Back Home

Ok so we do have people that read our Blog. Yea I know we kind of dropped the ball once we got back to our home in Michigan. After we got into Green Cove Springs marina which I would call it more of a work yard then anything. There is a slip or maybe 2 if your lucky. Most of the slips are taken up by liveaboards that I would dare say have not moved in years. We had to wait about a week to get pulled and put into the work yard so we could do a few maintenance projects before going into the long term storage yard. In the work yard your able to live on the boat with power and water but once it goes into the long term storage yard your done with the boat. Going back and taking snap shot of our voyage from leaving Whitehall Mi up through the north channel and then down Lake Huron, up Lake Erie to Buffalo NY. That is where all the water runs out of the great lakes as it is almost like a sucking sound as your flying down the Niagara river onto the connection of the Erie Canal. The canal is a trip all in its self. All the towns along the canal were very boater friendly and willing to help in what ever you needed. The last lock you go out of to get into the Hudson River is called the Federal lock. Once those gates open up to send you on your way down the Hudson it kind of hit us. Wow! We are actually doing this and not looking back. Oh sure we looked back many times only when tugs and barges were bearing down on us just to move out of there way. Just to show you how naive we were or should you say Randy was. Once your below the Federal Lock your now in a tidal flow of the ocean. Well we went the whole dam way down the Hudson not even thinking about having the current to help us out. Sure I knew there was a tide but you would think I would have put 2 and 2 together and figured that we need to look at the current as well to give us a boost. It was not till the Delaware River that we figured that out. There we were with Simple Pleasure and we nailed the current and rode it all the way up to the C& D canal. It gave us a boost of a couple of knots. The C&D canal is a barge canal as it lets commercial boat traffic from the Delaware River go to the Chesapeake bay with out going out in the ocean. The C&D is not that wide as you need to call ahead to traffic control on the VHF to get clearance to pass through. As Mutual Fun is only 11’10” wide we a watched a few of the super barges pass as we sat a day in Chesapeake city and no way in hell would I want to meet one of them. We would have been shoved off to the side for sure. Now mind ya that we have sailed all out lives in the Great Lakes and took on some nasty water at times. I never had none come up our stern until we were sailing down the Chesapeake Bay. If we had been smart we would have sat that day out but noooo . We had a dead line to make, That is what gets one into trouble. Deadlines on a boat.

The Chesapeake is a place you could spend all summer in. But we understand it gets very buggy and no wind. We were blessed with wind going down most of it. We had many of different air shows provided by the military during a fee of the days and even got to see some bombs being dropped. Wha! Hooooo. To this point of the trip we had only seen a few people so far going south and we were wondering if we were to late in our timing or to early in it. But once we got in Norfolk that is where it kind of all started for us seeing the great migration south of the snow birds. (boats) I remember coming into a anchorage at Hospital point and asking a boat called Star if those balls out in the water were mooring balls as we slowly passed by them and Gale replied back no they are crab pots so hit everyone you can. We just laughed. Now this is where the ICW actually starts and ends in Miami. But for the next month to month and a half we seen and met so many great people along the way. Only to actually see a lot of them in the Bahamas. As we motored most of the way down the ICW we were kind of gauging our time as we were still in huricane season but yet wanted to get as far south as we could to get warm weather. During that time of year the weather does determine what your going to do a lot as many cold fronts are coming down from the north. Not having heaters onboard as we took them off to make way for more storage of things we thought we would need.

Oh what we have learned. We remember being told oh via some of the boats we were cruising with, oh yea tonight we are coming over to your boat for pot luck. We thought oh @~!# we do not have a big table onboard. So I told them hey we only have a table for 2 and was told well we are still coming so figure something out. From then on we knew we were part of the cruising community as that is what made it so fun for us. Meeting people like that. As we made or way down the ICW Jeannie and I resorted to well we will be the last boat in a pack if we are traveling as everyone was passing us as we cruised at 5 kts. We never gave thought to all the can goods we had stored in every nook and cranny. If we were smart we would have shopped in lake worth or closer to where we crossed over for the major can goods. But nooo, once again we had them all along with us from Michigan. Only to get more in places we stopped. Once we crossed over to the Bahamas it was like wow we are finally here. Now we had to figure out where do we want to go. Like everyone’s first time in the Bahamas we had to go thru a learning curve in reading the water color to help us navigate thru different places. All the time we were there we never felt threatened or in need to lock things up. I guess it is as close to heaven as one can get as we were very blessed for being able to do the whole trip with very few problems. In all we traveled over 4000 nautical miles since leaving Michigan. Lost a few pair of sunglasses and towels overboard. Got our anchor stuck once. In all what we learned is that you can not be in a hurry or a time schedule and you pay attention to the weather a lot more. Unlike weather in Michigan where it pops up faster. Weather in the Bahamas you know well in advanced that fronts are coming. All in all is if Mutual Fun can do it you can also. Just stick to your dreams as dreams do come true. Lastly I want to say thank you to my loving wife Jeannie for putting up with my drive to do this as it opened up a new chapter in our life. We will be returning to our boat in Florida in late October to do it all over again.