Wayne.B wrote:


wayneb wrote:
If you had it to do over again, would you have gone offshore or up the
ICW?

===========================
On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 07:11:14 -0500, DSK wrote:

We didn't have the time. We made it in 4 days, on the ICW it would have
taken closer to ten. Doing the ICW with a few short inlet-to-inlet
outside hops would have been ideal (until the weather turned cold, anyway).

==========================

Not a hypothetical question for me since I'm going to face that choice
in late May when we take our trawler north for the summer. Hopefully
we'll have better weather then, but the Gulf Stream is always a big
question mark for weather and seas. I'm figuring it will take 2 1/2
days offshore from Ft Pierce to Beaufort but am planning some
alternative ports like St Mary's, Charlotte or Savannah in case
weather deteriorates unexpectedly. We might be looking for crew if
you're interested.

We are not constrained by time, and last year we did a much larger
number of offshore hops because Bob is bored of the ICW. I always
make him convince me it is safe to go, although I make up my own mind
based on weather forecasts etc. The one time I let him convince me
against my better judgment we had a horrible time.

Anyway, we always (after the first time) go offshore from Miami (we
always stop in Miami because we have grandchildren there) to Ft.
Pierce. Hate all the bridges that we get into otherwise.

We usually go inside from Ft Pierce and up the Indian River anchoring
around Melbourne, Titusville, Daytona, St. Augustine, and Fernandina
or St. Mary's. That's 5 days.

We've also gotten into the habit of doing offshore from the St. Mary's
River to Charleston. That way we avoid all the tides in Georgia. We
have more grandchildren in the Charleston area.

And on the way back this time we also went from Charleston to the Cape
Fear River and that worked out pretty well, although we missed
Georgetown and the Waccamaw which are very pretty. But OTOH we also
missed the rockpile and the pontoon bridge and a lot of shoaling.

Each of these trips takes about 24 hours - sometimes a little less.
That's about as much as I want Bob to go without sleeping, which he
doesn't do very well under those circumstances. He doesn't want to
take crew either (even if we could get someone).

When we came up the Cape Fear River, we went in to Southport, but
moved the next day to Masonboro to rest up. I suggested that we go
out Masonboro and come in at Beaufort as a day trip, but he vetoed the
idea and then we promptly ran aground which REALLY irritated him (we
were right in the middle of the channel). It would probably have been
a better idea to do that.


grandma Rosalie