Let's try this Again!

8.13.15

Well, our first attempt to pass through Beaufort had proven unsuccessful and after spending two months waiting for our transmission to be repaired (that's what we get for having a Japanese tranny!), we were more than ready to head further North. By now, the Chesapeake and places further were beyond our reach and we were hoping just to make it to Little River to dock the boat and put her up for sale. With the new transmission installed and the engine aligned and mounts tightened, we were excited to head out. So, last Friday, we waited for the tide to be in our favor and then tossed the lines and were on our way! Or so we thought...

Unfortunately, the boat turned, kissed its bow to the dock and we literally just spun on our axis stuck to the dock so that we went from being tied up on our port side to being broadside on our starboard. Not knowing what was going wrong, but knowing that something wasn't right, I quickly switched the lines to the other side of the boat and made a jump for the dock. I got the bow line secure and by the time I made it to the stern of the boat, Brad was there to hand me the stern line. Hmmmm....not how we had imagined our departure going.

With the lines securely tied to the dock, we were able to look into the matter a bit more. We found that forward was reverse and reverse was forward. This happened because we had to flip a piece of the transmission to get it to fit into our engine compartment (which our repair guy assured us was ok to do). Well, we would have made do with that and just shifted in reverse for the trip until we could fix it, but we have a feathered prop, which means that it cannot go either way, it has to be set up in a certain direction. So, not only were we going in the direction, we had no control over the boat.

A quick call to our repair guy and we realized we were going to be in Dataw another four days. Fabulous. We put on our smiley faces and decided there was no reason to fret, we would just use the time to get a few boat projects done. We were hoping to wait until we got up to Little River, but it just wasn't meant to be. So, for the next few days we crossed a few items off our checklist.

Finally, after the repair guy drove down and fixed our transmission, we were ready to press on - for real this time we hoped! We left the dock at first light and off we went! We were so excited and both of us were holding our breath in hopes that everything would continue to run smoothly. Luckily, we had a fabulous day of motoring and made great time up the ICW. It was a long day and we didn't drop the hook until just before 7 (almost 12 hours later!), but we had made it to just South of Charleston and couldn't have been happier.

We enjoyed dinner in the cockpit and just soaked up the beauty of being at anchor, knowing that this is one of the last few times we will get to experience this. Tomorrow we head up past Charleston.

We were all excited to get back on the water:

Love this little copilot:

Brad ushering in the sunset:

As a side note, the whole time we have been stuck in Dataw, we have had the luxury of getting to know and spending time with the Hausers, Caroline and Rudy. Caroline is from Franklin and has known my Dad and his brothers for years. This is our first time meeting them (you will remember I wrote about her when we had lunch on the day we arrived in Beaufort) and we couldn't have asked for anyone more hospitable. They chauffered us around before we had our car, making sure we somewhere to do our laundry and taking us to the grocery store. They have invited us over for dinner at least once a week and have even come to pick us up via boat a few times! They have been our lifesavers and we just wanted to give a HUGE THANK YOU to both of them for all of their help! We would have had a hard time making it all work without them!

In Limbo

So, these last few weeks have been a whirlwind of emotions: excitement, trepidation, utter sadness. Accepting the fact that we will be selling our boat has been so hard for us both - and add to that the fact that it was the first home we bought together and we are both having moments of doubt and sometimes complete depression. But, seeing all of our friends and family has helped us to realize that now that we are moving to land, we will have the benefit of being able to see all of these wonderful people so much more often. While we have made plenty of cruising friends, we have missed those land lubbers who have supported us and loved us through all of our crazy travels. They say it takes an village to raise a baby, and it will be nice to be close to people who can come running when we raise the white flag!

Being in this middle limbo between land and sea has only made this situation worse. Due to our transmission issue, we have been stuck in the same place for a month now. We are neither land lubbers nor out enjoying the ocean breezes on our faces, soaking up the last bits of sailing we will be doing for awhile. I think the latter part has gotten us in more of a funk than anything. Knowing that our time on the boat is coming to an end, we are both eager to get in as much sailing as we can and being stuck at a dock is just miserable.

On the other hand, we *think* we have decided that Little River, SC will be our new home we are eager to get her up to the marina and begin the process of decommissioning her to be sold. We have lots of cleaning, sprucing up and moving off to do before she can be shown and we both realize that the winter season is closing in on us faster than we would like. Ideally, we will have her sold before cold sets in, but time is of the essence.

Nor can we search out apartments and jobs until we have gotten settled in our new location. So, here we sit, in limbo - trying to plan out our next moves and get a jump on anything we can to make our transition easier, but also trying to enjoy the last few months of boat ownership. Neither is easy in our current state and I think we are both ready to get a move on and hurry this process up on all accounts.

I think a good day of sailing out on the water is just what the doctor ordered...

Semi Annual Friends and Family Tour, Spring of '15

It has been awhile since our last post, and while there has been lots going on in our social lives, our poor boat is still sitting in limbo. Despite multiple phone calls and internet queries, neither Brad nor our transmission repair guy has been able to locate a new transmission for us. So, our boat has been sitting disabled at the marina for over two weeks now, with no end in sight. Luckily, yesterday, our luck changed....kind of. Our repair guy called and said he had decided to do a complete rebuild of our transmission using new parts. He had ordered them from Japan and hoped they would come in within the next two weeks. Add another week for the actual rebuild and another week for shipping and the actual reinstallment of the transmission on our boat and it looked like it would be another 3-4 weeks of being here in Dataw. While we were excited to finally hear that a solution had been found, we were less than thrilled at the prospect of being here that much longer.

Dataw has been fabulous - friendly, caring people abound and now with our spiffy new A/C, we are comfortably biding our time. But, we are car-less and there is nothing within ten miles of our little marina - literally nothing. So, here we sit, plotting out our next big move and waiting to see when things will be resolved. But we are hopeful! At least there is starting to be a dim light visible at the end of the tunnel!

Meanwhile, our social life has been great! (Not in Dataw - we are the only liveaboards and often we will go an entire day without seeing another person!) But if you remember from my last post eons ago, we decided to hit the road and start our semi annual friends and family tour early. Usually we wait until we are settled in one spot before we do this, but with the heat, this seemed like the perfect time. So we loaded our kids and our possessions into a rental car and headed out!


We have the best little travelers!!

We had so much fun catching up with everyone (and soaking in their A/C and running water) and were happy to be able to spend so much time with people since we were not on a strict schedule. We made it to Franklin to see my family first, then on to Baltimore to visit Brad's family and to meet our perfectly adorable little niece, Liliana, who we couldn't get enough of!

After seeing family, we starting trying to squeeze in as many friends as we could - Columbia and Richmond were next to meet up with some of my fantastic college girlfriends and then down to Corolla to see our home away from home and spend some time with the ever fabulous Defeo clan.

**Disclaimer: I was a terrible tourist this trip and hardly took any pictures! So sorry for the lack of photos in this post! I will do better next time!


We rounded the trip out with a tour of the North Carolina water front in hopes that we would find a new port to call home. We were surprised that none of the North Carolina towns had much to offer in terms of boater friendliness and convenience and even more surprised when we found that our two favorite cities actually ended up being Little River and Charleston, both in South Carolina. After a few days stay in Myrtle Beach to recharge our batteries, we headed back to the boat.

Although we love our road trips and enjoy our time catching up with all our friends and family, we were all happy to be back in our little floating home and have been soaking up our little slice of heaven.