Our SPOT tracker on the left has gotten a bit confusing, as we have abandoned ship briefly and taken a roadtrip inland! My parents are celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary in Scotland next week, so rather than attempt to outpace what has become a major hurricane, we decided to tuck Betty into a protected river in New Jersey and take a vacation from our vacation. We are here in Atlanta retrieving our car, which we’ll leave in Boston while we’re away. We rejoin the boat at the end of September and will bring her to Boston for the winter.

That said, I have finally updated our Flickr set with pictures from the Chesapeake. Our trip up the Bay deserves its own post, but for now, enjoy the visual story.

I’ve been keeping mental notes about our trip up the ICW and finally put them all together this week. Technically, the Intracoastal includes the Hudson River, New Jersey’s inside waterways, and the Chesapeake. For us, it may include Long Island Sound and the Cape Cod Canal. Every time we “go outside” and make a passage in the ocean, we are a little bit thankful to have the ICW as an option. And never moreso than with kids. It can be a slog. A slow, crowded slog. But it promises relatively settled, safe waters and good anchorages (in most places). It’s one thing to put two adults on a boat and ask them to endure rolling seas and sleep deprivation for a few days. Kids, on the other hand, have no need to prove anything to themselves. Their perspective is a bit more limited. A steady table for their coloring books, some time at the end of the day to play with us, or on a special day, to go ashore and swim or run- that’s all they’re after. So that’s what we set out to find.

Miami Beach has a lovely anchorage on the north side of the Venetian Causeway bridge- I can imagine it’s jammed in the wintertime. We dinghied ashore at the police marine patrol docks. Publix was two blocks away. The girls had a lovely playground at their disposal. We explored up the Collins Canal but would not have left our dinghy there without a big chain.

Las Olas Municipal Marina in Fort Lauderdale deserves high praise. We picked up a mooring there and dinghied in- the girls loved being at the beach (two blocks), and we rode the free weekend trolley which takes you right through Fort Lauderdale, to the science museum, library, lots of shopping. The thing that amazes me about Fort Lauderdale is how BIG some of the boats are sitting behind people’s houses. Sometimes bigger than the houses themselves. It’s ridiculous.

We spent nearly a week in the Palm Beaches. First at the big anchorage south of Peanut Island and the Lake Worth inlet. It’s breezy and spacious but there’s basically nowhere to go ashore. A local live aboard recommended the anchorage in North Palm, at the very northern edge of Lake Worth. It was lovely- tons of room, no current, with a great dinghy landing under a bridge in the canal going to Little Lake Worth. Just down the road was a huge mall with Publix, Starbucks, a pub, and a West Marine not far beyond. The girls swam at the dinghy landing and left a few sandcastles behind.

We put into North Palm Beach Marina for a few nights waiting out Tropical Storm Bonnie. Great rates, good service, and access to a ginormous pool at the country club across Rt.1. Kid heaven.

Fast forward to Fernandina, where we spent three nights at anchor. The marina has been dredged and had we wanted a slip, they were offering good rates. We did dinghy in and use their facilities, including a super-nice television lounge that was a respite in the 400 million degree heat. Great town with restaurants, bookstores, taxis to shopping. We visited the local library and participated in their Wednesday story hour. Rosy was fond of the trains on the waterfront. If we ever go back, we’ll spend some time at the fort on the northern end of the island.

Our one night in Georgia we spent in Walburg Creek, off St. Catherine’s Island. I loved the deep creeks of Georgia and South Carolina. We plowed through the ditch to a second creek just west of Daufuskie Island the next night- I’ll never forget sitting in the cockpit with Rosy, in this lonely, narrow creek, and seeing a huge tourboat coming over the marsh, right at us. With another one right behind it. Our secret was out. “And on your right, the disheveled, hot mother of two with her naked baby and her wine glass.” Classic.

Beaufort, South Carolina has a great marina on the downtown waterfront. We met my parents there- they stayed directly across the street at a hotel. But had we needed it, the marina has a courtesy car for shopping. We found a West Marine in Port Royal, with a PigglyWiggly behind it. The waterfront park goes from the marina to the swing bridge and contains a really cool, unique playground with a nautical theme. The girls also discovered shave ice on that hot Sunday in the park.

Charleston City Marina is hardly a municipal marina, but for a premium ($2 a foot has been our highest on the trip), we spent the night at their “Megadock” alongside the big yachts. The facilities were beautiful. They have a courtesy van for shopping, and were essentially just steps from downtown. We thoroughly enjoyed our romp through Mt. Pleasant and Sullivan’s Island, thanks to our friends Haddie and Dino. It was a great occasion to stop in beautiful Charleston.

We spent another night in a creek south of Georgetown, SC and were truly attacked by an army of mosquitoes. They swarmed. We got the nets up and started exterminating those that made it in, but it was fairly unforgettable. The next four or five days are a blur of busy, narrow stretches of the ICW with no anchorages. The jet skis and wakes were truly maddening. Our best stop was south of Southport, NC at St. James Plantation. The marina was among the lowest priced we’ve seen ($1/ft!), but really well-maintained and had a restaurant and store on-site. The girls made fairy houses in the woods nearby and were completely smitten with the wild mushrooms growing all over the lawns of the condos around the marina basin.

Which brings us to Oriental, NC, home of the best coffee on the ICW (thank you, staff of the The Bean, for half a dozen cups or more) and a lovely local restaurant, M&Ms Café. The girls and I found a playground three or four blocks from the marina, and a great park along the river. It’s a sleepy town. Don’t go there expecting to do much but eat, play and drink coffee. No amenities beyond that! Which is how we like it.

Our intention the next night was to anchor off Belhaven, but between the heat and an urgent need for toilet paper, we went into a dock at an old Southern plantation/estate famous for it’s Southern smorgasboard of a buffet. Turns out the restaurant only opens once a week now and the old house looked and smelled like a relic from a bygone age. The eeriest thing was walking in and seeing dozens of tables set for dinner, with white tablecloths and napkins, like a family of ghosts was expected after hours. We were the only boat at the dock, which should have given us fair warning. When we asked about shopping in town, we were offered the “street-legal” golf cart, which had no brakes or signals, as it turned out. John got the 411 on its operation- “To stop it, you put it in reverse and step on the gas. Just like a boat, Cap’n, just like a boat.” That trip to the Food Lion will go down in our collective family memory as the most unusual shopping trip ever. I told John at some point that it felt like a continuation of the boat, moving along this main road at 5 miles an hour. The world from a very different perspective. Just like a boat, cap’n.

We braved the wilds of the Alligator River and spent a nice night at anchor north of the Alligator-Pungo River Canal. In Elizabeth City we were the only cruising boat at the town’s fabled free dock, and we are happy to give sufficient warning: Grouper’s Restaurant, adjacent to the town dock features bad cover bands at extremely high volumes on Saturday night. The girls quest for wildlife led us down to the Waterfront Park where we fed a large flock of geese and ducks. The Museum of the Albermarle looked lovely and inviting, but was closed on Sunday.

So off we went to the Dismal Swamp! On our last trip, and on this one, the Dismal Swamp Canal was hands-down, the best part of the waterway. Its speed and draft restrictions keep the big boats away. It is a sailor’s paradise. Through a gorgeous, dense forest! We locked through at South Mills Sunday afternoon and tied up to the free dock maintained by the North Carolina Visitors Center. Two fabulous ladies welcomed us and we planted ourselves in the sitting area, with a book exchange and a kid’s table (genius). Half in jest, John asked where we could get a pizza and sure enough, Geneva, one of the kindest people on the East Coast, took him down to South Mills after work where he secured two pizzas from the local convenience store. The girls were over the moon, having a pizza picnic in the woods. We spent the next morning exploring the new Dismal Swamp State Park, with a beautiful boardwalk and visitors center. Sophie and John succeeded in her quest to catch a butterfly. The butterflies and dragonflies are reason enough to visit the Swamp.

On our way to Norfolk, we spent one last Dismal night at the free dock in Deep Creek, VA. There is a Mexican restaurant beside the bascule bridge that we remembered fondly from our 2004 trip. It was still in operation and though the margaritas were a bit weak, the food was still excellent. We also happened upon the easiest provisioning we found on the entire Waterway. Literally a few hundred feet from the boat, we had a supermarket and an auto parts store (for oil). It doesn’t get easier than that.

The lockkeeper at Deep Creek was the same guy we met in 2004. He even asked if we’d brought him a conch shell (which he asked us to bring back six years ago). He’s a bit grayer but every bit as nice and helpful. Into the Elizabeth River we went . . . mile marker 0 is at Hospital Point in Portsmouth, VA. We tied up to get fuel and water, and a break from the heat just south of High Street Landing in Portsmouth. The ICW, over 1000 miles. Accomplished.

More soon . . . . and more pictures in our Trip Set on Flickr.

We are in the village of dragons. Everywhere you look- dragon statues, dragon murals, even dragon eggs. My Puff-obsessed children are in heaven. We love Oriental. We love the sleepiness. We love that we can walk off the dock here, up to the coffee shop, and speak to everyone inside by the time we leave. People already know my girls’ names. It’s a lovely little place that reminds me of Maine.

The 100 degree heat and overpriced cab fare kept us from re-provisioning today. The stars just wouldn’t align. As I was sitting on the banks of the Neuse River in an Adirondack chair with my feet up, watching the afternoon breeze fill in, I realized that perhaps that was exactly what we needed. A day with no sailing, no motoring, no shopping, no maintenance. A day that was long enough to have three coffees, two trips to the playground, a long sit by the river, a few $1 beers and fries, and an icecream for the ladies. I realized that had we found a cheap cab or a local ride up to the stores, we would have shortchanged the girls the time they so desperately needed spinning and sliding in the park. We needed the excuse to stop and sit.

I’ll admit, it has been hard for me to pull the throttle back and fall into to the slow routines of cruising once again. We travel the East Coast at 5 miles an hour. It takes multiple days for us to travel distances a car covers in hours. But somehow the sense of accomplishment that comes after a 50 miles day on the ditch is just as satisfactory as any other trip. We are that much closer to somewhere new.

Rosy wakes up from her nap and says, “Are we anchored yet?” Not because she’s tired of the trip, but because dropping the hook means something new. That’s truly what all this is about.

Today, as we entered Myrtle Beach, it was like a switch went off. It seemed like there was a new development every ten feet. Brand new houses, new docks, golf courses, people everywhere. Jet skis were all over the place. We would meet big oncoming powerboats in the narrowest sections of the channel and have not an inch of room to move over. I felt like we needed an escort vessel with flags on both sides. Instead of wide load it would say DEEP DRAFT! But honestly, the folks zooming around us wouldn’t have understood. They remind me of the black houseflies we have on the boat. They just swarm, with no particular destination in mind. Always buzzing, oblivious, irritating.

The good news? We are moored in North Carolina. Another state line crossed. I have nothing but rave reviews for the ICW in Georgia and South Carolina (with the one exception of Myrtle Beach). We were careful about the tides and used them to help us through the low-water spots (and there were some), but the abundance of deep-water creeks and isolated anchorages was just lovely. The stretch we’re in now has very few of those winding creeks to drop a hook in. We miss that. On the flipside, we’ve come across some very affordable, accommodating marinas, most of which didn’t exist five years ago when we sailed south. Development is a double-edged sword. North Carolina maintains their stretch of the waterway, but only because it is a maven for tourism. I think I may prefer the unpredictable, isolated waters of its more southerly neighbors. The Waccamaw, the Dawho, Minim Creek, Edisto, St. Catherine’s island . . . just plain lovely.

More pictures on Flickr. And more jetskis tomorrow, if we don’t choose to rest.

I’ve been following a group of blogs by cruisers traveling together through the South Pacific. One boat, IO, was visited by some non-sailors who wrote a really wonderful letter to Mike and Hyo, her owners. For me, it truly summed up the “real” cruising we do everyday, whether it’s in French Polynesia or off the coast of Georgia.

“Kevin and I wanted to thank you both for an unbelievable vacation. Both the highs and the lows are an experience we will soon not forget, although it’s only the highs I can think of right now. The amazing ocean life, both on land and in the water. The different people and their boats we met and will remember forever. The infinite stars, beautiful moon and sun rises. The sunrises on Moorea were amazing. The indescribable blue of the water. It’s really interesting when I mention to people the demographic that we met sailing. “how can they afford to live like that”? or ” they must be rich”. I just laugh and tell them anything is possible when you are determined, aren’t focused on material wealth and chose to live your dream. I am also getting a lot of comments on” what a glamorous way to live” or “how romantic”. Again I just laugh, if they only knew how glamorous and romantic sea sickness is or staying awake all night to the rocking of the boat and the sound of chain rubbing on coral! Wondering how big the swells will get.”

We feel lucky to be in a position to opt out of the swells and the seasickness. We can go out and sail when the weather is good. We can motor up the Intracoastal for the next 10 days if it’s not. Sleep deprivation is a current low. Making miles towards Maine every day- a big high. There are the lows of small lapses in communication made every day, countered by the high of watching your kids gleefully run down gangways to show their home to friends we haven’t seen in years. There is the low of having the current push you out of the breeze on a sweltering night, and waking up to a dozen flies in the boat (unwanted passengers at this point). But the high for me comes at the end of the day, slowly motoring into a deep creek, the only boat in sight, dropping the hook and thinking, this is why we do this. It can be beautiful and romantic. It can be hard, hot, and irritating, and infinitely challenging. It wouldn’t be cruising without hard work.The very name belies the reality!

We are in Beaufort. The Beaufort in South Carolina that’s pronounced “BEEEUUUUUfort,” as opposed to the Beaufort in North Carolina that sounds more like “Bo-fort.” We are retracing our steps. Four and a half years ago we came through here, just ourselves, left the boat here and went to see my family for the holidays. This weekend we arrived in a new boat, with two kids, and my folks waiting at the dock. An odd symmetry . . .

It is a lovely town with Spanish moss on the old oaks. There’s a beautiful bend in the river that frames the marsh and the gracious old houses behind it. It exudes South Carolina, in the best ways. Humidity and all!

The girls were thrilled beyond belief to see their grandparents. I won’t soon forget walking into their cold hotel room to hear the ladies splashing in the bathtub (what a luxury!) and having my Dad offer us a cold beer. Perfect. We cleaned up and ate our way through the next thirty-six hours, replenishing all the calories we’ve sweated away. It’s simply too hot to eat much underway. We heard reports of heat indexes in the 110-120 range here in the Lowcountry. NOAA Weather Radio warns us to stay in air-conditioned quarters (hah!). We drank 20 gallons of water in two and a half days.

And yet the girls don’t complain. They soldier on, drawing endless variations of superheroes and dragons. They watch Robin Hood and Wall-E and Curious George. They eat crackers and drink lemonade. They put stickers on things. I bought a book of 700 stickers in Fernandina Beach and we have stuck our way through nearly all of it. They are wonderful companions- patient, willing, and ready for the next adventure, even if it’s just a ride on a tiller, or a pretty sunset, or a dolphin off the stern. It’s all good to them, and frankly, that rubs off on us.

Thank you family for a lovely few days- in “Booful Buu-furt.”

Rosy got sick. I managed to get some Dramamine into Sophie in time, but Rosy had a long day. It take me most of a day to get past my own seasickness, so it shouldn’t have surprised me. The adrenaline, and the easterly swell kept both John and I up most of the first night. Then, on Sunday morning, we lost the wind. It totally, and completely died. We never intended to motor for four days. We don’t carry enough fuel to make that kind of passage under power alone (we do have sails, afterall), and we had no desire to sit and be rocked by the swells while waiting for wind. So, on to Plan B.

By Sunday afternoon, the day felt very normal. Just like motoring up the ICW. I did the dishes, the ladies played with Playdough. Their appetites returned. John took a nap while I took my turn in the sun (oh my, it was HOT). The wind picked up around sunset and we were in for an entirely different ride. We still haven’t figured out quite why- the moon tides, we think- but those last eight hours into St. Mary’s inlet were a rollercoaster down quartering seas. We took turns sleeping (and having been up the night before, we SLEPT despite the rollers). The girls slept in their leecloth like rocks (thank you, Dramamine). The highlight was seeing a pod of tiny porpoises jumping through the waves around us, chasing flying fish, their black bodies all lit up by the moon. Somehow the wind subsided just in time for us to make our grand entrance, past the shrimpers headed out at 5AM. We dropped the hook in the Amelia River just as the moon set.

We’ve spent the last few days in our favorite town in Florida, trying to make sense of the randomness of the weather, and the unexpected swells. We’ve gone back and forth about whether to go inside to Charleston and Beaufort, or to travel up the coast. Whatever we decide, I try to keep John’s mantra of , “Every option is on the table,” handy in my mind. As the ocean clearly abides by that philosophy as well.

You just never know. You plan, you adjust, and you take what you can get. For us, that’s been a nice sojourn in Fernandina Beach. And that’s not much to complain about.

Today it finally happened. We still have a to-do list, but nothing on the list keeps us from the here and now. The blissful breeze that comes down our hatches and keeps us up in the cockpit in the evenings, while the girls tie ropes around our legs and say things like, “It’s booful (beautiful) Mama. So booful.” Nothing that keeps us from preparing to go offshore, weather-permitting (go away, ugly storm!).

The first night we were at anchor we walked out on deck and could see not only the stars, but the Milky Way streaming over the Keys. I hadn’t seen it since the night before our wedding, on the coast of Maine. There are few things more spectacular in the natural world, from our perspective. It was like the universe lined itself up to say, “Welcome back. Welcome back to where you’ve always wanted to be.” This was the life we chose to live together and finally, we are here once again, with no intention of looking back.

As John said last night, standing in the cockpit in this lovely anchorage, “Why would anyone NOT want to live this life?”

Truly. We are thankful, Universe.

That said, the anchorages we’ve managed to discover have been nothing short of lovely. We spent two nights in a nice spot in Miami Beach, two nights on a mooring in Fort Lauderdale, last night off the Lake Worth inlet, and tonight, up in a nice cove at the northern reaches of the lake. The girls were beside themselves with glee when we pulled the dinghy in to go shopping and found a nice, sandy swimming hole under a bridge. They were in the water before we could ponder the question of swimming. Of course we will swim. Of course.

The ladies have been wonderful. The other big downside to the ICW is that there are long stretches where I’m watching for buoys and shoals and John is steering, leaving the girls to manage themselves. They watch Curious George, color and draw, play with Play-dough, sleep, eat, repeat. It’s insufferably hot in the cockpit with a bulky lifejacket, so they bide their time down below. They never complain. Today on our short passage, they played some involved imaginary “Make you into a princess and sell the shark for three quarters” game. I am glad they have each other, and deep down, they are too.

The highlights for them come when the adventures onshore begin. Just riding a bucking dinghy in a chop is fun. Add that to a thunderstorm while waiting for a trolley, and then an impromptu swim in the ocean. Every day is new. Every day is different. For them, that’s enough.

Cross your fingers for the wind to go south, or southeast, or west, or southwest. We might get our chance this weekend. But I shouldn’t have said that.

We’ve been underway two and half days and just like that, we’ve set up temporary housekeeping in Miami Beach. It’s a wonderful and strange thing, to travel from place to place with your home fully intact. Our routines, our possessions, our habits simply follow us. Like a turtle’s shell, John always says.

Spot is frustrating me with it’s odd inability to upload our positions automatically. But I will continue to work out the bugs. For now, here’s our map!

Tomorrow is a day off for some shopping and boat projects, in hope of making a long passage outside the Intracoastal later this week. We need the East winds to abate- universe, send us good vibes!

Speaking of which, we had a big karmic moment on Monday afternoon. We were trying to get off the dock and out to an anchorage, just to set ourselves up for Tuesday’s run. Just after four o’clock John tried to start the dinghy motor and it wouldn’t run. Diagnosis: a clogged carburetor (thank you, Ethanol!). He raced up to the outboard shop owned by a friend of ours, Eric, who we met on our trip south five years ago. We led Eric and his family through Biscayne Bay, and across to the oceanside via Angelfish Creek. As we retraced those same steps today, almost exactly, it reminded me of how the universe had paid us back. Our little bit of help was paid back in spades, as Eric took the carburetor apart and got us back underway in less than an hour. You never know. You just don’t.

Love from Miami Beach, and more soon.