MADDELYN ROSE
ICW - Virginia to Florida;
We finally got away and departed Tidewater Marina at 10.00 on Monday
28th Oct with farewells from Sil and Jan from "Captains Choice" ( boat name ) and waves from several other boaties.
Arrived at the lock at Great Bridge 1145, passed throughout lift bridge 1215 then tied up at the public dock for the night to catch up with Chuck and Kelsey from Virginia Yachts ( the brokers we brought Maddelyn Rose via ) had a chat for an hour or so, they were both impressed with the work we have done on Maddelyn Rose.
Had a problem with the plotter so asked Gary to pick Bill up and go to West Marine to get it checked, ended up by having to buy a new plotter, will get de funk plotter fixed later on trip and install on fly bridge which will be very handy.
Got away from Great Bridge early next day (29th), really the start of our trip home, anchored at Buck island for the night after traveling about 35 nm, had an interesting event !!
We noticed that some of the American power boats are really arrogant pricks, the ICW in places is quit narrow and as we do about 7-8 knots they go considerably faster, there was a couple of issues when two boats passed with a couple of feet clearance, ( no crap, there was only 2 feet ) they simply cannot wait 5 mins, Bill got annoyed with one stuck up arrogant prick so gave him a blast on the VHF. (those who know Bill can only imagine what was said )
The next day (30th) we travelled further south and anchored at Pungo river which is a little inlet about 10 mn from Belhaven for the night. Passing throughout some of the man made canals was interesting, one canal was 21 nm, dead straight, lots of floating logs ( hit one that bumped under the boat ) and tree stumps in side making the canal narrow so had to keep a watchful eye out. Had a problem when the RPM counter on port engine went he RPM counter on port engine went dead and as we have a synchronizing system for the engines it made the starboard engine go to idle, turned out the sender on port engine feel out of housing, someone ( not Bill ) had not fitted the locking pin correctly.
Moved onto Belhaven the next day (31th) and tied up at River Forest Marina where Jimmy and Carolyn ( worked with them in Thailand ) visited, we felt bad because Jimmy said they lived in Greenville, but there are two Greenville's, one in North Carolina about 30 mins drive from Belhaven and one in South Carolina about 7 hours drive, Jimmy and Carolyn live in the Greenville in South Carolina, ( oopppps ) But it was great to see them. The marina had a couple of courtesy golf carts and we used one o go to the local supermarket about 3 mile distance, heaps of fun driving the cart along the highway with every passing motorist waving and laughing at us.
After leaving Belhaven on the 3rd November and having a good but cold trip we stopped at Beaufort city and tied up at the local city dock, right in the center of the city. Beaufort is a quaint town with everything within walking distance, lots of restaurants which we tried a couple but sadly the range on the menu was a bit limited, ok if you want burgers though as we have found to be the usual in the states. The marina has several courtesy cars and we used one to go to post office to send plotter, the courtesy car was a 1980 Buick estate, 23 feet long, 8 feet wide, a bit like driving an aircraft carrier down the road, but lots of fun, every bump we hit it took a mile for the suspension to return to normal. Tried to get plotter fixed at Garmin service agent but turned out the company noted on Garmin web site are not service agents after all so after long phone conversations had to send to Garmin in Kansas and will get them to send to our next stop or next ones when repaired. ho hum !!!! The charts indicate that the ICW south have too many shallow spots so will top up with fuel as we are planning to go straight from Beaufort to Jacksonville Florida, 360 nm, about 2 days travel, be good for Rose to experience her first long overnighters and to get a firm fuel usage over that distance so we can plan on how much extra fuel we need to carry for the longer trips.
We left Beaufort on the 6th Nov and anchored under Cape Lookout to wait favorable weather, early morning on the 9th we left Cape lookout and arrived at the St John river entrance after covering 409 nm which leads to Jacksonville at 0300 on the 11th, we did not want to enter the river at night so steamed around in a circle or two hours before heading in, tied up at Morning Star marina about 3 nm inside the entrance at 0830. One of the highlights of the trip was we were visited by Dolpyns several times, Rose had never seen Dolpyns before so was extremely excited ( in fact was over the moon ). The staff at Morning Star marina were extremely helpful and friendly, even lent us their Ram pick up truck to explore Jacksonville and get some food supplies, didn't even get lost as Rose uses her I phone map thingy that works a treat. Topped again with fuel, 367 US Gals ( 1400 ltrs ) which by Bill's calcs worked out to 28 ltrs per/hr for both engines at 8 knots.
We departed Jacksonville 1330 on the 15th Nov and did a 20 hour overnight Atlantic run to Cape Canaveral, had a uncomfortable trip as seas from 3 different directions of about 4 to 6 feet, 20 hours of bash, crash, roll, tied up at Cape Marina in port Canaveral early morning, nice to have the boat still.
Seeing as we were at Cape Canaveral we decided to stay an extra day and go visit the Kennedy space center (NASA) and glad we did as it was one of the highlights of our trip so far, hired a car for the day and got lost, first time Rose's I Phone let us down, the space center was such an interesting place, seeing the Gemini space capsule that two astronaughts spent 14 days in, gezz you wouldn't want to fart in that little thing, (Bills old Fiat 500 bambina was bigger) we should never complain again about cattle class seats again, (but will no doubt) saw the shuttle Atlantis (the real one) along with lots of rockets and spacy sort of things etc, got to meet and have lunch with Wendy Lawrence, four times she has been into space, told us all about being weightless, life on the space station and compared blast off to like strapping a butterfly to a bullet. The below photos show the size of some of the equipment, awesome !!!
Left Cape Canaveral on the morning of the 18th Nov, passed throughout a lock system that put us back in the ICW, had a lovely sunny day cruise, spent most the day helming from the fly bridge, anchored for the night under the Wabasso bridge, lots of mozzies, Rose having fun cremating them with the electric tennis racket thingy she brought back in Norfolk.
Moved on again 19th to Jensen beach area where we anchored under the Jensen bridge for the night. Had a problem with port engine rev counter not working, Bill investigated and found that the shaft that drives the sender was broken, annoying but will not stop the engine, will try to find replacement somewhere.
So far on the ICW we have seen literally hundreds of Dolphyns in small groups of two to four, the strange thing is that they all like to get a free ride in the wake of the boat, a bit like wake surfing, usually they like to ride the bow wave, Rose laughs and giggles at them and they respond by rolling on their side or doing barrel rolls which sets Rose off shrieking giggling again.
Another thing Bill has noticed is the idiotic stupid demented arrogant behavior of some of the power boaters, (sport fishing or cigar boats), we have encountered many that seem to have the attitude they have complete ownership of the water , passing at speed ( like 20 knots, "no crap") from astern or head on with a couple of feet clearance, one instance is when we left Beaufort we had a sport fisher boat pass us with about 4 feet gap, keep in mind we were 10 miles out in the Atlantic with 3000 miles of sea room to the east. What is wrong with these clowns ?????
After taking 4 days from Cape Canaveral, anchoring each night at small inlets on the ICW and having to wait for something like 36 low bridges to open, the timing of the bridge openings were not synchronized, as an example a bridge would open every 15 minutes but the next bridge only a mile away would open every hour thus leaving us stuck in-between bridges for anything from 30 to 60 minutes, but all in all we had an interesting trip, seeing the array, style and splendor of homes was staggering, some of the homes we found out later were in the 15 million plus price range.
We arrived in Fort Lauderdale in the afternoon of the 21st and anchored in a place called Lake Sylvia, not really a lake but more of a tear drop shaped inlet right in the center of Fort Lauderdale, lovely sheltered place.
Our stay in Fort Lauderdale did not start well when we decided to go ashore in our dinghy and we run straight into problems with the local water police, stopped us for causing to much wake in our little 10 foot dinghy and not having the dinghy registered in Florida !!!!!!!! we got a written warning, then water police stopped us again next day for not having four life jackets in dinghy, got a citation for $90, when we tried to explain that we were not from the USA and were unfamiliar with the regulations we felt that the water police were targeting and stalking us as we noticed other boats were moving about with no registration,
speeding or safety equipment and not being stopped, so got dinghy
registered for Florida waters $260 and put life jackets, flares, horn, lights, fire extinguisher, VHF and mooring ropes onboard, ( now have more equipment on a 10 foot dinghy then a super tanker ) we were not stopped again which pissed us off as we wanted to show the buggers how well equipped our mini super tanker was.
We were having problems with the stabilizers which seemed to work only in one direction of roll so contacted the Trac Stabilizer agent Daryl Wendorf from American Bowthruster ( ABT-TRAC ), Daryl and his helper Steve spent 3 hours onboard reprograming the control unit as the gyro was out of whack and checking out the entire system, when we asked what was owed Daryl insisted that there would be no charge much to our appreciation, this totally offset the bad experience with the water police and our thanks to Daryl.
We managed to catch up with Gerry and Mary Anne who now
work in Florida for a few drinks ( maybe just a bit more than a few ) and diner, when Bill was working in Fiji he meet Gerry and they become firm friends, Gerry and Mary Anne now have a 18 month old daughter that Rose adored.
On Monday the 21st Dec we had to go to the local court house to pay the citation, we had tried to pay online but system would not let us, after much waiting we were told citation number not entered into system and advised to phone the court to get it inputed, Bill was really pissed ranting why the hell should we be fined for a stupid thing and then have to do the courts work !!!!!!!! ( only in the land of the free )
The weather was good so decided to get the hell out Fort Lauderdale, fueled up but had a rather big issue, our usual procedure is for Rose to fill and Bill to watch the tank gauge in the engine room so we don't overflow, huge fines if any fuel is spilled, Rose noticed after filling about 20 liters of diesel that Bill had opened the water tank filler ( Bugger blast is not what Bill said ) we decided to depart anyway as we had bottled water onboard so we left at midday, had a lovely 24 hour overnight trip to Key West, sunny clear day, great sunset with a low swell, when we were going out through the Port Everglades channel a 60 foot sports fishing boat zoomed down our starboard side doing 30 odd knots putting up a 4 foot wake about 3 feet apart ( the sports boats really are tossers ) Rose said hang on while running about grabbing anything not bolted down, but the stabilizers worked a treat since being re calibrated and only rolled about 10 degrees whereas before it would have like being in a washing machine. Trip log now reading 1048 nm since departing Great Bridge, Norfolk.
We wanted to move into a marina at Key West so we could flush the water tanks, the marina we chose was up a narrow channel and on the way we ran aground, Not Bills fault as half way up the channel the markers changed sides, ( since Norfolk it had been red marker to starboard and green marker to port side ) luckily we were only going about 3 knots and only the bow was aground, after refloating we decided to head back to another marina with easier access. Spend two days flushing the tanks by using a gallon of detergent in each tanks, filling and emptying, ( frothy foam everywhere and we mean everywhere ) again flushed using bleach, then flushed with a gallon of conditioner, then flushed by adding vanilla essence to take the bleach smell away, finally filling and emptying about 10 times, used about 10,000 gallons ( 45,000 liters ) of water but now the tanks are cleaner than before Bill's silly mistake and really smell lovely.
Key West is quite a nice town, very colonial but touristy and is busy with at least 2 cruise ships in at any time, most of the restaurants are sea food based of which we tried several, now that the weather had warmed up considerably we made good use of the fly bridge area and have had several BBQ's.
Our plan is to go direct to Panama from Key West some 1200 nm, the east coast of central America does not really interest us, we carry 6000 liters of fuel that will get us over the distance with a small safety margin, but to be really safe Bill wanted more fuel and at the marina we found a worker that had five 200 liter plastic drums for sale so we brought them, lashed them on the aft deck, this will give us about a 25% safety margin.
Now you can go to Homeward Bound
We finally got away and departed Tidewater Marina at 10.00 on Monday
28th Oct with farewells from Sil and Jan from "Captains Choice" ( boat name ) and waves from several other boaties.
Arrived at the lock at Great Bridge 1145, passed throughout lift bridge 1215 then tied up at the public dock for the night to catch up with Chuck and Kelsey from Virginia Yachts ( the brokers we brought Maddelyn Rose via ) had a chat for an hour or so, they were both impressed with the work we have done on Maddelyn Rose.
Had a problem with the plotter so asked Gary to pick Bill up and go to West Marine to get it checked, ended up by having to buy a new plotter, will get de funk plotter fixed later on trip and install on fly bridge which will be very handy.
Got away from Great Bridge early next day (29th), really the start of our trip home, anchored at Buck island for the night after traveling about 35 nm, had an interesting event !!
We noticed that some of the American power boats are really arrogant pricks, the ICW in places is quit narrow and as we do about 7-8 knots they go considerably faster, there was a couple of issues when two boats passed with a couple of feet clearance, ( no crap, there was only 2 feet ) they simply cannot wait 5 mins, Bill got annoyed with one stuck up arrogant prick so gave him a blast on the VHF. (those who know Bill can only imagine what was said )
The next day (30th) we travelled further south and anchored at Pungo river which is a little inlet about 10 mn from Belhaven for the night. Passing throughout some of the man made canals was interesting, one canal was 21 nm, dead straight, lots of floating logs ( hit one that bumped under the boat ) and tree stumps in side making the canal narrow so had to keep a watchful eye out. Had a problem when the RPM counter on port engine went he RPM counter on port engine went dead and as we have a synchronizing system for the engines it made the starboard engine go to idle, turned out the sender on port engine feel out of housing, someone ( not Bill ) had not fitted the locking pin correctly.
Moved onto Belhaven the next day (31th) and tied up at River Forest Marina where Jimmy and Carolyn ( worked with them in Thailand ) visited, we felt bad because Jimmy said they lived in Greenville, but there are two Greenville's, one in North Carolina about 30 mins drive from Belhaven and one in South Carolina about 7 hours drive, Jimmy and Carolyn live in the Greenville in South Carolina, ( oopppps ) But it was great to see them. The marina had a couple of courtesy golf carts and we used one o go to the local supermarket about 3 mile distance, heaps of fun driving the cart along the highway with every passing motorist waving and laughing at us.
After leaving Belhaven on the 3rd November and having a good but cold trip we stopped at Beaufort city and tied up at the local city dock, right in the center of the city. Beaufort is a quaint town with everything within walking distance, lots of restaurants which we tried a couple but sadly the range on the menu was a bit limited, ok if you want burgers though as we have found to be the usual in the states. The marina has several courtesy cars and we used one to go to post office to send plotter, the courtesy car was a 1980 Buick estate, 23 feet long, 8 feet wide, a bit like driving an aircraft carrier down the road, but lots of fun, every bump we hit it took a mile for the suspension to return to normal. Tried to get plotter fixed at Garmin service agent but turned out the company noted on Garmin web site are not service agents after all so after long phone conversations had to send to Garmin in Kansas and will get them to send to our next stop or next ones when repaired. ho hum !!!! The charts indicate that the ICW south have too many shallow spots so will top up with fuel as we are planning to go straight from Beaufort to Jacksonville Florida, 360 nm, about 2 days travel, be good for Rose to experience her first long overnighters and to get a firm fuel usage over that distance so we can plan on how much extra fuel we need to carry for the longer trips.
We left Beaufort on the 6th Nov and anchored under Cape Lookout to wait favorable weather, early morning on the 9th we left Cape lookout and arrived at the St John river entrance after covering 409 nm which leads to Jacksonville at 0300 on the 11th, we did not want to enter the river at night so steamed around in a circle or two hours before heading in, tied up at Morning Star marina about 3 nm inside the entrance at 0830. One of the highlights of the trip was we were visited by Dolpyns several times, Rose had never seen Dolpyns before so was extremely excited ( in fact was over the moon ). The staff at Morning Star marina were extremely helpful and friendly, even lent us their Ram pick up truck to explore Jacksonville and get some food supplies, didn't even get lost as Rose uses her I phone map thingy that works a treat. Topped again with fuel, 367 US Gals ( 1400 ltrs ) which by Bill's calcs worked out to 28 ltrs per/hr for both engines at 8 knots.
We departed Jacksonville 1330 on the 15th Nov and did a 20 hour overnight Atlantic run to Cape Canaveral, had a uncomfortable trip as seas from 3 different directions of about 4 to 6 feet, 20 hours of bash, crash, roll, tied up at Cape Marina in port Canaveral early morning, nice to have the boat still.
Seeing as we were at Cape Canaveral we decided to stay an extra day and go visit the Kennedy space center (NASA) and glad we did as it was one of the highlights of our trip so far, hired a car for the day and got lost, first time Rose's I Phone let us down, the space center was such an interesting place, seeing the Gemini space capsule that two astronaughts spent 14 days in, gezz you wouldn't want to fart in that little thing, (Bills old Fiat 500 bambina was bigger) we should never complain again about cattle class seats again, (but will no doubt) saw the shuttle Atlantis (the real one) along with lots of rockets and spacy sort of things etc, got to meet and have lunch with Wendy Lawrence, four times she has been into space, told us all about being weightless, life on the space station and compared blast off to like strapping a butterfly to a bullet. The below photos show the size of some of the equipment, awesome !!!
Left Cape Canaveral on the morning of the 18th Nov, passed throughout a lock system that put us back in the ICW, had a lovely sunny day cruise, spent most the day helming from the fly bridge, anchored for the night under the Wabasso bridge, lots of mozzies, Rose having fun cremating them with the electric tennis racket thingy she brought back in Norfolk.
Moved on again 19th to Jensen beach area where we anchored under the Jensen bridge for the night. Had a problem with port engine rev counter not working, Bill investigated and found that the shaft that drives the sender was broken, annoying but will not stop the engine, will try to find replacement somewhere.
So far on the ICW we have seen literally hundreds of Dolphyns in small groups of two to four, the strange thing is that they all like to get a free ride in the wake of the boat, a bit like wake surfing, usually they like to ride the bow wave, Rose laughs and giggles at them and they respond by rolling on their side or doing barrel rolls which sets Rose off shrieking giggling again.
Another thing Bill has noticed is the idiotic stupid demented arrogant behavior of some of the power boaters, (sport fishing or cigar boats), we have encountered many that seem to have the attitude they have complete ownership of the water , passing at speed ( like 20 knots, "no crap") from astern or head on with a couple of feet clearance, one instance is when we left Beaufort we had a sport fisher boat pass us with about 4 feet gap, keep in mind we were 10 miles out in the Atlantic with 3000 miles of sea room to the east. What is wrong with these clowns ?????
After taking 4 days from Cape Canaveral, anchoring each night at small inlets on the ICW and having to wait for something like 36 low bridges to open, the timing of the bridge openings were not synchronized, as an example a bridge would open every 15 minutes but the next bridge only a mile away would open every hour thus leaving us stuck in-between bridges for anything from 30 to 60 minutes, but all in all we had an interesting trip, seeing the array, style and splendor of homes was staggering, some of the homes we found out later were in the 15 million plus price range.
We arrived in Fort Lauderdale in the afternoon of the 21st and anchored in a place called Lake Sylvia, not really a lake but more of a tear drop shaped inlet right in the center of Fort Lauderdale, lovely sheltered place.
Our stay in Fort Lauderdale did not start well when we decided to go ashore in our dinghy and we run straight into problems with the local water police, stopped us for causing to much wake in our little 10 foot dinghy and not having the dinghy registered in Florida !!!!!!!! we got a written warning, then water police stopped us again next day for not having four life jackets in dinghy, got a citation for $90, when we tried to explain that we were not from the USA and were unfamiliar with the regulations we felt that the water police were targeting and stalking us as we noticed other boats were moving about with no registration,
speeding or safety equipment and not being stopped, so got dinghy
registered for Florida waters $260 and put life jackets, flares, horn, lights, fire extinguisher, VHF and mooring ropes onboard, ( now have more equipment on a 10 foot dinghy then a super tanker ) we were not stopped again which pissed us off as we wanted to show the buggers how well equipped our mini super tanker was.
We were having problems with the stabilizers which seemed to work only in one direction of roll so contacted the Trac Stabilizer agent Daryl Wendorf from American Bowthruster ( ABT-TRAC ), Daryl and his helper Steve spent 3 hours onboard reprograming the control unit as the gyro was out of whack and checking out the entire system, when we asked what was owed Daryl insisted that there would be no charge much to our appreciation, this totally offset the bad experience with the water police and our thanks to Daryl.
We managed to catch up with Gerry and Mary Anne who now
work in Florida for a few drinks ( maybe just a bit more than a few ) and diner, when Bill was working in Fiji he meet Gerry and they become firm friends, Gerry and Mary Anne now have a 18 month old daughter that Rose adored.
On Monday the 21st Dec we had to go to the local court house to pay the citation, we had tried to pay online but system would not let us, after much waiting we were told citation number not entered into system and advised to phone the court to get it inputed, Bill was really pissed ranting why the hell should we be fined for a stupid thing and then have to do the courts work !!!!!!!! ( only in the land of the free )
The weather was good so decided to get the hell out Fort Lauderdale, fueled up but had a rather big issue, our usual procedure is for Rose to fill and Bill to watch the tank gauge in the engine room so we don't overflow, huge fines if any fuel is spilled, Rose noticed after filling about 20 liters of diesel that Bill had opened the water tank filler ( Bugger blast is not what Bill said ) we decided to depart anyway as we had bottled water onboard so we left at midday, had a lovely 24 hour overnight trip to Key West, sunny clear day, great sunset with a low swell, when we were going out through the Port Everglades channel a 60 foot sports fishing boat zoomed down our starboard side doing 30 odd knots putting up a 4 foot wake about 3 feet apart ( the sports boats really are tossers ) Rose said hang on while running about grabbing anything not bolted down, but the stabilizers worked a treat since being re calibrated and only rolled about 10 degrees whereas before it would have like being in a washing machine. Trip log now reading 1048 nm since departing Great Bridge, Norfolk.
We wanted to move into a marina at Key West so we could flush the water tanks, the marina we chose was up a narrow channel and on the way we ran aground, Not Bills fault as half way up the channel the markers changed sides, ( since Norfolk it had been red marker to starboard and green marker to port side ) luckily we were only going about 3 knots and only the bow was aground, after refloating we decided to head back to another marina with easier access. Spend two days flushing the tanks by using a gallon of detergent in each tanks, filling and emptying, ( frothy foam everywhere and we mean everywhere ) again flushed using bleach, then flushed with a gallon of conditioner, then flushed by adding vanilla essence to take the bleach smell away, finally filling and emptying about 10 times, used about 10,000 gallons ( 45,000 liters ) of water but now the tanks are cleaner than before Bill's silly mistake and really smell lovely.
Key West is quite a nice town, very colonial but touristy and is busy with at least 2 cruise ships in at any time, most of the restaurants are sea food based of which we tried several, now that the weather had warmed up considerably we made good use of the fly bridge area and have had several BBQ's.
Our plan is to go direct to Panama from Key West some 1200 nm, the east coast of central America does not really interest us, we carry 6000 liters of fuel that will get us over the distance with a small safety margin, but to be really safe Bill wanted more fuel and at the marina we found a worker that had five 200 liter plastic drums for sale so we brought them, lashed them on the aft deck, this will give us about a 25% safety margin.
Now you can go to Homeward Bound
