Short day

Gale force winds today so we only made it to Morehead City (near Beaufort), NC.  But once again we were able to tie up to a dock in front of a closed restaurant  (Sanitary Fish Company, since 1932).  We go great protection from the wind and shore leave for Lacy.

Spring is coming here too.  When we run out of signs of spring we'll have to slow down.

Actually we're on a pretty tight schedule to be at the top of the Hudson by April 21st so we're hoping we don't get slowed by weather.

It's impressive how everything seems to have come to a halt

Lonely trek

This picture tells the story.  We are ahead of the snowbird fleet (Quebec navy) and the waterway
is eerily quiet, which is a good thing because even in the south people are taking the virus seriously.  So we're on our way home.  230 statute miles to Virginia and the Dismal Swamp.  We typically have the waterway to ourselves.

Time to get home

Well this voyage has changed, like everything else in the world.  We're now just intent on getting back to Vermont as quickly as we can as healthy as we can.  Most of the fun things we had planned for the trip back are no longer possible.  Like baseball games in Baltimore, visit with our dear friend Captain Owen (who's 82 and not leaving the house.).  So it's head down, full speed ahead.  We may leave Rosie somewhere on the Hudson and pick her up later.

We're out of South Carolina.  8 more states to cross.  But we're following spring north.  Wisteria and young leaves along the waterway.

Last night we anchored in the Calabash Creek off the Little River Inlet.  As so happens when we anchor in a channel somewhere, we're surrounded with sights like these which were just off our stern and pretty symptomatic of where this country is right now.

Please be careful out there!

Live from the ark!

When the rains stop and things return to normal, this little ark will land on a mountain top in Vermont and we will emerge, whole and healthy.  Hope some of you are still around.

Seriously, this is crazy!  After a lot of agonizing about what a socially responsible business should do, we decided to close the Public House.  Then today the Governor decided that all restaurants are to close effective tomorrow.  We will survive!

I apologize for being so late with this post.  We're revisiting some of the sites we shared with you on the way down and I hate redundancy.  But then I realized a lot of you are locked down with nothing to look at but the idiot box.  So here are some stories and pictures from the ark

Cumberland Island is wonderful but it is rife with ticks.  Yeow!  Lacy had a bunch.

I showed you the car carrier on the hard in St Simons Sound.

Here's the back story from some locals. The Korean ship was delivering Kias to the east coast and on a tight schedule.  The ship had a problem with the ballast pumps and called in a crew of mechanics to fix it from Korea.  But the captain needed to get to Charleston and told them to work on it while underway.  As they headed out the sound the ship began to list 30 degrees.  A pilot was in command of the ship at the time and made the decision to beach it.  He's now a hero.  No lives were lost.  Just money.  They're going to cut it up in slices.

The Brunswick bridge is beautiful.

So is this craft.

This one was a little too close.

So we're anchored in Deewees Creek, just north of Charleston.  For the second night there's been no shore leave for Lacy.  Nothing but marsh for miles and miles.  But there's a neighbor one creek over.

And I was able to get the third coat of varnish on the pilot house trim.

As the world falls apart Kathleen and I really want to be home to offer whatever support we can to whomever needs it.  And yet, at our ages, we think we are pretty lucky to be self-quaranteed on Rosie.  But we are thinking about you all and how hard this must be.  We might quicken the pace of our return voyage just a teensy.

Thanks for checking in on us.  We are just about at 5000 views.  I'll try to do better with the posts.

Cumberland Island and Brunswick

We left on Sunday and stopped at Sister Creek, a free dock at a park on the St Johns River that leads up to Jacksonville.  Had a guest for dinner.  Bill on an Endeavor 37.  Good talks.

Then on to Cumberland Island.  We went up to the north end of the island into the Brickhill River and hiked over to the ocean.  It was a longer hike then we expected, about 3 miles each way, but well worth it.  We hit it at low tide.  Lacy loves to run on the beach and after the 3 mile hike she had a ton of energy for the beach.

 We walked back past the little Andrew Carnegie summer camp seeing our first signs of spring.  Azaleas!

Got back to Rosie who was sitting at low tide also.

And the bartender says "What'll it be cap'n?"

Then it's on to Brunswick Landing marina.  First slip since Bahamas.

Cumberland Island

https://photos.app.goo.gl/MDNCyivBEHd13CNW6

Update

The strategy for the way home is to wait for good weather (tail wind, sun, fair tides) and hammer it.  So from Vero we went 54 miles to Cocoa, 68 miles to Daytona and 51 miles to St Augustine averaging better than 6.5 knots.  Pretty good.

Now we're waiting out a stiff north wind and cold weather.  We'll leave Sunday.  There are 8 states to traverse before our beloved Vermont.  We'll knock off Florida on Monday.

Sitting at our mooring ball yesterday we were thrilled to see another Lord Nelson approach.  Hull #5, Miss Willoughby, owned by Beau and Mariah Hicks from Urbanna, Virginia.  Hope we get to spend some time with them before we head north.  They're hanging out here for a couple of months.  She looked real good.  Built in 1983, repowered with a 150 horse Yanmar in 2010.  Brightwork was Cetol and it actually looked pretty good.