No 9: Bittersweet.

I know this update is a bit behind the times…. As planned, Passages was hauled out of the water on Wednesday 8 May 2024, and we spent until Friday afternoon preparing her for her time in storage at the Brunswick Landing Marina Boatyard. It is always bittersweet. For me, I am excited to be going back to Perth, to my sewing room and seeing my lovely group of friends, plus not having to worry about the weather.

Mel having a final look
around Passages.

For Mel, I know he misses being on the water but it’s a nice respite not having to do the constant maintenance that is required when living on a boat. Remember there is a saying – ‘Sailing is maintenance in paradise.’ We said our ‘farewells’ to Passages on Friday afternoon and drove up to Savannah, Georgia for Friday and Saturday night. On Saturday 13 May, we spent the day enjoying the sights and sounds of downtown Savannah by taking a hop-on hop-off bus tour. Early Sunday morning, we drove to Atlanta enjoying the scenery as we were flying from Atlanta to Hamilton, Missouri via Kansas City on Sunday afternoon. We had organised Liz, from Hamilton, to pick us up at the airport and transfer us to our Airbnb in Hamilton. This was an hour’s drive from the Kansas City airport. You are most probably asking why we were going to Hamilton, Missouri. Well, one of my favourite quilting YouTube contributors, Jenny Done, started the Missouri Star Quilt company in Hamilton over 15 years ago. In recent years, I have wanted to visit Hamilton to see the Missouri Start Quilt company, also referred to as the Disneyland of Quilting in the USA. We had arranged to spend from Sunday evening to Wednesday lunchtime in Hamilton, where I spent a wonderful time going from shop to shop looking at all the beautiful material. I burnt a rather big hole in the credit card. Thankfully, I was flying back to Perth on Qatar airlines which always allows two pieces of luggage with a maximum of 23 kgs each. Phew!!! So now, we are back in Perth, acclimatising to the colder weather and adjusting to the time zones, but we have already organised the return of Passages into the water on Friday 15 November so until next time. 

Take care, keep well, and stay safe.

 Best wishes, always Mel and Caryn

👉Brunswick and Savannah

👉Hamilton, Missouri

No 11: Making our way to St Mary’s Boatyard.

St Mary's Boatyard - Georgia, USA.

👉Our Journey on the ICW

I have often said that owning a sailboat teaches you a multitude of life skills. You are also confronted with a multitude of feelings and emotions. If you haven’t got any resilience and need to learn about resilience – Go Sailing!

Travelling up north to St Marys Boatyard, where Passages will stay for about 4 -5 months while we return to Perth, as Mel needs to work to pay for the new chain plates, we were confronted with some challenging and basically awful weather.

We understand now why so many people from the USA who own sailboats, start making their way back out of the hurricane zone by the end of May, as the weather was just plain awful: Hot and humid in the mornings, then almighty thunder and lightning storms in the afternoon.

This is what we experienced almost every day we were travelling up the St Marys Boatyard, on the Georgia/Florida border.

We tried to go out into the open sea, but we were hampered with north and northeast winds so we, reluctantly, stayed on the ICW. It was quite fascinating to journey along the ICW – see video.

We spent two nights in Melbourne and Titusville, one night in Daytona, two nights on a mooring ball in St Augustine – the oldest city in the USA, where we did a trolley tour around the old town. We were hoping to sail from St Augustine to St Mary’s Inlet BUT when we were over halfway and had
approximately 25 Nmiles to go, an almighty storm and severe weather warning was issued, so we ducked into Jacksonville. As we were entering the harbour, the storm hit us – see the photo taken from some friends of ours, Dana, and Chris. We meet Dana and Chris on Black Elise II while in Guatemala. They arrived in St Augustine on our second day there. They took the photo of the storm, and sent it to us, when they checked to see if we were okay. We eventually found a very small anchorage upstream, on the ICW and spent a relatively peaceful night there before heading to St Marys passing the port of Fernandina.

👉Tour of St. Augustine

As mentioned, we were confronted with some awful storms and many nights we would watch the lightening streak across the nights sky.

One of the highlights of our journey up the ICW, was stopping off at Titusville to watch the Space X
Falcon 9 launch 52 Starlink satellites into low earth orbit. The launch was scheduled for 3.10am, Monday morning 12 June, so we set our alarms so we could watch it. We were approximately 5 kms away from it, but the brightness of the launch and the sound was quite amazing to see and hear.

So… here we are in St Marys Boatyard. It was quite a journey getting here as we had to consider the tides. The tidal range here is 1.6 metres and there is PLENTY of soft mud. Many times, our depth sounder alarm would go off as there was less than 1 metre below our keel. (Mel has set the depth sounder alarm to go off when we have less than a metre below – it is for safety reasons). We spent 4 nights anchored off in the St Mary’s Inlet, waiting to be hauled out, which eventually happened on Tuesday 20 June 2023. So once again Passages is on dry land although she has quite a good view of the whole of St Marys inlet.

Before we leave her, we clean pack away and cover her. She has so many covers!

So, until next time (January 2024??) – enjoy whatever you are doing. Keep safe, Be Kind and Be Happy.

Bye for now.

Mel and Caryn