Sail Felix

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist......" General John Sedgwick , killed in battle, 1864 Ok , the quote doesn't fit the blog entry today, but I thought it was funny. More on the story of Sedgwick at the end. We've been settling in to my Mom's beautiful house here in Port St. Lucie, and basking in the novelty of newness. It just feels strange being in a new house with new appliances, new fixtures, new everything! Don't worry Mom, we're treating it better than we would our own! There's more than a little culture shock moving from Deltaville , VA down here to Port St. Lucie, where we have a Publix , a pharmacy, a Walmart , Arby's , and everything else significant, all within a quarter mile of us. We'll miss all of our friends, family, and good people in Virginia but not the cold and snow. After looking at numerous oil leaking, dilapidated, wrecked, junkyard destined cars; I fin ally found my 4 wheeled machine. A '96 Chevy Blazer ...

"My Karma ran over your dogma."- Anonymous This one goes in the "true, but hard to believe" file. We were at West Marine this morning picking up bottom paint and a few other items when we noticed a black pouch on the floor by the checkout counter. I picked it up and told the girl at the register "It looks like somebody dropped their pouch, if there's any money in there it's mine!" I flipped it open and there was a wad of $100's!!! About 150 of them!! No I.D, nothing else. My name's not Earl, but I know when Karma is testing me, and we gave the pouch over to the manager to put in the safe while we tried to track down who lost the pouch. The most likely customer was a German guy who had just bought a dinghy, but the store didn't have any contact info for him, just a vague idea that he was leaving soon on a boat he just bought, and he may be at a local marina. We drove over to the marina where they thought he may be, and sure enough two ...

There are three faithful friends--an old wife, an old dog and ready money. - Ben Franklin If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. - Mark Twain Just to sweeten the thought of moving back to Florida, it's been blowing a blizzard since last night. Probably 10 inches of snow on the ground right now and poor Chief can hardly make his way through the shoulder high (for him) snow. We had a harrowing ride to Tappahannock from Deltaville last night in conditions where we never saw pavement the whole way. Flipped over SUV's , trucks in ditches, cars on their backs, and sections of the highway shutdown for emergency crews. It took us 2-1/2 hours to navigate the 45 miles, and we only slid off the road and had to get pulled out once. Felix was lifted out of the water two days ago, winterized, and now the fun part of cleaning her up begins as soon as we can get back to Deltaville and clear th...

What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue. ~Thomas Paine Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss. ~Robert Heinlein From Article 1, section 9 of the United States Constitution: No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state. No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one state over those of another: nor shall vessels bound to, or from, one state, be obliged to enter, clear or pay duties in another. I think the writers of our Constitution were being very clear in their intent on that last line. nor shall vessels bound to, or from, one state, be obliged to enter, clear or pay duties in another. So how can a Florida registered vessel, owned by a Florida resident, legally be charged duty (property tax) simply because it is temporarily in the waters of the State of Virginia on January 1st? The Middlesex County tax collector has informed me that Felix's owners will be ch...

Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. - Carl Sandburg Selling Felix, not quite as romantic as Sailing Felix. We've never been afraid to make bold moves, and so once again we are picking up the large brush and repainting the canvas of our lives with the color of change. I've been offered a marketing job with a growing manufacturing company (yes, some things are still being built in the USA!) in Palm City, FL. We'll be hauling Felix out of the water in the next week or two, winterizing her, and listing her for sale with a local yacht broker. We'll be packing up and moving to my Mom's house in Port St. Lucie, until we can find a place of our own. Work starts the first of the year, so we've got 3 weeks to move and get settled in. Ho, Ho, Ho!! Merry Chr...

Life h angs on a very thin thread and the cancer of time is complacency. If you are going to do something, do it now. Tomorrow is too late. - Steve Goss Thanks Pavy ! I completed my week of physical therapy up in the mountains deer hunting with my brother. Thanks Mike for taking care of everything and finally, after a few frustrating days, putting me in front of one. The pic above is of the two Madison County bucks that he dropped while sitting in the same spot last Wednesday, while his buddy Darrel and I got to sit and stare at the relentlessly unmoving trees for 10 hours. The funny thing about luck though is that everyone eventually gets their turn at some. I got my opportunity on the morning of our last day hunting, when after walking into the woods only 200 yards from the truck we jumped a deer up. Mike and Dean let the sick boy from out of town go ahead and try to stalk the deer while they hung behind watching. Being a young and not so wary deer, I was able to sneak up and get a ...

Every Veteran at some point when they enlisted, wrote a blank check to their Country and Government payable for any amount up to and including their life. A fitting day for my first blog entry in a long, long while since I spent all of last week in the Veteran's Hospital in Richmond . I was admitted for a case of perforated diverticulitis with an abscess . The care I received was great, and I'm extremely thankful for it because like 1 in every 5 Americans I have no health insurance. We came up here to Deltaville for the summer, arriving a little late, and it seems we've been captured for the winter. Star is working part time at West Marine, and had a brief stint selling boats for Gratitude Yacht Sales . After working the Annapolis Boat Show, she was 'let go' last week when she chose to visit me in the hospital rather than sit in the office/residence of the managing broker for no pay. She was told her 'priorities are wrong'. Some jobs just aren't wort...

Sometimes when I reflect on all the beer I drink, I feel ashamed. Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams shattered. I think, 'It's better to drink this beer and let their dreams come true than to be selfish and worry about my liver.'" - Babe Ruth Went and checked on the Opel electric car project vehicle today. We were going to tow it back to the shop, but have a few obstructions to clear along the path out of the woods, and need to take some air for the tires back with us. We'll make a thorough inspection of the underbody once we get it back to the shop. The body is a little rough, but nothing that can't be fixed. Sweet lines!!

" I think a man's duty is to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to disprove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life ” - Plato This weekend we went over to West Virginia for an adventurous time of camping and Whitewater Rafting to celebrate Star's birthday. Well, camping in a cabin, which you can see behind Star in the picture. We don't like to rough it too much anymore. :-) We used the outfit Rivermen , and rafted the lower New River. A first class operation, we have nothing but good things to say about the staff, facilities, and operation. I would definitely recommend them and use them again. We signed up for the package deal, two nights in the cabin and 3 meals on Saturday for the 6 of us; Big Joe and little Joe, Big Wes and little Wes, and Star & I. While we sort of expected greasy burgers and hot dogs , we were happily surprised to find that like everything else, the ...

" Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people " Eleanor Roosevelt Tesla Roadsters , running the 1/4 mile drag strip in 12.4 seconds, 121 mph; Hagerstown , MD. Next time you fill up your car with gas, think about where your money is going. We send 6 Billion dollars a month overseas for oil! They are building indoor ski slopes in Dubai with your money . 70% of the oil we use goes towards transportation. We need to shift our transportation to electric, it's in our national interest. Plain and simple. I really don't care much about all the tree hugging, greenhouse gas, pollution part; but it's so clearly in our nation's best interest to quit using more oil than we can produce ourselves. Patriotism is not putting a little yellow sticker on the back of your SUV, it's about doing something that helps your country. This weekend my Dad and I went to the electric car show and drag race in Hagerstown , MD . Apparently electri...

“Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they only unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and at last some crisis shows us what we’ve become.” - Brooke Foss Wescott This quote doesn't really have anything to do with the post, but I read it this morning and liked it. I know, I know,.... I haven't updated the blog in a while. We've just been real busy, and haven't travelled anywhere and this was originally a travel blog. That's my brother Mike holding up a double hookup of Croaker, which we slayed last weekend fishing around Gwynn's Island. We've been catching plenty of little croaker, but not much else. If only the water were a little more clear --------------> We've been hard at it, trying to find steady work to keep this champagne lifestyle running on our beer budget. Times are tough everywhere, and Deltaville isn't exactly a metropolis, but it's a great little place an...

"Men go b ack to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up." Henry David Thoreau This weekend my brother Mike and his daughters Megan and Brittany came down from the mountains to go sailing on Felix. The weather cooperated and we had a great weekend of sailing, fishing, and buzzing about in the dinghy. With overcast skies and 10-15 knot breezes we headed out of Jackson Creek Saturday morning and sailed into the Bay on a beam reach. Early on we caught a small bluefish while trolling a piece of squid, and sailed back and forth for a couple of hours before anchoring to spend a while bottom fishing. Mistakenly, we anchored by some charter boats, thinking they knew where the fish were, and got skunked. The girls were naturals, and seemed to take right to this boating stuff like it's in their genes. After returning to the dock and securing Felix back in her slip, we launched our inflatable with the 15 hp ...

We were in Urbanna yesterday having lunch, and our timing was perfect for watching a Power Catamaran being launched. Built by Felix the Catman , this behemoth is powered by twin 370 hp diesels and is over 50 feet long. Their shop is just around the corner from Dozier's marina where we were eating lunch, and they had to use two cranes to carefully, very carefully, lift it up and out into the water. Time to buy a lotte ry ticket......

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll spend all day in a boat drinking beer. We've had a great 4 th , hanging with Wes and little Wes. Fishing, riding in boats, loitering on the sandbar in Jackson Creek, grilling out, and every other fun thing that we could think of. Tomorrow we head to Tappahannock for a little while to stay at my Mom's place and then back to Deltaville to get serious about work. The weather has been great, about 10 degrees cooler than it ever was in South Carolina, and we barely even need the air conditioner up here at night. It's great to be in a sailing area also, unlike Florida where 3 out of 4 boats are power boats, here the marinas and anchorages are full of masts and when you look out at the Bay during the afternoon all you see are sails. Sailboats, sailboats everywhere! Nice protected waters all around, we're looking forward to being able to take some day sails soon. For those who read this a...

We made it here to Deltaville Tuesday evening, and it's been a whirlwind since then. This is just a short update, I'll tell more when I get some pictures. We've been hanging out every evening with my old friend Wes and his son Wes, who've been a great help getting us settled in. We've had a truck to use around town, and Wednesday we pulled into a slip at the Deltaville Marina on Jackson Creek . A nice place with a swimming pool, great facilities, close to town, a swimming pool, full service boat yard, screened patio with grill, and did I mention, a swimming pool! Lots more to write, but I'll leave it for after the weekend. It's crazy with festivities here this weekend, and in a one road town that means we need to get all of our errands done before the crowds come. We have to leave the marina and go anchor for the night of the 4 th because they are booked full that night, so I'll update more when we get back to the dock.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is . - Anonymous We left Broad Creek on the North River two days ago and made the slog straight into North winds up the Currituck Sound. The passage was fairly smooth because the winds were light, and we were looking forward to a peaceful night in Pungo Ferry to prepare for the 5 draw bridges and one lock on the way through Norfolk. Unfortunately, there are no good anchorages in Pungo Ferry, and the Marina is now closed. I think there were once anchorages in Pungo , because the NOAA charts show several deep areas and Skipper Bob's Guide mentions a couple of places. We tried them all. Same old story that we've seen up and down the waterway. Places that are charted at 10 or 16 feet of water have less than 6 and we end up hard reversing to get ourselves back out. We must have tried 4 or 5 places around there that looked good on the charts but had no water, and finally ended up hanging our butt...

A Human Being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - Robert Heinlein Yesterday's sail up the Alligator River and across the Albermarle Sound was a glorious one. Captain Clyde would have been proud; as soon as we entered into the Alligator we shut down the engine and left it off all day except for the short transit through the Alligator River Swing Bridge. Through the morning we made 6-7 knots while we had a good wind forward of the beam, falling off to 4-5 when we turned off of the wind and it started to lighten. I have some great video of Felix under sail that I was planning to post today, but thanks to the 'new and improved'...

I read somewhere that 77 per cent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 per cent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves. - Jerry Garcia First, thanks to everyone for the comments and emails about deadheads. Partially submerged logs, and the 20 mile long Pungo -Alligator River canal was littered with them. We passed through there this afternoon and saw 3 of them like in this photo that were smack in the middle of the channel, and another 4 or 5 off to the side of the channel. Fortunately when you're travelling at 6 mph these things are easy to spot. Now I need to back up. Yesterday we had a great sail and motorsail from Oriental up the Neuse River and Pamlico River to Belhaven . Belhaven is becoming one of our favorite places. We had stopped there 14 years ago and loved it, this time we learned to love it even more. To begin with the harbor is excellent with a deep well marked channel leading into a huge, well protected...

Currently, North Carolina is the only state on the U.S. Atlantic coast that allows shrimp trawling to take place in its estuarine waters . - NCSU . edu "The Sailing Capital of North Carolina" is written across the flags flying along every street here in the town of Oriental. Friendly people, well stocked and accessible marine store, public dinghy dock, all of the things that cruisers love. The temperature has been great, it finally cooled off to a comfortable 85 degrees, and I'm not going to complain about the heat anymore, I'm embracing it! It's 115 in Baghdad today, so I know how good we've got it! Today we went ashore and explored the town because we've always heard so many positive things from other cruisers about Oriental. We were offered bikes to use to ride to the grocery and hardware store, which we gladly accepted, but then I ended up pushing one of them back after the tire blew out. No fat boy jokes!! We were a little surprised by the size of t...

I've always found it very sanitary to be broke . - Orson Welles The Sanitary is a Morehead City waterfront landmark, established in 1938 as a fish market and restaurant and still churning out a large menu of mostly fried seafood to tourists and locals alike. They also have a rough dock with no electric or water, but $10 a night to tie up. 14 years ago when we came through on Moria we tied up here for $5, and had decided on this trip that we would just anchor. We're not going to stop there this time, no way, no how, besides it was a Saturday afternoon and there won't be an open spot. Well, the anchorage was jam packed and there just happened to be a nice hole at the dock for Felix , so we went ahead and tried to repeat the past and stopped once again at the Sanitary. It turned out to be a nice respite, we ate dinner ashore, Chief watered the fire hydrant, and we got to once again be the local tourist attraction. As soon as I'm done writing this we'll be taking of...

Felix is Hot! - Paris Hilton Apparently Paris is a big fan of the blog. She is right, Felix is smoking hot today, it's about 95 degrees in the shade here in Swansboro , NC where we are anchored right out in front of this quaint little waterside town . The Marines blocked off the anchorage at Mile Hammock Bay for training exercises, so we had to push on yesterday and make a 56 mile run up to Swansboro . We didn't argue with them, I know when we're out gunned. We had fairly good luck with the 3 draw bridges and current, and were able to keep the jib up for most of the way. The town here is a welcome relief from the waterway down south. Restaurants on the water where you can get a reasonably priced lunch, free public dinghy dock, commercial fishing/shrimp dock, and also a cool touristy type atmosphere with all the standard trinket shops. Swansboro has yet to be invaded by the hi-rise condos, megayacht attitudes, and the $4 bottle of beer. It's good to see some of the ...

You can't teach people to be lazy, either they have it or they dont . - Dagwood Bumstead Herb & Laura, you left a day too early. After admirably toughing out the oppressive heat for 4 days, yesterday's overcast sky's , 15-20 knot winds, and drizzling rain kept temperatures down to sub-sweating levels as we pushed on up to Wrightsville Beach. We were up at 4:30 A M to get an early start at twilight, and then just as we were about to cast off the lines a classic 'Duh' moment. We realized the Sunset Beach pontoon bridge which is 8 miles away only opens on the hour, so we hung out a few more minutes and then slowly motored up to the bridge, delaying any chance for a good, early head start . Otherwise the morning was uneven tful , until we reached the entrance to the Cape Fear river where we had decided earlier that we had to enter the river before 1 pm to catch the flood tide to carry us upriver for the 12 or so miles. Any later than 1 pm and the tide would have t...

I think he'll be to Rome as is the Osprey to the fish, who takes it by sovereignty of nature. - Shakespeare, Act 4 scene 5 of Coriolanus The last few days have been marked by beautifully calm anchorages and great times with our visiting friends Herb and Laura. The fates were cooperating and every night we watched magnificent thunderstorms roll by while the sky seemed to part and clear over Felix each night. We made 50-60 miles every day and stayed dry until the very end, when the Heavens finally parted and dumped torrents of water just as we were approaching the Marina in Coquina Harbour, north of Myrtle Beach. That's the way we like to come into new places. After hundreds of miles of travelling through marsh flats all the way north from Fernandina, Florida, the change in scenery on the Waccamaw River came as a welcome surprise. Shores lined with Cyprus trees and Ospreys nested on almost every channel marker made for a spectacular morning yesterday. Our crew members have ...

Always stand clear of the ladder Boss!- Capt. Ron We left the dock this morning just after 9 so that we could catch the 9:30 opening of the Ladies Island bridge. Hot, hot, hot!! We raised the vertical awning for about an hour and watched it flap lazily before finally admitting to ourselves that there was just not enough wind. We tried to make some of our own, but 37 horses can't push this ' ol girl fast enough for that. Our new crew members Herb and Laura got a taste of the idle life motoring up the ditch today. So sad, nothing exciting (read scary!) happened today and we were anchored by 3:30 here on the South Edisto River 30 miles north of Beaufort. The plan is for an early 5:45 departure tomorrow so that we can get past Charleston. Great place, but we've been in the 'city' too long now, and we want to stick to anchorages like this one, where we are the only boat and there is no house, town, or sign of life about us. Of course, we still have internet access, ...

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?- Albert Einstein While still killing time here in Beaufort before we leave next week, I thought I'd share some of our recent history and our life before Felix. Because we must be rich, living on a sailboat and not working and all, this is a good chance to show future dreamers our fool proof path to wealth and happiness. ;-) It was 2003 and everybody it seemed was making money on the housing bubble that was blowing up around us. We were living in West Palm Beach, FL spending a ridiculous amount of money on rent while saving nothing, and thought it might be a good idea to buy a place to live that might make us some money in the future. We knew that with $15,000 of life savings we weren't going to be able to buy anything in South Florida, so we started looking north in the state. Looking at the map we saw a town in north-central FL named ' Chiefland ', and if you've read much of this blog you...

In my own experience, such knowledge as I possess was acquired with difficulty, involving the expenditure of considerable time and effort that was often hard to justify. But in the final analysis, the pleasures that I have derived from the practice of these skills more than compensate for the endeavour. - from 'The Arts of the Sailor- knotting, splicing, and ropework ' by Hervey Garrett Smith This is one of those jobs that I think only the unemployed would tackle. Nothing like spending a day on decoration. Now I'm sure that some great, big maintenance item that I've forgotten will come back to bite me as soon as we take off again next week. This picture of Toots reminded me of our friends old steering wheel, and that I've been needing to cover ours. It has a couple of purposes besides just looking cool. On those freezing cold days, which we hope to see as few of as possible, even wearing gloves doesn't cut the chill from holding on to that frozen piece of meta...

"The only way to get a good crew is to marry on e." - Eric Hiscock Since we invited a couple of friends to go sailing with us next week when we head north from Beaufort, we decided that it would be a good idea to try and come up with a list of crew suggestions. Just a few things to help prepare them or future guests for the way things work aboard Felix and to help the transition to life aboard a cruising sailboat. This is a list in progress, so please help us out and feel free to add suggestions in the comment section below. Packing: We recommend that you bring foul weather gear. When the afternoon thunderstorm rolls through and reduces visibility to nothing with lightening crashing all around the boat, we're going down below to curl up in the fetal position and leaving you at the helm to drive the boat. Safety: Safety always comes first aboard Felix, unless we are in a hurry or tired. Water Usage: Don't use any! We carry a limited amount of water on board. Water is ...