October 16th dawned cloudy with the promise of rain. A cold front was predicted with strong winds behind it. We elected to motor through the rain for two hours to find a more protected anchorage than Hospital Point in Portsmouth, VA. We were the only boat to anchor in a small cove at statute mile marker 10 in Chesapeake, VA. The highest wind we saw in this protected anchorage was less than 20.
Picture courtesy of Tammy Merritt from her house
There are two routes south at the beginning of the Intracoastal Waterway or ICW. You may recall last year we chose the Dismal Swamp and suffered propellor damage when a thirty foot tree was kicked up by the wake (waves created by a boats forward motion) of the boat in front of us. The depth of this man-made canal has shrunk over the years from ten feet to perhaps six foot deep as there are years of debris from the overhanging trees.
Dismal Swamp 2018
The width seems narrow in spots, especially for sailboats with masts; due to the overhanging trees. We’ve read that there is a large amount of duck weed floating in the swamp this year. Engine raw water filters have to be cleaned often.
This year we chose to transit the ever so slightly shorter route, sometimes referred to as the Virginia Cut. We found depths from 10-16 feet most often and the shorter canals merged with rivers and were often quite wide. There were a lot more birds this year as well. Larger flocks and more of a variety of species. Great Bridge Lock is only a 2 foot rise, quick and painless.
Great Bridge Lock
Looking back to the lock entrance, this crane was dredging near the entrance. Don’t you think the below picture of the winding North Landing River looks wider than the Dismal Swamp?
North Landing River
We anchored in Shiloh, NC after nearly 9 hours and 50 miles. It was a long day at the helm, too narrow and many twists and turns to use autopilot. We had the engine on all day. Though the jib gave us a boost with the wind behind us for about 10 miles in Currituck Sound. I was surprised that there were so few boats migrating south at this time of year. However, our night time anchorage had about a dozen boats.
The next day we sailed downwind across Albemarle Sound and down the Alligator River. 
This Alligator river swing bridge was closed for a couple weeks this fall. So glad it was repaired by the time we arrived. It’s a long way around this stretch of water! We anchored for the night just before the Alligator/Pungo canal and enjoyed this beautiful sunset.
Alligator/Pungo Canal
Morning fog in the beginning of the canal.
We chose Pungo Creek rather than Belhaven Marina for our next stop-over as the remnants of a tropical storm was predicted to race by. We found good holding near the Marina and enjoyed a walk on shore before the blow. Locals were extremely friendly and the neighborhood was filled with very friendly dogs.
A TriStar 46 docked in Pungo Creek. Similar design to our Lone Star which is a TriStar 39.
On Monday, October 21 we sailed south to one of our favorite spots: Oriental, NC. This historic town is so welcoming and we love the unusual and practical supplies at the local consignment store. Last year we sold a Porta-Bote that was too long for our davits. This year we dropped off a gasoline outboard and a series drogue. They were replaced recently by a Torqueedo electric outboard and Shark drogue (sea anchor.)
Bringing the Series drogue to the consignment store in Oriental, NC. We also enjoyed a delicious lunch at the restaurant behind Tom.
We motored the remaining 24 miles to Beaufort, NC two days later. We completed our southern trek down the ICW in only a week. So excited to have reached our final destination before heading offshore to sail south to the Bahamas!
Next up Preparations and Passage to the Bahamas.
The anchorage on the Bohemia River.
Sailing south with Miles.
That evening we went to a nearby pub to celebrate Helen’s birthday. Great dinner and fun time with them and another cruising couple.
Steve and Helen in their dinghy near their boat, anchored in front of Lone Star.
We were literally anchored at the end of the navigable creek.
After a week in Annapolis we saw a weather window to head south. Can’t pass on fair winds and following seas! On October 11th, we enjoyed a fast 48 mile sail to Solomons, MD.
A Chesapeake Lighthouse.
We elected not to go ashore here as the full moon tides, called king tides in this area; resulted in flooded docks and the main street too.
Such a peaceful and beautiful anchorage.
We expected a boisterous downwind sleigh ride as a strong cold front had passed overnight. Rather than 15-25 knot North winds we experienced 10-12. As the wind was still behind us, sometimes the apparent wind was not strong enough to fill the sails. So we motored whenever our speed dropped below 5 knots. We had a wonderful overnight sail at sea with only occasional ship traffic. Just enough to keep the on watch person from boredom.
Zoom in on the chart plotter above to see what AIS (Automatic Identification System) targets look like directly on our chart. See the green triangles those are clickable links that show details about a ship or navigational aid. Details for ships include length, beam, tonnage, speed, direction, etc. and most importantly “closest point of approach” or CPA. The computer tells you whether you’re on a collision course or not. We currently have an AIS receiver built into our VHF and it is networked with our Chart Plotter. Soon we will install our own transmitter, so other ships can see our boat statistics.
Our buddy boat Miles (at sea in the above photo) led the way into the 
Cape Henlopen ferry.
A Lighthouse in the bay.
Salem nuclear power station.
We traveled 75 miles in 11 hours. We’ve earned a lay day! Miles and Lone Star plan to stay put for a day or two.
It fits well on our Davits and has a clever harness under the dinghy for added support and security.
And it passed the test of carrying our first grocery run with our 
A week later than last year, we saw a weather window for our first passage south. Similar to last year we were on shore when we saw the end of a rainbow over our home. A good sign it’s time to leave!
Our sail to Block Island on September 28th was fast and fun; 26 miles in three and a half hours. We met with Steve and Helen on Miles and we both planned to leave for Cape May early the next morning. So happy to be heading south again!
Avery Point Lighthouse on UCONN property.
View of SYC from UCONN.
We were so lucky to have use of a car this summer. Trips to Defender marine supply store, hardware stores, laundry and grocery stores whenever we needed to go were invaluable. We were prepared to use Uber all summer. Tom’s generous sister and her husband offered us the use of their van. Thank you, dear sister!! The car was also a big help when we decided to move into a better priced storage unit and downsize our belongings a bit more. We were also able to visit our son a few times and help them out with a garage insulation project. We were grateful son, Alex and fiancé, Jenna came to more than a few Friday night picnics at Shennecossett Yacht Club.
So sad that I don’t have any pictures of the beautiful blue inner cells, but here is the finished project. We still have a separate engine starting battery for now. So far we are very happy with the new lithium battery bank. It delivers a steady voltage consistently. We’ve even used the microwave and a heat gun with no voltage drop as our old batteries did.
At the end of August Tom’s Dad and friend, Ilse came for a short couple night visit. We sailed to Flat Hammock and anchored for lunch and a walk on shore. What a beautiful day. So glad they made the trip!
Our next event was to attend a 100 year celebration at the Montville, CT power generation station that Tom worked at from 1979 to 1987. Great time visiting, reminiscing, and touring the current facility. The food was fabulous as well. 
We decided to do the majority of our provisioning for the Bahamas right here. This was facilitated by the van we borrowed. This time we stocked up on some dried fruits: apples, peaches, and strawberries. Repacked in vacuum sealed bags for longer storage.
Tom is always researching new marine products. We’ve been looking for some specific emergency equipment. Things we want to have on hand, but hope to never need. The first was an emergency rudder or perhaps a tiller arm. What he found is a very compact sea anchor: a Fiorentino
The item stores compactly in itself and is smaller in size than a basketball 🏀. 
Very well engineered product made of high quality materials. We purchased one and will practice using it as it is so easy to deploy. The YouTube videos for this product were fun to watch and informative.
A hands on demonstration inflating a life raft inspired us to research options for our cruising situation.
Touring various cruising boats was fun, educational, and a much appreciated benefit to this gathering!
We began by removing the rudder, shaft, and engine. You may recall we had an alternator problem last winter; we burned up or shredded more than a few v-belts. Although the engine ran well, we thought it was due for an overhaul and paint job. Great opportunity to clean the engine room and continue to sound proof it too.
We added new engine mounts, all new hoses, new Balmar alternator with serpentine belt, a new starter and rebuilt the injectors.
The folks at Essex Boat Works are so helpful, we highly recommend this knowledgeable staff!
We removed the four noisy cockpit drains that were just at the waterline and replaced them with closable valves, one on each side about 8 inches lower. Note the old AGM battery bank in the above picture, replacing them with lithium was another summer project. Tom and I scrubbed the yellow stain and numerous black marks off the topsides. We also had the yard do some touch up painting on the topsides and they added a black boot stripe and keel guard; a vinyl strip on the port transom, to prevent wear when lifting the dinghy on davits. After reinstalling rudder, new shaft, and old propellor we were ready to launch. The rudder is now painted white for better visibility.
After launching late on Friday, we had to spend one more weekend in Essex as the rebuilt starter was messed up. Essex Boat Works generously replaced it with a brand new one the following Tuesday. This haul-out was expensive, but considering all that we accomplished, it was well worth it. After 30 days, we were on our way down river and back to our mooring at SYC.
Old Saybrook Lighthouse at the mouth of the Connecticut River.
Ahh relaxation, sailing small boats, swimming, and spending time with family, a slice of heaven on earth.
Nice new dinghy dock in Great Salt Pond makes it very easy to reach town and get some exercise.
Who doesn’t enjoy a gorgeous sunset? It never ceases to awe and humble us. We live in a beautiful world 🌎.
Our passage from sunny Atlantic City to our home base at Shennecossett Yacht Club in Groton, Connecticut took 36 hours. At three different times we were able to sail at 5 knots. However, that amounted to only 5 hours of the passage. So we motored on a calm sea the majority of the time. Thankfully, our electric auto pilot did all the steering of this open ocean passage. About 4 hours south of Montauk, Long Island we were surrounded by thick fog. Thankfully we are equipped with radar, and AIS positions of most commercial and some pleasure boats appear right on the chart plotter. We also recently added an automatic fog horn, so it was automatically blasting our position to boats as an auditory signal. We were disappointed that the fog never lifted all day. We had to slowly feel our way into our own little harbor and trust our instruments!
A big thank you to Bill Hooper for taking this photo of us from E deck! It made us smile to hear the cheers of fellow club members that were on a boat at the nearby dock. Thank you for the welcome home at 7:00PM on Saturday, June 1st.
Spring was cool and very wet here in New England. However, after a cold front blasted through the next day, the long range forecast looks pretty good. When we first arrived we were enjoying sleeping in slightly cooler weather: high 50’s and low 60’s rather than 70’s. Daytime highs have been in the 60’s or 70’s so quite comfortable. Summer weather finally arrived at the end of June.
Yes, you see three mini desserts: creme brûlée, chocolate cherry torte, and banana custard. All were fantastic!
Approaching Atlantic City 
At our anchorage
Our statistics for this passage: 370 nautical miles, 71 hours total passage time, engine on for 38 hours.
We gave them some dehydrated peanut butter as a thank you gift, something we still had in stock and they had never tried.
We had one bedraggled bird sleep on our lifeline all night. He flew away at dawn and was a long way from land!
Fun to see a pod of dolphin play with us in the Gulf Stream.
We actually would have preferred a bit more wind. The highest we had was around 12-14 knots right behind us. We ended up motoring almost one third of the time: 29 hours of 102. We steered with the electric auto pilot exclusively on this passage, rather than the wind vane. There was not enough apparent wind for the wind vane to work well.
The real entertainment began when we started the engine as we needed to turn up wind and weren’t sure if we could still sail. The alternator belt broke almost immediately. No time to fix it now! We sailed the last 2 miles up winding narrow channels, against the tidal current, and with a variety of small pleasure craft. There was a large motor yacht passing us at the last turn as we were sailing too slow (4-5 knots) at the same time that a larger fishing vessel was coming the other way. It’s understood they didn’t know our engine was out of commission. Fortunately, we never had to turn fully into the wind so were able to steer flawlessly! A sailboat stops when it points closer than 45-50 degrees (360 degrees on a compass) either side of where the wind is coming from. The same large motor yacht chose to block the entire channel right in front of the anchorage by spinning his boat around in preparation for docking. We managed to steer past his bow and avoid other anchored boats. Then we turned upwind into the narrow anchorage across from 
and Pegu Club who left from Egg Island at sunrise. Their towed dinghy is hiding behind a wave.
We both anchored in the Lee of 
The next day, we stayed aboard and celebrated Kimberly’s Birthday by grilling steaks and hamburgers on the grill accompanied with parsley potatoes and carrots and brownies and chocolate malted milkshakes for dessert. So happy to have sailed so much with Kimberly and Jeff this winter. We wish them well on their return trip to CT. The next day they headed west, while we headed east for a nostalgic return to 
We had to wait out some nasty weather at anchor near Eagle Rock…
Enjoyed more pretty sunsets …
Explored the still operating kerosene historic lighthouse and the amazing view from the top…
And a two mile walk on the beach, love the sound of crashing waves on a beach…
After one rocking night with south winds; we decided to move back to Marsh Harbor for our final stock up before heading to sea, and north toward New England for the summer. There are other cruisers getting ready for their crossings as well. Always fun to compare plans and swap sea stories. On our walk to Maxwells, a large grocery store, we spotted a cruiser on a folding bicycle with a Burley Travoy trailer holding two ten pound propane tanks. Tom stopped him by asking a question so we were able to see what we purchased online last month. He said, it’s the best purchase he ever made! We’re looking forward to getting ours!
How’s this for a front yard tree?
After a couple days anchored here we moved into quiet 
One morning some locals were out for their morning swim and stopped to say hello.
Sailing on Lone Star 