Usually I love living as close to nature and its rhythms as we do on the boat. Knowing when the tides are coming in and going out, when sunrise and sunset are, what the phase of the moon is, and what the weather is going to be are all part of our daily life. But sometimes the weather just does not cooperate. It has now been blowing steadily out of the east and north-east for over a week, making it unwise to try a crossing to the Bahamas and making the Gulf Stream into an angry 10-foot sea mess. So we are waiting for the weather to moderate, still in Miami Beach. We're still recovering from illnesses; I have developed what we think is a sinus infection, and Larry still has some tail end of flu symptoms. Hopefully by the time the weather moderates later in the week, we will be well enough to leave.

Both Larry and I now have the flu and are recovering. We have done a bit of exploring in Miami Beach; here is a view of Miami Beach from the neighboring island, close to sunset.


We have found Miami to be an interesting place to visit, but we wouldn't want to live here. There is more emphasis on "looking good" and all sorts of superficial stuff that is hard to get away from. In our typical "cruiser-wear", even dressed up, I feel out of place. We're ready for the islands, as soon as we are healthy enough to work the boat, maybe even by this weekend, March 17. We hope so!

In Miami Beach, we have been fixing a number of necessary things on the boat. Here you see our old fuel pump; Larry replaced the fuel pump with a new one on our diesel engine, which (so far) has finally fixed the last of our fuel drip problems.

We've also found a leak in one of our new polyethylene water tanks. It's been a problem that has been nagging us for a while - just a bit of water in the bilge we haven't been able to locate. We decided to examine the water tanks and found a leak in the tank, and have been dealing with the manufacturer (Seafab in Rhode Island) about a fix. So far it still leaks and we're waiting for some new adhesive to try out next week on it.

We arrived in Miami on Feb. 10, 2007, after a short hop from Vero Beach to Fort Pierce, and then a pleasant overnight motor-sail in good weather from Ft. Pierce to Miami offshore. Unfor- tunately the diesel drip from the fuel line area was still evident on our offshore passage; Larry had to take it apart twice to try to slow it down while we were underway. It's not much but is enough to concern us, and we want to fix it before we leave the US. We have a new fuel pump on order and will install it here in Miami. Also, Debby is sick again, so we're doing maintenance on the boat and resting to recover before we hop over to the Bahamas.

We sailed past some huge cruise ships; Miami is a big port for cruises. We're anchored over by the Venetian Causeway in Miami Beach and are exploring the city with a great bus and rail system. We know we wouldn't want to settle here, but Miami is a pretty nice place to hole up for a week or two.

We have had to slow down to recover from illness. We've been holed up in Vero Beach, Florida, for three weeks now, as Debby recovers from a bout with the flu. It's been pretty warm here, in the 70s and 80s mostly, so it's been a good place to stay put for a while. We hope to go south a bit, and position ourselves in Lake Worth at Palm Beach, FL, to wait for an opportunity to cross over the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. We may get favorable weather to do a crossing as early as Wednesday, Feb. 7. We'll just have to see what the weather does for us!

For the first two weeks of January, we made our way down Florida's Intracoastal Waterway to Vero Beach. We saw the juxta- position of nuclear power plants in the distance with palm trees and the river in northern Florida. We also went through a great deal of "thin water", with a narrow channel dredged out for passage in a two to four foot sound, where this flock of different types of birds were hanging out in central Florida. We're going to stay in Vero for a few days to a week, fixing things and reprovisioning, and then go down to Lake Worth to wait for a good weather window to hop over the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas.

We left Southport on the afternoon of December 27, and headed out the Cape Fear River inlet into the north Atlantic. We wanted to get south into some warm weather quickly. On a 60 hour passage, we had good weather for the first 24 hours, motor-sailing, and short, punchy waves for the last part of the time. We made landfall in Fernandina Beach, Florida, at 04:30 a.m. on December 30.

We spent Christmas at the town dock in Southport, NC, along with several of our close friends the pelicans, as you can see here. Southport was a friendly little town, and we met a number of people there. We went to church downtown on Christmas Eve, and saw many decorated boats and houses.

We also weathered a storm the day after Christmas, where we had to tie down the boat with extra lines and help other neighboring boats. We found out later that some gusts of wind were 60 mph!

In Southport, NC, a cormorant dried his wings right next to our spot at the town dock. It has been two warm and beautiful days, almost seventy degrees. We're busy doing a number of things to prepare ourselves and the boat for another offshore adventure. We'll either go down the coast from here, to Charleston, Fernandina Beach, or Ft. Pierce, or if the weather permits, we'll cross the Gulf Stream and make it to the Bahamas. We can almost feel the warm sand, but it will take a while to get there. Merry Christmas to all!

On December 12, we left Oriental, bound for Swansboro. Close to Beaufort, NC, we broke a fan belt and didn't have a spare. We got a tow into Beaufort and lots of help from the local TowBoat / US operator there in locating a new belt. Now we have a spare. It was a new and interesting problem to install the belt, involving taking the alternator mostly off, but finally we were on our way. We stayed two nights at Swansboro, waiting out some chilly, drizzly, foggy days. We also had had a new fuel hose shipped to Swansboro and installed that there. Then we made our way to Southport, NC, close to the Cape Fear inlet, on December 17.

We finally made it to Oriental, NC on December 5. We spent some time with our friends, fellow Baba- owners, Joe and Priscilla Brant. While we were there, another cold front with strong winds was predicted to come through, and Joe found a slip for us to hole up in and wait it out. It turned out to be the coldest weather yet this year, with two days of lows in the 20s, breaking records around the area. We were very grateful to have heat and stay put in this wonderful spot, with a lounge area that looked like a mountain lodge.

On December 3, we left Belhaven bound for Oriental, NC. After a bouncy ride across Pamlico Sound, we entered the canal. By the time we crossed the canal into the Neuse River, the skies were looking gray and the wind had come up. We turned around and spent two nights at the R E Mayo shrimp boat dock, alongside commercial shrimp boats. We waited out the cold front in this protected spot and had a delightful dose of local color from the off-season fish company. Accomodations were a bit dilapidated, and I avoided the ladies' room pictured below.

We left Elizabeth City on November 29, and crossed the Albemarle Sound on a beautiful calm day. We anchored in a peaceful bend on the Alligator River. There we noticed diesel fuel in our engine pan (again!). We had to limp back to the Alligator River Marina and contact AYB again. After some prodding, and calling Yanmar directly, they did send down a mechanic to look at the engine. A pin hole leak in a high-pressure fuel line was found, and he could jury-rig it up to work. We left the marina after a cold front went through the area on December 2.

On November 26 and 27, we motored through the Dismal Swamp Canal in Virginia and North Carolina. There wasn't anything dismal at all about it, on sunny, calm days, after a bit of fog in the morning. We tied up at the Visitor Center for the night, and made it to Elizabeth City, NC on November 27, where we stayed for two days.

At Atlantic Yacht Basin in Ches- apeake, we had a new bow roller installed, our engine checked over once again for any leaks, and a new stainless plate through- bolted for strength. A small yard worker had to get into our anchor locker through the V-berth (our bedroom!) all the way forward, and work had to be done on the bow of the boat. We ended up with a much better system that we think will withstand much greater stresses.

We also got strong three-fourths inch nylon three-strand line, and learned how to splice a steel thimble eye into it. We added a stainless shackle and chain hook for a heavy-duty snubbing line, to be used with the chain at anchor.

We left Chesapeake on November 26, headed for the Dismal Swamp Canal.

On Saturday, November 11, we sailed back to Norfolk. Larry had gotten the engine working again, and we had a very nice south-west breeze to sail back with. The sun was setting as we spotted the entrance buoys to the inlet, and we motored the long way back in the inlet in the dark. The weather forecast was for south and east winds of 20-25 knots after midnight into the next day, so we anchored in the south-east corner of Willoughby Bay to get protection from the winds forecast. We dropped anchor just before midnight, let out 90 feet of anchor chain, and battened everything down for a breezy night.

The wind, when it came up, was instead from the northwest, blowing directly across the bay, allowing the waves to build. By mid-morning it was a full gale of 35-40 knots, blowing sheets of rain across us. Our anchor was holding well, but it was a wild ride. It did not start subsiding until Monday morning, when the wind was down to about 15-20 knots, with a steel-gray sky. We decided to pull up our anchor and get going down to the boatyard.

The force of the wind and water on the anchor was hard to describe; in hindsight, we should have waited one more day for the wind to die down before moving. Using the engine to help motor up to the anchor, and our windlass, Larry tried to get the anchor up. The bow roller that guides the anchor chain started to flex as the chain came in, something we had never seen before. Finally the roller twisted into the shape pictured above. Larry also got his hand caught between the chain and the post, crushing a finger, even as careful as he could be. Things just happen very quickly when the wind is blowing. He could have lost a finger very easily. The anchor wouldn't come up, when we came to the end of the chain; it was solidly set and wouldn't budge.

At that point we were in a real predicament. The roller was compromised and could shear off at any moment; the bow of the boat was bucking like a bronco; and we knew if the roller came off, the anchor chain would start to take out the bow of the boat. We could lose the boat quite easily. We tried to hail TowBoat/US on the VHF radio, but they didn't answer. Neither did anyone else. So, we used the ham radio to contact Maritime Radio 14300 KHz, who saved the day. They contacted TowBoat/US for us and put us in a patch via the radio to them. It turns out they were on another emergency call and couldn't get to us for over 2 hours. So we braced the bow as well as we could and waited. Finally, the motion of the boat broke the anchor free, and we carefully raised it and lashed the anchor in the twisted roller.

We held our breath with every rolling wave that washed over us and motored down to Great Bridge. In the morning, the boatyard was extremely accomodating, cleaning up the diesel in our bilge, and even replacing our bow roller. We also had their machine shop put a steel plate to reinforce the bow roller.

Things could have been much worse, as we read up on bow rollers and their vulnerabilities and importance in an anchoring system. We got several good lessons in safety at very little cost.

Friday night, November 10, about 22:00 hours and still becalmed about 80 miles south-east of Hampton Roads, I noticed a vessel's lights and started tracking it. What we do is take hand-held compass bearings on vessels; if the compass bearing relative to our own course does not change, and especially if it becomes larger, we need to take action to prevent a collision. We were completely becalmed with no wind. First I tried to hail them on VHF radio, channel 16, with no answer. Then, as we became increasingly concerned, we decided to turn on the motor and get out of the way ourselves; as a sailing vessel, we do have right of way, but that is often ignored on the high seas. The engine started, then sputtered, and died. It would not restart and sounded starved of fuel. We thought we had close to a full tank.

The priority now was to draw attention to ourselves. We got out our big spotlight, shone the light on the main sail, and also pointed the beam straight out at the ship. That got their attention and they changed course. We realized we were on the south and west side of the Gulf Stream, and shipping heading south will use this corridor to get out of the Stream's pull north-east.

Now we had to figure out the engine. On taking the cover off, we immediately spotted diesel fuel - the engine pan was full, and the bilge under the engine was full of pink diesel fuel. We spotted the secondary fuel filter casing, which was just hanging on by a thread. After our engine work in Chesapeake, the mechanic had neglected to tighten up the fuel filter casing, and our tank's diesel fuel had dribbled out into the pan and overflowed into the bilge. The bilge pump had probably gone on while we were motoring out the inlet and we hadn't heard it. We had just lost over three-quarters of all the diesel fuel we brought with us. The fuel canister is pictured above, after we tightened it.

After tightening the fuel filter, we used our new sipon pump to put a jerry jug of diesel from our deck jugs into the main tank, tried to bleed the engine of air, and restart. No go that night, and after discussing our options, we decided we had to turn back. Without enough back-up diesel to use and only 80 miles out, we had lost our ability to motor for a day or two if we needed to, in a storm or calms. So we reluctantly turned our bow north west and waited for some wind.

The next morning we reported in on our ham radio to the Waterway Radio Club and talked to our friend Rick in Charleston. We had him call TowBoat/US to alert them of our condition (engine won't start and no wind), and had him call the boatyard where the work was done. As the wind filled in that day, we had a fine sail back to Norfolk, while Larry worked on the engine. After bleeding the injectors, he finally got it started. We transferred all fuel in jerry jugs on deck (about 22 gallons) into the tank for our motor in the inlet.

On Friday, November 10, our breeze died in the afternoon. We rolled up the jib, pointed our bow southeast, and tracked the swell, which was taking us very slowly in the right direction. We had an unexpected visitor; about 50 miles offshore, a red-winged blackbird came onto the boat. Here he is about mid-ships, looking at our fuel jugs and folding dinghy. We offered him a bowl of fresh water and a cracker, but he ignored us. The forecast was for the wind to fill in from the south-west on Saturday morning, so we left the motor off to conserve our fuel. We only carry about 2-3 days of fuel for motoring and need to carefully weigh when to "turn the key" and motor.

On the afternoon of Thursday, November 9, we sailed out the Hampton Roads inlet into the Atlantic Ocean, headed again towards Bermuda and the eastern Caribbean. As we motor-sailed past the US Navy base, the submarines, aircraft carriers, and battleships were bathed in the rosy glow of sunset. We had spent the night before at the Portsmouth Boating Center, stowing everything below and tightening all straps, inspecting sails and rigging. It was a fine day, with a westerly breeze, with a good forecast of a south-westerly wind the next day, after a low-pressure system had moved out to sea. We had an uneventful first night out and headed south-east.

Our friend Diana from Charleston drove up to visit us just before we left Ches- apeake, VA. We had a lovely visit, including a dinner party with steaks aboard a friend's boat. I had missed her a great deal and so much appreciated the visit. Diana and I took a walk in crisp, sunny, fall weather over to the locks park too.