For the Memorial Day weekend, we had made perfect timing to be able to spend it with David’s family in Rowayton, and we arrived there on Friday. On Saturday, we were welcomed by John and Joan and had a lovely dinner together at their local restaurant – which happened to be the first restaurant we ate at (outdoors) after the Covid quarantine. They were kind enough to give us the use of their car for the weekend to get back and forth between the yacht club where we moored and their house. On Sunday we did a big re-provision and visited Costco for the first time in a year! Sunday night, we headed to John and Joan’s house for dinner and, to our surprise, by David’s cousin Kevin who was in town for the weekend for a bachelor party and had decided to surprise his father for Father’s Day.

On Monday morning, we were joined by Paul and Nancy and all had a lovely brunch aboard Highwind! I made pancakes, waffles, and french toast – it was quite a feast.

With the weather forecast looking good for crossing the sound, we left Rowayton on the holiday Monday and headed towards Greenport, where we planned to meet up with Steve on his boat for the following weekend. As it turned out, he had also used the good weather for the weekend to bring his boat to the area, so on Tuesday after work we were invited to join him and his friends at the house they had rented for a barbecue dinner.

On Friday, with a somewhat light schedule on my part, we were joined in the afternoon by Steve, Lauren, their friends and daughter, plus Nick and his son Noah. Interspersed with a few work calls, we enjoyed the good weather and good company for happy hour before returning to land for dinner.

On Saturday, we pulled anchor and headed to Coecles Harbor on Shelter Island, where we were joined by Steve and Lauren on their boat (1 hour cruise for us, 15 min cruise for them!). It was a beautiful calm bay and very warm, so we enjoyed a swim from the boats and then we ate homemade sourdough pizza.

Lauren and Steve returned back to Greenport in the afternoon and David and I spent a lazy afternoon on the boat – me reading and him coding. A perfect day!

With the Platform secured, and a favorable 2-day weather window, we woke up early and began the first leg of the journey to New York, which is down the Delaware River. Last year, we went from Chesapeake City all the way to the New York harbor in one day, but with diesel prices as high as they are right now, we decided to slow-boat our way north, and planned to break up the journey with a stop in Atlantic City, where neither of us had been before.

We had a pleasant cruise and pulled in to our marina just before sunset. Despite this being something of a last-minute planned adventure, we had made some reservations for a full evening in the city! As soon as we got tied up, we threw on our swim suits and headed to the casino/hotel attached to the marina to their rooftop pool where we had a quick soak in the hot tub with a cocktail. Heading back to the boat, we changed into fancy clothes for the evening. We were headed to a magic show – the Masters of Illusion. I hadn’t seen a magic show live before (not counting a magician at one of my brother’s birthday parties who scarred me for life by sticking swords in my dad’s head in a box). David enjoys watching magic videos on YouTube, but enjoyed the live experience.

After the magic show, we walked to another casino/hotel (on a main road with no sidewalks or shoulder, which wasn’t really advisable), and had delicious Omakase at a sushi restaurant.

It was a lovely evening!

The next day, with the weather holding, we completed the remainder of the New Jersey coastline and pulled into the anchorage we had stayed at last year just north of Ellis Island, with a stunning sunset view of the southern tip of Manhatten.

The next morning, we pulled in to the Brooklyn marina were we planned to stay for the first portion of the week. David would be flying back to Seattle on Monday for a work event and I would remain on the boat and work from my company’s NY HQ. However, we had one day for some tourism and decided to head to Governor’s Island.

When we arrived to the pier, we noticed that we were surrounded by people wearing 1920’s outfits – too many for it to be a coincidence! After a bit of googling, we realized that there was a Jazz Age Garden Party on the island. Once we arrived, we aimed for the visitor center where we could take a free walking tour of the island. We passed by the party where a swing band was playing music for a huge gathering of costumed participants – what fun!

The walking tour took us around the island and we learned a bit about its varied history and ended up on one of the “hills” overlooking Manhatten.

On Monday, David headed to the airport via a piston repair shop to drop off our swim platform pieces in the hopes that a fix/rebuild would not take too long. I commuted to the city via Ferry and had a lovely 3 days working from the office with my colleagues! On Monday evening, we had an ‘executive’ dinner with Steve and Nick overlooking the water on the west side.

On Tuesday, I had managed to get tickets to Hadestown, which I was very excited to see. The musical was amazing – a wonderful blend of storytelling and political commentary, with a timeless quality to the costumes and staging.

On the last night before David came home, we had a big happy hour with almost all of my colleagues who live in the area. I enjoyed all my opportunities for some social time, and especially loved returning to the boat with amazing nighttime city views from the marina. It’s not affordable to stay in the city, but I really appreciate it every time we do – there is so much to experience in New York!

David returned early the next morning and since we were unable to extend our reservation in the marina and needed one more day before we could pick up our rebuilt pistons, we headed north to City Island and picked up a mooring for overnight. The next morning, David went to pick up the pistons, and we headed to Port Washington for the evening. After working, David replaced the pistons and we now have a functioning swim platform!! It does make a lovely whale-singing sound as it is moving, so we think we may need to buy a complete piston replacement, but at least we’ll be able to use the dinghy for the summer. Though it had taken several hours, we hopped in the dinghy and headed to land for a nice dinner to celebrate the milestone.

Brent, Mary, and baby Ember joined us in the afternoon on Saturday. Since this was our first time with a baby on board, we weren’t sure exactly how everything would work out, but it turned out her travel crib fit perfectly in David’s office, and the boat was actually surprisingly baby proof since all the cabinets have locks (to prevent them opening while we’re underway), so she was pretty much able to explore safely.

We had made reservations at the Annapolis Yacht Club for dinner that evening. Our waiter was completely charmed by Ember and kept bringing her things to eat.

We set off the next morning for St. Michaels. We had visited last year with David’s parents and enjoyed our time there. We went to the maritime museum there and I took a shot of Highwind in the marina – this time the marina was almost empty, a little different than last time when we visited on 4th of July weekend and there were no spaces at all!

We returned back to the boat for the evening and decided it was easier to cook dinner on the boat so we could accommodate napping schedules, which we would do for the remainder of their visit.

Our next stop was Baltimore, which neither David nor I had visited before. We went to the aquarium, which Ember really loved – I think it was her first time seeing fish!

After Baltimore, we spent one night anchored in our favourite spot on the Sassafras River, before heading to Chesapeake City. This was our first time visiting Chesapeake City on a week-day, and unfortunately everything was closed! We got takeout and had a lovely dinner for Brent and Mary’s last night with us.

Ironically, Mary had asked us at dinner about the “dark underbelly of boating”, since they had had a lovely trip with us. She was able to observe in full swing the downside of boating that evening… Unfortunately, I had earlier noticed that our dinghy platform had lowered by itself as I was heading to pick up our food. After dinner, we noticed that it had again dropped down. David went to top up the hydraulic fluid, but unfortunately we had a catastrophic failure and the platform could not be raised any more. At that time, the skies opened up and it began pouring rain with 360 degree lightening. Our plan had been to continue through the C&D canal to Delaware City and then our 2 day open water legs down the Delaware and up the New Jersey coast to NYC. That was likely going to change!

First we needed to get the platform out of the water so that we would at least be able to leave Chesapeake City. We struggled in the rain with the ratchet straps we had on board to try to manually lift the step and we were able to get it just out of the water, but no further. We decided to call it a night and in the morning we would reach out to the lift manufacturer.

The next morning, we said goodbye as Brent and Mary headed to the airport – thank goodness this issue happened at the end of their trip! David hopped on the scooter for a trip to Harbor Freight for more ratcheting devices and returned with some cable winches. We were able to get on the phone with the lift manufacturer who gave us some ideas about the potential problems. With the cable winches and new ratchet straps, the platform was lifted and secured in short order. David was able to remove the pistons and we identified that at least one source of the issue seemed to be a leaking seal.

At this point, we felt confident in the platform and with the weather predicting no wind or waves, we decided to press on north, rather than head back to Baltimore. We should be able to find a piston repair shop in New York and with any luck, the repair shouldn’t take too long. In the mean time, we have purchased a proper tow rig for the dinghy, which will arrive while we stay in NYC. This way as we head up to Long Island Sound, we will be able to use the dinghy despite not being able to lower the platform. It’s always an adventure while boating!

We worked our way north with a couple of long legs since I was recovering from COVID and would not be able to do anything in towns. We had a night in Swansboro were David grabbed takeout and I stayed on the boat. For the next few nights we stayed on anchor.

We had also been watching the price of diesel rise and had made plans to fill up in our normal spot – Top Rack Marina, which is just south of Norfolk. However, as we began to pull in to the fuel dock, the attendants told us they had no more! As it turns out, any marina that had a reasonable/cheaper price for diesel was out of supply.

We’d run the boat to almost empty since we were anticipating a complete fill which would get us all the way to New York if we slow boated through the Chesapeake. Yikes! David quickly found an alternate fuel option in Norfolk to pick up a couple hundred gallons to defer the problem until later.

We decided to spend the weekend in Hampton, a small town just north of Norfolk. By this time, I was feeling completely better, but still testing positive. We decided to go for a short scooter ride to Fort Monroe, and since it was completely outdoors and nobody else was there, I was able to visit too. It is an enormous stone fort facing the entrance to Norfolk, and took us a couple hours to walk completely around and explore, which was fairly brutal in the 90+ temps of the weekend.

On the way back to the boat, we saw a cider place with an outdoor seating area out back and a free table far away from anyone where I could sit. David grabbed a cider flight while I stayed outside. We quickly decided that mid 90s was too hot to exist outside, though, and retreated to the boat.

We left Hampton and headed for Dare Marina, where we had planned to pick up some additional diesel. Our new plan was to keep doing small fills in the hopes that prices would eventually go down, but as we were filling up, the attendant warned us that his price was about to jump again in the next few days. Having called a dozen marinas that morning, every last one of whom were already 60-80 cents a gallon more expensive than the price survey from 3 days earlier, we were inclined to believe him, so we decided to fill all the way to nearly 1000 gallons. Then, pocketbook empty, we spent the night on anchor just outside of the Marina.

As I started to feel better, David unfortunately felt the first signs of symptoms and spent the next few days feeling unwell and the next morning tested positive for Covid himself. We spent the next few nights on anchor and arrived in Solomons, a favourite spot of ours, in time for the weekend. Our original plan was to meet up with Jan and Jim for the weekend, but unfortunately David was still testing positive and we decided not to risk seeing them.

Now our roles were reversed and I ran errands and picked up food, including the most delicious key lime pie, while David stayed put on the boat, and worked on some projects including the wiring the watermaker remote and the installation of a new backup radio antenna. I also had fun with my sourdough starter and made cinnamon rolls and pizza dough along with a loaf of bread.

We had also been trying to see some of David’s extended family on Tilghman Island, but due to timing and covid, we were not able to make that happen. We finally both tested negative! We spent the night in Knapps Narrows and tried to go out for happy hour, but since it was mid-week everything there turned out to be closed!

We headed to Annapolis and were finally able to see Jan and Jim. We realized that Annapolis is actually closer to their house than Solomons, and decided this will be our new meeting point with them :). We had a lovely meal where we completely forgot to take any photos…of course!

We would have some friends visiting us for the next week and had decided to take the next week as vacation. On Friday evening before they arrived, we walked to a nearby wine-bar where it was standard procedure to buy a bottle of wine to drink while you waited for a table. We played some Hanabi outside while we waited.

It was Pride weekend in Annapolis, so on Saturday morning we did a scooter ride into town and wondered around. We also checked out the Benneker-Douglass Museum, which was small, but very well done.

We really enjoyed spending a weekend in Annapolis, and it has a bunch more stuff to explore on future trips.

We flew back to Seattle, arriving on a Sunday, and settled in for a standard Seattle visit where we organized evenings catching up with various friends. I even managed to get in one class at Divine! David had a work offsite for a few of the days. This was all gearing up for a busy weekend filled with wedding events. Since it was the wedding of our usual hosts, Brent and Elizabeth, this time we stayed with Brent and Mary and their daughter Ember.

Because my work meeting schedule tends to be very busy, and I’m not great at planning ahead, when we’re in Seattle, I usually work east coast hours so as to not disrupt my team, which means early mornings and long days for me! I was glad for the weekend to arrive!

On Friday afternoon, David had the day off and I signed off around the end of the day EST and we headed with Brent and Mary to a nail salon for mani-pedis. David even joined in, and chose a lovely midnight blue for his toes! On Saturday morning, I went to join the girls getting ready at Elizabeth’s and got a fancy up do!

We arrived early at the venue with the rest of the family to help with the final preparations for the ceremony. David, who had just finished his speech the night before started getting nervous, but he did an amazing job and wrote a lovely, funny, and heartfelt speech. It was a lovely ceremony.

Matthew had been invited to the wedding, and it was lovely to be able to spend the evening with him. The venue was a whiskey distillery in south downtown and the couple were married by David at the end of the barrel room. It was a beautiful location! After the ceremony, a long table was set up down the length of the room for dinner.

On Sunday David and I picked up some pastries for a brunch event, which was followed by ice-skating (Brent and Elizabeth met playing ice hockey). The couple had an extremely cute photo shoot dressed in their wedding finery on the ice. Elizabeth’s dress hung over her ice skates so it looked like she was just floating magically along. David had muscle memory from skating when he was younger and we had a lovely time on the ice! (Thanks Brent and Elizabeth’s wedding photographer for the photos of us!)

In the evening, there was an immediate family dinner event on a heated outdoor patio. Another lovely evening!

We travelled home on Monday, which took the entire day and had decided to spend the next day at the marina – primarily due to the fact that they had several packages for us, and the office would be closed when we returned!

Unfortunately, the next morning, I awoke with a sore throat that didn’t go away. After a couple of hours, I decided to take a covid test. The result was negative and I was relieved – it must just be a cold from working long hours, lack of sleep due to pre-6am wake-ups all week, and a super busy wedding weekend. The next day, I was feeling a bit worse, but still like a mild cold. In the afternoon, I heard that someone at the wedding had tested negative on Monday, but tested positive today. I decided to take another test and wa-wa…it was positive. After two years of avoiding the plague, it had finally arrived on Highwind.

That night I moved into our spare bedroom and all week we’ve tried to avoid each other as much as possible. It is now the weekend and David has had a sore throat all week, but is still testing negative, so we are hoping that he has been spared for now. Luckily my symptoms have been mild and I’m definitely on the upward swing right now. Unfortunately, next week I will miss a leadership offsite planning session with my company.

We’ve been mostly on anchor and I will continue to quarantine on the boat until it is safe for me to be around others. On that note, I’ll close off this post with last night’s evolution of a sunset from our anchorage.

After heading out of Charleston, we spend the next week with another string of early mornings in order to maximize our pre-work traveling time to push north. We were aiming to get all the way through the Waccamaw River, where there is no civilization, and to a town with a convenient airport for flying back to Seattle for a week of in-person work for David followed by his sister’s wedding.

We spent the week at peaceful anchorages, mostly alone, working through the remaining fresh food in the fridge in preparation to fly out at the end of the week.

However, on our way to Wilmington, where in early in the week we decided would be our airport destination, we decided to stop in Myrtle Beach for 2 nights. We had been through here last year, while everything was still closed, and I had seen the huge sign for “Dolly Parton’s Pirate Voyage”. I had made David put this on our list of “things we want to do when restrictions lift”. We managed to snag tickets to the show for our second night. On the evening of our first night, I managed to convince David to head in to Myrtle Beach proper on the scooters to ride the ferris wheel. We pulled out the big scooters, since it was about 8 miles away. We discovered that the front brake on my scooter is completely broken, so yet another project for another day….

We arrived at the wheel after sunset, so we didn’t really get to see much of the view over the beach and ocean, but did get a good view of the boardwalk area of Myrtle Beach.

The next evening, I was SO READY for the pirate show. It was essentially just across the street from the marina, so after work we headed there.

Once you walk inside the building, it is an EXPERIENCE. Our tickets were for the Sapphire ship, and we were ushered in to one side of the theatre. The show is a variety/cirque dinner show with a pirate battle theme. Once the show opens, the audience is inaugurated as pirates of either the Sapphire or Crimson captains. We were treated to pole, doubles aerial silks, mermaid lyra, performing seals and sea lions, pirate sword fights, spectacular circus diving, and much more!

WHAT FUN! It was a great way to cap off a long week of traveling north, and we didn’t have too far to go the next day where we arrived in Southport where we’d leave the boat while we flew to Seattle.

Normally when in Charleston, we stay in a marina that is on the eastern side of the city, but that marina was full when we called to make a reservation, so we ended up at a new-to-us marina on the west side. We had made arrangements ahead of our arrival with a boat wash/wax/detailer that we had worked with before to wax and wash during our stay – something we hadn’t done to the decks and below since Michigan and not for a year to the above-decks!

We arrived in the morning and were put out at the end of the “megadock”, a half-mile-long finger dock on the west side of the city. We completed our work day, then headed into town for dinner. I managed to make reservations for our first night at a restaurant called Laurel. Our entire meal there was excellent, and we had a lovely sparkling rose that was suggested by our waiter. He even bought us a glass of the wine we initially tried to order to compare to his suggestion and he was completely right – the one he suggested was much better!!

Since we’d been doing so many early mornings in order to push north as quickly as possible, we decided to sleep in on Saturday morning, and then had brunch on the boat with some breakfast meat from Cocoa Village. In the afternoon, we pulled the scooters off the boat and headed into the city to re-visit a distillery and brewery where we spent the afternoon playing games.

While at the brewery, we managed to make reservations at a restaurant called The Warehouse. It was a tasting menu, which was delicious and we had excellent service. Over the course of dinner, the background music had gradually been getting louder and louder and as we were approaching our dessert course, we noticed that the tables behind us were being moved. Our waiter came over to our table and apologized and explained that at 10pm, the restaurant turned into a night club!! Indeed, as we were eating dessert, it got crowded and loud behind us. We finished up our excellent meal and headed back to the boat for the evening.

On Sunday, we had another lazy morning and then hopped on the scooters to visit the Powder House Museum, a building that had stored gunpowder during the revolutionary war. Though small, it was an interesting museum.

We returned back to the boat just as the cleaners were finishing up a sparkling Highwind.

It was wonderful to spend another weekend at Charleston. This is one of our favourite spots on the ICW!

After a month away from the boat and a few weeks of visiting with people, David and I decided that we would spend the next week on anchor as we made our way north to St. Augustine. This we did, with very little photographic evidence :).

We had made plans to meet up with Bethy and Alex one more time again in St. Augustine. Funny how it takes us a week to get from Cocoa to St. Augustine on a boat, and our friends can hop between Cocoa, Orlando and St. Augustine via a quick drive! We spent a lovely evening on Friday and at a huge Portuguese dinner that was delicious. They headed home on Saturday after brunch and since we had just received our new internet antennas David decided the afternoon was a perfect time for a boat project! After our last debacle dealing with the antenna when we had to replace broken plastic brackets with new metal ones, I can tell you I was not looking forward to this project. Despite already having wires threaded from the old antennas, we struggled quite a bit and what should have been a 1 hour project turned into a 3 hour project and we both ended up with a bit of sunburn.

On Sunday we set off for another week of anchoring. Last year on our way north we had taken the outside route, skipping most of Georgia on the ICW to arrive at Charleston. This year, the weather has been particularly windy for this time of year and we would be unable to go outside. As we were heading north past Jekyll Island Marina, we heard someone hailing us on the radio. It turned out to be some of our Looper friends that we had last seen in Key West. We slowed down and had a quick chat as we were driving by. We had also reached out to our friends on St. Simons and it turned out they were in town due to some unfortunate structural issues with their deck. We made some slight changes to our plans and ended up staying in a marina and meeting up with them for dinner – a lovely unexpected surprise. They invited us over for dinner the next night. Since Endeavour-Highwind is too large to now fit on their dock, we decided to anchor at the mouth of the river on which their house sits, and we’d take the dingy to visit in the evening after work. It was a lovely evening dingy ride and I was struck by the oddity of the normal that is our life on the boat – driving a dingy up a peaceful river as our commute to visit with friends.

The dinghy ride on the way back, however, was significantly more precarious, as it was a nearly-moonless night, at low tide. Imagine a blind canyon run for several miles to get back to the boat.

For the rest of the week, we have enjoyed some further quiet anchorages and sunsets and plan for our last leg through Georgia, heading to Charleston for the weekend.