We are going to be Grandparents!!!!!

We are going to be Grandparents! Jenny and Steve are expecting and due in mid July. This will be our first grandchild so it is very exciting news. Jenny is doing well and they are studying all of the baby name books.

We are still in Vero Beach. The weather has been warm and sunny until today. It is windy and rainy ahead of the cold front. The rain is good because it means that the salt should all we washed off the boat. We have been working little projects around the boat. Wayne changed the engine oil today. A dirty task but one that must be done. He also looked at the saildrive oil and they both look PERFECT!!!! We have NEVER seen the oil look this clear.

We are now looking for a weather window to cross over to the Bahamas. Hopefully we will have a window in the next week or so.

The picture of us was taken by Jim Austin on "Salty Paws" as we were leaving in the dinghy to go on one of our many trips to town. Jim is a professional photographer. You can check out Jim's web page at www.jimages.com. I think this may be the first professional picture ever taken of Wayne and I other than at Steve and Jenny's wedding. We are rafted up to "Salty Paws" and are enjoying getting to know Jim, Bentley and their Corgi Crew of Petrol and Ethyl. Petrol and Ethyl have trained me well and I am feeding them dog biscuits daily.

Thanksgiving at Vero Beach

We had a nice Thanksgiving here in Vero beach that we shared with 100+ other cruisers. The picture is of the tables as people were bringing in food. Our "pot luck" included all of the the traditional Thanksgiving favorites. We met new friends and went back to the boat full of turkey and pumpkin pie.

Vero Beach is a cruiser friendly town. The city buses are free, donations are accepted. The buses have seats for 24 passengers. They come through the parking lot of the marina every hour during the business day, M-F, and until 3 on Saturday. No service on Sundays or Holidays. The buses take you to restaurants and shopping including the mall, Walmart and West Marine. The marina has a nice dinghy dock, lounge and laundry. It is easy to see why Vero Beach has gotten the cruiser nick name of "Velcro Beach" because cruisers come here and get stuck by falling into the routine of catching the bus and enjoying the company of other cruisers and spending a little more time here than they had originally planned.

We are settling into once again living on board and are enjoying the time here to meet new friends and catch up on some boat projects....yes, there are always boat projects. We are listening to the weather looking for opportunities to cross over to the Bahamas. A cold front has come through and the high will only be in the low 70's today. The 80's that are predicted later in the week sound a lot better to us.

Finally far enough south for it to be warm

This picture is of something very rare...boats actually sailing on the ICW! They were ahead of us for several days. We put our big genoa up too, and gained up to one and a half knots of speed!

I can tell that Wayne is back in retirement mode because he keeps asking me what day it is. We have a calendar in the salon that I mark off the days just so we can keep up. Life is good.

We traveled several long days. Saturday we went from Daytona to Merritt Island and Sunday we made it to Vero Beach. The current was in our favor most of the time and the wind was helping us along. We just wanted to get south. We have seen lots of dolphins. They love to dive under the boat. I used to worry about them getting hurt but the design of our hull is such that the keels and the rudder protect them from the sail drives. The dolphins just like to play.

Near NASA we saw an island that had white pelicans and pink flamingos. It is times like this that I wish I had a camera with a fancy telephoto lens. We could see them nicely through the binoculars. The white pelicans are really pretty, for a pelican that is.

Sunday was Wayne's birthday, it was a travel day, so we celebrated by going out to lunch today in Vero Beach. He got several cards, emails and phone calls with well wishes.

We are at Vero Beach City Marina on a mooring ball. Here, as it gets crowded there may be up to 3 boats on a mooring ball. We were alone last night, but had two other catamarans join us today. Our new neighbors are Salty Paws and Gypsy Rose. We plan to be in Vero Beach for at least a week or more, so I will tell you more about Vero Beach later.

We are happy to be where it is warmer. It was nice to wake up this morning and find the temperature 62 degrees inside the boat, much better than the 42 we had last week. We were hot wearing jeans today, so tomorrow we may have pull out our shorts.

Daytona Beach

We had a nice quiet night at Pine Island, just north of St. Augustine. It is a good anchorage. We were anchored there with two fellow Northwest Creek Marina cruisers, Grateful Attitudes and Margarita. They invited us over for dinner, but we were just too tired. Yesterday we also spoke to friends on Chanceaux and Jockslodge. It is definitely migration season. In Daytona we are once again anchored near Grateful Attitudes.

I forgot to mention in my last update that Wayne did very well during our bumpy ocean ride and did not even get queasy. He used his seasick patch and two different types of wrist bands. He had ginger ale with his dinner and ginger snaps as a snack. We are not sure if he would have gotten sick without all of the precautions, but it is nice to know the patch did not make him goofy (which is a possible side effect). We also don't know which precaution worked, we are just happy he did not get seasick.
I was fine and only had the ginger snaps.

We have been checking our "gas mileage" and are very pleased that it has improved since our last cruise. We have the new alternators, rebuilt fuel injectors and new props which all help. Diesel prices have not been too bad. Lowest we have paid is $2.79 in SC and only paid 2.89 in St Augustine.

We are still trying to move as quickly south as possible. The weatherman is predicting another cold front coming through in the next day or so. I guess we can't put away our winter clothes yet.

The Sunshine state welcomes BTC!

The Georgetown, SC anchorage was ok, but very crowded. We were there on a cold, rainy, windy night and did not leave the boat. A couple of boats dragged anchor, but we were fine. The boardwalk looks nice and stores, etc are easily accessible if you want to spend a day or two there. We were up and on our way by 7:00 AM. It was sunny but very cold. We saw lots of clusters of birds on piers and trees. Maybe they were together to stay warm, I kept joking that since it was Sunday maybe they were
there for church services. We managed to catch the currents right and made it all the way to Charleston.

We stayed at the Charleston City Marina on their Megadock! It deserves its name, that place is HUGE! It is almost half a mile walk to get to the dock office, and that is walking on the docks! We were on the dock with the 100+ foot yachts. We felt VERY small next to most of the boats there. We arrived in Charleston in time to take a shower and then have dinner with Steve and Jenny at Fleet Landing. Monday we had a lazy morning and then walked over to Caviar and Bananas, where Jenny works. We
had lunch there and then borrowed her car to run errands. We picked her up at 3 when she got off work and went home with her. We spent a fun evening with Steve and Jenny playing Wii. Wii is a computer game where the computer can follow your movements. We played sports games and tried the Fitness program. I laughed so hard I cried while watching Wayne trying to do the hula hoop! Wayne is great at sports and was really good with the Wii sports games too. I was ok with bowling and yoga but was
not willing to try the hula hoop after watching Wayne. We spent the night with them and got back to the boat around 9:00 on Tuesday morning. We fueled up and were on our way. We just missed the 10:00 opening of the Wappoo Creek Bridge, so we put down an anchor to wait for the 10:30 opening. The current there is terrible.

It was a very COLD day. The wind was gusting to 30 and blowing at a constant 20 knots or more. With the high temperature of only 50, it made for a chilly day. We anchored in the South Edisto River for the night. The weatherman had freeze warnings and said there was a possibility of breaking the record low temperature. He also said the wind would continue until sometime on Wednesday. Luckily he was mistaken about the wind, it calmed down around dark. I made enchiladas for dinner to use the oven
and left it on a little extra for the heat. By the time we went to bed about 9:00 it was 52 in the boat. We have lots of comforters on the bed, so we actually slept well and were warm. When we got up, the temperature in the boat was a chilly 42 degrees. Making coffee on the stove brought it up to 50 before we got underway again. The high today was predicted to be 50 but without the wind it is not bad at all. We had our easiest and best crossing ever of the Coosaw River this morning. The current
was in our favor and there was very little chop. We saw a few of the Blue Angels and also Fat Albert, which is their supply plane, doing touch and goes at the base in Beaufort, SC. Just as we were approaching the Lady Island Bridge in Beaufort, a crow decided to come along for a ride. He sat on various parts of the bow rail for almost 10 minutes. We have also seen a turtle and dolphins. It is supposed to be in the 30's again tonight but then the temperatures should be warming up. We are trying
to travel as many miles as possible during the day to get south as quickly as possible. This means we are trying anchorages we have never been to before and we are happy to finding some nice new places to stay.

When we passed Beaufort, a cruiser from our home marina at Northwest Creek, Chanceaux, hailed us on the radio. They were waiting until 1:00 to "go outside" in the ocean to go overnight to Fernandina Beach, Florida. We said we would meet them there in a few days. The more we thought about the slow trip through Georgia and our timing of the tides, the more we thought they had a good idea. Georgia had not had the money to dredge their portion of the waterway. The current is so strong that shoaling
is bad. Tides are over 9 feet, often you are only able to travel through certain places during high tide. Our timing on the tides was not good and we would probably have to wait until noon to travel for the tide to be right. It takes about two and a half days to get through GA when the tides are in your favor. Wayne listened to the weather and we decided to go for it. We went out into the ocean at Calibogue Sound, just south of Beaufort, SC around 3:30PM. The ocean was calm. We have been in the
Neuse River when it was rougher. At 9:00 PM it was no longer calm, the wind, water and tide were fighting each other. We had a very bumpy night, the boat rolled from side to side with winds on our nose. But we made reasonable time and expected to be in Fernandina, Florida early in the morning. At 6:20, Wayne woke me when the starboard engine quit. He figured out that the raw water pump was not working and discovered the impeller had gone bad. He had the engine up and running again by 7:30.
We arrived at Fernandina at 8:45 AM. As we entered Fernandina we heard boats we knew talking on the VHF, Jockslodge, Grateful Attitudes and Margarita were all heading south from Fernandina. Chanceaux had made it safely to Fernandina just ahead of us. They too, said it was a rough night. We are still debating whether missing all the hassle in Georgia was worth the rough night. Wayne and I had both slept at least 5 hours during the night so we decided to continue down the waterway. We quickly started
removing the extra layers of clothes we had been wearing to stay warm. By midday it was 71 in the salon of the boat. That is the warmest it has been in over a week even when the oven was running! Tonight we are anchored at Pine Island, which is one of our favorite Florida anchorages.

Our theme song this week is "Boat Drinks" by Jimmy Buffet. For those of you who are not familiar with the song, it talks about being tired of the cold and snow and a line that is in the chorus and also the last line of the song is "I want to go where it's WARM". Every mile we go further south we are making that happen.

Born to Cruise is in South Carolina

Once again we had a good experience at Bock Marine. Kenny and his staff do a great job. You are hauled and launched as scheduled. We also had Larry and Randy of Bock, sand and paint our hull and saildrives. They do a great job and do it quickly. They charge by the hour, so quickly is good. We will visit them again when it is time for our next haul out.

There were a lot of dolphins playing in Core Creek and the current was in our favor as we left Bock Marine on Wednesday the 12th. It was overcast but still a good day for a sailboat ride. While we were at Bock we watched LOTS of boats going south, it was nice to finally be one of them. Taking the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) you plan on motoring. Sometimes in the big bays and rivers you can sail. When the wind is in the right direction you can put up a sail while motoring to increase your speed.
We had the mainsail up for 2 hours today which increased our speed by up to one knot. We average around 5.5 knots so that means we see an almost 20% increase in speed. We love watching the dolphins and seabirds as we travel, they are very entertaining. We anchored for the night in Mile Hammock with 10 other boats. We were back on the hook for the first time in a long time, it felt good.

We woke up Thursday to rain, wind and fog. We headed out slowly and sped up as the fog burned off. We had three bridges on Thursday, which slow you down but are part of the challenge/fun of traveling the waterway. When we anchored on Wednesday, it appeared that our new LED anchor light was not working. When we anchored at Carolina Beach it was calm, so Wayne climbed up the mast. The light was working!!! It was good to know our fancy new bulb was working, we just can't see it from the deck.
It was a quiet night at Carolina Beach with rain and once again we awoke to fog.

Friday we started out in rain and fog again! The good news is rain and fog means that we have had a warm night. Wayne had studied the current and determined the best time for us to leave would be around 9:00 to take advantage of the current through Snow's Cut and crossing the Cape Fear. While we were waiting for the time to be right, Wayne replaced the strainer on our fresh water pump, which has resolved the leak we had. We made good time across the Cape Fear even in the fog. The real challenge
of the day came when we reached the bridge that is under construction at Oak Island. They had posted the schedule on Salty Southeast Cruisers Net of when the crew would be working and when boats could go through. They should have finished for the day well before we arrived, but the rain must have slowed them down. Between the barge and the shore there was a small opening to go through. We were not sure we could make it, but the bridge crew was telling us it would be at least an hour before the
barge was moved. Three mono-hull sail boats went through before us. One had a 5'6" draft, so we felt ok about the depth. Each of the three said they had clearance on both sides so we decided to try it. I stood on the bow while Wayne slowly steered BTC through the opening. We had about a foot clearance on each side. Half way through we ran aground! Wayne was able to back up,he moved just a little closer to the barge, we now had about 6" of clearance on the port side, he came through a little
faster and we made it. Neither of us wish to do that again! We crossed over the NC - SC line and anchored in Calabash Creek.

Today is Saturday and there was finally no fog. The currents have been running with us all day. Prior to this we have been averaging about 43 miles a day. Today we are headed for Georgetown, SC which will be 56 miles which is a lot of miles for days that are growing shorter ! It helps that the bridges open on demand or we timed it perfectly so there was no waiting. We have never anchored in Georgetown, SC before, but have heard it is a favorite of many cruisers.

We are happy to say that all of the electrical work Wayne has been doing is working well. The new high output alternators are charging the batteries while we are motoring, which then lasts us through the night. YEAH! The solar panels are putting in some power even in the rain! The solar panels will be further tested when we are at anchor in the Bahamas and not using the engines. The best news is the new seals on the starboard saildrive are working great! There is no water in the oil. YIPPEE
!!! I don't think I mentioned that when Wayne changed the oil in the port alternator, it too was free of oil, this is a first for us. We are happy!

Born to Cruise is back in the water!!!

In this picture Wayne is installing one of our new props. Notice the new bottom paint and the blue paint on the sail drives.

Our props came in today and Wayne had them installed in no time. They had time to put us back in the water today so at 3:15 Born to Cruise was back in the water! We are "parked' in the haul out well until in the morning when we will be on our way. The good news is that we can have heat tonight!

While waiting for the new props we have finished everything on our to do list. The bottom was sanded and painted. The sail drives sanded and painted. The seals changed in the starboard sail drive. Oil changed in both sail drives. New zincs everywhere. New props installed The hull cleaned and waxed. Wayne polished the stainless steel bow rollers and swim boarding ladder and removed all the rust. The fenders and dock lines have been washed. The salon and cockpit windows have been washed. Touched up the Cetol on the rub rail. The water tanks are full. The deck has been washed down. Everything went really well. We are tired and happy to have it all behind us.

Wednesday we will truely begin crusing! Life is good.

Thank You Dennis !!!

Dennis of S/V Celebration working on our starboard saildrive.


I don't know of any boat owner that likes to have their boat hauled out and do work in the boat yard. Dealing with the known issues is not fun, but there is always the dread of the unknown that you will find or accidentally break when you are doing something else that makes everyone dread the yard. It is a time feared by most of us.

Our biggest unknown and fear for this haul out was to replace the seals on the starboard saildrive. We knew the seals were leaking because we had water in the starboard sail drive oil. If you will remember on our first cruise, the port sail drive was leaking. We stopped at St Augustine Marine to get it fixed. They not only did not fix it, but broke the upper housing of the sail drive. Do NOT ever go to St Augustine Marine !!! We can highly recommend Helseth Marine Services in Vero Beach, Florida, who fixed our port sail drive, however we could not find anyone in NC who came highly recommended to work on our sail drive. So that left this task up to us.

Wayne was having nightmares about the problems he could run into while replacing the seals and did not feel comfortable taking this on alone. We are very fortunate to have some very talented and knowledgeable friends. Dennis, on S/V Celebration, is one of those friends. Although his expertise is not saildrives he knows how to work on engines and machines. He agreed to help us.

Dennis and Wayne studied and planned prior to the haul out to determine what needed to be done. Saturday it was time to replace the seals. After taking everything apart, they determined that the shaft would also need to be replaced...it's a boat so you expect problems. Luckily we were prepared and had all of the necessary parts. It was a long, all day project, but it was successfully completed. I wish that I had had a video camera to record the smiles on their faces, the high fives and the "happy dance" they did when everything finally came together! Thank you Dennis we could not have done it without you!!!

Len and Bev from S/V Louie Louie joined Dennis, Wayne and I for a bon voyage dinner in Beaufort.

There are still tasks to complete while we are here in the yard but the major one is behind us. So the rest of our time in the yard may not be so bad and we will be ready to go when our new props arrive.

In the Boat Yard

We had a beautful day to start our second cruising season. We even put the sails up for a while. The trip to Bock Marine from Northwest Creek is a little over 26 miles. We arrived at Bock a little after 1:00, they were waiting on the dock ready to haul us out. The picture above is of Born to Cruise in the sling that they use to haul boats. You cannot see him but on the left side there is a seat for the driver to sit to control the lift. BTC came out with no problems. They power washed the boat and had it blocked by 2:00.

We decided after examing the bottom that we definitely needed paint and we also needed new props. Today we borrowed the Bock Marine "loaner" car and went in search of props. We were able to order props, they should be in on Monday, Tuesday at the latest, so it looks like we will be in the yard until Wednesday. While waiting for the props we will be able complete more projects from our list.

Larry and Randy sanded the bottom and got one coat of paint on today, they will put on a second coat on Monday. We hope this paint will last 3 years, if we are lucky. We also have new hull zincs.

Wayne has been working on replacing engine zincs, we need these because our engines are salt water cooled. He also drained the oil out of the starboard sail drive. I have been cleaning up. I washed windows today. I also put RainX on the inside and outside of the windshield. We have real glass in our windshield and we have found that RainX really helps.

Cruising again !!!

CLOD no more! On November 1st we moved back aboard Born to Cruise. So we are no longer CLODs (Cruisers Living on Dirt). It is great to be home again !

We have been busy finishing up projects and getting everything put away. The weather has been a little crazy with a subtropical storm off the coast but it should be ok today, sunny with highs in the low 70's.

Today we are leaving Northwest Creek Marina with plans to return in the spring. We have a haul out scheduled with Bock Marine early this afternoon. Born to Cruise will have the bottom sanded and get new bottom paint, sail drives will be sanded and painted, the saildrive oil will be changed, new seals will be put on the starboard sail drive and the hulls will be waxed. And of course their are other projects on the "if we have time list". With any luck we will be ready to go back in the water on Monday and be headed SOUTH!

Born to Cruise is officially in cruising season number 2!!!