Slow Boat

The locks ahead of us on Erie Canal are still closed, and SlowBoat is still sitting in Scotia. Who knows when we can move forward; we're hoping the rainbow at sunset on Saturday was a sign the flood is nearly over.

Release the doves!  There's a rainbow over  Lock 8 in Scotia

That boat looks strangely familiar!

We've spent a year giving our canal boat an adventure, taking her places canal boats never go. Out of sight of land in the Gulf of Mexico. Racing down the fast currents of the Mississippi. Bucking the waves in Albemarle Sound. Through all that, she's enjoyed celebrity status.  In every port, she's the cutest boat on the dock--or at least, the most unusual.

But the party's over.  Today, after touching in Albany, NY (to put our guest boater Ally Berger, who's been cruising with us from Catskill, on a train home), we locked through in Troy, NY . . . and Dragonfly re-entered her home waters, the Erie Canal.

Where canal boats are, um, practically common.  Here's one, sharing our dock in Waterford.

Possibly our prettiest anchorage yet:  Germantown, NY

A very Happy Mothers Day to our friends who are also moms!  Hope you got breakfast in bed and other treats from your lovely children.

Where we stayed Thurs: Newburgh

SlowBoat is creeping slowly north up the Hudson River.  There's no rush because, once we pass Albany, we leave the river to head west on the Erie Canal . . .  and the Erie Canal is still closed due to flooding.

We stayed Thursday in Newburgh, NY.  To travel along with us, check the photo album, "Streets of Newburgh."

We're in Catskill, NY, today and figuring out our next move.

Check back later for details about "Penguins in Bondage."

Look!  A giant floating box of animal crackers has invaded Manhattan!  (photo courtesy of Mark Winkler.)

I couldn't blog yesterday (Blogger was, again, inexplicably down) but I did post a photo album with some shots of Dragonfly "as you've never seen her before!"  If you haven't been to SlowBoat on Facebook recently, click HERE.

President Obama speaks from Ground Zero today.  We cruised past the site early Monday morning, watching construction cranes at work on the Freedom Tower.  We docked at 79th Street and spent two peaceful days just steps from Central Park. The city was dreamlike in its beauty--streets clean as if they'd been swept moments ago, buildings tall and elegant, flowering fruit trees making clouds of pale pink and frothy white against the fresh green of budding lindens and oaks. The chaos and horror of 9/11 seemed far away.

So many experiences on this trip have tied directly to the headlines.  We read the news that levees had been breached along the Mississippi--and remembered standing on our boat roof, back in September, trying to get high enough to look OVER the levees and see what lay beyond.

(No luck. SlowBoat is also LowBoat.)  But I've re-posted a few photos from the Mississippi stage of the trip, so you can see that stretch of the river at a more idyllic time.  Click HERE.  Notice another levee blast is planned TODAY.

Is that the smoke from burning sox? (No, redbud in bloom along the canal)

Today we learned that sailors on Chesapeake Bay celebrate March 21--the spring equinox--by burning their socks.

Truth!  In the words of the immortal Dave Barry, I am not making this up.  (Click the link to confirm.)

Somehow the vernal equinox blew by us this week.  But yesterday was also momentous, because we arrived safely in Norfolk, VA--"Mile Zero" on the Intracoastal Waterway. (Next stop: Chesapeake Bay)

"Should we burn our socks to celebrate our safe arrival?" asked the crew. "No!" said Cap. "I need all the sox I've got to keep my feet warm!"

With a forecast of "High 40, feels like 35," and feeling colder, we pulled away from the Not Very Dismal Swamp Visitors Center dock. A nice little stinging wet mist was blowing, for added traveling pleasure.

But we were well fortified for the day's travails.  Yesterday, after a sunny cruise on canal (photos HERE), we docked to enjoy a fried-chicken-dinner at the Great Dismal Swamp Welcome Center.

Readers are invited to AMA. Miles Johnson asks, "What have been your top five favorite places so far?"  Impossible to limit to five. But I DO have a new favorite place:  The Waccamaw River, a meandering, mostly unspoiled river that makes up about 30 miles of the ICW north of Georgetown. Click HERE for photos.

Thought we'd seen every kind of bridge there was. This is a gondola across the ICW

After an idyllic day on the Waccamaw, the next day was a shock. The ICW cuts north in a narrow, straight,  man-made ditch, with crumbling, scalped, and rubble-strewn shores topped with gaudy, oversized houses of recently construction.

And lots of bridges.  Which gave our noble boat the chance to demonstrate once again, that, as Cap'n Mikey said, back in Georgetown, when he pulled out his wallet and offered to buy her on the spot, "This is the Ultimate Looper Vessel."

Near day's end, we approached the Little River Bridge, a swing bridge with a clearance (when closed) of 7 feet.  Radioed the bridge operator, who said, "Sorry, bridge is out of order.  You'll have to wait. We've called the electrician."

Dark was an hour away . . .  as was the next safe anchorage.  Now, Dragonfly's height, from the waterline to the very top of her scalloped red canopy, is 9 feet.   Cap started scrabbling in his toolbox for a wrench.

We're anchored near Little River, South Carolina--about 30 miles south of Cape Fear.  We cruised along today in the sunlight, with the electric motor humming quietly; about every 100 yards we'd spot an osprey on a nest.  The bald cypress trees seemed to visibly push out their feathery green leaves as we watched. Hopeful signs of spring are good. It all seemed surreal. The news from Japan is terrible.

If you're here on this page because you're taking a quick brief break from bad news, here's some brain candy.  Click to the next page to preview an article that's about to appear in the April 2011 issue of Latitudes and Attitudes, a slightly offbeat magazine for sailboat enthusiasts.  We met the author, Craig Ligibel, during our stay on Useppa Island in Florida.

Tomorrow I'll tell you all about our FURTHER adventures in anchoring, and scooting under low bridges, and meeting (I am not making this up) Captain Kirk.

Note:  This is a guest blog from Bill

This is our "on-board self-tensioning weight training system" . . . I mean, the lighter of our two anchors

Smoke, just as forecast.  If tomorrow's weather is "cloudy with a chance of meatballs" I'm really gonna worry.

AMA--ask me anything. Miles Johnson asks, "What about the trip has suprised you? Many things, one being, how little cell phone/internet access there is at the coast! (Which is why you haven't heard from us)

SlowBoat left Charleston Tuesday and anchored overnight in a narrow tidal creek.  After dark the horizon heaved with the uneasy glow of reflected streetlights.  In the morning the weather forecast was, "Temperatures in the 50s, wind from the SE at 15 to 20, knots, chance of smoke."

 I like to read books that are set in the places I'm visiting. At the end of this post, you'll find my reading list for the Low Country.  But first, the boat news . . . .

Isle of Hope looks like the movie set for "small, charming Southern town"

When the Dragonfly stopped at Isle of Hope, the first mate cruised to Savannah to tour the "Ships of the Seas" museum.  The main attraction: A scale model of a very innovative boat--a hybrid vehicle.  The S.S. Savannah was built in the town it was named for in 1818.

Notice that date.  Years before barges started plying the Erie Canal, dragged by mules, Captain Moses Rogers of Connecticut conceived of a powerful hybrid boat, a sailing vessel and steamship combined. The Savannah's claim to fame: she ultimately made the world's first steam-powered transatlantic crossing.

Full disclosure: She covered only part of the distance under steam.  It would be 30 years before another American steamship made the crossing.  But innovation has to start somewhere, and in the case of hybrid boats it started in Savannah.

The next day, at the Isle of Hope Marina, we spotted pictures documenting the work of another local inventor with an unusual vision for boat design.  Captain Matthew Batson built the world's first flying yacht.  (Photo HEREhttps://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-flying-house-an-aeroplane-invented-by-capt-arlington-news-photo/3280068#/5th-december-1913-the-flying-house-an-aeroplane-invented-by-capt-picture-id3280068)

Ra

On rainy days our aft cabin converts to a mudroom

We've been passing through another Verizon-Free Zone, hence no blog posts recently. But here we are, emerged from the dark side of the world and docked at Jekyll Island, Georgia.  Goodbye, Florida! It's been swell.

We left St. Augustine Friday under cold and cloudy skies; spent the night in a pretty little anchorage in an oxbow around Pine Island.  At least we think it was pretty--fog rolled in around 4 PM.

Saturday we docked in Jacksonville Beach, a built-up town where houses, condos, hotels, and grubby-looking businesses crowd every which way on the streets that parallel the beach.  It was still cold and rainy. The white sand beach looked gray, and the seashells were the color of soot and tobacco.

Sunday--more cold, clouds, and rain. The terrain was changing as we neared the Florida border; fewer palm trees, and the waterway seemed wider, edged with low marshes of dry grass, a startling burnt-orange in color.

We got to Amelia Island and the town of Fernandina Beach just before sunset, with enough daylight for a fast stroll through the well-preserved historic district, goggling at the towering brick courthouse with its New England-style cupola and the Italianate confection of a post office, built to resemble a Medici palace

Water towers are great mariner's landmarks.  The water tower in Cocoa Village (where we're now anchored)  is painted to look like an American flag.

First, the answer to the ever-popular question, "Where ARE you?" From Stuart we've sloowwlly hopped our way north up the Florida coast, anchoring behind mangrove islands by night and admiring our dolphin escorts by day. We're now anchored off Cocoa Village, not far south of Cape Kennedy.

I promised to return to the subject of Pahokee, the farm town where we stayed at the southern tip of Lake Okeechobee. (A few favorite photos now viewable on the SlowBoatCruise Facebook page.)

We docked there for old-time's sake:  Our boat's been there before! Back when the Dragonfly was a rental boat named the Honeyoe, she used to ride south, in winter, on a truckbed, to Pahokee, where she was a rental boat on the Okeechobee Waterway.  Imagine her steely sigh of satisfaction last week as, for the first time, she arrived at the port under her OWN power.

The H.M.S. Turtle is a bit more secure on the high seas than Dragonfly. Notice the sealed bow (where we have canvas and screens).  That keeps big waves OUT!

Sunday was another idyllic day on the Okeechobee Waterway, and I want to tell you more about it. 

But first, fast forward, because the past two days have been jam-packed with exciting family reunions (and one TV appearance).  

(Meanwhile if you can't wait to know more about the area around Okeechobee, check out the photos HERE.)

The Waterway connects Fort Myers to Florida's east coast in the town of Stuart (about an hour's drive north of Palm Beach).  We knew we HAD to stop in Stuart, because of a special resident we just had to see.

Backing up just a sec: Whenever we dock the Cap'n says, "Whoa! Look at all the canal boats!" JOKE!  There are hardly any canal boats in North America.  In fact, we estimate there are about 25 of the quirky vessels.

But in Stuart, there IS a canal boat!  Indeed, a canal boat constructed by Mid-Lakes Navigation, the same company that built our own dear Dragonfly.  

We got in touch with the Captain of the H.M.S. Turtle, Dick Harding, and Sunday evening, having been delayed en route by a lock that--unexpectedly--closed down for several hours, we finally groped our way, after dark, past the crab pots and mooring balls to the dock. Dick was there to grab our lines.

Thursday we left Fort Myers, headed east along the Okeechobee Waterway. We planned to end the day at the town dock in LaBelle (town claim to fame: Swamp Cabbage Festival!)

Cruising the Okeechobee . . . It's FLAT out here!

But before we reached the crowded town dock, our radio crackled to life:  "Dragonfly! Hailing Dragonfly!  Look behind you!"

A man in a yellow sailor's slicker was hailing us from a dock in front of a neat, waterfront home. Addison Austin is a canal boat enthusiast and member of the American Canal Society, and ACS has been publishing excerpts from our blog in its newsletter.  So he knew we were headed his way, and he'd been watching for us.

End result: instead of crowding in with the boats squeezed stern-on to the town dock, we had a luxurious night on Mr. Austin's private dock. Over drinks 'n snacks with Addison and Mary Jane, we paged through the album documenting their own Great Loop adventure:  Two adults,  three dogs, four months, six major repairs . . .  in a 23-foot Sea Ray.

Where we're docked now. There's quite a story as to how we ended up here.  Check the NEXT blog installment for details!

Boy, can that man wield a wrench!  The Cap'n finished our engine repairs on Wednesday. Today (Thursday) we said goodbye to Fort Myers and started cruising (gingerly) up the Caloosahatchee River . . . which is part of the Okeechobee Waterway.  Which means, canals and locks.

Which is good, because after all, Canals "R" Us.  We're riding in a boat called a "LockMaster."  (Say it like a Hollywood announcer voicing the trailer for a sci-fi epic: "LockMaster! Savior of the Universe!"

Dragonfly is capering a little, kicking up her heels, maybe because the re-mounted engine feels good, and maybe because she's in familiar waters. When we checked in at Fort Myers the marina guy hustled over to say, "I recognized your boat immediately!  A couple from New York used to bring boats like that here!" We assume he's referring to Peter and Libby Wiles of Mid-Lakes Navigation who (back when Dragonfly was called the Honeoye and part of their rental fleet) used to bring her here in the winter, so  Floridians could sample the joys of canalboating.

I am strong, I am invincible, I am ready to pilot my boat for 15 hours non-stop across the Gulf of Mexico!

We've spent the last few weeks plotting and planning how to cross Florida's "Big Bend"--the U-bend where the Panhandle meets Florida's West Coast. The Gulf IntraCoastal Waterway doesn't go around the bend; to get to the West Coast you HAVE to cross open water.

For a boat as slow as ours, it's quite a puzzle how to make the crossing. You have to factor in the hours of daylight available, the timing of the tides, predicted wave height and wind direction, and which harbors a creeping SlowBoat can reach before the weather changes. The Cap'n spent hours checking charts and seeking local knowledge. Finally, a plan: Early Tuesday we would leave Carabelle, Florida, and cross to Steinhatchie, a fishing town. Total distance about 75 miles. 

Cap also repaired the dinghy's broken gunwhale

We've been working our way along the underside of the Florida panhandle, following the network of canals, bays, and sounds that make up the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.

The scenery says "Florida":  Palm trees and beaches with sand like white sugar and dolphins leaping from sparkling blue water.

The air temperature says "Upstate New York."  Just our luck to visit during a record cold snap.

Sunday night, we tied gratefully at the dock at Port St. Joe and on Monday, while the crew shopped for thermal underwear at the town's lone clothing store, the Cap'n visited three hardware stores, two dollar stores, three furniture stores and an auto parts store, looking for construction supplies to winterize the boat.

If only I had battery-powered socks, life would be perfect!

Fortified by a hot bath and good night's sleep in an actual bed, we put on every item of clothing we possessed and left Fort Walton Beach on Thursday morning (air temperature 35 degrees, wind 5 to 10 knots), aiming straight across Choctawhatchee Bay.

By taking turns at the helm for 20 minutes at a time, we made it through the day . . .  and approached our anchorage, just beyond the Choctawhatchee Bay Bridge, a little before dusk.  

The sun had finally warmed the air, and the pale blue water was flat calm. Just outside the channel, the water was very shallow, and we could see a large flock of birds--pelicans, gulls, and common loons--all foraging together. 

The Capn' turned off the engine for a moment, and in the stillness we could hear the loons making plaintive little hoots--gentle sounding, very different from their crazy summer laughter.

"Look at that!" Cap said.  "Something's going on UNDER the water."  He pointed to an area where ripples were spreading on the flat, blue-gray metallic surface of the bay.

Dog River Marina on Mobile Bay.  Ho Ho Ho, transient slips for rent!

You know how it is: Thanksgiving rolls around, and next thing you know, Christmas decorations are everywhere.

We left Dragonfly tucked up in a side channel on the west of Mobile Bay last week while we flew home to snowy Upstate New York, to spend Thanksgiving with the Cap'n's family.

How amazing to travel 600 mph in a plane.  And . . . how quickly we burned through the "carbon footprint" savings we'd accumulated over the past 6 months by running with the sun.

After a wonderful week with family and friends, we are now back on the boat. And as of today, our SlowBoat is half-way through her grand adventure. She has travelled 3,000 miles in 6 months, with 3,000 more miles to go in the next six months.

Where we stayed: Pirate's Cove.  Can you find the canal boat in this picture?