Season 1: Key West, US East Coast and Corona
Our first cruising season
Our first cruising season began in early March 2020. Our plans were to sail to the Dry Tortugas and then spend our first season exploring the Bahamas. After finishing up my last work contract with Sarasota Memorial Hospital, we set our course to Fort Jefferson ( Dry Tortugas). It turned out to be a very boisterous trip and was probably some of the biggest waves we’ve been through. At one point, we were actually riding with bare poles and the engine in reverse to slow us down! However, this is what we signed up for , right?! Needless to say , we were happy to arrive and drop the hook. We spent a few days here exploring the fort, fishing, nature watching, and enjoying time at anchor.
Everyone has a start of the pandemic story… here is ours
We left the Dry Tortugas and headed for Key West. The plan was to spend a couple of days here to refill our diesel cans and prepare for our upcoming Bahamas trip. We dropped anchor in Fleming Cay anchorage and immediately headed into town in search of a cold IPA. It was at one of the local pubs that we learned of the approaching pandemic and all the lockdowns that were starting to happen in parts of the US. At this point , the keys were still fully open with hoards of tourists and cruise ships. We still weren’t sure of the seriousness of the situation and just kind of shrugged it off. Still thinking it would resolve over the next week or so, we continued with our plans to sail to the Bahamas. A couple of hours after departing the anchorage, we received a call from the marina we had booked with telling us not to come because borders had been shut. So we made a U-turn and headed back to Key West. We dropped anchor back in Fleming Cay and within 24 hours , the Keys went into complete lockdown as well.
Life at anchor in Key West
So there we were, at anchor in a spot that was completely shut down, borders closed in the country we had planned for a year to visit, and no marinas accepting reservations so that we could store the boat to make a plan B . We were stuck in a ghost town paradise with no idea what to do next.
We just sat at anchor hoping things would open up in a week or so. Well a week turned into many weeks, weeks turned into months, and so on. Thankfully we were well provisioned before the pandemic hit so we weren’t struggling in that area. We spent the next three months hanging out on the boat , dingy fishing for snapper in the afternoons, and looking forward to our once a week trip to the grocery store which we were allotted 1 hour. Aside from a rough case of cabin fever, our lockdown experience wasn’t too bad. We know many others had it much worse. With the beginning of hurricane season approaching in May, we had to make a plan to leave Key west and get out of the hurricane belt. Borders were still closed south of us, so we had no other choice but to head north and cruise the US east coast. In Hindsight, we are actually thankful that we were “forced” into this opportunity because we most likely would never have chosen to do this trip otherwise. Since we were eager to make it out of the hurricane belt before the season started, we took every weather window that came our way and coastal hopped as quickly as possible until we made it to the Chesepeake Bay.
Sailing the Cheasepeke Bay
Sailing the Cheasepeke Bay was an amazing experience. Between the great sailing conditions , endless anchor spots, and beautiful nature, we could not have asked for more. We spent a few months leisurely exploring the area and hitting all the spots such as the Solomons, St. Micheals, and Annapolis. When in Annapolis we rented a car for a few days to further check out the Washington DC monuments, which I enjoyed much more than I thought I would. We also made a lunch stop in Baltimore where Jerrod finally got to take me to his favorite restaurant with the best crab cakes in the world, G&Ms. He had been talking about this place for years and he was absolutely right! Those crab cakes by themselves would have been worth the trip up the coast. We were enjoying this part of the country so much, we decided we wanted to go further north and see more , New York or possibly Maine. so we sailed to the top of the bay crossed through the C&D canal and into the Delaware Bay, which ended up being a most regrettable decision…
Crash on an underwater jetty
The timing through the C&D canal can be tricky. The currents are strong and with our speed boat you will either be fighting the current through the canal or in the Deleware Bay. You must choose. We chose to go with the current in the canal, meaning that once we got to the Bay, we would be fighting the current head on in the bay. So our plan was to anchor in the bay, have breakfast and wait for the current to shift. It would have been a good plan if it wasn’t for the poorly charted underwater rock wall that we smashed into! This is probably the scariest moment we’ve had on the boat. After we hit the wall, I immediately started ripping up floor boards to ensure we hadn’t put a hole in our boat and possibly sink. Thankfully, that was not the case!. We weren’t in the clear yet , however. We were now stuck with the rock wall being in between our rudder and keel. With the tide dropping we had to do something quick, or we wouldv’e been high and dry. By some miracle, the wind was in the exact direction we needed in order to pull out the sail and crab walk off the wall. We got ourselves off , anchored, and started researching nearby boat yards to haul out and do a proper inspection of the damage. Jerrod dove and inspected what he could, but its so murky there , it was hard to really see what was going on. We found a boat yard that could haul us out in Georgetown, Maryland. So the next morning, we headed back through the C&D canal , toward the boatyard in the Sassafras River, where we would spend the next week repairing our home.
Make it stand out
We hauled the boat out and performed a thorough inspection on her. We were estatic to find out that the only major damage was our pride. We had some minor fiberglass work to do on the rudder, a few scrapes on the hull that needed to be repainted, and easy repair on the keel. The boat was fully inspected for structural damage which thankfully turned up no issues. It only took us a week to finish the repairs and we were back in the water in no time! This was a hard lesson.
We actually enjoyed this area so much , we spent the next couple of weeks anchored in the Sassafras river before heading back down the Cheasepeke bay. We revisited Annapolis and St.Micheals , but only for a short time. We made our way back to the Solomons where we discovered an oil leak in our engine. We ended spending about a month here repairing the issue and enjoying the charming town. We needed to drive back to Louisiana for Jerrod’s best friends wedding, so the spring cove marina was the perfect spot to leave the boat while we visited home for a couple of weeks. After the Solomons, we continued south , eventually making our way to Beaufort, NC where we discovered that the engine problem we had over a month before was once again an issue. We engine up having to just get _____ rebuilt to fix the issue permanently. I guess these are the not as fun aspects of owning a sailboat. We spent another few weeks here waiting on a good weather window. With gale force storm after gale force storm, it felt like that window would never come. Once it did we jumped on it quickly, even though it was 30 degrees outside and the lines were frozen. We didn’t care , we were ready!
Make it stand out
We left Beaufort , NC and headed for Charleston, SC where we spent new years and prepared for our final leg toward Fort Pierce, FL. On that passage south, the weather turned something ugly on us and we were forced to make a stop in Fernandino Beach and let it pass before continuing on. This actually turned out to be a pretty cool stop as far as the town is concerned. The current through the area however, is nothing nice. We departed Fernandino and had an amazing sail down to Fort Pierce. Perfect sailing the whole way, saw a pod of what seemed like a hundred dolphins, and Jerrod even caught a sailfish! We dropped anchor around 3a.m. and celebrated the end of the season with a bottle of Chardonnay. We spent the next month and a half here planning our second season in the Bahamas, taking care of some paperwork errands, and getting all the covid travel requirements completed. After a couple of years of trying, finally we were on our way to the Bahamas!
