3/21/2008 Friday
We awoke before sunrise for the final chapter of our trip of a lifetime!  The night before, our close proximity to home had been emphasized by the visit of our good friends, the Goddards who joined us from their home for dinner at the Coinjock Marina Restaurant, famous in cruising circles for their prime rib!  So our last dinner of the cruise was shared by old friends, as well as new ones, with Dick & Nancy White from M/V EMERALD LADY at the table with us.
With the dawn, we were on our way north through the challenges of the unpredictable depths of the ICW.  We began the trip with EMERALD LADY leading the way with her 5 foot draft calling the depths for us.  Just as predicted, we often crossed areas that were marginal for AF even though we were in the center of the channel.  Although we were never “aground” in the strictest sense of the word, it was frequently necessary to slow to a crawl or even reverse course as we sought deeper water.  The weather that had dictated our entry into the ICW system was a challenge even within those protected waters.   The winds that were about 20 knots in the morning, increased throughout the day to as high as 40 knots, confirming the appropriateness of our decision to avoid the fury of the Atlantic for the final 130 miles of our trip!  As we approached Norfolk, our progress was slowed significantly by the bridges that opened on a schedule that was not made with boaters in mind, but by early afternoon, we were passing landmarks that confirmed our arrival in home territory!  My Blackberry was alive with messages from friends confirming that they were awaiting our arrival at various points along our route to welcome us home! 
As we arrived at Hospital Point, which is mile marker #1 of the ICW, EMERALD LADY, whom we first met in Glacier Bay, Alaska, left us for her slip in Portsmouth, symbolically ending our Alaskan trek!  There is no doubt that we will see Dick & Nancy again somewhere, sometime!
Then the Wainwright Building where I have practiced medicine for the past thirty-one years came into view!  The windows of the top floor were open and filled with our friends and staff waving their welcome to us after a year away from home!  A very touching scene that reemphasized the ambivalent feelings associated with the end of such an adventure as we have had the privilege to experience together.  The last time that I recall experiencing such feelings was my last flight in fighter jets as I was about to leave the Navy after three of the best years of my life.  An email from Scott Dungan who has been following our trip via the internet, predicted that we would have feelings similar to those that he felt as a high school football player during the final minutes of the last game of his senior year.  He was right!  The wonderful memories were flooding our thoughts, mixed with regrets that it was about to come to an end.  The last ten miles of our journey took us by Pier 12 of the Norfolk Navy Base where I left thirty-six years ago onboard the aircraft carrier USS KENNEDY  to prepare for our anticipated time on Yankee station off North Viet Nam.  It was fitting that one of my very best friends and a fighter pilot from those days, Ed Andrews, was with me on the bridge as we passed that milestone in our lives and this journey!  With the winds howling at near gale force levels, ALWAYS FRIDAY took us safely and comfortably into Little Creek Harbor where some of our best friends were waiting to welcome us home and take our lines.  As I turned the engine to “OFF” for the final time of our journey, the realization that Kathy, Raleigh, Binky and I had traveled almost 14,000 miles around the North and Central American continent together on the greatest adventure of our lives came welling to the surface with a sense of accomplishment, happiness, and sorrow that is hard to describe.  There is no way to overstate the happiness that ALWAYS FRIDAY has brought into our lives!  It is no longer an inanimate floating work of the boat builder’s art, but more importantly, a part of our family’s lives that can never be taken from us.  At some point in the distant future, someone else may own and enjoy our boat, but no one else will ever possess her soul!  ALWAYS FRIDAY is an indelible part of our being, and that can not be changed!  What has the last year meant to me?  Maybe it can be summed up by the fact that no matter what the circumstances in the future, I will always be able to close my eyes and relive many of the most memorable moments of my life….until my mind no longer knows my name.
To those of you that have added so much in so many ways to the journey of ALWAYS FRIDAY, either onboard, ashore or via the internet, we thank you all from the bottom of our hearts! 
We loved having you with us!
Until we sail again,
Buddy, Kathy, Raleigh & Binky 

3/18/2008 Tuesday
Last night was an excellent one at anchor with little wind and no problems at all with the anchor rock steady with a 3:1 scope in 12 feet of water.  A sail boat and shrimper followed us into our chosen anchorage, although the cruising guide would  lead you to believe that no decent anchoring sites were within miles!  Before sunrise this morning, I was up in order to make sure that we were underway at first light.  As we entered the Pungo Canal, we were met with fog that required radar for a safe passage.  I knew that the sailboat that anchored with us did not have radar, so I called him to warn him of the conditions that he was about to encounter.  What followed was yet another delayed reward of our Alaskan adventure!  Another boat had heard the call of AF to the sailboat, and that boat was M/V EMERALD LADY!  The same EMERALD LADY that had shared Alaska’s Glacier Bay with us last summer!  Dick & Nancy White had shared the experience of Marjorie Glacier with us, and called on the VHF there when they saw our home port of Virginia Beach, since theirs was the same!  We talked at length of Virginia and Alaska then went our separate ways.  We last crossed paths south of Ketchikan….until the Pungo Canal in North Carolina!  The VHF came alive this morning with the question “ALWAYS FRIDAY, this is EMERALD LADY!  Remember us?!    With great memories of Alaska bubbling to the surface, I quickly answered “Sure do!!  Great to see you again!!”  It took us almost 12,000 miles to cross paths again, but it happened!  After a few more pleasantries, we agreed to meet at the Coinjock Marina for dinner later for our first face to face meeting ever! 
But before that was to be, we had about 60 miles of very challenging ICW travel to safely complete.  The decision to take the ICW option over the outside passage around Cape Hatteras has tuned out to be a very sound one.  The weather system off shore runs from Maine to Cuba, and is associated with winds as high as 65 knots and seas as high as 45 feet!  Just offshore, the seas are 8-12 feet!  AF has been through considerably worse than what Hatteras would throw at us today, but there is no reason to subject ourselves to that when the ICW option is available.  So the challenge switches from that of a rough sea passage, to one of limited visibility through tight channels and shallow waters!  The unpredictable shoaling results in shallow areas in the middle of channels where the draft of AF exceeds the depth of the water!  Twice today we were stopped by soft sand blocking the very center of the channel.  On both occasions, we were able to back out of the dilemma and find an acceptable area for passage outside of the published channel.  Just tonight, I received this message from a seasoned delivery captain suggesting that we will see more of the same tomorrow:

Buddy,
I’ve been following your trip like many others, and had a chance to meet you in Miami. Great trip. As I’m sure others have told you- you will exercise caution in Currituck Sound.  I’ve been through there delivering boats with 6ft draft and bumped bottom many times in mid channel.  It’s a miserable stretch of markers to follow- once past the open sound you are in good shape, but expect a little bottom paint to rub off- Mike

But it is far better than being punished by seas that would make the two day nonstop passage around the Cape into a miserable experience, impossible to justify when an acceptable alternative was available. 

So about 4:30PM we completed this leg of our ICW journey and tied up at Coinjock Marina with EMERALD LADY at our bow!  My recollection of their emerald green hulled boat as a truly beautiful one was borne out by closer inspection!  The layout is excellent, and the roominess of her interior would lead you to believe that she is much larger than her forty-one feet!  They have equipped her as a live-aboard boat in a way that would make you think about giving up your shore based home too! 

As proof that we were almost home, we were joined for dinner by Mark & Jacqueline Goddard and their son Mark Jr.  who came over from their home in Currituck.  They have been great friends for years, as shown by the fact that among the most excited to see them were Raleigh & Binky!!  Their tails could not stop wagging after seeing one of their best people-friends, Mark Jr!    After tours of both AF and EMERALD LADY, all eight of us gathered at the Coinjock Marina Restaurant for a dinner featuring their specialty - prime rib!  The conversations centered around our many adventures in Alaska and the Inside Passage through British Columbia, with the surface only scratched in three hours of non-stop recollections!  Dick & Nancy chose to ship EMERALD LADY from Victoria, BC to Fort Lauderdale, FL rather than subject their 41 foot boat to the uncertainties of a long ocean passage.  Their boat certainly could have made the voyage, but at about one fourth the displacement of AF, it would not have been a pleasant experience.   So with two more good friends added to our list of Alaskan treasures, we are about to go to bed in anticipation of one of the highlights of our trip – our arrival home after over a year away!  During that year, we have experienced adventures that, although in the reach of many are experienced by only a very few!  We were asked many times by those that work with me in our water-view office “when will you be home?”.  On each occasion, I have answered that we will be home when you hear AF’s horn blast out the news of our arrival!  Well, the office has been told that our arrival is eminent, and the horn should blow tomorrow afternoon barring unforeseen challenges in the shallow waters of Currituck Sound.   They have promised to be leaning out of the windows as we pass by the Norfolk harbor on our way to East Beach Marina in Virginia Beach! 
So tomorrow the fat lady will sing at the top of her lungs….and we should be home in our old beds for the first time in more than a year tomorrow night. 
The term “ambivalent feelings” will take on a very personal meaning to me as I step off of ALWAYS FRIDAY and into our car for the short ride “home” from the marina.  
For the past year the word “home” has meant ALWAYS FRIDAY…in a way it still does in my dreams.  

3/17/2008 Monday
Last night was a most enjoyable night!  Billy and Linda Page of NH 40  SOUTHERN COMFORT treated us to a night on the town of Morehead City!  They picked us up from the boat, and after a tour of AF for Linda, we were off to one of their favorite restaurants, WindanSea!  Not a place that you would find on your own, but well worth the trouble of finding it if you are ever hungry for an excellent dinner and in Morehead City!  The food, although excellent, played second fiddle to the superb company of Billy and Linda!  They live about 60 miles from Morehead City, but have had a waterfront cottage for years that has evolved into a great vacation home with their Nordhavn moored in their front yard!  After dinner we went to their home for a tour of both it and SOUTHERN COMFORT.  Both are beautiful!  Bill is an electrical engineer, CPA and Wharton graduate, so every facet of their lives is organized and efficient!   Their boat is the second generation 40 foot NH, and the workmanship and design are excellent.  Billy has taken it to an even higher level with his knowledge of electronics and electrical circuitry!  Billy is one of those people that you could talk to all night and learn something from him with every sentence! 
So by about 11 pm, we had said good night to Billy & Linda and were back onboard AF, preparing for an early departure up the ICW for Belhaven!  About 7:30 AM we were underway with an adverse tide not only rolling against us, but also stealing the water under our keel as low tide progressed.  We had been told by many that we would have plenty of depth with occasional exceptions at dead low tide.  You guessed it!  At dead low tide with the depth sounder announcing 4 feet under the keel, we bumped the soft bottom from well within the channel!  In no time a shrimp boat came over with an offer to assist us off the shoaled sand.  Before we could thank them for their kindness, they demanded $200 for their benevolent services!  Thankfully, their prophecy that we would never get off without their help proved inaccurate, and much to their disappointment, we were soon off and again headed north!  For the next 65 NM, the narrow channel required our full time attention, with almost no use of the autopilot’s nav mode, and constant use of the jog lever which is basically an electronic steering wheel.  Our original plan was to spend the night in Belhaven, NC, but our arrival there at 5 PM would have been a waste of two hours better used for getting closer to Coinjock, NC tomorrow.  So we canceled our plans for Belhaven and continued another hour down the road to the Alligator River/Pungo Canal area.  There we picked an acceptable area for anchoring for the night and dropped the hook about a quarter of a mile off the ICW in 12 feet of water.   The anchor held beautifully, and we are now set for an evening under the stars, with a pork tenderloin on the grill preceded by a real treat of smoked moose courtesy of our good friend in Alaska, Craig Forgaard!  Our Alaskan friends continue to be stars of our conversations on a daily basis as the memories of last summer continue to flood our thoughts!  Tomorrow we hope to be in Coinjock for the night where our friends from NC, the Goddards will join us for dinner at the Coinjock Docks, famous for their seafood and prime rib!  If all goes well, we may be in Virginia Beach by Wednesday evening! 
It is almost over.  Judging by distance traveled, we have completed 99.3% of our planned trip, with the remainging fraction of a percent just off the bow!  I can hear the fat lady warming up in the dressing room!!  Although all good things must come to an end, we can relish the fact that it has been a truly fantastic show......and one Hell of a trip!

3/15/2008 Saturday
Our arrival at Cape Fear’s Bald Head Island Marina on Thursday was uneventful, and the marina quite nice.  After a flounder sandwich for each of us at Eb & Floes’s, a nice walk around the marina took us to the old light house and the resort town where it seemed that everyone there had seen the “big yellow boat” come into the harbor!  After answering the many questions of the locals gathered around the post office about our trip, and offering the obligatory boat tours to several admiring locals (including Joe the harbor master who pronounced AF to be the best boat to go through the marina in recent times), we returned to the boat to consider the options for our continued northerly progress towards Virginia.  One option was to get a good night’s sleep and leave for Beaufort early the next morning, but that would put us into a new harbor after nightfall – a situation that we have always made every effort to avoid.  The second option was to take a nap to offset the fact that we had run the boat all night, and leave on the rising tide about 9:30 PM for Beaufort.  By running all night, we would arrive about noon for an easy entry into a deep and well marked commercial channel.  We decided on choice number two, and with the rising tide we were on the way to Beaufort!  By virtue of the extensive shoals surrounding the entry channel, we were forced to run almost due south for over an hour in order to reach deep water before turning to the northwest for our next port.  The radar, electronic charts and FLIR again showed their mettle in a very demanding and potentially hostile environment of a very dark night and extensive areas of very shallow water (less than six feet!).  The seas were about three feet and the wind behind us, yielding a very comfortable trip into Beaufort.  The course into the City Marina of Beaufort was a serpentine one with depths that varied on the chart from a foot to fifteen or more feet – not a situation that engenders great trust in the available data.  So I called TowBoatUS on the VHF for some very valuable “local information”!  After a very prompt and friendly reply from their local boat, we had priceless advice as to the best approach into the marina.  Following that advice, we enjoyed an uneventful trip to the dock with no less than ten feet of water under our keel the whole way!  A very nice way to finish our second all-night run in as many days. Our inability to contact the city marina over the past two days by both cell phone and VHF was easier to understand when the personality of the dock master came to light.  He seemed to have a definite dislike for all three of us, and probably for Raleigh and Binky too had they not been confined to the shower (their usual station for our arrivals).  We commented that it seemed unusual for someone to dislike us so intensely after having known us for only a few minutes, but he appeared to have perfected instantaneous animosity!  We later found it reassuring to learn that he doesn’t seem to like anyone, at least leaving us in good company with others on the dock. 

Not long after our arrival, a friendly knock on the side of the boat signaled the arrival of Billy Page, the owner of the Nordhavn 40 M/V SOUTHERN COMFORT docked in Morehead City.  He had emailed us an invitation to call him if we came to Beaufort, but saw on the website that we had just arrived, so he came by with a bottle of wine to welcome us to town!   Although he lives several hours away, he had come to Beaufort primarily to meet us and hear more of our adventure.  After a very enjoyable visit and a tour of AF, he left with plans for all of us to get together for dinner tomorrow night after a tour of their boat!  Another new friend thanks to ALWAYS FRIDAY and another enjoyable night to look forward to!  

Beaufort is a very interesting little town filled with very friendly people, almost all of whom enjoy the boating scene.  The majority of the shops are nautically oriented, and seafood restaurants abound among the twenty-four eating establishments that line the harbor!  The long seafaring history of the town is proven by the many homes facing the water dating back to the late 1700’s to mid-1800’s.  The local graveyard is the final resting place for veterans of the War of 1812 and the Civil War, as well as dozens of citizens whose lives spanned the 18^th century and later.  A truly fascinating little town, and well worth a two or three day stop!

Our protracted runs of the past several days were dictated by a weather system that earlier today played havoc with the southeast.  This evening we tracked the storm on our 72 mile radar as it moved towards us accompanied by tornado watches and rising winds.  About 9:30 PM it hit with a vengeance with 50 mph winds, torrential rains and one of the biggest drops in barometric pressure that we have seen all year., but nothing of a destructive nature.   In fact the five of us enjoyed dinner in the salon as the rain beat down on the deck.  (Kathy’s sister and her husband, Susanne & Hugo, who joined us in Alaska for ten days, again joined us today for a short overnight visit from Raleigh, NC to welcome us back to the east coast.)

The talk today has been how best to head north again in a day or so.  The Atlantic is forecast to be quite unfriendly for the next week with seas as high as 17 feet, and winds of gale force intermittently.  We could pick our time and run the 30 hours to Virginia Beach through 6-8 foot seas…..or we could consider riding the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) through North Carolina and into Virginia.  The ICW has not been a viable option until now because the depths are either too shallow or unpredictable through Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.  However, the Coast Guard, TowBoatUS and the local watermen now confirm that boats considerably larger than ours can now safely traverse the waterway north of us if navigation is careful and accurate. So I gave Kathy the option of 30 hours in 6+ foot seas through the “Graveyard of the Atlantic”, or a slower trip through the ICW in much calmer conditions.  Since she had been asking to see the ICW since south Florida, I had a good idea of what her response would be, so today we will be deep into the paper charts as we prepare for a ride down the “ditch” to Norfolk.  It will be the first time that we have not been in an ocean since we turned south into the Pacific from Canada last fall.   From the standpoint of running the boat, it will be a much more challenging trip.  In the ocean, it is usually a “set it and forget it” scenario with the autopilot and chart plotter.  However in the confined channel of the ICW, the boat’s direction requires the constant attention of the helmsman or the bottom will rise up and smite you! 

The wind here in the harbor is about 15 knots out of the north, and XM WeatherWx reports gale warnings and challenging seas just off shore.  So today will be a lazy day with Susanne, Hugo and Ed before we join Billy and Linda for dinner in Morehead City tonight.  Then tomorrow we will be off on a new adventure up the ICW to home in Virginia!

3/12/2008 Wednesday
Our time in Charleston was everything that we had hoped for. In fact, it was one of Kathy’s favorite stops of the year! The Charleston Municipal Marina was an excellent choice for our base while in the area.  It is a true megayacht center, and the quarter mile long main deep water dock was essentially filled with very serious boats of many kinds.  The big sport fishing boats are here in numbers as they head back north after wintering in Mexico or Central America.  The cruising boats are well represented too, with many that are confining their cruising to the Intracoastal Waterway, and a few that stay in the ocean as we have.  Most are returning from the Bahamas or South Florida.  None that we have talked to have been as far as AF has safely taken us!  Shortly after setting our dock lines, Kathy had a gourmet meal ready for our first night in the city.  The next morning, the marina’s shuttle took us downtown where we became the ultimate tourist wandering the markets, and looking in amazement at the prices that they asked for the famous Charleston woven baskets!    Little baskets that you might expect to pay $50 for were actually ten times that much; even placemats were over $500 each!  We left them for someone more impressed with them than we were. 

The web site answered our question of “where for lunch?”.  One of our office managers read that we were in Charleston and emailed us her recommendation of Café Cru for lunch!  Annette had been there many times before, and always found it memorable.  So noon found us there….without reservations!  It was obvious that this was not just any little lunch place!  On the wall was a receipt for catering the staff lunch when the President visited Charleston!  (Over a thousand tax payer’s dollars by the way!)  Since we had beat the rush, we were seated quickly and enjoyed a truly memorable experience that we would recommend heartedly for anyone following in our wake later!  Having taken great pleasure in mingling with the locals as a “non-tourist” in Alaska, the next event left us with no option other than to admit to present status as visitors to the city.  We actually bought a ticket for a buggy ride through the city!  So there we were, riding behind two mules with quintessential tourist from Canada, California and Pennsylvania!  We even had a camera draped around our neck!  It was actually quite enjoyable and very informative.  Charleston is indeed a beautiful city!  Earlier today, we again hit the tourist circuit as we visited the City of Charleston Museum and two historic homes filled with priceless antiques.  Even though my interest in antique furniture is not great, and my knowledge of the subject even less, the great beauty of the old cabinet maker’s art is very easily appreciated!  Since they are owned by the Charleston Museum, they will never come on the market, but if they were ever to be sold, the best pieces would easily bring seven figure prices! 

So after two full days of sightseeing, it was time to move on to the north.  After many rejected invitation over the past year, our old friend from our Naval aviation days of 35 years ago, Ed Andrews joined us tonight for the ride to Virginia!  He arrived at 8 PM, and within a half hour, we had thrown off the lines and left Charleston under the cover of darkness!  The night time departure was chosen in order to put us into Cape Fear, NC tomorrow afternoon before sunset.  Having come into Charleston during daylight on Monday, we now had an electronic chart of our inbound course of two days ago.  That information made a night departure much easier and very safe.  It is now the middle of the night, Kathy and the dogs are sound asleep, and we are 29 miles off the coast on the way to Cape Fear’s Bald Head Island Marina. If you ever wonder why this area is called Cape Fear, just look at the chart!  Within ten miles of our present position there are twenty-one charted ship wrecks sitting on the bottom!  In fact, we just deviated around a beacon marking the final resting place for the M/V CITY of RICHMOND.  The lighted beacon is essential since the wreck sits as high as 40 feet off of the bottom, with only 19 feet of clearance for ships passing over her.  Since many of the commercial ships plying these waters draw over 25 feet, a collision with the wreck would be a significant threat without the marker.  However, tonight the seas are friendly, and the wind less than ten knots.  The nighttime offshore skies are again filled with the millions of stars that land dwellers are never privileged to witness, and the sound of the seas parted by the bow lull you into a state of relaxation usually claimed only for the vibrating chairs in Brookstone’s showrooms!   This is our 46^th overnight run on AF this year, and few have been nicer than this one! After Cape Fear, we will make a sort run of less than a hundred miles to Beaufort, NC, and then wait for a weather window to challenge the “Graveyard of the Atlantic” as we make the trip around Cape Hatteras into the home stretch for Virginia Beach!  Almost 14,000 miles behind us, and less than 300 miles before home.  The reality that we are on the last pages of the last chapter of our “trip of a lifetime’ conjures up mixed emotions.  It will be nice to see our friends and family that we have missed so much, but I will greatly miss our life at sea that I have grown to love and enjoy greatly!  I must admit that the same profound sadness that I felt as we left Alaska in our wake is beginning to raise its head again as the reality of once again centering our lives on solid ground presents itself as inevitable.  Virginia is a truly great place to call home…..if you can’t live in Alaska!!

3/10/2008 Monday
Saturday in Hilton Head was a day predominated by the weather!  The winds blew from the west all day at 35-40 knots playing havoc with the seas to the degree that there was no decision that could be made other than to spend the day in Harbour Town Marina!  Had you been so foolish as to attempt to venture out into the Atlantic, King Neptune had done you a favor and blown almost all the water out of Calibogue Sound, making it impossible to leave.  AF and all of the boats around us were mired in the chocolate-pudding bottom to the extent that moving was not an option.  Sunday was some better, but Kathy so enjoyed Hilton Head, and so does not enjoy rough seas that we decided to spend another day there and wait for the calm after the storm. Our strategy worked well, and this morning at daybreak we left Hilton Head for Charleston.  The mystery of the missing live-aboard couple, now making the national news, remained unsolved as we left.  I saw an interview on Fox TV that included AF in the background, but that was as close to being involved as we came.   Most seem to think that they left on their own free will – why they would do so, nobody seemed to know, 

The ride to Charleston was very good, although once again the weatherman was way off on wind direction.  His southerly prediction gave way to the reality of 10 knots out of the NE!  The trip up the coast led us to the commercial shipping channel with depths of 30+ feet, wide channels and easily seen channel markers!  An easy entry into Charleston took us right by Fort Sumter, so close that you could almost hear the Star Spangled Banner riding on the wind!  A slight delay came when the Coast Guard called and asked us to stand off while they lifted a swimmer from the water into their helicopter.  It looked as if they were practicing ocean pick-ups, but we couldn’t tell if it was for real or not.  No matter what, it went well and the helo headed off into the sunset.

The Charleston City Marina is one of the nicest that we have seen anywhere.  It is a massive facility with many impressive yachts and a dozen or so  long range boats of our class.  We got in too late for me to meet any of many boaters here for at least a night, but I’ll be talking to them in the morning!  Charleston has been one of Kathy’s most anticipated stops, so we will stay here for a few days and take in the sights and experiences of the city! 

After our departure from Charleston, Cape fear, 115 NM NE of here, will be our next stop.  We are hoping that Ed Andrews, a friend of three decades from my Naval aviation days, will join us for the ride around Cape Hatteras, the “Graveyard of the Atlantic”.  He has had a standing invitation onboard since we left California for Alaska, but so far it has not worked out. 

It looks like we will be home before too long.  Under different circumstances, I would much prefer to just keep going, but it is a few years too early for that. 
Tonight Kathy is cooking halibut from our freezer.  I can almost hear Craig and Greg saying “nice fish” as we haul it over the side from the cold Alaskan waters!  The term “priceless memories” takes on a new meaning after a year such as our last one.
It’s not quite over yet, but the fat lady is back stage warming up!  

3/08/2008 Saturday

The trip to Hilton Head was a very pleasant one with winds of less than 10 knots and seas of about three feet, both of which go unnoticed by AF.  The morning was spent showing Trey the boat’s electronic systems, which he quickly learned, at least in part because his profession is the design and installation of computer controlled  “smart homes”.  We arrived at the Savanna entrance buoy exactly at our predicted time, and followed the channel to the point of exit that leads to the Harbour Town Yacht Basin.  Once again, in keeping with east coast yachting tradition, the channel was shallow, poorly marked and tricky to follow.  We had by plan hit the shallow area at high tide, so our passage was challenging but uneventful.  With the famous red and white lighthouse of Hilton Head prominent at the entrance, we entered the harbor and were welcomed by a harbor tender who led us to our slip.  After mooring the boat, they presented us with a bottle of wine which kindled my concerns that we were about to spend a lot more money for dockage than we usually do!  The harbor is modern, beautifully equipped, and on this day, the home of several beautiful yachts of more than 100 feet. However, the day of our arrival was one of mystery and concern for the staff, as evidenced by a significant police presence and a flurry of law enforcement activity.  Before long, we heard some of the lurid details… a couple that lived aboard a yacht in the harbor had simply disappeared without a trace, leaving the TV on and the cat onboard.  One of their two cars was gone, and neither had shown up for work for a day or two.  The harbor was buzzing with a body sniffing dog working the surface for gases emitting from a decomposing body, while divers scoured the bottom for either evidence or remains – all to no avail.  So we have sailed into a mystery with no answers to many questions!

 In contrast to that situation, a very nice surprise was docked adjacent to our slip – the M/Y BREAKAWAY owned by Tony & Renee Russell of California!  We actually share mutual friends in Alex & Cece Cook who have a NH 55 on order, and Alex emailed both of us as an introduction!  Once again, we had new friends within minutes of arriving at a new destination!  Over the next several days, we ate several meals together, toured the island, and enjoyed their company before they headed south to Port Canaveral to watch the shuttle launch next week.  They have completed the “Great Loop” circuit of up the east coast, across to the Mississippi River, down to the Gulf of Mexico and across to the east coast again in their beautiful 49 foot Hampton motor yacht, and have plans for more extensive cruising this summer.  Their boat and journey can be seen in detail on their website http://www.breakawayyacht.com/.  As if that were not enough, Walter & Beth Howell, whom we first met at the Miami Boat Show, again came by the boat and entertained us for the day with an extensive tour of their beautiful home and community of Wexford!  Wexford will be the site of Alex & Cece’s new home for both them and their new Nordhavn.  Walter retired from Coca-Cola, left Atlanta for Wexford, and is now actively involved in the real estate business of Hilton Head. Tony & Renee are retired from professions in California, and are contemplating a home here as well!  So with six new friends on Hilton Head Island, we are sure to stop here again on our next trip south – no matter what the cost for docking! 

As has been the case so often since leaving Alaska, the weather is the determining factor in our schedule.  Today it has been blowing 35-40 knots all day, and temperatures are in the high 40’s!   Although she is a veteran of far worse conditions, I have promised Kathy to keep her out of rough seas on our last legs to Virginia.  We have tentative plans for a departure for Charleston tomorrow, but the actual conditions in the morning will dictate our final decision.  The weather forecasts are often very much at odds with reality, and we don’t make a final decision until we look out the window just before casting off the lines!
We will see how it looks in the morning.