Aaron's blog

Two days ago I removed all of the old engine compartment sound insulation. It was coming loose and had nice carvings in it from the water pump and alternator...since when we bought the boat (1,000 engine hours ago). Today I installed the new sound deadening material so it is finally fixed!

The part that is down against the table (most boat maintenance projects involve trashing the "dining room") is where the steps are, and faces forward when the cover is installed over the engine.

Micro USB is often frustrating because you have to look at the cable and the device carefully to plug it in the correct way.  Optionally you can just try and flip if it doesn't work...pretty quick.  USB C is a reversible port so resolves that issue.

My phone's USB C port has apparently become damaged, probably from a little rain exposure.  Now it only charges with any given cable inserted one way, and not the other.  This is even more annoying than micro USB because it takes longer to see if the phone is charging or not (C) than to feel whether the plug inserts (micro).  So I have about a year of that to look forward to.

We motored almost 60 miles to Cumberland Island--a long day!  The next day we went on a long walk on some of the trails there and along the amazing beach.  And the day after we traveled to Brunswick, GA to see our friends Leanne and Mark.  After we anchored near the marina they had us over to their catamaran to visit.  For supper we walked into downtown to find something but not much was open so we went back to their boat and made burgers.  The next day we made the difficult decision to travel on even though we would have loved to stay and visit more.  The holding for our anchor in that spot was not great and storms were forecast, the marina was fairly hostile about us taking our dinghy to their customers' (our friends') boat, there was no other dinghy shore access, and it was very hot.  It was best to keep moving, but only barely.

After a late start at about 11:00am, we made it maybe 5 hours until inclement rain made it seem wise to anchor in a creek that was actually only about a half mile short of where we had been thinking about stopping.  Of course we were still not fast enough and had to do the anchoring in light rain.  That and the next two nights were all spent kind of in the middle of nowhere; Darien Creek, St. Catherine's Island (we noticed magnolia trees/blossoms for the first time here, but did not spot any lemurs), and Skull Creek.

From Skull Creek it was just a short hop to Beaufort, SC.  We found a great nook just south of the city waterfront and ended up spending a little over a week there.  At low tide there was a great sandbar for Louise to play on.  There is a great public dock there so we really enjoyed the town.  One day we rented bicycles and rode on the Spanish Moss Trail which is a "rails to trails" trail...very flat as a former railroad.  Anna dropped her ring off to get a matching band made.  I did a lot of OpenStreetMap editing.  I replaced the air conditioner run capacitor and got the EasyStart working so that we can reliably start our air conditioner using the generator.  It rained a fair amount.  We called the marina to pay for a mooring ball so that we could use their laundry facility; none were available due to maintenance but they were nice enough to let us use the laundry anyways.

Eventually it was time to move on again to so we headed for Charleston.  We stopped short because of a long stretch of opposing tidal currents and approaching storms.  So the next day it was a relatively short day.  At one area called Elliott Cut the tidal current really flows fast.  Our timing was a little off so it was 1.5 knots against us and there was a bridge a couple miles up that had a restricted opening schedule.  A catamaran entered the cut just before us and wasn't going fast enough to make it through the next bridge opening.  He didn't respond to many hailing attempts on the radio so I ended up passing him in the cut.  We had very good maneuverability due to the opposing current but it was still pretty tight in there!  About halfways between the cut and the bridge he hailed us so I was able to explain and apologize for my aggressive driving.  And the bridge opening worked out--we were there on time and he was able to make it through too even though the bridge tender did yell at him on the radio to speed it up!

The anchorage in Charleston was rougher than I liked and I didn't feel like staying there so we motored on the next day to Georgetown.

From Vero we motored to near Palm Shores, FL.  I changed the oil the next morning and we motored on to New Smyrna Beach.  We anchored, took the dinghy to the nice public dock, walked around the abandoned (COVID19) downtown with Louise, and got some food to go from Panheads Pizzeria.  It was VERY buggy when we got back to the boat with our food.  I think this is the place where so many of the bugs (sort of like gnats?) got into the boat before we put the screens in, that eventually we just left one light on in the v-berth to attract them all.  Periodically I would swat the cloud of bugs around the light to kill as many as possible.

The next day (April 22nd) we arrived in St. Augustine.  We pulled in to the fuel dock for diesel and water and to figure out where to rest for a few days.  A mooring ball would have been ideal but they were not available for two boats or for more than two nights.  We didn't want to anchor because it would be pretty windy and the current really runs through that area.  So we decided to spend three nights at the dock and Keelin' It would do so too.

The current was moderately flowing into the slip which makes pulling in bow-first tricky because you don't have much time to rotate the boat before getting pushed into the slip.  But it was flowing much less near shore where the slips were compared to the fuel dock.  I wouldn't do it again, but we did make it in.  I was about 15 degrees shy of getting the full 90 degrees of rotation that we needed so the port side of the boat went against a piling and Alex on the finger pier was able to push on the bow to complete the rotation.

We had a couple days of lounging and Anna made a huge grocery run with Lisa.  We decided that we would like to spend a month there but Keelin' It opted to continue on.  We had payed about $280 for three nights and it was something like $350 more for the 27 additional days.  At most marinas it is only economical to stay for one-month periods!

We had a great month in St. Augustine.  The marina is right in the historic district so there was plenty to see even with pandemic shutdowns.  Louise got a lot of great walks.  I spent a lot of time walking around making improvements to OpenStreetMap.  We ordered many maintenance and wishlist items.  Anna hosted the cruisers net a few times.  We had sun-downers with our neighbors from our own cockpits.  And eventually it was time to leave.