Author: captainbrett@learntoliveaboard.com

I'm the average sailor...converted from a landlubber of course. While I was born with a love of the ocean it has evolved into a love of sailboats and other vessels that ply the open seas and connected waterways. I am probably like most of the people who (hopefully) will read our blog with the exception that we are now doing what we always dreamed of doing and I hope to help others do the same. I am NOT any of the following...a naval architect, a marine surveyor or connected commercially to any builder, distributor or boat sales organization. My opinions are generally my own, although influenced by many years of research.

It’s been a while…..how have you been ? Or ….Mermaids (?) but no Dolphins

Well, we have made it to the Keys 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 !!!!!!

We spent a few days motoring south on the ICW in order to reach Lake Worth where we planned to leave Florida and re-enter at Biscayne Bay just South of Miami. We enjoyed a visit from my youngest sister and even convinced her to pilot the boat for a short period …….sadly, it was the first time we can recall not seeing any Dolphins or Manatees…..it was weird. My sister was understandably disappointed, but that just means she has to come back sooner. Hurry back Sis!!!

We we spent an unexpected three days in Ft. Pierce due to the New Year holiday (who knew some marinas closed all day on New Years Day?) and discovering that the wind was going to be pretty heavy plus we had developed a stalling issue with our diesel. We discovered the issue while trying to pick up a mooring ball in Vero Beach…..it is a VERY SMALL area with two and three boats on some mooring balls…….a pretty exciting few minutes there…..my apologies to the residents of that mooring field….we couldn’t slow down and when I did, we stalled so I had to come in at about 4 knots and then once we went to neutral we stalled and coasted up to the ball.

We did get to meet a VERY nice and professional TowBoatUS Captain named Al, the next day in Ft. Pierce, which was our first ever tow….if you don’t have BOATUS Towing insurance I highly recommend buying the best package you can afford….we use the unlimited Gold and its only $180 per year and worth every cent….this tow alone would have been $370.

A great by product of this mechanical misadventure was that we discovered what we have decided must be manufactured from voluntarily donated unicorn blood, or some other mystical creature. Our diesel started fine….ran fine for hours…..then when we tried to shift for neutral we would stall……after some research and consulting with the folks at Trans Atlantic Diesel (a big Thank you to our diesel guru Marcus Neville) we acquired the magic juice…..

It’s called “Stanadyne Performance Formula” and your diesel can actually run on just it, but it’s about $80 a gallon, so if you have that kinda coin, can you float me a little?? Long story short, we drained our fuel filters and filled them with this additive, ran the engine at varying RPM’s for an hour ….and …..VOILÁ !!!! SHE RAN LIKE NEW !!!!! We couldn’t even cause a stall…..

We left Ft. Pierce on January 2, 2016 after ringing in the New Year at Cobb’s ….a great restaurant and tiki bar in Ft. Pierce. If you ever get near there I highly recommend that stop. We made a quick one night stop in Stuart where the winds howled again that night. We had the chance to catch up with some friends from our old sailing club, Rick and Cathy.

We arrived arrived in Lake Worth the next day and spent five days in a Marina since the winds kicked up yet again and were blowing 30 knots. Once that settled down we proceeded on our trek where we anchored just South of Peanut Island (where the JFK Cuban Missile Crisis bomb shelter was built) and we spent five days there again riding out 20+ knot winds…. And rain….and heavy chop…..did I mention that I think the wind is following us ? Lake Worth stretches between North Palm Beach, West Palm Beach and Palm Beach…..

Peanut Island is a man made island constructed from then dredged material created from the digging of the Palm Beach Inlet and Basin and is also the home to JFK’s Cuban Missile Crisis Nuke Shelter. It seems his family owned a home nearby and the Secret Service chose this spot in the event of a nuclear attack to protect the President.

Kim seated at JFK's Bomb Shelter Desk — Kim seated at JFK’s Bomb Shelter Desk

Me ...running for the bomb shelter!!! — Me …running for the bomb shelter!!!

We we noticed after four days of the bucking bronco that our anchor snubber …(snubber: a device made of dock line and a saddle or slotted plate that rides on the anchor chain that is used to absorb the shock of the boat pitching and pulling on its anchor)

….had worn through the starboard side thimble ….(a thimble is curved section of metal fitted into a loop of spliced line to protect the line from strain and chafe)….so we had to get that replaced at Florida Line and Rigging….another great cruiser friendly place in Palm Beach and Erin really hooked us up, had the new line done in an hour and did a great job on our new snubber line.

See the really rusty loop at the end of that line ?? Rust bad….

The winds and tides at Lake Worth so often ran against each other that our boat and anchor line looked like they were practicing yoga or twister…..I made a rough diagram of how it looked on one day……the yellow line is our anchor chain…the red part is the chain and anchor that was buried in the sand……its no wonder people often think their anchors are set when their boat doesn’t drift away but many times it’s just the tide and wind working against each other plus the weight of the chain and anchor holding you in place….that’s why we always back down (i.e. Reverse and pull) against our anchor to be sure we are set.

We left Lake Worth and cruised down the coast with 15 to 20 knot winds behind us and following seas…..sadly, not as comfortable a ride as the old saying would lead you to believe. After we came into Biscayne Bay and crossed over into Key Largo, we stopped over at Gilbert’s resort for a night and met a nice couple who worked there, they are also interested in living on their own sailboat….it was great to meet you Lorenzo and Kate…..

Well, that’s it for now……

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We finally got the video editor working for our bike assembly video

Here’s a link to watch our bike assembly video…..a big thank you to Bikewagon.com ….if you’re in the market for a new bike of any kind, try them first…..don’t forget to mention you saw them here on our blog !!

https://www.magisto.com/video/bk8bZAFTG2gvAENhCzE?l=vsm&o=i&c=e

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Our first successful boat purchase consultation…..!!

I am pleased to announce that after some time consulting with someone who was considering living aboard and been looking for a liveaboard sailboat that a purchase has occurred !!!

In the interest of their privacy, I won’t name this person outright. I can say that they are one of our very best friends and that they have appeared in our blog.

And this is their new boat !!

I edited the name of the boat out of the photo, since, it wouldn’t do much good to not name them but then leave the name of the boat visible ….😝….I’m sure there is a renaming ceremony in the not too distant future, though.

I found this particular boat by coincidence while recently visiting with our friend while we were drinking coffee one morning. I was browsing online for the model of boat they liked. As it turned out, the boat was only about ten miles from their house!!

The boat is an Island Packet 350….a great design and this one was apparently owned by someone who was amazingly meticulous and had a great eye for detail. We had only spent about ten minutes on the boat and I could already tell that this was the one for our friend. A full survey confirmed my suspicions that the boat was in fantastic shape and ready to go sailing. She’s scheduled for a bottom job in January and then our friend is planning to make the transition to living aboard over the next few months.

Congratulations to……well,….you know who you are ……haha

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Two heads are better than one….or so we’ve been led to believe…

First and foremost…..Merry Christmas from the crew of Kitty Hawk……

The casting net Christmas Tree ….an ingenious design by our friend Joan….

Well….this month has been a busy one….we’ve had a total of seven visitors on board Kitty Hawk and have two more on the way. We’ve done a lot of work to Kitty Hawk to get her ready for the next leg of our journey. Like any aspect of life on board, using any system can and eventually will, expose any deficiencies or lack of maintenance.

During this month, we rebuilt both pump assemblies of our forward and aft heads. For those not up to speed on nautical terminology, a head is a bathroom and also the name of the actual on board toilet. So if you say “I’m going to the head” you just mean you’re going to the restroom. If you say “the head is clogged” you mean that the toilet has failed to deliver whatever was deposited in it to the intended destination, decided to stop the flow of other materials in the future and by extension, ruined the Captain’s day.

Now, you may ask yourself, “Why call it a head?”….good question. In the old days when ships could generally only sail downwind, the placement of the head was in the very forward most area of the ship. Also, near the figurehead that many ships of that day sported for numerous superstitious, decorative or identification reasons. The natural wave action of the boat moving through the sea provided a “flushing out” as the seawater moved into and out of that space through openings in the hull just above the waterline. Also, since the vessel was sailing downwind the smell was being carried away from the rest of the boat.

During our rebuild of our heads, (which are Raritan Compact II manual heads, which means they must be manually pumped to drain and introduce water as opposed to electric heads which just require the push of a button) we ran into an issue where the pump assembly, simply would not stop leaking. We disassembled and reassembled the unit about a half dozen times. It had what we thought was just a difficult seal around one of the bolts that holds the pump to the base. My brilliant wife said “could there be a crack in that we can’t see?” Well, long story short even thought we couldn’t see or feel a crack…there was one…..once we we replaced the pump housing….voilá…no leak.

Once the pump was removed we could see the hairline crack on the backside….it looked like a mark from a wrench…..we made sure to inspect all of our spare units and discarded any with a similar mark….so we threw away three of them….which will cost about $110 a piece to replace….ow.

Since we had two sets of visitors it was only right that during each visit one of our heads clogged. Our aft head was first during the first set of visitors and then our forward head lines clogged. Maybe two heads really are better than one ? Haha….you don’t want to be without a head at all. I had even made the comment that “if the aft one has clogged the forward one can’t be far behind” how regrettably right I was. We were glad it happened where we were, rather than away from easy access to transportation and parts. Plus, I had assistance from one of our guests when the forward head clogged. The upside is we have rebuilt pumps and brand new lines for both heads now. These clogs are mostly caused by calcium build up from using salt water to flush the heads. We are considering changing to composting heads in the future but for now they are just too expensive plus we should get four or five years of use after this rebuild.

On the upside…between clogged heads…..a neighbor and I landed an enormous Redfish….so two heads did work better than one in that instance……sadly, it was over the size limit to keep but may have been a state record…..

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The psychological struggles of living aboard……

“The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.” – Samuel Smiles

I have felt, at certain points in my life, that I had been successful in certain aspects because I had chosen some paths of lesser resistance or perhaps only attempted things at which I already knew, or felt, I could succeed. Right or wrong, I think everyone has these feelings at one time or another. During these times you can doubt your abilities to adapt or overcome adversity, to learn and comprehend new ideas and master new or unfamiliar technologies. The important thing to remember is that no matter how alone you feel, help isn’t far away. This help may come even from within through exercising some patience and the study of your “enemy”.

Once you have committed to live on board a boat of any type, you will almost certainly be faced with a situation, repair or replacement of some system or component with which you are unfamiliar or unskilled. This can make you feel very overwhelmed and even helpless. It can even make you want to abandon the dream if you hit a really low spot. A combination of challenges or gear failures can test even the most hearty among us. You will question your decision to pursue the dream you have committed to and wonder if you have done the right thing. After all, for many cruisers, embarking on a long term cruise or to live aboard full time requires a tremendous sacrifice of stability, financial and physical. These feelings can be compounded by the distance from assistance of any type and a lack of readily available support, whether it is technical or emotional.

It is important during these times to remember that patience pays off. The seemingly insurmountable problems of today can be overcome with some time and even the slightest change of perspective. Don’t be afraid to take your time, walk away from the project and take advantage of the time it takes to have parts delivered and recharge your batteries. You can’t reasonably expect to be an expert in every field, unless of course you happen to be an ABYC Master Certified Techinican in a variety of fields, in which case, do you have any free time to stop by Kitty Hawk ? Haha….(no, seriously, swing by..)

Whenever I am faced with a repair of a system with which I am unfamiliar, I always take the time to conduct a “reasonable” amount of research on the system or component before I try to tackle it. This can relieve a tremendous amount of anxiety. Dealing with the unknown only adds a layer to the stress of the situation. Many systems on a boat, sail or power, have evolved to be reasonably user friendly. The research tactic can also translate to the planning of a trip to a new cruising area. Reading the cruising guides, thoroughly reviewing the charts and comments from others who have visited the area before you can make the unknown much less intimidating. If you are anything like me, knowledge reduces stress. Don’t be afraid to contact a professional and get their input. I was initially surprised how many will give you free advice (not unlimited) on how to best tackle your problem. I have even enlisted professionals to evaluate my repairs for as little as one hour of their normal labor rate to be certain I hadn’t missed anything. You’d be surprised how generous they can be with their time in these circumstances.

I can’t imagine how some cruisers make it. I have seen many online requests for help because the people living on their boat didn’t know how to fix or maintain their engine, outboard, dinghy or any other systems and were apparently unwilling or unable to research the repairs and couldn’t afford professional help. Their first and only recourse was an online plea through social media for assistance. Most of these requests are from the same people over and over again. Living with that degree of uncertainty would most certainly diminish my enjoyment to the point that I might surrender and I’ve seen almost all of those cases end up in a “Boat for sale” posting.

So, how do you avoid that?

Research. You know how they used to say “Reading Is Fundamental” ? Well, it wasn’t just a catchy slogan. If you know going in that you can’t afford much (or any) professional help, learn as much as you can about your potential dream boat’s systems.

Take “baby steps”. There are tons of seminars (online and real time) being given away out there. They cover everything from repairs and maintenance to upgrading and even boat handling skills. Go to (and watch online) as many as you can. Be prepared to get a “starter boat” and move up from there adding complexity as you go. If you can’t resist buying your dream boat right out of the gate, limit your cruising until you can become versed in the systems and their upkeep/maintenance. That way you don’t end up stranded in a remote location.

Be realistic. Don’t make your first boat a Pandora’s box of systems you know nothing about and assume nothing will break or go wrong. The learning curve can be steep and you don’t want to break the bank (or your spirit) in the process.

Finally, remember it’s supposed to be a fun adventure, not a soul crushing grind. If you don’t rush things and learn as you go, even a complex problem can be an enjoyable challenge.

And now, a moment to relax after discussing all those stressful obstacles…..

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Trouble shooting the fuel system…..or….I got slimed….

Ok, well, maybe not slimed like Bill Murray in Ghostbusters but definitely mostly clogged with globs of tank sealant.

I think I mentioned that we were having an issue without port side fuel tank not feeding any diesel to our system. Well, after some troubleshooting and consulting with the prior owner we discovered that some sealant had made its way into the fuel tanks when the access panels were reinstalled years back. One glob had shown up in the fuel shut off valve previously…..so guess where I found this one? You got it….fuel shut off valve. I had begun troubleshooting the fuel lines and that was my next stop anyway but it always helps to get a little advice. I had already pulled the Racor fuel filters since I could see some globs of something in those. Our port side filter wasn’t draining from the petcock at the bottom of the fuel bowl so that means they needed a rebuild. Racor filters are amazing pieces of engineering in a pretty simple package. It only takes about 20 minutes rebuild one after you remove it or get the fuel bowl off while it is still attached to the bulkhead. That can be tricky depending on where yours are installed. The bolts that hold the collar on the fuel bowl are 1/4″….although on our older unit they are hex bolts…..not overly convenient…..

This is the nice, clean, rebuilt Racor filter….with a newly installed vacuum gauge…when the pressure goes up you know the filter is getting clogged so you can switch to your other filter……normal pressure is about 6 to 10PSI according to Racor…..it’s an older one but not much has changed……the diesel flows in from the right, down to the turbine which spins off the water and debris in the lower bowl, then the fuel goes back up through a ten micron filter and then comes out the left side. We have another vacuum gauge for the system but I think it’s also clogged with sealant so that gets a cleaning later. I like the idea of having the gauges on the individual filters better, I think.

Below are the piles of what appears to be the Permatex style sealant that also appears around the fuel tank access panels on the tanks. Apparently, some of this got squeezed out of that joint and into the diesel tanks when they were last sealed and has been getting slowly picked up out of the tanks over the last couple of years…..eek….I plan to add a pair of temporary, clear, 250 micron filters to be sure we can keep these out of the Racors until we feel that there are no more or we resort to a fuel polishing system.

That’s is all for now…..it’s happy hour…..next time…I’ll be “bringing in the (steering) sheaves”….

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Welcome to our newest sponsor… Bikewagon.com

We are very excited here aboard Kitty Hawk to welcome our newest sponsor Bikewagon.com…..

Transportation is critical when you’re away from (or without a) your car for months, or years, at a time and these bikes fit the bill perfectly. They are comfortable, light, have a wide gear range and are easy to fold and store when not in use. Don’t get stuck with a tiny slow bike….check out bikewagon.com !!!

We recently received our new Montague Paratrooper folding mountain bikes from Bikewagon and we had a great experience. Dale and the folks at Bikewagon helped us screen, evaluate and finally select our new bikes and accessories.

If you are looking for a new folding bike for a sailboat (or for a regular bike or folder for on land) check out their website and see what they have to offer. (Don’t forget to mention you saw them here at learntoliveaboard.com too!!!)

Our new bikes only took about five minutes to un-box and assemble. We can have them off the boat and on the dock fully assembled in less time than that now, after a little practice.

They’re so pretty !!!!…..

The best part is, for a full size bike, they fold and store in the salon out of the way while we are underway…..

As soon as I can find a reliable video editing app I will add a video of Kim assembling the bikes in Oriental before we departed……

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Upgrades…..then…..Southbound and Down…..

Well, it’s been a pretty eventful month, or so. We took advantage of our time in Oriental to upgrade our battery banks wiring and a few other things. Some of our battery bank cables were undersized, not properly crimped, our banks lacked a main fuse and our smaller bank had been wired in a slightly less than a fully efficient manner. We also installed two Bogart/Trimetric (Model TM-2030-RV) battery bank monitors which have made keeping tabs on our charging and battery bank status much, much easier. That’s one of the things about buying an older boat, she’s been through a few owners and while some were meticulous, some weren’t, and if a system is working one owner may never have had the need to address or investigate the status of the individual components that may not have been exactly “up to snuff” when installed by the prior owner, owners or contractors or the standards have changed over time in favor of better, safer or more efficient methods..

Now that’s a pretty bad crimping job…it was covered by electrical tape……

We also added a Blue Seas electrical master panel to our AC shore power system that has a 30 amp, dual pole, ELCI (Electrical Leak Circuit Interrupter, if your boat happens to develop a leak of AC current into the water while plugged into shore power, which is extraordinarily dangerous, it shuts off the AC power). The breaker itself has a sensor in it that measures the amount of electricity flowing out and compares it to what returns and if there is a slight difference it trips the breaker. We discovered once we powered up this new panel that our water heater was wired incorrectly since the new breaker tripped as soon as we energized the circuit. As it turns out, the wiring for the water heater was a commercial type of wiring (IEEE marine cable, intended for use on Navy and commercial vessels….with this type of wire red is ground, black is hot and white is neutral, so our water heater was basically wired backwards, which still allowed current to flow through the element but the new more sensitive breakers caught the difference in the polarity/voltage returning and shut it down) since the color coding was different it must have confused whoever originally wired it. It took an extra fifteen minutes to correct this and then things operated perfectly. We also added a safety cover to the interior of our shore power plug connection which was missing.

I’d like to extend our gratitude to Jim Bonnett, the owner of Wavetop Technologies in New Bern, NC, for his assistance with the battery and AC upgrades. He’s been having some website issues but if you need any work he’s an ABYC Master Technician in a lot of fields (maybe all of them, I haven’t counted yet) . His current website is www.wavetop.com but he may migrate to a new one if his current issues prove to be linked to that web address. Jim is so educated about AC and DC systems and wiring it can make you dizzy just listening to him talk….he’s a very smart guy. You can also reach him at Jim@wavetop.com

We also painted our newly re-plumbed and re-opened forward shower stall…..

I also painted new length markers on our anchor chain and replaced the shackles…..

I decided to go with Red at 50′, white at 100′, Blue at 150′ Black at 200′ and Orange at 250 just before the chain runs out and the rope rode begins.

We’d also like to give some well deserved praise to Pete Waterson of Seacoast Marine Electronics (http://seacoastmarineelectronics.com/) in Oriental, NC. Pete is the owner and installed our new NMEA 2000 backbone wiring, AIS transceiver, a new Raymarine I70 display, a masthead anemometer and wind direction sensor which is now all tied into our Garmin 741XS chartplotter at the helm. Pete also installed a new VHF antenna and Windex while he was at the masthead. Pete also helped me (or maybe I helped him) rewire our binnacle wiring and add a power/ground bus to clean up the connections there and eliminate some voltage loss and an issue with a weak ground. If you find yourself in Oriental or nearby and need any electronics or assistance be sure to look Pete up. He’s a great guy and his office staff (Jill, his wife and Betsy) are super friendly and helpful.

We were later joined by our good friend, Mike, in Oriental, just in time for the Ol’ Front Porch Music Festival on October 17. It was a great day, beautiful weather and lots of good music and food. Apparently, this was a tradition among the old time farmers in the area and on Saturday nights they would come into town and play music on a variety of front porches around town. Time and progress being what they are, this tradition was slowly lost and has been revived during this once a year festival. The Carmona Brothers and Laurelyn Dossett were the final performers of the day and if you’ve never heard either of these, I recommend looking them up online.

Aaron Carmona and his traveling pooch (photo credit to Towne Dock)

We waited for some weather to pass and departed Oriental on October 20th around 8:00am. It was a nice trip. We arrived around 11:45am in Morehead City, NC since we wanted to make the first day short and non stressful…then Murphy reared his ugly head. As we approached Portside Marina in Morehead City a large tugboat that was bow in at the state port abruptly moved astern into our path. I was forced to throw Kitty Hawk into full reverse to avoid colliding with the tug. As the dust settled from that encounter we again proceeded toward the Portside Marina face dock. There was suddenly something very wrong. It took about five seconds for me to realize that for some reason we were no longer getting any forward propulsion. I immediately shifted to neutral, then tried reverse and got the same result….no response …I could hear the transmission shifting and assumed we had lost our throttle cable. After advising Mike and Kim that we were going to be coming into the dock at about 3 knots SOG (speed over ground) I called the marina hands on the dock on our VHF radio to let them know. We managed to dock pretty easily, all things considered, despite coming in at what felt like warp speed. Once we got settled, we diagnosed the problem and it was, in fact, the throttle cable that had broken just below the shift lever. I spoke to the owner of Portside Marina, Denard, who is a super nice gentleman. He not only found the part for us, but let his brother in law, who works at the Marina, drive me over to get it. The cable was replaced two hours and $27 later…..Portside Marina is the only place I’ve ever walked into and been immediately invited to partake in the employee lunch. They were having fish one of the guys had caught and a local restaurant fried them up for them….talk about hospitality !!!

Our trip South was Kim’s first long distance trip on Kitty Hawk….she got her first experiences in the ICW (and her first grounding, so that’s over and done with), navigated out of the Cape Fear Inlet and made two overnight offshore trips. One was between Cape Fear, NC and Charleston (a rough one) and the second was between Port Royal, SC and Jacksonville, FL. During the first hop we even got the wind to cooperate and we sailed for 6 hours.

The Admiral at the helm…..

Next time I’ll detail our stops at Beaufort, SC and St.Augustine, FL and share our ghost video from Facebook if you haven’t seen it yet…..

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Wind, wind and more wind…..

IMG_0148

Above is a link to a short video of the windy conditions at our good friend’s house on the other side of the Neuse River…..

A still shot from the video…..

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Water, water everywhere…..and rising

It’s been an interesting month on board Kitty Hawk. We’ve been working on her and making some upgrades and trouble shooting a few things in preparation for our trip South in a few weeks.

At first, we had pristine weather, with an occasional shower in the afternoons. We had our first multiple night guest since we moved aboard full time and our first happy hour guest.

Then we had the rain….and the rain….and some more rain….about seven days worth at this point with the first short break today and another break forecast for tomorrow. During the rain we found out about Hurricane Joaquin. We spent a long couple of days prepping the boat for the possible arrival of Joaquin. He was kind enough to stay offshore….thank you for that Joaquin. Some weren’t as fortunate, our thoughts and best wishes go out to them and their families.

And now….the wind…..it’s been pretty gusty since the rain started….but yesterday and today it really kicked into high gear……25kts to 35kts and its coming out of the North and Northeast, which around these parts, means the water levels are going up. Wind from that direction in the Pamlico Sound for any extended period drives water into the sound and then the river and then the creeks. As a result of the strong and incessant wind, we are not connected to shore power. Once the water reaches the bottom of the docks, the Dockmaster has to shut off the AC power to avoid anyone being electrocuted in the event of a damaged wire or connection at the dock pedestals. We are lucky, since we have a wind generator and the wind has been in a very, very giving mood and we have seven solar panels which, despite the cloudy conditions, have been contributing to keeping our batteries charged. That’s key for us since we have a refrigerator and freezer on board and we just stocked them up.

Tonight, the water rose above the docks by about 8″ or 10″. That makes getting on and off the boat a little dicey. I actually took a bit of a spill while climbing off when the step stool we have been using slipped off the edge of the submerged dock. Fortunately, I caught myself by one hand and one leg while holding my iPad and flashlight in the other hand…..I got a nice shin bruise which will probably feel really good tomorrow. Under these circumstances, Kim and I have decided that it is essential that the other know when one of us is going to, or leaving, the boat and the other is sure to watch or check up on the other. It wouldn’t take much to take a serious fall and if you were unlucky enough to take a blow to the head as you fell it could rapidly devolve into a fatal mistake. The other downside of the high water is that the local Copperhead population becomes displaced by the rising water, so you have to keep an eye out for those also. We’ve seen a few crossing roads nearby but none near the marina, yet.

So, tonight we wait, we have decided to hang out at the marina clubhouse and see what the water does. Since getting on and off the boat is the riskiest part we thought we’d monitor the water from the clubhouse in case we need to move our van to higher ground. The boat is well secured since we were preparing to ride out the hurricane so that’s lucky also.

Let’s hope our next post isn’t from Atlantis…..haha