Beautiful Weather, Great Progress

Tue 4/22 Titusville, FL (Cape Canaveral in sight)

Since our last post, the weather has taken a GREAT turn for the better. Whereas at the beginning of our trip we were huddled under full cover of our cockpit bimini with all windows up to protect us from the cold and high winds, we now are enjoying 60 degree nights and 80 degree days, with light winds and cloudless skies. How wonderful! And the boat (and our bodies) continue to work on a high level, so life is very good.

We've made great progress since Charleston and are now a day ahead of schedule, able to relax and catch up with downloading pics and posting to the blog. I've added a couple of sample pics here, but as usual, you can view the rest on our Flickr site (see link in previous post).

The next stop after Charleston was Beaufort, SC (beu-furt) where we anchored and went ashore by dinghy to walk around the quaint town. They have completely re-done the waterfront into a wonderful 2-block long park, with the greatest pirate ship playground ever. A dad and his two young kids were in full imagination mode, yelling commands and "aarrrrggggg"s intersperced. But it was still cold and windy.

The next day we weighed anchor with the outgoing tide and rode down to, and past, Hilton Head Is with all it's beautiful waterfront mansions. We anchored the next night at Isle of Hope, just SE of Savannah. No running aground in the ICW like we did last spring, and no 5-day stop for engine repairs like last spring either;-)))). Then down the ICW again to a quiet and peaceful anchorage at Back River, GA which was out in the middle of the marsh and MILES from civilization. We could hear an occasional "whoosh" around the boat as dolphins rose for air. What a wonderful sound to wake up to!

At 7am on Thr 4/17 we took advantage of slack tide to exit the ICW to the Atlantic. There were 10kt winds from the NW most of the day and we got the sails up and set the autopilot for South. 10 hours later we pulled into Fernandina Beach, the northernmost town on the FL coast. We docked, fueled, pumped out the holding tanks and filled the water tanks. Oh, and did a grocery store run. It's so great to find $10 1.5L wine at the grocery stores here! It felt good to get everything ship-shape.

We're averaging .8 gal per hour, or 7 mi/gal on diesel, which costs $4.15 to $4.30/gal! We cruise comfortably at 2,000 rpm at 7mph, or faster when needed at 2,500 rpm at 8mph. That's a slow way to travel 800 miles, but it's also very relaxing when the weather is so nice.

Having "Otto", our new autopilot, with us on this trip has made a world of difference in our comfort level. Last year we hand-steered all 1,000 miles northward, having to concentrate much of the time to stay within the 30-40' wide channel that is the ICW. Now Otto does all the work, and all we have to do is either set a "track" for him to follow on the chartplotter (he shows you the cross-track error or how far off track you are which is usually within 15' of the track), or manually guide him using either 1 or 10 degree turn buttons. The screen shows a course arrow ahead of the boat which shows you which direction the boat is going according to the GPS, whether you're in cross currents or not. So the whole steering process is so much easier with Otto aboard. Otto also has a remote assistant, Remo, which is a wireless remote that we can use to control the steering of the boat from wherever we are aboard.

From Fernandina Beach we went 'outside' again for another beautiful day on the Atlantic to St. Augustine where we anchored and explored this historic and beautiful city. Then on to another remote quiet anchorage, then to the marina at New Smyrna Beach where we got a ride from a fellow cruiser to Wal-Mart for a few things, then on to our current anchorage at Titusville. We can see the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center across the channel from here. It's HUGE! But we decided not to take the day and do the tour so we can get to Jupiter on Thursday, a day earlier than scheduled.