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Yep, another beautiful Sunday morning after a somewhat sleepless night.

There’s a loss for words when trying to describe the feeling while looking out the salon window. Out there, the reality is the beginning of another beautiful day within the protected shores of Solomons tranquil little harbor. Meanwhile, at home, in Jupiter, our house is being pounded and our friends, who have stayed put, are confronting Hurricane Irma that’s forecast to be bearing down on South Florida. (See live video of the effects of Irma here: NPBM)

Below, in the video that’s streaming from a front window at Spearfish, as I write this, not much is happening. It looks just like last year’s Hurricane Mathew that passed by without doing much damage.

Hope it stays that way.

Guilty is certainly not the descriptor that comes to mind, though anxious is definitely in the mix. Conflicted doesn’t seem to fit either.
Is there a word that combines fortunate and grateful? If so, that’s it.

And then I turn and look out the salon window again —

Yes, anxious, fortunate, and grateful applies.

Our thoughts are with everyone in the path of Irma. For those who stayed, please be safe. For those of us with property in Florida — it’s just stuff.

Adios,

The Bluffs Marina – Jupiter, FL

onSpot wifi Live Video Feed:North Palm Beach MarinaWe’ll keep these online as long as possible.  Nordhavn 57-26 Istaboa

It’s another one of those peaceful Sunday mornings… My favorite way to start a day — quiet, overcast, the view from the salon window is like an old photograph, and so far, other than a few gulls, there’s not a soul stirring around the harbor.
We’re now tied up in Solomons Island, MD at Spring Cove Marina where we’re spending a soggy Labor Day Weekend. Though the sun may make an appearance today, it’s probably too little too late and has been a disappointment for those deserving a sunny respite from work. Especially for the marina operators; all prepped to handle the large crowd of boaters, who for the most part have canceled reservations due to weather.

So far, we’re enjoying the bay, we always do. I like motoring to all our favorite towns and marinas while mostly running in deep-ish water — very comfortable cruising — unlike the attention demanding shallow windings of the ICW. Mel likes the local restaurants serving good Blue Crab and local fish…  and the little shops. We both enjoy bumping into old acquaintances and making new ones, this seems to happen a lot on the Chesapeake.

Lady M, Marty and Amy, we’ve known them for years.  Now 88, Marty and his girlfriend Amy — have been running up and down the east coast for so many years. Marty is a wealth of knowledge and experience, he’s our personal cruising guide. If we have doubts about an inlet or a marina, we call Marty. Been there done that, many times. We always enjoy their company and did for the few days while repairing our lightning damage at Atlantic Yacht Basin. (Which, by the way, seems all good)

Leaving AYB and heading out into the Chesapeake, we found the Bay to be a bit sloppy, but soon the tide changed direction and all settled down.

Around Thimble Shoals Light, we made way toward the York River, Gloucester Point, VA and York River Yacht Haven. We’ve done this many times so with the comfort of previous track lines on our charts, we easily skirted the shoal and eased into the marina.

We were surprised to see Southern Star on the same T-head. Istaboa was briefly tied next to N-47 Southern Star while at Old Port Cove. Later we got together with Ted and Jenny and we’ve enjoyed their company several times since.
Nice folks.

They gave us a great tie at YRYH, out on a T-head with a killer view from our stern. Waking early every morning and having my coffee with the sun rising above Sarah Creek was always a pleasure and certainly worth the effort of getting out of bed.

While at YRYH we endured a tropical disturbance that could have been much worse. With wind constantly blowing hard, gusts to 40mph, and hard rain all day, we discovered a couple of good leaks. Nothing that we couldn’t quickly stop, although they did require some creativity to overcome. Wind and rain found the weak spots, duct tape and a plastic bag stemmed the leaks until a proper fix was done the following dry day.

 The next morning brought an end to bad weather and we started that day with sunny skies and pleasant temps. It’s been a long time since we’ve experienced mid 70º temps, we’re actually wearing pants. Nice.

So after a few days of weather, both good and bad, we untied and pulled out of York River.

We like YRYH and they’ve made many changes for the better. As we did a few years ago, we’ve decided to book our slip there on a monthly so we’ll return from time to time, making this our base on the Bay. It’s a nicely tucked away marina that will make for a decent hiding hole in a blow. (we hope)

Our 90 mile run from YRYH to Solomons was nice and smooth. On the way up we passed through the fleet of commercial fishing boats from Reedville. We assume the Menhaden must be schooling up.

Now, everyone’s attention is on Hurricane Irma. Our intentions are to hang here for a few more days and take care of some biz. Then move on to Herrington Harbour and Annapolis, if we don’t have to head back to York River to hide out.
We’d like to visit old friends over at St Micheal’s and stop at a few more little port towns along the Eastern Shore before heading back, but we’ll see.

Damn, it seems every hurricane update brings even worse news for everyone on the East Coast, time will tell.

Fake News? Don’t bet on that.

Fingers crossed for now.

Adios,

In all the years and all the miles of doing this, we’ve never had any problems with lightning; been in plenty of storms, but suffered nothing worse than the anxiety it brings.
Then,  finally,  a loud bang, a flash, and we realized we’d been hit or almost anyway.

Sonar, chartplotter, and radar screens blinked then rebooted, I turned to head back out to the Neuse River and deeper water, then started working to bring back some electronics. Luckily, we’ve redundant nav systems on-board and our computer driven system was not affected. Charts and AIS were still running, but we had no depth info.

After a few minutes I had depth coming from sonar, but oddly enough no sonar screen – just the numbers. That was enough to get into the marina so we turned back to the entry point and headed in.
Things could have definitely been worse and we’ve heard many stories that were. We slowly motored into River Dunes basin and saw a beautiful marina with Rich, the harbormaster, waving at us from our dock.
The rain had stopped and the storm had moved on. The rest of the night was quiet as I went about going through all the affected systems.

With all the redundancies aboard I was able to put together a working nav system and we pulled out the next morning, heading for Belhaven, NC and River Forest Marina.

Another cool little town. The docks at River Forest are old, but the electricity is stable and the depths are good. The dockmaster’s name is Henry Boyd III. He and a group of Belhaven citizens bought the marina out of bankruptcy. They’re slowly rebuilding the docks, but the lovely old southern manor next door was brought back to mint condition. Henry and his crew are very proud of the project and love to talk about it. They also loaned us a golf cart and gave us directions to town for dinner. Spoon River Art Works and Market is a fine restaurant. The local Black Drum was killer. The place was crowded.

That evening we went through another storm, but other than rolling us around for a few minutes there were no problems. We ended the day with a peaceful sunset

The next morning we made way to Coinjock to spend the night. Coinjock is Coinjock. No, we didn’t get the steak, but the soft shell craps were very good.

Then, AYB. We always stop here and throw a bit of money at James Taylor’s crew. They do good work and this time we may need to take advantage of that.

All in all, we did okay, as far as storm damage goes.
Our main GPS was acting up, but after a reset it came back for the most part. It now shows us running at .05 knots while at the dock, but it’s position seems to be okay. We have several ways to get GPS info so that doesn’t stop the show.
One of our depth sounder transducers is dead.
Both Raymarine displays are blinky.
Ironically, the Sirius Weather Receiver was fried and has yet to return.
By far the most expensive damage is the KVH Satellite TV dish. It’s toast.

I called our insurance company, and inquired about making a claim. They’ve since sent out a surveyor who thinks the damages are worse than I do. He explained how lightning causes crazy intermittent problems that usually show up at critical times. He’s probably correct.

So, here we are, laying up at AYB, waiting to hear back from several folks.

There’s good friends tied up just behind us and it’s nice catching up with them.

For some reason we’ve always liked it here. Always little projects to do and AYB has the essential supplies to get them done.

We’re thinking The Chesapeake Bay will be our next leg, but news of Sea Nettles (Jelly Fish) may change that. The Bay full of Nettles is not uncommon this time of year. They clog sea strainers and stop air conditioning; not good in 90º heat .

And, as they so often are, our plans are still peculating.

Life’s good ~

Cheers,

Nordhavn 57-26 Istaboa

After a nice couple of days in Georgetown, the weather settled and we continued our trip north.Leaving Georgetown, SC was a trip. Inside the little harbor things were calm, a bit of current, but as soon as we made it into Winyah Bay the tidal surge gra…

Well, that didn’t take long. Our intentions were to push out of Charleston with a heavy load of fuel and water and run all the way up to Beaufort Inlet. All the weather sites showed doable seas until Tuesday afternoon or later.But, weather is as weathe…

Charleston – City Marina

Yes, I know— a long time since anything has been posted on this blog. We’ve been somewhat busy, but really, that’s no reason. Usually it’s photographs that inspire me to write something and I really haven’t taken any photos that have roused me to open the blog and post. But, make no mistake, we’re loving life on the boat and have no thoughts to stop floating anytime soon. For personal reasons, we feel a freedom we haven’t experienced for a long time.

We’re always flattered and a somewhat surprised when along the way a stranger speaks fondly of Istaboa and the blog we’ve done for more than a decade; I really don’t know what to say when asked why I’ve not been writing much. Sorry? That’s happened several times on this trip.

So once again, it’s a lazy Sunday morning, I’ve ingested a sufficient amount of caffeine, and gone through several days of unprocessed pics.
It seems we’re always catching up, so ~~~~
This year’s cruise has been different than those of the past. Hoping to avoid the crowds of yachtistas at the marinas along the way, we waited till late May to leave for the islands. This strategy worked as we figured it would and most of our favorite marinas have had slips available without reservations.

Our last post was at the beginning of our run up the East Coast so I’ll pick up there.

Leaving Old Port Cove we made a short run out in the ocean to Ft Pierce where we waited out an almost continuous line of thunderstorms. Storms have been the daily deciding factor for this whole trip.
The seas had picked up so we ran the ICW all the way to Vero Beach. 15 miles.

Out of nowhere Tropical Storm Emily popped up. We had just left Vero Beach Municipal Marina in the rain, (not realizing it was the outter bands of a tropical disturbance), and made way to Titusville.

Happily, TS Emily was a flop, just rain. We had a peaceful night at Titusville Marina and enjoyed the sound of raindrops falling on the boat. The next day we shoved off and motored to Daytona.

We stayed at Daytona Marina and Boatworks. There’s a Charthouse restaurant onsite that is excellent. Happy Hour was enjoyed; small plates of excellent appetizers, happy hour prices, and all just feet away from the boat. 

Our next stop was Palm Coast Marina. A nice/quiet little marina where we always stop for a night and to buy fuel.  Best prices in Florida, easy in and out.

The next day was a short easy run to St Augustine and Camachee Cove Marina. We pulled into Camachee Cove on a low/low tide and had to try several slips before we found one deep enough for us.
As you see from the above picture, storms are following us pretty much all the time, however we keep on running the ICW and manage to avoid most of them.

I hate the ICW – Mel likes it. After a day of negotiating the ICW, I’m exhausted. It’s not just shallow water, actually it’s not that shallow in Florida, it’s the constant attention one must maintain to successfully make it to your next stop.
At last we to make it to Jacksonville and back out to the ocean. St Augustine to St Simons was the next day’s leg. No storms and relatively flat seas.

Saint Simons/Brunswick is Mel’s hometown where she had family waiting. I took this time to do a little business and catch up with chores on the boat. Mel visited the farmers market and acquired a few pounds of Georgia shrimp and fresh vegetables.

Next stop: Hilton Head. We’ve never been into Hilton Head, always passing it by saying that someday we should stop and check it out. We’ll, we did and it really is a nice place.
We choose Harbour Town Yacht Basin to tie up. It’s a great marina, though last year’s Hurricane did damage that they are still working through. We took a few days off and explored the island a bit, though the storms were back in full force giving only half days before driving us back in the boat. Still, we liked the area and we’ll be back.

After a few days we chose a time to run out Calibogue Sound with good tide and pointed north toward Charleston.
Another fairly easy run with calm seas ended where we are now. Charleston City Marina.
We couldn’t have timed it better if we had tried. We eased in and called the marina, they asked if we’d turn around and back down about 500 feet on the inside of the Mega Dock. Slack tide allowed this to happen without incident.

We’ve done a bit of sightseeing while here. Took a buggy ride through downtown to see all the historic sights, a young fellow narrated the tour, and did a nice job of it.

Of course we passed by Ft Sumpter on the way in.

As we entered Charleston Harbor, in my head, a song was being played over and over again.  I’ve heard Randy Newman’s Sail Away many times and always liked the melody and the hook, but I never really listened to it until I heard Etta James bring it home. And, boy she did.

On this day, the lyrics are painfully ironic:

We’ll be leaving soon, maybe tomorrow, depends on weather. We’ve realized that time aboard is good no matter where we are. We’re still heading north, maybe the Chesapeake, maybe not. Point A and Point B is the same place to us and that would be Jupiter.

We’ll be back when we get there.

One thing is for sure, Istaboa is a happy boat.

Adios,

Over a cup of coffee on a peaceful Sunday morning I realized it’s been a while since our last post. There hasn’t been anything unusual to speak of, almost everything we did we’ve done before and written about it, but there are a few photos to share so I’ll just write around them

We’re now back in the USA… nothing’s changed here and we won’t go into that, but it is nice to be back; it always is. We sometimes complain, but there really is no place like home.

Our first stop was Ft Lauderdale.
Istaboa’s been kind to us on this trip, but there were (as always) some minor fixes needing to be done and we can always count on Craig at Hogan Marine to knock ’em out quickly — so Bahia Mar was our first stop. We did a little technical work there at the marina and caught up with old friends — then to take advantage of flat seas, we eased north.

Now, temporally home at Old Port Cove and continuing on with those fixes: the cook range needs attention, this time of year the ACs can always stand a flush , and some technical stuff.
We’ve been experimenting with a new powerful onboard cellular network and it’s feasibility in the islands and offshore. Heading to Ft Lauderdale from Cat Cay we saw Verizon Wireless at about 15 miles out from the US coast and connected at 12. Not too bad. This same system hooked us up well at Great Harbour, Highbourne, Nassau, and Cat Cay

This trip has been both interesting and entertaining. Compass, for the most part, was Compass, though while there we observed the most chaotic 4th of July we’ve ever experienced at any marina. It seems the marina was double booked and all the boats showed up at the same time.
Needless to say many unhappy folks, mostly mega-yachts, who thought they had reservations, were turned away. Forced to anchor wherever, the radio was buzzing with heated exchanges, expletives, then finally resignation as the long boats faded into a stunning Exuma sunset… later the real fireworks started — Literally.

“Freedom”, a very large yacht we’ve known for sometime, whose home port is Florence, Alabama, eased in and tied up. As soon as they were secure the crew started unloading fireworks. That night, to the delight of those with a slip at the marina, a massive fireworks display took place.

The Real Stars of Compass Cay

                             Jamal Rolle

The locals from Black Point who help out at the marina are mostly affable fellows who have learned an attentive attitude accompanied by a smiling face is compensated handsomely. They treat us all the same; sports stars, movie stars, super models, and plain folks like us are all tourists to these guys.
The young man to the left is Jamal, son of Tucker Rolle. Everybody likes Jamal.

Our old friend, Tucker.
This man is not only a legend in the Exumas, he’s known and loved by many all over the world. When the rich and powerful, famous and infamous come to the Exumas they head to Compass Cay to visit Tucker.

Leaving Compass, we followed our tracks back to Highbourne. We stayed there for 3 or 4 days before  moving on to Nassau.
Highbourne, a nice resort, is a good way to start the inevitable process of re-acclimating to civilization. It’s a remote little island, although there is a little grocery, a restaurant, and a few killer beaches.

Next stop, Nassau with all the trappings of a large city. We like Nassau, in many ways it reminds us of Memphis.

I’ll stop here for now, there’s several more photos to post. So more later.

No, not done yet. We’ll start heading north soon… not sure where that will take us… as far as we want.

Cheers,