Blog

So far one of the most difficult aspects of this journey has been homesickness. We miss the regular interactions with family/friends/co-workers and are learning how to spend our time together without a daily work routine that takes us away from each other – providing varied topics for conversation over dinner. Our new routine was drastically different and we had to adjust to it. Slowing down in Brunswick aggravated this because we weren’t experiencing something new every day as we had been in the first three months of being constantly on the move. Both of us slid into a slump but through discussion realized the common cause. We embarked on this adventure for many reasons, one of which was to experience personal growth. We were feeling the growing pains and luckily we felt the relief of overcoming this particular bump through acknowledgment and understanding. (Rod just did an editorial review and said this sounded too much like Dr. Phil. Not being a fan of Dr. Phil…. Well, actually, I really can’t stand Dr. Phil…. this made me gag and want to change the entry. I’ve modified it some, but it still does sound a bit Dr. Phil-ish. Sorry.)

One of the best parts of slowing down in Brunswick has been making new friends. We have met a variety of interesting people that have been a wealth of knowledge as well as just plain enjoyable to be around. Some folks are fellow cruisers waiting out the hurricane season in preparation of heading South or to the Bahamas for the winter. Some live on their boats as residents and working citizens of the Brunswick area. Some live/work elsewhere and visit their boats on the weekends. All have been a pleasure to get to know and their eagerness to help us with whatever we need has been most appreciated.

Yes! We are now in final preparation mode to start heading south. Today is November 2, 2005 and we are planning to leave Brunswick within the next two weeks. Our plan is to head to Palm Beach, Florida, where we will wait, anchored at an area called Lake Worth, for a favorable weather window to make the crossing over to the Bahamas. It is 54 miles from Palm Beach to West End, Grand Bahama. Not far, but crossing the 25 mile wide Gulf Stream is a major milestone for most sailors. It will take us between 10 and 15 hours to make this short distance. We will stop at Grand Bahama and then spend the next three days traveling on to the Abacos, which are on the east side of the Bahama Bank. At this point, we are planning to spend the winter cruising the Abacos. Once we are there, we may decide to continue further south to explore Eleuthera and the Exumas (all part of the Bahamas). We will see once we get there where the wind takes us.

While Brunswick is not what I would describe as a destination city, it is situated next to the Golden Isles that include St. Simon and Jeckyll which attract their share of tourists seeking beautiful beaches and expansive golf courses. St. Simon is the bigger of the two islands but Jeckyll has a more interesting past and, in our opinion, was more beautiful with the old oak trees that canopy the roadways and drip Spanish moss from their expansive limbs. While that is a common sight around Georgia, it was especially cool on the small two-lane roads that circle the island. Jeckyll was once privately owned by a group of America’s wealthiest. Families such as the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Pulitzers, and a few others that had a few bucks to spare bought the island and formed their prestigious private Jeckyll Island club in 1886, limiting access on the island to only their elite members. Story has it that they didn’t even allow the President of the United States to visit because he wasn’t a member. Jeckyll is now owned by the state of Georgia (purchased in 1947) and further development is restricted to preserve it’s natural state.

The first week of October was thunderous and very wet due to Tropical Storm Tammy passing just south of us. We received somewhere around 16 inches of rain in 6 days and we had a couple of restless nights on the leading edge of the storm with the thunder shaking the boat and the lightening getting a little too close for comfort. There were many areas of Brunswick that experienced flooding that week, and we were not immune to the wet living conditions either. After discovering a soggy rug and a soaked settee cushion, we deduced that some areas of the boat were not water tight. We have added “rebed chain plates” to our list of projects. Fortunately that’s not a complex project and it’s one that needs to be done as a normal part of boat maintenance. Guess it was time for ours to be maintained.

What began as what we refer to as a Bargain Safari, ended up including a side of tourism in St. Augustine. We were motivated to visit St. Augustine again, this time by car, after we learned of a store called the Sailors Exchange, where one could find good deals on used and new equipment. It’s basically like a salvage yard. A boater’s dream! At Sailors Exchange we bought Sunbrella cloth for a deck shade and other projects at approximately 60% of the normal retail price per yard. We also bought enough Triple B chain to replace and increase the length of our current primary anchor chain. This too was at a very good price. During our 4 hour scavenge at Sailors Exchange Rod found a welding shop next door where he scored a piece of stainless steel pipe needed for the windlass installation and we also learned of some local wood workers where we might get some small pieces of teak also needed for the windlass. By this time it was after 5:00 so we had to make a decision – drive the approx. 100 miles back to Brunswick and then return the next day to track down the teak, or spend a spontaneous night in St. Augustine. With the price of gas around $3.00 per gallon and our general inclination toward the spontaneous, we decided to spend the night. That decision allowed us to be tourists for the remainder of the evening and wander the quaint streets of this historic city, where Rod claimed to sense the presence of ghostly pirates. We even found the restaurant/bar in the tree, The MillTop, that Chris had told us about from their visit to St. Augustine.

Once we were mentally settled in to Brunswick after returning from Orlando, we started adding things to our project list, prioritizing, and determining where to begin. Here is a sampling from the list (yes, this is just a sampling):

Install Racor 500 fuel filter
Install solar panels
Order new sails
Install Windlass
Install chain stopper
Install new bow deck cleat
Install manual galley pump
Move raw water strainer on engine
Determine email/weatherfax solution for Bahamas
Connect GPS to network and radio
Install deck pipe for stern anchor
Buy 4-person off-shore life-raft
Fix auto-pilot mount
Add cheek blocks and cleats to boom for reefing
Repair Mack Pack zipper
Check water in batteries
Install Monitor wind steering system
Replace mast boot
Various sewing projects – bumper covers, TV cover, sunshade, windlass cover
Get ship’s clock fixed
Polish stainless and aluminum
Polish fuel and tank

Brunswick, Georgia

Brunswick has an active waterfront that is home to one of the largest shrimp boat fleets on the east coast and is frequented by ginormous (sic) container ships. The city is similar to Lewiston, Idaho in size and smell. Koch Cellulose operates a large pulp mill in the area that provides an aroma that is only rivaled by the daily low tide. While Brunswick is not a large city, is does offer convenient shopping for most of the items we need for our projects. We tend to frequent Home Depot, Wal-Mart, West Marine, and Boaters World along with the various specialty metal shops to locate items for our projects. The Colonial Mall offers some other typical Mall shops as well as a movie theater that we’ve gone to a couple of times. There are no Albertson’s in Brunswick, so we do our grocery shopping at Publix or Winn-Dixie. They even carry “Idaho Potatoes”!

Slow down, you move too fast…. You got make the morning last…
After sailing over 1000 miles in the initial 6 weeks of our adventure, we’ve certainly slowed our traveling pace since arriving in Brunswick, Georgia at the end of August. And that’s not just because we’re fitting in with the southern style, even though that happens to be our roots. My (Lisa’s) great grandmother was from the neighboring state of Tennessee. Her name was Sidney Lier Bolton, being named after a famous poet of the 19th century, Sydney Lanier, who was from Macon, Georgia. One of his most famous pieces of work, “The Marshes of Glynn”, was written here in Brunswick (Glynn County). We sailed under the massive Sidney Lanier bridge on our way in to Brunswick! I had no idea I was arriving in a place that had such a connection to one of my ancestors!

When we first arrived in Brunswick, we intended on sitting tight for a week or so while Hurricane Ophelia determined her path. As that initial week passed and we used that time for some exploration of the area and for making extensive lists of what we wanted to do to get the boat ready for the winter in the Bahamas, we made the decision to not continue north any further and to wait out the remainder of the very active hurricane season in this relatively safe harbor. This non-travel period would allow us the necessary time to check off the items from our growing list of projects.

Since this lengthy log entry captures a variety of activities and projects since arriving in Brunswick, it is divided into sections for easier perusal.

We just want to let everyone know that we are still safe and hunkered down in a marina in Brunswick, Georgia, where we plan to remain until the weather begins to moderate. Tropical storm Ophelia is stalled off the East coast of Central Florida and predicted to move slowly North or Northwest before turning back out to sea. We are keeping a close watch. Other active hurricanes in the Atlantic, Nate and Maria, pose no threat to us.