by Judy Handley | Dec 29, 2014 | Little River, SC, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 80, Year 10: Ready or Not . . . Here We Go
Date: Monday, December 29, 2014
Weather: Overcast and Rainy, High in the 60’s F
Location: R Dock, Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, SC
Ready or not, in less than 12 hours we will pull out of this slip and be on our way to Florida. As always, we are working down to the line to get everything done. Right now Mark is sending an email via ham radio just to make sure things are working properly. We will attempt to post this log via ham radio tonight, but I have this vague memory that posting our logs via radio didn’t work on the passage from Quissett to Norfolk. Neither of us can remember exactly what the problem was, if there really was a problem, but if there is we will find that out in the morning and attempt to get things worked out before we leave. Since we will be offshore for the next two nights, we won’t have internet. If there is a problem that we can’t get fixed, logs won’t be posted on our website until we reach a destination with phone service. So no worries if a log does not appear for a few days.
It rained off and on all day today which made getting things aboard a bit messy. It is turning cooler and will continue to do so over the next day or so. The forecast for tomorrow calls for an overcast day, so our first day out could be a bit chilly. Hopefully by Wednesday we’ll have sunshine and by Thursday morning we will be near the Florida border and the temperature should be a bit warmer than here. Our first destination is Cumberland Island on the Florida-Georgia border. We should arrive there on Thursday morning and will spend a day or two exploring the island. Then, depending on the weather, we will continue our trek to Fort Lauderdale either offshore or by traveling in the Intracoastal Waterway. If we do go outside, we will make a stop or two along the way. For sure we are planning on going in the Lake Worth Inlet and spending a couple of days there. Basically we have a general plan that will evolve depending on weather and interest. But by January 13, we hope to get temporarily settled in Fort Lauderdale. Mark’s first treatment in Florida is on January 14 and Lynda and Lee need to pick up and install their solar panels. So we’ll be in the Fort Lauderdale area until Monday, February 2 when we will sail down around the Keys and up the West Coast of Florida to Fort Myers Beach. At this point, we are thinking that we will head to the Bahamas around the first of March. So basically our sail plan is Little River to Fort Lauderdale to the West Coast of Florida, then back to the East Coast, and then on to the Bahamas. We’ll be in the Bahamas for a month to six weeks and then it will be time to sail back to Little River and then on to Cape Cod for the summer.
So ready or not, we are excited to get started. We love the cruising life and are really looking forward to this trip. But the pull of family is always there. We said our farewells to Patsy and Joe tonight and that was really hard. Goodbyes are certainly not my forte. We have so enjoyed our time here with them and appreciate everything they have done for us. We’ve been using their washer and dryer, their kitchen, and their car since we arrived in November. So thank you, Patsy, for being the best sister ever, and Joe, for being the best brother-in-law a person could ever ask for. We will miss you.
by Judy Handley | Dec 28, 2014 | Little River, SC, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 79, Year 10: Preparing for Take-off
Date: Sunday, December 28, 2014
Weather: Beautiful, Warm, Mostly Sunny Day, Temp in 70’s F
Location: R Dock, Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, SC
Today was all about getting ready for our sail south to Florida. Mark spent the day doing things on Windbird and I spent my day at my sister Patsy’s doing laundry cooking food for the passage. Mark’s big job was reinforcing the stitching in our bimini. He and Lee also spent some time taking boxes of our photos from Patsy and Joe’s to Lee and Lynda’s house. It is very possible that Patsy and Joe will be making the move to Nashville before we return in the spring, so we needed to relocate our things so we can then take them back to Cape Cod with us in the spring. We had dinner with Patsy and Joe and came home to check our ‘To Do’ lists and strategize about tomorrow. Mark has a treatment in Myrtle Beach at 1:45 pm, so we’ll work on the boat until then, and do our final food shopping after the treatment. I want to be with Mark when he meets with the nurse practitioner. We have lots of questions about the new development of Mark’s low saturated iron level. My immediate remedy would be to have him eat grass-fed, grass-finished organic beef liver once a week, but I have no source of this here. I can order it from Wellness Meats and have it delivered to my sister-in-law’s in Florida, but we won’t be there for another week and a half. He is doing fine, but I will be anxious to arrive in Florida so we can get the liver and fresh dark greens for him to eat every day. In the meantime, I’ll cook a lot of kale in mineral broth for us to take with us and he’ll take the iron supplement the doctor prescribed.
Preparing for a passage is an exciting time, but it can also be a tense time. Trying to find places to stow away all the food and other supplies you will need is always a challenge. We are very experienced in doing this, and still it is a challenge. I can only think back to October 2005 to try and imagine what Lee and Lynda must be going through. Mark saw them today and tells me their preparations are going fairly smoothly. I don’t know about them, but I know both Mark and I are very anxious now to get this show on the road. Cold weather is headed this way, so we’d like to get as far south as possible as soon as we can. Cold weather is coming because the wind shifts to come from the north tomorrow and stays that way until about Friday. The temp will start dropping and tomorrow evening we will have rain. By the time we are ready to leave on Tuesday morning, the daytime high temp here will be in the 50’s and the nighttime temp in the 30’s. So we’ll have a cool take-off and first night, but as we get closer to the Florida border, the temps will start to rise again. Like everything in life, it is a trade-off. We get favorable northerly winds to blow us southward, but with those winds, we get cooler weather. Thankfully both Windbird and Sea Turtle have full cockpit enclosures and we are both carrying a Mr. Heater propane stove that we can use to take off the chill. The cockpit enclosure is a brand new addition for Sea Turtle, and one that I know both Lynda and Lee will appreciate during their first offshore passage.
by Judy Handley | Dec 27, 2014 | Little River, SC, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 78, Year 10: Bonus Day
Date: Saturday, December 27, 2014
Weather: Partly Sunny, Temp in the low-80’s F
Location: Back Home on Windbird, Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, SC
Today felt like a ‘Bonus Day’. First we had our wonderful trip to Puerto Rico to visit with Justin and family and then today we got to visit with Ed and Lynne due to our unscheduled stopover in Fort Lauderdale. Definitely a bonus. Since we will be back in Fort Lauderdale in two weeks, it was fun to drive around and acquaint ourselves with the area. But more than that, it was just fun to have to the unexpected visit with good friends. And getting to stay on Sunday Money was quite a treat. We stayed in the main guest suite and it was luxurious. We met one of the crew members who showed us the crews’ quarters and the engine room—also quite luxurious. But tonight we are back home on Windbird. She’s not a 100 foot superyacht, but we love her. It’s great to be home and tomorrow we’ll start readying this ‘yacht’ for the trip south.
by Judy Handley | Dec 26, 2014 | Little River, SC, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 77, Year 10: Guess Where We Are
Date: Friday, December 26, 2014
Weather: Sunny, Temp in the 80’s F
Location: Guests Aboard Sunday Money, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Where in the world are Mark and Judy? Well, we are certainly not where we were supposed to be tonight. We are not back in Little River aboard Windbird. Due to air traffic control issues, whatever that means, we are in Ft. Lauderdale spending the night aboard Sunday Money. This is the gorgeous 100 foot Hatteras superyacht owned by Ed Kirwin’s son. Ed and Lynne are our cruising friends that crossed the Indian Ocean at the same time as Windbird. They are here in Ft. Lauderdale preparing to set sail for the Bahamas for the winter. So when the Spirit Airline agent in San Juan broke the news to us that our flight was going to be delayed and that we would not be able to make our connection from Ft. Lauderdale to Myrtle Beach tonight, we had to quickly decide whether to stay in San Juan until tomorrow night or go on to Ft. Lauderdale and stay there. The only Spirit flight to Myrtle Beach leaves Ft. Lauderdale at 8 something each night. We just didn’t know what to do. If we stayed in San Juan we were afraid the same thing would happen tomorrow night, so we decided that we had to go on to Ft. Lauderdale and figure things out from there. Then we remembered that Ed and Lynne were in Ft. Lauderdale, so we gave them a call. They graciously agreed to pick us up from the airport and put us up here for the night. Thank goodness for wonderful friends. Thank you, thank you to Ed and Lynne, the Sunday Monday crew, and Ed’s son and his wife. I’ve never been aboard such a luxurious yacht, so this is a special treat. But this delay means that we will just have Sunday and Monday to ready Windbird for the sail south. It will be tight, but we can do that. Mark jokingly sent an email to Lee and Lynda Kaufman telling them that he thought one of them should just sail Sea Turtle and the other sail Windbird down here and that we would just wait for them here in Florida! But instead, we’ll spend tomorrow hanging out with Ed and Lynne and casing out Ft.Lauderdale. We hope to be here again in just two weeks, so tomorrow will be a sneak preview.
We left Justin, Jo, Ziggy, and Coco just before noon to head to the airport in San Juan. I have a really hard time with goodbyes, so I was a bit teary-eyed. But we had such a wonderful visit with lots of happy memories. We got to spend quality time with Ziggy and Coco and feel like we know so much more about them now. We enjoyed seeing some of the West Coast of Puerto Rico and hope to return again to spend more time with the kids and to do some exploring. Thank you, thank you, thank you JJZ&C for a wonderful Christmas.
by Judy Handley | Dec 25, 2014 | Little River, SC, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 76, Year 10: Feliz Navidad from Puerto Rico
Date: Thursday, December 25, 2014
Weather: Partly Sunny, Temp in the 80’s F
Location: Visiting with Justin, Jo, Ziggy, and Coco in Aguada, PR
I’m sure you’ve heard the Christmas song, Feliz Navidad. So sing along.
We want to wish you a Merry Christmas.
We want to wish you a Merry Christmas.
We want to wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of our hearts.
We do hope you had a Merry Christmas. We certainly did. We opened presents for what seemed like hours and the only complaint came from Coco who cried uncontrollably when there were no more presents to open. Coco and Ziggy were up VERY early, before the sun was fully up, but Ziggy was so excited when he ran over to the guest house to tell us that Santa had come and filled our stockings that there was no choice but to join in the jubilation. We all rallied and opened all the stocking gifts from Santa before we stopped to have breakfast. We had that wonderful acai fruit bowl that we had when we went out a few nights ago–acai, homemade granola, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, papaya, fresh pineapple, and coconut oil. Yummy, yummy, yummy. This gave us the energy to continue opening presents. It was a BIG Christmas. There were all sorts of remote-controlled vehicles, Legos, doll furniture, both big and little for Coco’s dollhouse, a gardening kit for Ziggy, and Monarch butterfly wings and tutu for Coco. Justin got a surfboard as well as a quiver and arrows for his bow. Among many other things, Jo got an auto-harp which makes beautiful music. Wow! Mark got a drawing app for his tablet, a new drill bit set, wooden puzzles, and a much needed dive suit as his old one is thread-bare. I got the new Ken Follett trilogy which will make great passage reading, a collapsible bucket, and an Amazon gift certificate to share with Mark (if he is a good boy). There were many, many more gifts, but I won’t bore you with more detail except to say one more time that it was a fantastic Christmas. Thank you, JJZ&C!!! We talked to Heather, Jed, and boys via Skype video. They were having a wonderful Christmas in Maine. But seeing them made us wish that we could all be together. And we also had a Skype video call with Jo’s family in England. We got to see Kitty, Jo’s sister’s new baby, which was quite a Christmas treat. Justin, Jo, and kids will be flying to England on Saturday, and they are so excited about that trip. After all the presents were opened, we had a huge feast in the late afternoon—roasted chicken breasts, baked root veggies, mashed potatoes with gravy, stuffing, Mark’s cranberry salad, broccoli, and later in the evening we had fruit crumble. And between dinner and dessert, we all headed to the beach. “Let’s go surfin’ now.” It was low, low tide and kids had a ball in the shallow pools of water near the shore. The waves further out weren’t great, but Justin did get to stand up on that new surf board for the first time. I think surfer Justin and auto-harp playing Jo might have been more excited about Christmas than Ziggy and Coco—and that’s going some!
Tomorrow at noon Justin and Jo have arranged for someone to pick us up to take us to the airport in San Juan. And if flights go smoothly, Lee Kaufman will pick us up at the airport in Myrtle Beach at 10 pm. Then we will switch gears. We’ll transform back into cruising mode and spend the weekend and Monday preparing for four months of fun in the sun in Florida and the Bahamas.
by Judy Handley | Dec 24, 2014 | Little River, SC, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 75, Year 10: Era la noche antes de Navidad
Date: Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Weather: Beautiful, Sunny Day, Temp in the 80’s F
Location: Visiting with Justin, Jo, Ziggy, and Coco in Aguada, PR
‘Twas the night before Christmas (Era la noche antes de Navidad) and everything here is as quiet as a mouse. After a day of running about to get the final things needed for Christmas, we started our celebration. When Mark and I got home from the ‘last’ trip to the grocery store, Justin and Jo had Christmas music playing and it really added to the Christmas spirit. We helped get dinner underway and then we watched Ziggy and Coco while Justin and Jo walked down the street to pick up fresh goat’s milk. While they were gone, we gave Ziggy and Coco their Christmas ornaments for this year—small wooden sailboats that can hang on the tree or float in the bathtub. When Justin and Jo got home, we had our fish curry dinner. Mark and I picked up the fish from a guy on the side of the road. He said it was robo (maybe rojo), but we have no idea what it really was. Regardless, it was good. After dinner, Ziggy and Coco opened a present from Mummy and Daddy and one from Oma and Granddad. They each got a book and a set of washable markers. I gave them some special paper and they wrote their letters to Santa with the new markers. Then they set out some treats for the jolly ol’ soul and hurried off to the bedroom to read their books and go to sleep. They are very excited for the arrival of Santa Claus.
Before dinner, Heather called to check in from Maine. She, Jed, and the boys drove there yesterday and have been in a whirlwind of activity getting ready for Santa’s arrival. We’ll look forward to talking to them tomorrow, hopefully on Skype video. I’m not sure how early Santa arrives here in Puerto Rico, but I figure we should get to bed in case he comes early.
