All I Want for Christmas is a Pilot House

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun, but we were ready to trade in Buffalo snow for some southern sun and warmth. Too bad we haven't really had much of that yet.

While we were gone, our friends on Elixer V passed by the marina where our boat was safely tied up. It's been great keeping in touch with other boats we run into along the way. Whether they're offering a tip for a free dock or letting us know our boat hasn't sunk yet, other cruisers are always willing to help us out!

Home sweet boat.

After returning the rental car and doing some last-minute laundry, we set off back down the Intracoastal. Now, I definitely love the house Justin built for us in Buffalo, but some of the houses we passed were ginormous and super fancy, even by Justin standards.

Think of all the cats I could fit in there!

Some of those houses, however, were a little closer to the waterfront than I think they originally intended. I'm not sure if it was the rainy weather over Thanksgiving or hurricane leftovers, but there were quite a few houses with their yards completely underwater.

The only thing not wet is the pool.

As we went along, I saw that the water levels weren't even as high as they could be. Along the tree line, above the normal marks for tide changes, we could see the line where surging waters from hurricanes would reach.

That shadowy line is where the water can come up to. It is not an elephant graveyard. 

Luckily, we haven't seen any hurricanes recently, but what we did get a lot of, even in North and South Carolina, was cold. We had quite a few days of highs in the low 50s, and nights that got below freezing. I was more thankful than ever for our heated blanket. But while we're driving the boat, the heated blanket doesn't do much good. We don't have any enclosed space in our cockpit; just a bimini to cover our heads and give us some shade. And as a sailboat, we generally try to drive on relatively windy days, so the cold feels worse when it's blowing in your face. 

We would pass by boats with plastic-enclosed cockpits, or even better, full pilot houses, where they could sit in relative comfort and drive the boat without getting pelted with wind and rain and whatever else comes flying at you.

This is a boat with a pilot house. I stole this picture from the internet. 

But we don't have a pilot house. Instead, we have established our own routines for dealing with the weather: we suit up. Suiting up starts with a base layer of regular clothes (which may or may not include a bra for me, because honestly, who's going to notice? The cats?) Then comes a thick sweater, then a sweatshirt, then a hat, then a jacket. And that's only on top. It can take me more time to get dressed on this boat where nobody is going to see me than it used to take me to get dressed up for my biggest clients. And undoing all of those layers to go to the bathroom takes almost as long. 

I know, I shouldn't be complaining. At least there was no snow.

A few days later we pulled into Charleston. We were pretty exhausted after several days straight on the boat, and it felt good to stand on something that wouldn't unexpectedly move underneath us. We tied up the boat in Shem Creek, which is home to lots of shrimp, shrimp boats, and restaurants that cook lots of shrimp.

I don't believe any of these shrimp boats belong to Forrest Gump.

At night, we could hear the clicking noises of shrimp eating the tasty algae on the bottom of our boat. If fishing didn't involve touching fish (and if we had a net), I probably could have reached down into the water and grabbed some shrimp for us for dinner. Instead, we decided to eat at Vickery's Bar & Grill, a short walk from our boat. I decided, since I was in the south, I should try some traditional southern food. (Justin had a burger.) I ordered shrimp and grits, even though I had no idea what grits were.

It looks so yummy.

And so I learned what grits are: disgusting. They look like mashed potatoes, but the texture is more like mashed potatoes that somebody has already eaten, with little hard mystery bits that could have been something dislodged from the back of that person's teeth. Luckily, everything else on the plate made up for the revolting abomination that are grits. The shrimp were better than any seafood I've ever had. They were so fresh, they had probably been swimming in the creek that morning.

The next day was one of the only warm-ish days we had (and would have) for a while. We decided to stick around Charleston and rent a car so we could run errands and check out the city. Right outside our boat was a small nature preserve, with boardwalks and walk paths criss-crossing over sandy marsh.

Justin walked off the path. He's such a BAMF.

In the park, I met my very first palm tree! Okay, I've seen palm trees before, but after weeks of cold, it was thrilling to see something real and tropical and not frozen.

The palm tree was kind of short and stumpy... like me!

There are a lot of people who would come to the park to fish. (Not me. Fishing is gross.) But a lot of birds have discovered that if they hang around the fisher-people, they can sometimes get a snack. As a result, I was able to get really close to a bunch of birds.

This is an egret. He is my friend now. 

Before this trip, the only pelicans I had seen were in Finding Nemo.

We spent the rest of the day checking out the area. We drove to a beach and walked around in the unusually fine sand. It was even warm enough for me to take my socks and shoes off and feel the soft sand between my toes. I poked the water for a second, but decided I wasn't crazy enough to get any wetter and colder than that.

The ocean was suspiciously calm. I think it was up to something. 

Next, we went to visit the Angel Oak Tree. This tree is over 400 years old and ginormous. It's huge branches sag on the ground, many of which have to be supported by very tired-looking two-by-fours.

Think of all the photosynthesizing this tree has done.  

The signs tell you not to climb on the tree. Lame.

Even Tiny came outside to enjoy the warm weather and sunshine. She also liked looking at the birds flying by and trying to figure out if they were friends or food.

Bird? Is bird? I can haz bird?

The next day it rained. And the next day. And the next day. I drove us towards Beaufort in a pelting downpour, the wind slamming giant raindrops in my face. All of the nicely dried clothes we had just brought back from laundromat were damp by the time we got them to the boat. Luckily, by this point we knew to put extra towels down on our bed underneath the leaky hatch the second the rain started.

That's not a smile; it's a grimace of pain.

Our day in Beaufort dried up a little. There was an indecisive drizzle the whole time we were there. We got to check out the Verdier Museum, a restored house from the 1800s. A nice little old lady insisted on giving us a tour (and preventing us from taking pictures in the house) so Justin and I had to make fun of the painted outlets and mismatched banisters under our breaths. I did like the wallpaper, though.

Hello house. I've been inside you. 

Because Beaufort was used as a Union stronghold in the Civil War, many of the houses have been preserved instead of being burned down. During a brief dry spell, we wandered around the town, checking out some of the old plantation-style houses.

It's weird seeing Christmas stuff in a place that also has palm trees. 

The original owners of this house were probably racist. 

And instead of being laden with snow, the trees were draped in vines of Spanish moss. As someone who has seen plenty of snowy trees, this was a nice change.

These are trees. I don't think you need more explanation than that. 

Since Norfolk, we've been travelling in the Intracoastal, mostly because it's kind of hard to find a place to anchor when you're floating miles offshore. However, between Beaufort and St. Augustine Florida, there are some sneaky shoals and shallow waters. Shoals creep up as shifting sand and dirt create uncharted piles of danger in the water. It's not fun when you hit them, but more on that later.

We decided to avoid as much of those annoying shoals as possible and cut out Georgia in the process. I promise, I have nothing against Georgia (other than the unnecessary number of vowels in its name.  Honestly, what does it think it is, Hawaii?) But the Intracoastal through Georgia is very twisty and going offshore would cut days off our trip, getting us that much closer to warm.

And so, offshore we went.

At first, the water was very calm, with almost no wind at all. We looked down into the clear water and saw it was filled with jellyfish! The little tan and brown blobs appeared every few feet, floating along, doing their jellyfish thing. After some googling, I learned that they are cannonball jellyfish, and very common to the shores of South Carolina and Georgia. If I had longer arms, I could even have touched them safely; they aren't very poisonous.

Who wants to go jellyfishing?!

Now, another big reason why I wanted to try going offshore was because I had heard rumors that dolphins would come right up to boats and swim along side, checking out your giant floating mystery thing. Up until this point, we had seen dolphins at pretty much every inlet to the ocean. We would glance at a fin here, a tail there, but never see more than two or three dolphins for two or three seconds. After all, when dolphins come inland, they're on a mission. They want to grab some fish for dinner and then go straight back to the ocean.

But this time, instead of the dolphins coming to us, we came to the dolphins. When we noticed some unusual splashing in the distance, we veered off-course to see what it could be. (I figured it was either a pod of dolphins or some of the jellyfish mutated into a giant sea monster.) We didn't have to go too far before they noticed us and zoomed over.

I couldn't stop squealing with excitement. The dolphins were all around us, easily keeping up with our measly seven knots. They hovered just under the water and sometimes would even turn on their sides to get a better look at us. (One of them made eye contact with me. I think it saw my soul.) There were seven or eight in the pod, and when I listened closely, I could even hear the squeaks of their echo-location. Then, when I looked closer, I noticed one of the dolphins was considerably smaller then the rest. I must have freaked the dolphins out, because I couldn't help shrieking, "IT'S A BABY DOLPHIN!" It was the cutest, most incredible, fantastic, adorable, amazing aquatic thing I've ever seen. (Yes, all of those adjectives are necessary.) Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get it on video because immediately after seeing it I flailed my arms around (one of which was holding my phone) and got a lot of blurry water footage. But I was able to get some of the pod on video.

This was what this trip was about. Getting up close with something I could never see from our home in Buffalo.

That evening, the sun set on a clear sky and it got a little spooky as night fell. There was literally nobody for miles around.

#NoFilter

But then, I looked up. (I have to apologize again that I don't have a picture for you, but my phone doesn't do super well at night.) There were more stars out than I have ever seen before. It was hard to identify the two or three constellations I know because there were so many more stars to choose from. Where normally I would see patches of darkness, there were hundreds of sparkles of light, and more beyond that. It was a little daunting, looking up and seeing how much stuff there was out in the universe.

And then the wind started up again.

Before long, the occasional swell had turned into waves, and I had forced a Dramamine in my mouth before retreating into the cockpit. (The best thing to do when seasick is stare at the horizon.) When the sun was out, it was almost pleasant, but once night had fallen, the familiar almost-painful bite of cold had returned. And with the wind picking up, the freezing weather was even more intense.  It was great, looking at the stars, but paralyzingly frigid. After about an hour of rough seas, I told Justin I was done with the ocean. We weren't going to be seeing any more sea creatures, but there was a chance we would be seeing my lunch.

We turned in a few hours earlier than we intended, but we managed to find a safe place to anchor, just over the border into Florida.

The next morning, we had to finish off the twisty, shallow part of the Intracoastal that we would have bypassed had I not gotten seasick the night before. Since I was the reason we were so far behind (and the weather was pretty good) I volunteered to drive. I was zipping along, checking out the scenery, when I suddenly felt a KER-THUD! The boat reared up like an angry horse, and I (like any normal person) screamed in terror and frantically tried to keep driving.

It didn't work.

Justin came up and (not like a normal person) calmly explained that I had hit a shoal and should just back off it. I managed to regain shaky control of one hand and put the boat in reverse. For a terrifying moment, nothing happened. When a boat gets stuck somewhere, unlike a car, other vehicles are going by very slowly. So instead of them whooshing past and saying "Maybe we should do something to help them. Oh well," other boaters say "Hey, honey, get the camera! Look at what this idiot did!" Then the other boat slowly plods past and they mock the poor losers who ran aground. (At least, that's what we do.) I didn't want to be one of those losers.

This did not happen to our boat. It was some other loser. 

Luckily, Justin was able to back us off the shoal after a few minutes, and I decided that as a reward he could drive until we got to deeper waters.

That evening, we stopped driving on the early side and pulled up to our first dock in Florida. It was still pretty cold, but it was exciting to get off the boat and see palm trees. Oh, and a manatee warning sign. That was definitely something we don't have in Buffalo.

I want to see a sea cow. It's my new dream.

Those are some nice fronds. 

The next few days were a blur of Intracoastal driving. We were so sick of cold, wet weather, we decided our priority was getting to warm. Almost every day, we would get up at seven and drive until after ten at night. We flew past St. Augustine, Daytona, and Cape Canaveral at a breakneck six knots.

But finally, our hard work paid off. Yesterday afternoon we pulled up to a dock in Stuart, Florida, and finally found warm. I'm writing this post in a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, and I think it went up to 80 degrees today. We're exhausted after so many days of moving and driving, and this is supposed to be a vacation. So we're going to be staying at a small marina for about three weeks and get our chill on. (Or whatever the kids say these days.)

It has been a long, exciting, and cold trip, but I am so glad we're finally here.

tl;dr: After some cold, wet weather and an awesome time offshore, we made it to our home for the next month in Stuart, Florida.