We stayed in a marina on Lady’s Island for a few days and Maggie and I decided to take advantage of the nice air-conditioned lounge which had room for us to do some Pilates and weights.  I was in the throes of lifting my weights when mum and two cubs appeared, racoons.  We must have watched them for about 10 minutes.  Mum wanted them to go down underneath the pontoon but the two little ones didn’t have long enough legs to be able to reach down to the next rung.  So, in the end mum literally, got them by the scruff of the neck and took them down. 

There are a lot of big cars and trucks here but this was a bit of a surprise when you park up next to this.  It looks like something out of the space age or something one of the kids would draw, all square Tesler !

Beaufort, South Carolina (there’s also one in North Carolina) hold a Dragon boat racing festival every year which is an all-volunteer non-profit organization dedicated to assisting cancer patients who live, work, or receive treatment in Beaufort County.

We wanted to be somewhere for the 4^th July, Independence Day, as this is a big celebration.  4^th July commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, declaring the thirteen American colonies’ separation from Great Britain.  We decided on Southport, North Carolina.  They had a parade and then music, food stalls and of course fireworks. 

We had to start moving north pretty rapidly, as we wanted to get to Canada and arrive before it gets too cold.  We were behind schedule so that meant long days.  Going through the Inter Coastal Waterway has many different views, you go through some areas where it is green, others where it is full of houses and jet skis and pesky speed boats who send you rocking from side to side.

Rather than go outside into the Atlantic we decided we’d go along the New Jersey Inter Coastal Waterway which is very narrow and shallow depths so you have to pay close attention.  We arrived at Margate Bridge and asked for a lift time.  We were told we can open for you but unless you have less than nine feet vertical clearance you won’t get through the next bridge.  The Dorset Bridge was broken and there was no estimated time for repair.  So after very little debate between us and Colin and Maggie on Serafina we turned around, thankfully not too far to go and weather conditions were ok, to the inlet out into the Atlantic.  Someone else had been listening to us on the VHS radio and asked “is that the BBC on here?”  We never thought anyone would think we sounded like the BBC!!

Our next stop was going to be New York.  This is something of a pinch you moment when you see the New York skyline coming into view.  As you would expect marinas in New York require a mortgage, there are no anchorages so we opted for a mooring buoy on Staten Island at a yacht club.  We have a lovely Sunday afternoon with a couple of drinks chatting to the locals.  You know you are near a city as there was public transport, buses, trains and ferries.  We took the bus to the local shopping mall and found none other than Lidl!!

To get into New York we walked to the train station and took the train to the Staten Island Ferry.  We were told by one of the Yacht Club members you must take the ferry,  as it’s the only thing that is free in New York.  The ferry takes you into the financial district of Manhattan which is where the 9-11 Museum is.  The last time we came to New York it was two years after 9/11 and there was nothing at Ground Zero.  The museum was definitely worth visiting and was very well put together. 

We left Staten Island and made our way up the East River which was amazing to be seeing all the iconic buildings along the way.  We had to get our timings right to go through Hells gate which can have currents up to 5 knots. 

We hopped along the coast making our way to the Cape Cod Canal, again a strong current.  The Canal is about seven miles long and took no time at all to get through with a max speed of 11 knots, woohoo!! It was a lovely sunny day at the entrance and thick fog at the end of it.

July 2025

We headed up to St Augustine.   There are many bridges on the Inter Coastal Waterway (ICW) some are high enough for us to get under and some we have to wait for them to be opened.   I was making a cuppa, one of Ian’s endless cups of tea, and got called up to the fly bridge. “Lo, stand on the storage box at the back and make sure we don’t touch the underneath of the bridge!!”  EEK!  It was about 2ft clearance but we got through.

St Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European and African-American origin in the US and was founded in 1565 by the Spanish.  It is known for its Spanish colonial architecture.  It’s a big tourist attraction.

We needed to get a few things so the bikes got their first outing.  We needed something from the hardware store so Ian thought he’d support the locals. Unfortunately they didn’t have what we wanted. So, we ended up in a big chain store which was a lot further away and it was really hot. Amazingly they have bike lanes in some places so we took that route back to the boat which was a bit un-nerving, well at least it was for me, with three lanes of traffic blasting past, it was like being on a dual carriage way but with three lanes. I had to peddle like the clappers a few times to get through the traffic lights as they turned amber to keep up with Ian. The traffic was heavy and there were quite a few crossroads.

Susan, Ian’s cousin, was coming to visit and she arrived the next day with Daisy the dog.  There was lots of chatting and running us around to collect a new water tank which we couldn’t quite get on a bike. We had a lovely meal in the oldest restaurant in Florida, the Colombia which was Spanish/Cuban cuisine, so tapas it was.

We had to start heading north to get out of the hurricane belt so the next four days we covered just over 210nm arriving in Beaufort, South Carolina.  Here we were meeting up with our friends, Colin and Maggie, who were in the process of buying their boat for the Great Loop.  It so happened that the Music Festival of the Lowcountry was being held that weekend.  They had various acts playing and topping the bill was a Michael Jackson tribute who have been touring since 2003.  They had some fans who it appeared were regulars at their gigs.  It did feel at some stages of the show that some believed MJ was really there.

In the US you have to be 21 to drink alcohol.  To get some drinks at the festival we had to buy tickets and it doesn’t matter how old you are, or how you look, you have to provide ID or no wrist band and no beer.  This is everywhere including the supermarket and the liquor store, you can only buy beer and wine in the supermarket.  Well I suppose if my birthday was 29^th February I would have only been 15!

Friday night is the start of the weekend so Friday night drinks it must be.  Colin and Maggie managed to sniff out a local brewery, Shellring, in Royal Port Landings, well you’d expect nothing less from them.  It became our regular Friday night haunt for a few weeks. It was a very popular place with various ales, which were very strong, to choose from.

Just before you arrive at the brewery there is the “Cypress Wetlands”.  As you drive past, at first glance, you think there are lovely white flowers on the trees.  Only when you get closer do you realise, they are birds.  On the other side of the boardwalk, we spotted an alligator chilling.  This place was stunning.  We watched one bird attempting to balance on a twig, he was wobbling about all over the place and eventually fell off and went for a branch!

As Colin and Maggie had a car, we decided to have a day out at Savannah.  Savannah is just how you imagine the towns of the deep south to be.  Wooden houses with verandas surrounded by trees.  Many of the trees are live oak trees with Spanish moss, which we were reliably informed on a Trolley Tour that they are not Spanish and it is not moss.  They look pretty stunning around the parks and roads.

There are two Brits who made their mark in Savannah, Georgia.  The first was James Edward Oglethorpe, born in Yorkshire, England in 1696.  On June 9, 1732, the crown granted a charter to the Trustees for Establishing the Colony of Georgia. Oglethorpe himself led the first group of 114 colonists on the frigate Anne, landing at the site of today’s Savannah on February 1, 1733. The original charter banned slavery and granted religious freedom.  He returned to England in 1743. 

The other Brit was John Wesley the founder of Methodism.  He was invited by James Oglethorpe to serve as a minister to the early settlers .  He arrived in Savannah in 1736, but only stayed for two years before returning to England.  John Wesley said “The first rise of Methodism was in 1729 when four of us met together at Oxford. The second was in Savannah in 1736 when twenty or thirty persons met at my house”.

Savannah is the birth place of Johnny Mercer, an American lyricist, songwriter, and singer, best known for his contributions to the Great American Songbook and his co-founding of Capitol Records.  He wrote over a 1,000 songs, including classics like “Moon River,” “Days of Wine and Roses,” and “Hooray for Hollywood” 

June 2025

We said our final goodbye to Cuffysark sailing catamaran in mid March when we handed her over to her new owners in Greece. 

Our next trip was to go to America  and buy a boat so we could do the Great Loop.  So, if you’re wondering what the Great Loop is, it’s a circumnavigation of the eastern U.S., and part of Canada.  The route includes the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, the New York State Canals, the Canadian Canals, the Great Lakes, the inland rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico.  Sections of it have fixed bridges that would mean taking the mast down on a sailing boat, so there’s was nothing for it we’ve gone over to the dark side and bought a motor boat!  Ian had extensively researched motor boats, mainly for something that was economical or as economical as a motor boat can be. Filling up with diesel is the only time I miss the sails.  We had an eye on a couple of boats but in the end decided on a Mainship 350 which has just one 300hp engine and a popular boat for the Great Loop.

We flew into Orlando, Florida on East Sunday 20th April. The boat survey was carried out two days later. We had rented a house and a car for three weeks and began preparing.  What the neighbours at the rental thought, we should have had shares in Amazon and Walmart. Luckily there was a big lounge for all the deliveries. It takes some getting used to how everyone drives everywhere, to the shops which all seem to be pretty big along big roads, and then drive home and shut themselves away in their air conditioned houses, it is very hot though! You can order stuff online and collect from the store and you don’t even have to get out of your car, you can have a kerb side pickup, that includes McDonalds too and then there’s the ATM drive thru! 

Between the survey and waiting for the report we drove up to Suwannee County in North Florida to go and see Ian’s cousin, Susan and her husband Mike. It was lovely to see them after many years. The landscape is very different in this part of Florida, now what we expected.  It was like driving out into parts of the English countryside, it was spectacular.  We had a trip around the local country park where there is a natural spring that is the same temperature all year around 72F.  Ian braved it and dipped his toe in the water, it felt freezing!  We were reliably informed that in the winter it feels warm. 

We had some jobs to do on the boat before we could launch, apart from cleaning which seems to be never ending, we had to antifoul.  Although, it’s not called that in the US, it’s bottom painting.  We were going to get someone to do the job for us, as after years of rubbing down and painting boats we thought we’d done our bit.  Yeah right, after being quoted $100 a foot we were definitely doing it ourselves!  It took us one and a half days to complete the job and saved a lot of dollars.

The boat was dropped back into the water on the afternoon of Monday 12^th May and the following morning an engineer arrived to service the engine.  We were able to leave later that afternoon and headed for an anchorage just along the way where every type of bug was waiting for us. 

In the US you have to have “Permission to Proceed” from port to port so we had to visit Customs and Border Protection who were at Fort Myers airport, to get a very important piece of paper, a cruising licence.   This was a very smooth and quick process.  Clutching it tightly in our hand we were now able to start our journey east onto the Atlantic side of the Inter Coastal Waterway, ICW.  The quickest route was to cut across the middle going through Lake Okeechobee, (what a great name) which is full of different wildlife including alligators and into the ICW. 

There were a number of locks we needed to go through to get there. Bit nervous the first time but we managed it with out any mishap.  The locks are open between 7am and 5pm, with last lock in at 4.30pm, way too late for the second lock so we anchored in front of it and was there ready at 7am the next morning.  In addition to the locks there are some bridges that had to be lifted or swing open for us to go through.  Two of them were for trains and both times we managed to arrive just as the trains were due to come through so we had to wait.

Before we could get onto the Lake we had to go along the Okeechobee Waterway which is very narrow and not very deep.  As we went along you could see eyes popping on heads with long snouts, yep alligators and there were loads and loads of them.  From entering the Lake to the other side, which you can’t do in a straight line as it is pretty shallow, is just under 30miles wide.  The Lake is particularly low this year as there’s not been a lot of rain.  We’ve only had one lot of rain since we’ve been here, admittedly it was heavy, but still not enough. 

As the Lake is shallow and the channels are narrow you have to keep a constant watch on where you’re going.  So after leaving Port Charlotte on the West coast of Florida, and 10 days we are in Melbourne, and that’s the east coast of Florida not Australia!

We were too late to start the Great Loop this year so we are planning on going up the East Coast, into Canada and back down again and begin the Great Loop in 2026.

May 2025