Unexpected hospital visit. I hope this pic shows my disgust with this development. But I'm doing well now (Thr.), we've hauled the boat and are putting her to bed (again). We fly home on Saturday from Raleigh/Durham. Today we took time to enjoy a fantastic seafood lunch on the Beaufort waterfront, yum!

Heading Home

We have run into unexpected medical issues and must end this session of the voyage of Mystique. Steve spent the weekend in the Morehead City hospital with a GI bleed. It was mild, but continues. So.....we unfortunately we were advised not to be too far from medical facilities, and definitely not to be out in the Atlantic or in the ICW. For those of you who have seen the marshes of GA, you know that that country is about as far from civilization as you can get. (apologies to those of you from GA....). So we will be putting the boat up here and returning to Frisco this weekend. We are really bummed, but feel this is the best course.

A week later and...

We're still in Oriental!!! We spent last Thr-Sun in a motel here while the hurricane passed and we were working on the boat (up and down the stepladder 100 times). So Mystique was finally launched Monday morning and we moved aboard. The weather has been beautiful but the last few days have been cool with cold nights (32 last night and forecast 38 tonight). At the dock we have shore power so we're able to run all our lights, stereo, microwave and HEATER;-). But we do turn off the heat at night and sleep under 3 fleece blankets.

The autopilot has been installed as of Wednesday. Now we need the installer to take us out on a 'sea trial' in relatively calm conditions to tune her up and turn some circles to calibrate the AP. It was too windy on Wed. afternoon to do that and he had another obligation today, so we're headed out early tomorrow am to complete the setup and get our certification of proper installation.

Since it looked like we were going to be here longer for the AP installation we also have been tackling some other jobs, like cleaning, fixing some electrical connections, re-working the engine cooling water fill and overflow reservoir (where the antifreeze goes), and cleaning and re-marking the anchor chain. Today we found out the new batteries we ordered Tue for arrival Wed were still on the manufacturer's loading dock, so we decided to cancel the battery improvement program for now.

So now we're about 3 days behind our loose schedule and will be planning on trucking south, hopefully tomorrow afternoon. We will need to make about 50 mi per day, allowing about 4 days delay for weather/sightseeing. Our first destination is Beaufort, SC, about 23 miles south.

We do have plastic window screens we can put up around our cockpit if the weather stays cool. We discovered the joy of these uncool looking devices on our way north last spring. Comfort is more important than looks! Here is a picture from that trip that shows some of the window screens up.


So that's what's happenin' here in Oriental.


Steve & Jan

Mystique on the hard in Oriental - test pic from the cellphone (not too good!)

Windy in Oriental

Good morning friends,

Noel was upgraded from Tropical Storm to Hurricane last night. It's about 20 miles offshore from us (Cape Hatteras area) and we're getting lots of wind from the counter-clockwise flow. We're working on the boat today to clean her up for our trip next week. She's still 'on the hard' (on land) as it's considered too windy to launch today as planned. So Monday is the new launch date. We can still get all our work done this weekend, so that's OK.

We'll put the sails on, the cockpit canopy up, clean up the engine compartment, do a general cleanup and air out the cabin before moving aboard. We're staying in a motel on the harbor for a few nights. Our cat Sammy is with us and helping with the cleaning. We keep her kitty litter in the aft head.

I've tried to upload another picture but it didn't work and we've got to get back to the boat. Better luck next time?