits alongside the Charleston Innovation Campus, a former naval base and home to the H.L. Hunley – the first successful combat submarine, which sunk the Union USS Housatonic in 1864, disappeared and then was rediscovered by NUMA and Clive Custler in 1995. Just saying.
Thinking that we were underway we had stocked up the fridge and one freezer, but of course back to boatyard life meant no power. The solution? We hooked our batteries up to a charger connected to 110V and it worked. But because the boatyard is a small working yard, living onboard is not encouraged, so we were back to hotel life, but this time with a borrowed work van. The saildrive was replaced but weekends, the wind and Easter kept delaying our launch, so we spent two weeks, driving back and forth each morning from Mt Pleasant across the Arthur Ravenel Jr Bridge to the boatyard, it felt like Groundhog Day. It was a grind and the grit from cargo unloading was extremely irritating but on a positive note, manager Cory and his sidekick Justyna looked after us very well, and because we had to be at the boatyard by 0700 and leave after everyone had finished for the day, it gave us the opportunity to get lots of those one-day-I’ll-get-onto-it jobs done. Feeling rather un-Easterish, Easter eggs and hot cross buns are not an American thing, we were delighted to be invited by Justyna to Easter dinner with her family - great food, and great company.
Finally we splashed on April 1, and headed back down to our Yorktown anchorage to wait for a favourable weather window, observing as we went the increase in cargo traffic, possibly a response to the Baltimore Key Bridge tragedy that had just occurred. Next morning we woke up and discovered that both our genset startup battery and refrigerator needed to be replaced, two steps forward, one step back. To be fair our fridge had been slowly dying over the past couple of years, needing a regas every time it was turned off for a while, unfortunately a power cut at the boatyard had turned it off and a regas was going to cost us several days and USD500 dollars - time to get a replacement. After a couple of days of online shopping around for replacement parts, bouncing around in cruise ship pod wakes and dragging in a 40 knot rainstorm, the battery arrived, the fridge was ordered, the sun came out, the wind dropped, and we were underway, again.
24 hours down the coast, the water clearing, and temperatures rising, sea 20 and air 23 degrees, we had a great sail, supplemented with a bit of motor assist, and averaged a respectable 8 knots. Arriving in St Augustine as the sun came up, we had timed it perfectly, high tide had been 0700 and the marker buoys were accurate, fortunate as the entrance is very shallow with shifting sand. We anchored not far from the free public dock at Vilano Pier, handy for a provision at Publix and a wander along the wide, empty boulevard to the beach, admiring the 1950s and art deco architecture on the way. Afternoon in old town St Augustine was busy; the oldest continual settlement in the US, old and new Spanish architecture, it was reasonably interesting but I prefer Spain. Sundowners on Adanaco with a couple of Canadians and a Kiwi we had met on the way back from the supermarket was fun, swapping boating stories and picking up tips, everyone has their fair share of bad luck and trouble.
Continuing southwards, eight hours down the unbroken sandy coastline, clusters of tall condominiums and hotels every so often, we entered through another shallow shifting sand inlet which unfortunately was not marked. Briefly running aground, we managed to back off, and the local Seatow boat kindly radioed us with directions around the shoals. Up the Halifax River, we anchored opposite the Sea Love Boatyard & Marina where Sea Fantasy (Verity, Ant & Remi) are living aboard. We had met them at the end of 2023, they were parked up next to us in the boatyard and had since sailed south to give Remi a taste of school-life. A sunny Sunday, it felt like we had arrived on the movie set of Captain Ron; the margheritas just enhanced the feeling - Verity is number one mixologist, Ant is a relaxed can-sort-anything-out guy, and Remi is a wonderfully inventive young girl.
Ponce de Leon inlet, formally Los Mosquitoes, was an early Spanish conquistador discovery and later settled by Minorcans. It is delightful – a leafy neighborhood with quiet lanes, no high rises, a turtle and bird recovery centre and a beautiful lighthouse. We found the small museum interesting, for a such a small place it has certainly seen a range of quite disparate events – fishing camps, Daytona races and Cuban refugees - it was a great place to spend two weeks while waiting for the fridge.
We had found an Isotherm fridge dealer in Miami, who was waiting for a shipment from Europe, so we needed to find a marina where we could tie up briefly to get the old one off and the new one on, board. I had emailed many marinas down the coast as far as Miami, but those who got back to me were going to charge us up to USD500 for the privilege of tying up. Not so the Sea Love Marina. Steve told us we could tie up at the fuel dock for free, and that his team could help us on and off load and dispose of our old fridge! So we hired a truck, drove four hours down to hot dirty crazy Miami city to pick up our new fridge and then high tailed it back as quickly as possible. A new fridge, so exciting! Next morning we plugged it in and nada. And it was the weekend, sigh.
But the inlet has lots of pretty little sandbars, we had friends to play with, the weekend weather was lovely, perfect for picnicking and a short wander to the south end of Daytona Beach for a swim in the Atlantic.
Monday arrived and we spent the day on the phone troubleshooting and then arranging for yet another replacement fridge. More days waiting, watching Starlink rockets launch at night from Cape Canaveral and fending off noseeums, finally the fridge arrived, another offload, upload, we plugged it in and it worked. Provision time - we could finally stock up on all those items we knew would be hard or expensive to get once we had left the States – good quality meat, condiments, cheese, museli ingredients and cleaning products. With the Bahamas only a couple of days away, I looked back through my notes to remind myself how to create a Bahamian entry through their proprietary Click2Clear system and remind myself how much it hurt to pay the USD300 cruising fee. Finally Friday dawned and we were off - a still, clear morning, we headed up the Halifax River, taking a slightly longer exit via the ICW, memories of running aground still fresh in our minds, we didn’t want to start our journey by repeating our arrival mishap…
