On Saturday, the sun was just starting to light the sky when we cast our lines, but it was shaded by a big cloud, keeping us in deep darkness (much darker than when the picture was taken) that made it difficult to see the unlit channel markers, let alone discern red from green.

“What is your waterline differential?” is a question you don’t want to hear the captain ask at 5 am in the dark as he tries to find the channel. Galene draws 3 feet and when he asked the question, I immediately looked at the depth sounder, which was showing 2.9 feet.

Fortunately, our depth sounder measures the depth from the keel to the bottom and the keel is 3 feet below the waterline so we were actually in close to 6 feet of water and not running aground. However, the props extend a few feet below the keel, and poking around in the dark trying to find the channel was not smart. In hindsight, Greg and I should have insisted that we wait for better light before departing, and we should have used our spotlight to see the channel markers. Having never had a built-in spotlight before, we didn’t think to use it. Just another of many lessons learned on this trip.

I took the helm after we found the channel and as the daylight grew, I noticed that our bow line had not been removed from the cleat, which is a potentially dangerous situation because the line could easily slide off the deck and run under the boat and snag something, or worse, wash into the prop if it’s long enough. Another reason to wait for adequate light.

Once we were out to sea, the day was uneventful until the engine alarms started blaring about water in the fuel.

We knew this wasn’t a false alarm, because the day before as I was pumping the fuel, Greg was washing down the decks. Suddenly I noticed that the water was running down the deck and into the fuel filler hole. He immediately stopped the washdown, but enough water had gotten in to cause a problem. Fortunately, our hired captain knew how to remove the water from the water separator fuel filters. In the picture below, Greg is handing Captain Rob tools and a cup to collect the water from the filters. Captain Rob is down in the engine room draining the filters. All of this is happening in moderately choppy seas well offshore of land.

Once the filters were cleared of water (only about 4 ounces), we were back underway and we didn’t have any more issues. Our third learning moment of the day.

We arrived at our home marina at the Oyster Bay Yacht Club in Fernandina Beach, FL at 3:30 pm. Some friends had heard the news of our arrival and met us at the dock with champagne while our niece Nadia and the harbormaster Josh caught some Sheepshead.

The morning of Nov 5th leaving Ocean City started out calm, but the seas built to 4-5 foot chop by 10am. We set out at dawn to get ahead of the worst seas because Cape Hatteras is renown for extreme ocean conditions and our experience was consistent with the reputation.

After about 7 hours of being tossed, we tucked into the city marina at Morehead City, NC. The marina offers a loaner car, so I set out for some essential provisions like wine and Jefferson Oceans bourbon.

Knowing that Friday was forecast to be more of the same choppy seas, with a small craft advisory, we set out of Morehead City at first light, only to be met with 5’ swells.

It quickly turned into 2-3 foot wind driven whitecaps with 5-6 foot swells which feels like a rollercoaster ride. Having left at dawn with no breakfast, we were ready for lunch at 10am, so we slowed the boat down enough to go below to make some ham and turkey sandwiches.

After 8 hours of heavy seas (exhausting!) we turned into the entrance to Georgetown, SC and took the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) to McClellanville.

McClellanville is an old, beautiful, quiet shrimping village. We walked about 10 minutes to a local restaurant called TW Grahams, which reminded me of Hymel’s in Louisiana…a generations-old dive with great seafood and service.

Our boat’s name is Galene, named after the Greek goddess of calm seas. Today, after three days of rough seas, she finally lived up to her name.

We cruised at around 25 knots which is our best efficiency, burning 1 gallon of fuel per hour. For a boat this size, that’s pretty good. The calm seas made for a relaxing ride for the crew and the captain.

Tonight we are overnighting at Rudee’s Inlet at Virginia Beach. There are very few inlets in North Carolina, so we needed to stop here tonight to top off our fuel for a very long passage tomorrow to Morehead City.

Virginia Beach is a huge military site and on the way here, a military vessel was on the radio warning boats in the area to stay away from it. F18s fly over our boat in the marina about every 30 minutes. Greg sat on the bow trying to get a video, but they stopped flying. As soon as he gave up, they started back up. By then it was time for Sundowners in the cockpit, so we didn’t get a video of the fighter jets, but we did enjoy some good wine and chats with slip-neighbors.

The crazy 25 knot wind finally slowed down around noon so we could depart Cape May, but we didn’t get an early enough start to make it very far. Like Sunday, we were in 4 foot waves, but today they were off our rear quarter instead of head-on, which made for a bumpy but better ride.

We docked around 3pm in Ocean City, Maryland and since my sister Kelly and her husband Peter live about an hour away in Cambridge, MD, they met us for docktails on the boat then we went to a restaurant for dinner.

As we were placing our orders at the restaurant, the waitress presented a gift card from our parents. How did they know where we were? Well, earlier I had texted Dad that we had arrived at the marina safely and that we were having dinner with Kelly and Peter. He (jokingly) texted that he would have the private jet fly him and Mom in. He asked for the name of the restaurant, which I gave him, completely naive to his ploy, then he called the restaurant and bought a gift card. How tricky and clever is that?

We ate at the Shark on the Harbor and had a delicious meal of fried oysters, crab cakes, perfectly cooked duck, swordfish, and two desserts. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

Sunday night we had the best pizza of our lives at Lucky Bones. If you are ever in Cape May, don’t miss this place. The restaurant was a sit-down place, but the menu said this particular pizza was for takeout-out only. Greg launched into his full-on negotiation-mode; pleading that it was raining out, and a full moon, and that we were on a boat with limited space (you get the picture), so they made an exception for us and we were beyond happy to get to eat pizza from a box in the dining room. After dinner, the owner came over and we chatted about various topics like the challenges of running a local restaurant during COVID and the local fishing scene. At the end, he said he was going to add a personal size of that pizza to his menu based on our request.

Monday we rented a car and ran all over town to get the parts to bypass the faulty sensor. While we had wheels, we picked up some essential stuff: additional water, bread, and wine.

Tonight we are having leftover pizza and a salad.

This is how we roll…wine in Solo cups with bottled salad dressing and plastic tableware. Greg is in the galley reheating one slice of pizza at a time in the microwave to warm the top, then toasting it in an 8” skillet to crisp the bottom.

The morning started out great with this beautiful sunrise, decent seas, and we saw two whales! They surfaced so quickly, I couldn’t get a picture but the dorsal fin looked like a Fin Whale.

In the distance behind Greg, you can see Atlantic City. Notice that his hands are not on the wheel. That’s because we have auto-pilot, which is a nautical version of a self-driving car. The boat is more efficient when operating on auto-pilot because it maintains a steadier track and pace, plus it’s a lot less tiring for the person at the helm.

If the day had remained as pretty as the sunrise, we would be in Norfolk, VA this evening, but the weather had other plans for us. We knew today was going to be a wild ride so we set Atlantic City as our “conservative” destination, Cape May as “maybe”, and Ocean City, MD as our “optimistic” one. Well, as the seas built up to 4-6 foot waves, we slowed from 25 knots to 16, then 14, where we were doing ok with only the occasional wave washing over our roof.

The first picture is the normal view through the windshield and the second picture is how it looks when a wave washes over the bow and sometimes the roof. This morning, I would have named the auto-pilot as my favorite feature, but now the windshield wipers take the prize.

An engine alarm sounded when we were about 5 miles from Cape May, which slowed us to 11 knots, then 8 knots for the last few miles. The alarm was a high exhaust temperature warning, but both engines were running cool and after a few trips down to the engine room by Captain Rob, neither exhaust tube felt hot. Our mechanic was kind enough to answer his cell phone on a Sunday and he and Captain Rob agree that it is most likely a faulty sensor, which we will fix tomorrow if we can get the part.

We docked at Canyon Club Marina in Cape May around noon and Greg whipped up some chili dogs for lunch.

Tomorrow we will remain under gale warnings with 25 knot winds so we will likely stay put in Cape May until Tuesday. That will give us time to figure out the engine alarm situation too.

On Friday, the day before our departure, it snowed. The Captain we hired (Captain Rob) flew in from Florida and managed to drive to Cape Cod on slick, traffic-clogged roads while Greg and I slogged through the rain and snow carrying last-minute provisions to the boat.

We spent our first night on the boat on Friday night for an early departure on Saturday morning. We awoke to find icy decks and frozen dock lines that were a challenge to untie with frigid fingers.

That blue dock line is standing straight up because it is frozen solid.

Greg and Captain Rob trying not to slip off the icy dock and boat deck.

Our boat has a joystick control, just like a video game, for maneuvering around the docks. You can see Greg’s hand on the joystick and he did a stellar job getting us out of the slip for the first time.

We had choppy seas until we crossed Long Island Sound, then the seas calmed for the rest of the nine hour ride to the Manasquan River in Brielle, NJ where we spent the night at Hoffman’s Marina. We walked to a restaurant for dinner and turned in early.