Happy Holidays

The crew of s/v Stardust would like to wish everyone a very Happy Holidays as well as a Happy New Year. We're still here in Elizabeth City. We'll see how things go with the job search and if it goes well, we stick around for a while. If it doesn't look good by the time we do our taxes, we'll take the money from the refund and continue moving South to where we have friends and family so we can look for jobs in potentially larger markets with better public transportation options. We'll let you all know what happens as soon as we know.

Elizabeth City, NC

So now we find ourselves in Elizabeth City, NC. It has been almost three weeks since leaving Warren, RI and it has been a crazy three weeks at that. Our first day out, we had some high winds and around 3-5 foot waves going through Block Island Sound. This was not the best way to start a trip and things didn't calm down until almost midnight when we were in Long Island Sound. Brenda was then able to take over for a while so I could get some sleep. We ended up stopping in West Haven, CT to refuel and then spent a relaxing day in LI Sound and arrived at the East River around sunset. We made our way through New York City and New York Harbor without incident. Everything looked beautiful lit up at night and we got to see the Statue of Liberty up close, which was really cool. We made our way out of the harbor a little after midnight and started down Chapel Hill Channel. When we got to Sandy Hook Channel, Brenda said she would be willing to take over for a bit, since she would just be following the channel markers. I went below, lay down and about 15 minutes later felt the boat shake and the heard the engine stop. Apparently, you can see the markers over the top of the beach at Sandy Hook and our GPS had it as being slightly shallower water on the chart. This is apparently a land mass that has been growing every year for several years, so it was right at the time that the GPS chart was made and we were now in the sand at the edge of the beach. We tried to reverse and of course ended up getting the towing bridle of our inflatable caught in the propeller, disabling us and setting the inflatable adrift. We ended up waiting for low tide, when we were resting on sand at a 45 degree angle and cut the prop free, then waited for high tide when we were able to float ourselves back out and get away from shore. We have since heard from Sandy Hook Coast Guard that they found the inflatable, so at least we won't have to buy a new one. We need to see if they can get it sent to another Coast Guard station so we can retrieve it.

After getting back underway, we started down the coast of New Jersey and it was fairly calm for a while, so at around 1:30am, I went to get rest while Brenda took over. At 3:30am, she called me up as we had just entered a sizable fog bank. I got us through the fog without issue and got some more rest, then when the waves started to pick up, I took over again. We had at least 5 foot waves going down the coast of NJ the whole way and had no place we could have pulled in to get out of it. About 2 hours north of Atlantic City, we noticed massive clouds over the shore, so I had Brenda go below and seal everything up tight. The system moved right over us withing 15 minutes and had not only high winds, but driving, freezing rain coming down sideways in sheets. Waves crashed up over us and some water got between my collar and my neck, going down and soaking everything I was wearing. It took about an hour to get through the system and then the waves settled down a little as we made it to Atlantic City. Unfortunately, we were unable to contact anyone on the VHF in Atlantic City, so we couldn't pull in to stop there and the sun was going down. We went a little further south and put out a general call to see if anyone could suggest a place to stop, so I wouldn't end up with hypothermia and we were advised to head into Great Egg Harbor and Ocean City. We got in there, found everything was closed for the season, so we tied up at a Yacht Club and waited out some of the worst of the winds. We still had some issues with big waves going down to Delaware Bay, but once we were in the Bay, we had the waves coming behind us and pushing us along.

We entered the C & D Canal and made our way to an Anchorage Basin there, which ended up being a great place to stop since there was a lot of severe weather and thunderstorms moving through the area at the time. We were there for a few days and heard the tornado sirens go about three or four times.

Chesapeake Bay ended up being some of the worst waves of the trip after New Jersey and so we stopped in Annapolis and anchored there for a couple of days. When we left Annapolis, we had three footers most of the way and one of the knocked the hose loose from our bilge pump, so we started having water building up down below until we found what the problem had been. We spent a few hours over at the mouth of the Potomac bailing out and making sure the bilge pump was repaired. After that, we finally had calmer waters the rest of the way to Norfolk. When we got to Norfolk, we were impressed seeing all the Aircraft Carriers and assorted other warships that we had to pass by upon entering. We anchored over by the Naval Hospital and the next morning found ourselves on the ICW. By this time, our primary VHF radio had ceased working for unknown reasons, our handheld fell into the water from the bilge and shorted out, our speed indicator no longer worked, our depth finder works about 1% of the time and the radar decided it no longer wanted to give data to the GPS. We got into the Deep Creek Lock, made our way up the Dismal Swamp Canal and then found we seemed to be running low on fuel. We decided to wait on going through the second lock and instead moored in South Mills, NC to get fuel and something to eat.

The next morning, we got into the lock and made our way the rest of the distance to Elizabeth City. We arrived here a few days ago and have decided since we are very low on funds, that we are going to stay here for a few months and try to replenish our money. The people here are wonderful and we've met a lot of great boaters. Our thanks go to the family traveling on the catamarans "Alleycat" and "Zab-A-Cat" for coming over with their tension tool and helping get our rigging properly tuned finally. Hopefully, we'll see them again someday, but we at least hope to stay in touch with them as we do have their email.

Overall, it's been a crazy few weeks, but we're still in good spirits and looking forward to seeing what the next few months bring. If anyone needs or wants to send us anything, you can always send it "General Delivery" to the Elizabeth City Post Office, Elizabeth City, NC 27909.

Florida Bound Soon...

As we wrap up our time here in Warren, RI, I want to take the opportunity to thank a number of people that have helped us and offered us advice for our upcoming journey. Thank you to Harbormaster Matt and Deputy Dan for letting us use the transient dock and moorings during storms that have hit the area and caused even the river to be a bit on the choppy side. Thanks to Jason and Mary for advice, helping to put our sails up and letting us feel like we actually can make this trip without issue. Thank you to Bill and Donna for helping us out with getting an outboard for our replacement dinghy, being just generally cool folks to talk to and hang out with and giving Ringo plenty of treats. Thanks to Mike for being a real sport and ferrying us back and forth until we had gotten our replacement dinghy. Thanks to Jan over at West Marine in Newport for the assistance she provided when I accidentally got charged Sales Tax on the dinghy and also needed to return a light for the dinghy without issue. Thanks go to various others that it would take me a while to list here, but are no less important to thank for making us feel at home here in Warren and helping us in many assorted ways. We will miss everyone here, but will definitely return for at least a month time we come up to New England. To anyone not in Warren, but at least in New England, why not stop in Warren, which has many "Best of Rhode Island" shops and restaurants, as well as one of the nicest small libraries I've ever seen. We will likely depart on Monday the 18th as it looks like the weather all along the east coast will be beautiful for most of the week, with the exception of the end of the week having some showers down near VA and NC. But we can deal with a little bit of rain if we're going to have decent weather the rest of the time. Our plan, for those wanting to know is to leave early morning Monday, head through Block Island Sound to Long Island Sound. Down through the East River to New York Harbor. Follow the coast of NJ down to Delaware Bay. From there, head to Chesapeake Bay and pick up the ICW(Intra-Coastal Waterway) going down the Dismal Swamp Canal(really a much nicer area than it sounds) on to Elizabeth City, NC where cruisers can dock for free for 48 hours and we'll rest there. From there, we'll make our way down the ICW the rest of the way down to Florida. Overall, it should be somewhere between 1-2 weeks for us to get to Florida since we'll be mostly going the ICW and will be taking our time since there is really no rush. When we get to Florida, we plan to look up our friends that we have down that way and have a wonderful offer from Paul and Francesca to tie up on their dock for a little while. Looking forward to the journey as much as the destination. Hope all are well and we'll be sending Spot updates to Facebook for everyone so you'll know where we are along the way.

Greetings!

Welcome to the blog of the Ericson 38, "Stardust," and her crew. The crew consists of myself, my wife, our two kids, two cats and our dog. So far, we've been aboard for a little over a week and in that time we've done a lot. We had to leave Cape Ann Marina before being really ready, since they had a bunch of boats coming in that same day. We powered through Massachusetts Bay at night with limited experience and managed to avoid running aground. Got to the Cape Cod Canal at just the right time of morning to have the current work with us. Hung out in Bristol Harbor in RI for a couple of days. Moved up to a mooring on the Warren River in Warren, RI. Had our dinghy stolen. Even got to tie up on the docks for a couple of days to wait out Hurricane Earl which managed to turn south and not even hit us with anything more than a little rain. We've had stronger winds in the last couple of days after the storm than we did the whole night of the storm. We've met some really great and helpful people, too. Mary and her boyfriend, who own "Valentine" are being great and helping us out by letting us borrow their dinghy until we replace the stolen one. Mike, who owns "Diva," has offered us help with little things that were causing issues on the boat. Another great guy, Don, helped us get tied up to the dock, and brought us the 2010 edition of Eldridge, which has the tide charts for major locations along he Eastern U.S., as well as tide information and a tide wheel we could use should we choose to head up the Erie Canal to Buffalo to get some of our things from storage there. We really are enjoying being on the Stardust. I'll try to update often and will get other members of the crew to post here as well from time to time. Our plans for the next few days are to get ourselves back out to the mooring, then maybe take the bus to Providence, RI to walk around a little bit. Also get new tags for the pets showing boat name and Skype phone number. Oh, and laundry would be good too...