Protips for folks planning a cruise to the Bahamas for the first time: 1. Most of the Bahamas are shallow. This makes for a very pretty view from space, as well as at sea level – the white and pink sand beaches taper into clear water that varies from jade green to turquoise to sapphire.…
It is now February 2014 and The Fox has been cruising the Bahamas since our arrival on January 15, 2014. This is actually our second cruise through the Bahamas; we were here for the first time from November 2011 through the first week of February, 2012. I had avoided blogging about our first trip to…
It is not necessarily a bad thing to wait a week or two (or four) for a weather window to sail. The worst part is the mental factor: the impatience we feel when we are ready to move, and have prepared The Fox to move, yet it's prudent to stay put. Analyzing and discussing the…
Circumstances on the US East Coast during the past few months seemed to slow GB and me down every time we were keen to get moving. The very bad late-fall/early-winter weather on this side of the continent kept us from putting significant miles under our keel. Repeatedly. After our Fort Pierce New Year's Fiasco, we…
A few miles northeast of downtown Jacksonville, Florida, located along the banks of the Ft. George River, is the old Kingsley Plantation. It grew cotton and indigo during the late 18th through the 19th Centuries, and had a slave population that resided in 32 tabby cabins located about 1/8 mile from the plantation's main house…
Some areas of the US East Coast's Intracoastal Waterway regualarly fill up with sand and silt from the small tributary creeks and rivers along its length. Certain sections are actually shallow rivers, themselves. This constant water action builds up sand bars, expands them, and sometimes even causes them to migrate from one point to another.…
[For my story of Days 1 through 3 along a section of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), go here.] Day 4: Left Alligator Pass about 2 hrs. before high tide in Fernandina Beach, 10 miles further north. Had trouble finding deep enough water on 1st try; 2d try was able to re-enter ICW and continue north.…
I figured poor GB could use a break after doing a very intensive 11 days of boat work on the hard in Green Cove Springs, Florida, during early January 2013. (That's him on the ground in pic on the right, painting the last of the bottom paint on the underside of the keel just before…
Hope everyone rang in a very Happy New Year. We celebrated 1/1 aboard The Fox and underway.
Charting errors can occur anywhere. There's a running joke among cruisers along Mexico's Pacific coast, about how the charts in certain areas – most recently surveyed in the 1860s by a US Naval vessel – are some 5 miles off. Everybody takes pictures of their chart plotters showing that their boat is on land, when…