5 Months in Florida

Five months went by really fast.

We had planned to stay in Florida for a full year at least, but as soon as it started getting really hot, we got itchy feet and started thinking about heading North again.

Over our 5 months in Florida we worked, Tristan played Little League Baseball and had a fantastic time, and Trixie won over the hearts of all of the other liveaboards. We quickly became well known in the marina for having some awesome kids. The kids made some money selling drawings on the boardwalk, and made some friends with the couple other boat families that were in our marina for a time.

Tristan was on the Marlins little league team with a great group of boys. He looked so handsome in his uniform and he improved so much throughout the season. For a kid who hadn’t touched a baseball glove or bat in over 2 years he had some catching up to do, but he did great. By the end of the season he had a couple of hits, 2 scored runs, 1 RBI which started a rally for his team, had made an out by catching a fly ball and was the most team spirited kid on the team.

Trixie road her bike all around the marina, mastered starting and stopping by herself, but has yet to master the back-peddle brakes on her bike, her sneaker toes are much flatter now. She devoured books and started learning how to read. She can now sound out most 3-letter words and some longer ones. She tells everyone who asks that she’s in 1st grade (who needs kindergarten anyway?).

Ben was working 50 hours a week at the restaurant on the marina property. I also worked there a couple nights a week doing prep in the kitchen.

As Tristan’s baseball season started to wrap up (his team ended up at the bottom of the league…) Ben brought up the idea of heading North for the Summer. The heat was starting to intensify, and we worried about surviving (comfortably) the summer in Florida on a mooring without AC. We briefly talked about heading to Rhode Island for the summer, but finally settled on Solomons, MD. We called up the marina where our old marina manager from Beaufort, SC had moved, and they had a couple slips open for the summer. The best part – they have a pool. We booked our slip and started making plans for our departure from Stuart.

We had the boat bottom cleaned, looked for a weather window, and took off for 3.5 days offshore after not really moving the boat for 5 months. Part of us wondered if we were ready for a long offshore trip after being stationary for so long, but the trip went off really well. As usual, we motored way more than we hoped (and planned for).

Origionally the weather window looked as if we could possibly make it all the way to the mouth of the Chesapeake in one go. We had a friend sending us weather offshore, and as weather does, it changed. The wind we were supposed to have only lasted through the first day. We had a beautiful 6 hours of sailing in the gulf stream, before the wind died and we had to motor for the next 48 hours. The biggest problem with this was the amount of fuel we had on board. With one fuel tank still out of commission, we left Stuart with 60 gallons of diesel. At the end of the 48 hours of motoring, we had about 10 gallons left, and over a hundred miles to Beaufort, NC.

We decided we simply HAD to sail. With not much wind, and all of it behind us, we pulled out the spinnaker we hadn’t used in almost a year. After sorting it out, we got it up and flying and turned off the motor. We lost some speed, but at least we weren’t burning diesel. Around midnight the wind started to pick up, and I knew it was time to douse the spinnaker. This is a skill we haven’t quite mastered, and we almost had to cut it away and loose it into the ocean. We were able to wrestle it to the deck and shoved it unceremoniously into its turtle bag. It was not a fun experience.

With the motor on again, we kept chugging through the gulf-stream, hoping the wind would hold through the morning when we could put up some sails again. We didn’t want to try to put up sails in the dark, and we don’t sail directly down wind well anyway. I ended up taking the full night watch, getting to see the full lunar eclipse, and passing through a couple lines of squalls. I had to close up the companionway for the first time in a very long time with the boards to keep the rain from getting down below at one point.

Once the sun came up we were able to get the sails back up and turn off the engine to conserve our fuel for the motor into Beaufort. At this point there was no chance of going around Hatteras so we knew we were bailing at Beaufort, plus we really needed fuel. We were able to sail all day that last day, all the way to the entrance channel to Beaufort. We stopped only to fuel up and then headed up the ICW. We ended doing our fastest transit of this section of the ICW (the only section we have now done 6 times) completing it in basically 2 days. We did some of the ICW at night for the first time ever, and its something I don’t think we will do again. We went from south of the Pungo-River canal all the way to the Virginia Cut lock in one day, tying up to the free dock at midnight.

After sleeping in a bit the next morning, we continued on our way North and made it about 1/2 way to Solomons. We got quite a bit of awesome sailing in, some at only 1.5 knots of speed, but it was a calm, beautiful day. We arrive at our new marina the next day around 8pm and executed our first ever backing into a slip, and it went so smoothly!

We had arrived at our new home….for now.