2. The following article was originally written for the Vancouver, Canada, based Bluewater Cruising Association members as an introduction to starting a cruise on the Atlantic coast rather than the Pacific.
11 January 2001
Dear fellow cruisers,
Greg, my husband, our two daughters, Emmanuelle (4) and Jennifer (7), and I, Catherine, have started a trip on October 1. Unlike most of our BC friends, we have decided to start on the East coast of the US and therefore we had our Beneteau 43 Sloop trucked by Joule Yacht Transport from Semiahmoo Marina to Oxford, Maryland. We made this decision because it would give us much more time to familiarize ourselves with the boat, keep us close to 'civilization', allow us to visit all the history of the East Coast, have a 'canal' experience, and to psychologically prepare ourselves for going offshore.
We met the boat after spending a few days visiting Washington, DC. All went well with the boat but it took us quite sometime to get everything back on board! We spent a lovely month in Maryland; Oxford being a quaint little historic place where we could relax and enjoy the friendliness of a town nestled amongst corn fields, red and yellow forests. Fall in Maryland is indeed beautiful. Late in October we left the friendly Crockett Bros. Boatyard (a highly recommended place to commission your boat by the way) and headed towards Portsmouth, VA. We sailed down the Chesapeake Bay in 30 to 35 knots wind but since we were running it was fine. We spent Halloween with family in the Norfolk area and went to visit Liza and Andy Copeland in Deltaville.
A week later started our leisurely cruise down the Intracoastal Waterway, our 60 foot mast providing some initial excitement as we passed under our first of many 65 foot bridges. We would average 50 to 60 miles a day and found some lovely places to anchor. Since we were slightly behind the rest of the flock it was never crowded. We enjoyed Beaufort, NC (the home of the Beaufort Scale) and stayed at the city docks. Beaufort is a place not to missed for sure. It also has a very good nautical store right across from the docks (Scuttlebutt's) where we bought all the charts for the rest of our cruise. From there we went to visit Cape Lookout and found beautiful shells. Beaches were pristine there and only inhabited by pelicans. Soon enough we had dolphins following our wake in the ICW and the landscape became more of a southern one with palmetto trees growing wild along the banks of the river and Spanish moss draped from humongous oak trees. We spent another week in Charleston at the City marina (not a good one really, lack of showers and facilities) where Greg took time to install more equipment and I visited a good university friend.
South of Charleston, the Georgia and Florida ICW became more of a hair-raising experience because of its depth (or lack of). We made it to St. Augustine, FL in 5 days though and ran aground only once! A passing 60 HP boat pulled us off. That night we phoned and signed up for BoatUS (think BCAA). Note that south of the Chesapeake our Rogers cell-phone worked fine. As we were cruising south, the weather turned colder as many cold fronts came rushing through the entire southern States. Greg got confused as he thought south meant warmer. We left our boat for a week in Daytona Beach (at the Halifax Harbour Marina, a very good facility) and escaped to Disneyworld. It was magic for the girls and there we found warm weather. Our last stop on the ICW was West Palm Beach where we waited for a south wind to cross the Gulf Stream. We waited for ten days and on the 27th did the crossing. (Yes, Santa Claus did find our boat).
The Gulf Stream's forecasted 15 knots turned into a 30 knots, south-east, but it was to be expected. We had an old friend, a good sailor too, who did the crossing with us which was good because I (Catherine) became very sea sick despite the precautions I had taken! The girls were fine and slept through it all. In the centre of the stream it was 29.5 Celcius. Having left at midnight, at about 9 am, north of Memory Rock, the depth went from many thousands of feet to about 10, and the bluewater turned turquoise, at last the Bahamas.
After a full day of sailing, in the entrance channel to Walkers Cay we ran hard aground one mile from our destination. We had to spend the night because the channel has extended sand banks which are treacherous. Of course that was the night a full gale showed up with 60 knot gusts. Our 20kg Bruce (that's Mr. Bruce now) held us rock solid mid-channel and we thumped a bit when the tide went low again at 4 in the morning. Many peple could see us from the Cay and we received many assurances that aid was was just a VHF radio call away. We cleared customs in Walker's Cay on the 29th of December and found our new dingy which had blown away the previous night. The customs officer had spent the previous two Xmas's in Montreal and Toronto. We spent a wonderful New Year's Eve there with a special kids party, limbo dancers and fire eaters, a band and conch fritters and steak and New Years Bubbly! It was a wonderful mixture of black tie, Hawaiian shorts, kids, visitors and locals. We are now anchored with about 37 others in Marsh Harbour, Abaco, after spending a few days in beautiful Green Turtle Cay. The weather here is cold for the season (24 degrees air, 19.5 water (brrr!) and the locals are making snow jokes), the weather changing all the time, winds being unpredictable and you do have to be patient and wait for moderate winds. The biggest fear is the depth, typically 2 to 4 meters MLW with 1 meter tides. Do read your charts and be extra conservative with your route planning. All services and facilities are available here including: FedEx, 7 days a week groceries, haul-out and many chandelries, marinas at 50 cents per foot, Internet at US$20 per hour, phone at US$2.00 per minute, FM news, 8:30am VHF68 weather and cruisers net. Our costs have been about what we would spend in Vancouver given that the states is expensive and we used marinas about half the time.
School is going well with Jennifer's BC correspondance school, now on day 50, . It's challenging beinag a Mum and the teacher too! Emmanuelle does her 'school', coloring and playing Barbie. Dad fiddles with gadgets and keeps the boat in ship-shape (including the dishes). We haven't run into any BWC cruisers yet but we fly our burgee high. We have met few cruisers with children although all families make a special effort to allow the children to socialize. Visiting friends help provide familiarity and a chance to share our adventure.
We will write more later as we move south. In the mean-time we send greetings to all of you and wish you all the best for the new year.
