Sailing Maia home for the holidays

First thing's first: Happy Birthday to Gregor Piuk!!!!

Reinhart and I analyzed the weather and decided since no good weather window was going to present itself; we would go with the best of the worst. So we left Friday morning to ride light variable winds to NC. Oops, we left on a Friday, which breaks one of the cardinal superstitions of seamanship; good thing we aren’t superstitious! We actually ended up starting on a beautiful slow sail and decided 4 knots wasn’t really so bad and we could just take an extra 8 hours to get to Beaufort with lovely weather like this; but of course once our speed dropped to below 3 knots, and our sails slacked after each 8 knot “gust”, we started up the motor. Our newfound speed was rewarded with a large and loyal pack of dolphins that played in our bow wave and escorted us for hours right until the sun set. Who knows, they might have stayed along with us into the night. In the morning, Reinhart continued his losing battle with the sport fish of the Atlantic; he got something on the hook and battled a very heavy fish, but in the end it broke his line and took his lure causing the rod to come back and smack him in the head leaving a gash. Score: Fish - 2, Reinhart - 0. We found ourselves in the warm turquoise waters of the gulf stream for a few hours on Saturday, and thought of the beautiful waters we’ll be visiting in another 2 months. Just after we finished a chic lunch with Chef Boyardee, Reinhart won a hard fought battle and pulled in a nice mackerel. He filleted it in the cockpit and we stored it in the fridge…now I have to figure out what to do with it! Originally, I looked at this last offshore run of 2006 the same way you look at any journey home (its never as much fun to make the long trip home as it is to make the long trip “there”); however, the 35 hours held a great deal of charm and finished off our east coast cruise delightfully.

Our boat broker, John Warrington of Beaufort Yacht Sales, helped us find an economical solution for storing the boat while we go home for the holidays, and we ended up bringing Maia back to the neighborhood marina where we fitted her out when we took delivery in April 2004. So, it turns out as Reinhart and I prepare to make our trips home, Maia also gets to visit home as well. We entered the marina well after dark and slipped into our space at N34 46.046 W76 40.313

Lori and Chuck very sweetly and generously volunteered to bring us along with all of our gear home for the holidays. They’ll drive up tomorrow afternoon (Sunday) so they can get in a little boat-shopping and Beaufort-visiting before we all head inland on Monday. We’ll go home with them and stay for Thanksgiving and then come up to the triad on Friday. I’ll be starting with Syngenta on Monday after Thanksgiving and Reinhart will be heading to Austria on Tuesday to do some visiting and skiing.

We’ll continue to update the blog during our vacation from our vacation, and we may even update the site a bit. We’ll post as we make the big purchases of safety and communication gear and as we make the big decisions about where we’ll be going in 2007; but our sailing trip won’t start up again until between Christmas and New Years. Stayed tuned!

Here’s an unusually short one

We’ll see if I can publish the blog as we sail past a good wireless signal. We had a nice return to Charleston and then a really rough weather night. We’ve decided to ride the tail end of the pressure system up to NC on Friday morning. We’ll tell you all about it when we get to Beaufort, NC.

The weekend in NC

This weekend was a good indication that our holidays home will be packed with fun and friends. Currently we are looking back to getting back to the boat just to get some rest! Nancy dropped us off in Charlotte on Friday evening and Cortney and Dave picked us up. We had pizza and hung out at the house, and a couple more folks dropped by to say hi. Kelly showed up with what had to be the cutest dog on the planet. On Saturday morning, Cortney and Dave showed up with bags full of groceries and made us every breakfast food you can think of. At noon, we hopped in Lori’s fabulous car, put the top down and made our way to Greensboro.

We got to Emily’s house and checked out the new landscaping in progress before she got home. We got to do some visiting before running off to a birthday party at Stephanie’s house. Both Pam and Stephanie’s birthdays were on Sunday, so a Saturday night bash was in order. The party was great and we got to see some old friends as well as meet some new folks. On Sunday we woke up to tackle our storage in Emily’s attic, but we kept on letting other things distract us rather than finding our winter clothes. We got a lot of research done that we needed to do, but we’ll definitely have to spend another day in the attic after Thanksgiving. We finished off Sunday with a nice dinner at my parent’s house. I dropped by Syngenta on Monday morning to iron out some details for some temporary work I’ll do for them from November 27 to December 8. It was great to see the folks at work again and I got to catch up with Lisa and Ruhi at lunch.

Reini and took care of some bank stuff and then headed back to Charlotte to stay with my sister so he could attend his early morning meeting on Tuesday. It took us 30 minutes to get from their house to the INS office during the heavy afternoon traffic, so he thought 45 minutes might do. When we ran that by Lori and Chuck they said he should allow over an hour to get there. Well, he left one hour and 15 minutes before his meeting and he ended up being quite late. He called several times while underway and Chuck talked him through some detours. I can’t imagine how much stress he was feeling with each back-up he encountered and I wish I could have cleared the roads for him with a magic wand. They weren’t concerned about his tardiness though and started taking care of his situation right away. The lady at the INS said he overestimated the efficiency of their system, but now it is all okay because his green card has been extended, and he has completed his biometrics appointment for his green card renewal. Now Lori and Chuck are running us over to meet Nancy near the highway and we’ll be back on Maia in Charleston before dark…yippee. We’ll let you know how things are going in Charleston before the week is done!

Charleston to NC by car

We woke up on Thursday and radioed goodbyes to our friends who were leaving the anchorage to go to Georgia. About 9 boats headed out within a couple of hours of each other. Those of us remaining sighed in relief since we now had a little more space and didn’t have to watch so closely to see if any of us were going to swing into anyone else. A boat near us that was having such a difficult time at anchor took this opportunity to move over a bit and reset his anchor. Boy, were we surprised when he pulled up his chain and found no anchor at the bottom of it! I guess he lost it during last weekend’s heavy blows when he pulled through the anchorage; but Reinhart thinks something a little fishier than that might have occurred. As we were watching him scratch his head in disbelief, we looked to the southwest and saw another flock of boats making their way in. Seven boats came in as quickly as possible and threw out anchors even closer than the boats which had just left. Many of them hopped into their dinghies and headed into town quickly, leaving us to watch nervously for the turn of the tide. Once the tide had turned and it was obvious we were safe we decided to take advantage of the gorgeous day and go for a bike ride. We rode over the new Highway 17 Bridge over the Cooper River, just because it was there, and then we headed out for the Charleston Battery to check out the historic mansions.

Claus and Barbara on “Jonathan” invited us over on Thursday evening. We had wine in the cockpit as the tide turned and watched the neighboring boats swing dangerously close. It gave us a little chance to laugh and visit with them before they weighed anchor and moved to a different spot within the anchorage. Barbara fixed a delicious dinner for us and we had a lovely evening.

I don’t know if it is possible, but Friday turned out to be even prettier than Thursday, with incredibly clear skies and a high in the 80s. Right around lunchtime we heard someone call our names and lo and behold it was Nancy and Paul on their Caliber “Aurora”. We got to do a little catching up with them and found out we had been stopping at all of the same places since we left Annapolis, but our paths didn’t cross until now. Too bad, since we were just a couple of hours from leaving the boat alone in its anchorage to drive with Nancy to NC. Claus dinghied us over to the marina and Nancy picked us up; currently, we are at Nancy’s to pick up her doggie, Jasper, and publish the blog, but we’ll be on our way soon. She’ll drop us off in Charlotte and Cortney will pick us up for a fun night with her. We hope everyone has a great weekend!

Autumn days in Charleston

We had a great time with Andreas and Nancy over the weekend. We had a relaxed Sunday morning and Nancy cooked a wonderful brunch for the four of us. Andreas headed home in the early afternoon and Nancy shuttled us around for a couple of errands and then dropped us off at the dinghy dock.

Monday was sunny and cool and it was a good day to do some boat projects we had been planning…we now have cockpit lights. We noticed a few new boats in the anchorage and decided it was getting a little overcrowded in here; but a very rainy Tuesday was in the forecast, so it was probably just folks settling in somewhere for the weather. It was the perfect rainy day for washing the boat and trying out some rain collection ideas. We were a little bashful to try out some of our more elaborate water collection ideas in the middle of a crowded anchorage; we’ll have to try those out during another downpour when we aren’t under the scrutiny of our neighbors. After the rain died down, some contrary winds set in and the entire anchorage started to waltz; boats sailed and drifted on their anchor lines and neighbors who were perfectly comfortable with their space found themselves right on top of each other. While sitting in our cockpit I could carry on a perfectly normal conversation with the man anchored behind us…everyone was either in their cockpits or up by their anchors on stand-by just in case a re-set was necessary. Some folks just picked up and left, including the man behind us. We heard one of the boats nearby on the radio calling one of their neighbors, and it ended up being Sally and Conrad aboard “It’s About Time”; we worked the same gate at the boat show with them, and we were thrilled to bump into them again.

Once the boats had settled down we all listened to the turmoil on the VHF radio as a 60 foot sport fisher, “Water Witch”, in the channel started taking on water rapidly. The captain remained calm and gave the Coast Guard all of the information they needed; he continually told them how much water the boat was taking on and asked for a TDA from the coast guard. Where we were all sitting in the anchorage, we could tell the coast guard hadn’t left the station yet. Oddly enough, a fast coast guard vessel came into the station and then they finally sent out a slow behemoth of a rescue, but the vessel in distress was almost under by then. When the coast guard lost radio contact with the vessel, it was the first time I ever heard a mayday called and it was disturbing. Other boats were rushing to the rescue to try to get him some pumps aboard, but we really don’t know how it all turned out. I hate to say it, but I think a lot of folks in this anchorage lost some faith with the coast guard when we saw what appeared to be a poor reaction to this disaster.

We joined Sally and Conrad along with some other friends on their boat on Tuesday evening for dinner and drinks and caught up on what everyone has been up to and what everyone’s winter plans are. When we left their boat, there was a new neighbor anchored very close to them. I actually wrote most of this entry right before sunrise on Wednesday morning because the waltz started up again about 5am and I just couldn’t sleep through it. I noticed Sally and Conrad’s new neighbor is no longer anywhere near them, but is quite close to someone else, and another boat is breathing down their necks. It doesn’t appear that we were too close to anyone this time, but with the way we all move around our anchors, you never know who you’ll snuggle up to in 15 minutes…maybe its more like a square dance than a waltz.

Today (Wednesday) we borrowed Nancy’s car to see a plantation with Claus and Barbara from “Jonathan”. We visited the Magnolia plantation on the Ashley River and the gardens were just breathtaking. I can only imagine how lovely it must be in the spring when everything is in bloom. We also have some new plans to catch a ride to the triad with Nancy on Friday, so we may very well see some folks at home this weekend. Obviously, we are indebted to Nancy! I’m a little nervous about leaving the boat at anchor for days after the hassle of the past 24 hours; however Claus and Barbara said they’d keep an eye on her while we are gone so we can breathe easy.

Old and new friends in Charleston

We had a fantastic warm Thursday in Charleston followed by a lovely evening drinking wine on the neighbor’s boat. Barbara and Claus aboard Jonathan came all the way over from Europe and they shared wonderful stories of their travels of the past several years. It was wonderful practice for me to listen to German again, but no amount of wine was going to get me to speak much. I’ll have to get past my phobia before I go back to Austria in December.

We met up with Nancy, who lives outside of Charleston, and Andreas, who is visiting, on a much chillier Friday evening. Reinhart dinghied them over to Maia and we all had gabby dinner catching up on what we’ve all been up to lately. We went over to Folly beach on Saturday afternoon and had a fantastic lunch at Taco Boy…if you like fish tacos, that is the place to go! Andreas tried to rescue a drunk who fell over with his motorcycle in the middle of the street, but the guy decided he was fine to drive, so we removed ourselves from the area as quickly as possible before he figured out how to restart his bike. Currently, we are over at Nancy’s place (with a fantastic wireless signal) doing our laundry and looking at Kevin’s videos online. We’ll go out to dinner at Hank’s in Charleston tonight and we’ll probably come back here to spend the night in a nice warm home.

Charleston, South Carolina

We sailed out the ferocious Cape Fear Inlet on a stormy Halloween…well, actually, Halloween was warm and sunny and the inlet was calm as a lake, but that’s not very Halloweeny, is it? We had an uneventful trip to Charleston and arrived on a gorgeous Wednesday morning. The Ashley river anchorage was pretty crowded, but we nuzzled ourselves in at N32 46.614 W79 57.252. We’ve tried a lot, but it doesn’t look like we are going to have a reliable wireless connection here, but maybe it will be enough to send and receive emails when the boat turns the right direction.

As the evening set in, the snowbirds were settling and the anchorage was getting more and more crowded. We recognized some of the sailboats we saw at anchorages in northern NC, but none of our boat show colleagues yet. We are right outside of the Charleston City Marina and could also see some of the larger power yachts who passed us each morning last week tying up to the mega-dock…not all of the snowbirds are on the same budget! The boats in this anchorage don’t lie into the wind; instead, the boats lie with the current. This means that the boat turns 180 degrees about every 6 hours. Once the current turned at 6pm on Wednesday we realized we were a little closer to our New Zealand neighbor than we had originally been when the current was flowing up the Ashley and by 8:30 we were uncomfortably close to him. So we pulled up our 100 feet of chain and found a roomier spot within the anchorage at N32 46.521 W79 57.095. We’ve got lots of turning room here, or I should say we had lots of room until 9am on Thursday when a German couple in an Amel anchored nearby. We took the dinghy over to his boat this afternoon to say hi, and we are going over for drinks this evening.

We are planning on having a couple of quiet days in this lovely historic town and we’re really looking forward to spending some time with Andreas and Nancy this weekend.