Monday, December 8, 2015

Trip to remember!!!

I am finally sitting down to document our wonderful trip down from New Hampshire to Florida!

We started our adventure September 19. We experienced a mixed bag of emotions -leaving New Hampshire, excited about starting a new chapter in our life and saying goodbye to family, friends and the routines of normal life on land.

 The first part of our trip we headed down to Sandwich, MA where we picked up our temporary crew, Pam and Jeff. Jeff was our broker who found Sweet Ride for us and was the perfect person to have aboard to help us get really comfortable with cruising.

After a fabulous run down to New York and cruising down the East River we ran into a little problem! Weather!!! Here we were, trying to do our first night run and by the time we past Sandy Hook, the seas were very uncomfortable. We had not experienced 7 - 9 foot waves head on and we quickly decided that although Pam and Jeff were willing and able to continue on, Christopher and I were not so brave!! Andy was also in favor of turning back!!! Trying to lay on the bed, he was thrown into the air several times! Meow!!! We turned back, tucked into an safe cove by Sandy Hook and waited until morning. Weather conditions were not going to improve with the threat of a hurricane and the onslaught of another storm, so we decided to take the boat to a safe harbor, Liberty Landing in New Jersey, across from Manhattan. I was in full favor of that, since I really enjoy New York City.

  

( Our first time backing into a slip! It was so tight. Woohooo!!! Not a scratch.)

It took 14 days to get a good weather window! By that time, Jeff and Pam had to departed for other obligations.  We decided to do our first real night run on our own.

Fortunately, we had met a nice couple on a Nordhavn 47, Dragonfly, that were also heading south. We buddy boated with them for the next weak and were grateful to have that bit of support during night runs and anchorages. We definitely gained more confidence and by the time we continued our trip on our own we felt so comfortable with our boat.
Our trip consisted of a combination of ocean runs and Intracoastal Waterway runs. We loved the excitement of seeing small places like Beaufort, NC and large cities like Charleston!




There were also a  surprising number of dolphins that loved traveling with us. I think we photographed them daily!

                                            (The ICW gave me so much to photograph.)

(Here was a little souvenir we found floating in in the ICW in Coinjock, VA. Haha!!! Rather large for our boat, but well worth fishing it out of the water.)

We arrived in Stuart, Florida on October 27th. We felt like we had truly accomplished something. Now we are resting, planning and getting the boat ready for our next trip!