HOLIDAY GREETINGS!

Tis the season to communicate with friends and family, and although we had been blogging our sailing progress this fall, we dropped the ball so to speak when we moved ashore in St. Augustine for Thanksgiving with Jay and Pegg and then drove north with Andiamo's John and Betty for a month in the bitter cold of PA! Two events were already on the schedule as we headed north, first - the CCYC Christmas party in Annapolis which was a great success with 22 boats represented and much levity and a spirited gift exchange - just who did end up with those decorative sailboat plates?!?

Second was Blissmas which we scheduled to coincide with Martha's entry into Medicare. What Martha didn't know was Dan had organized a surprise gathering at our favorite Italian Restaurant to save me from having to cook on my birthday. The surprise was hard to pull off as Dan couldn't figure out how to keep me from planning dinner for our family of 22, so I got to be involved with the final preparations for the gala event. One of the highlight of evening was the "vonBlissmas" singers (6 grandchildren and 1 grandnephew) performing "Happy Birthday!"

We have taken care of haircuts, doctor and car care appointments, and are visiting with each of our East Coast families before we head south on the 28-29th to put Brunelle back in shape for the rest of our southern trek. (The water system is currently apart in preparation for a new faucet set-up in the galley - I'm sure there will be more to report on that when we get back!) We wish everyone a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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  !      ~~~_/)~~~     !      M&D

We missed sending a Christmas greeting in 2008 because we took our first trip south to the Bahamas on Brunelle and although we came home for a month at Christmas time, Martha had both knees replaced for her birthday and didn't get around to writing.

Here comes another good excuse! December 2009 the Bliss family, Grandma Peddie, Jay & Pegg, Dan & Martha and Barb all went to Chile for three weeks. We visited with our Chilean "son" Mauricio (lower right) and his family in Santiago. Mauricio had spent his senior year with us in 1992. We also visited the Clemo family in Concepcion. Patrick (who was Dan's best friend 55 years ago) made sure we saw all the wonders of Chile. He is pictured with us at his country home in Renaico (upper left). Jay, Dan, and Barb pose outside their old home on Pedro de Valdivia. It was truly a trip of a lifetime. Peddie (at 91) was thrilled to be back and kept remembering people and places. We hated to tell her that most of those people were probably gone! Luckily Patrick's mother, Joan, was alive a well and she and Peddie had a wonderful time together. We all enjoyed being welcomed so lovingly by all the Clemo families, Patrick, Beverly, Maureen and Jackie and their spouses.

By missing 2008 and 2009, we missed reporting that Danny (DB) married Natasha during Camp PaHaGaCo 2009. This picture is from Camp 2010, but it does show the whole fam damily. I'll try to group by families: Jess & Sam holding Ben(2), Oliver (2 mos.) is being held by Julie), John & Brandi, Popov & Grand Mar with Grace (5) on her lap, her twin sister, Alice (5) is in Katherine's lap. Behind Katherine is her husband Ryan with Kinsey (2) on his shoulders and Zoe sitting next to Kath. Julie's husband, Michael is balancing the twins' sister, Clare on the back of Zoe's chair. Newlyweds, DB and Natasha are on the right.

Monday in St. Augustine

A day to regroup. We decided to leave the mooring and take a slip for a day so we could hose down all the salt we picked up transiting the inlet and to work on figuring out why our GPS and autopilot choose to cut out every so often - - - like yesterday from just before the race ended until we pulled into the slip this morning.
Jay rode his bike over and he and Dan spent several hours and several calls to Raymarine customer service before they got it straightened out - - - WE HOPE. It works now anyways. I was busy writing yesterday's blog and manning the control panel as the switches were on and off about 40 times or more! Jay left around two and Dan got back to his original task, washing down the boat. I walked across the bridge with Maureen and Glen to Jay's house, left Glen preparing dinner, and Maureen and I went shopping. Everyone convened at Jay & Pegg's for spicy chicken tacos a la Glen. What a treat! Pete and Kathy leave tomorrow to fly home for Thanksgiving, and the rest of us will start prepping for Thanksgiving at Jay & Pegg's.
~~~_/)~~~M&D
After taking a slip for one day at the St. Augustine Municipal Marina, we watched these busy herons and crane fish off the docks. They didn't care how close we came.

THE RACE

We were determined to make the start of the Commodore's Cup race on time this year, because two years ago we were late to the start. Jay and I went to the 10 o'clock skipper's meeting and picked up course info, scratch sheet and dinner info. We were back aboard and crews disseminated (boys+Jay on Sevilla, girls on Brunelle) in time to make the 11:30 bridge opening. Unfortunately we were rushed enough that I forgot to turn on the on-line GPS and the SPOT tracking. I would have liked to be able to see just how we tacked and the distance we actually traveled over the 6 mile course. When we headed out, we were discouraged that our rating was much lower than Sevilla's (higher is better) and were worried whether we would be able to maintain the difference necessary to beat them on corrected time. We figured we had to give them 30 seconds per mile, or a total of 3 minutes over the 6 mile course.
Once outside the rough waters of the inlet, we raised the main and shut down the engine and realized most of the wind we encountered on the way out was engine driven. We barely had enough speed on to tack! We slowly made our way over to the starting area and studied the line to determine the best approach. When it was our turn (the spinnaker class started 10 minutes before us) we lined ourselves up and were closing in on the line when we heard a horn. We hardened up and thought we were a little late, but charged ahead. We were just settling in to the groove when we heard another horn....THE HORN, oops, we had started on the 1 minute to go horn! When we finally realized we were over early, we tacked around and re-crossed the line .....last. We tacked away from the rest of the fleet fairly early to avoid "dirty air" from the boat in front of us and seemed to be on our own.
Turns out it was a good move because we arrived at the windward mark miles ahead of everyone in our class except for a Hunter 50 (water ballast, 8' draft, sleek looking thing!) who wasn't listed on the scratch sheet, so we didn't know how we stood with them. The rest of the race was two reaching legs, and the wind had picked up a little by then, so we finished around 3:30, less than 2 minutes behind the Hunter 50. We all cheered and were ready to head in when the radio squawked at us - it was the race committee asking us to go pick up the windward mark. OOOOKay we'll go. We fired up the engine and headed east. As we approached the mark we noticed there was one boat rounding in and two more coming up behind us headed for it! We called the committee boat and they verified that there just might be a few more boats, just wait there. Well we circled for almost an hour and contemplated just how we would tackle our chore once the boats had rounded.
Finally around 5:00 the last boat rounded. We positioned Kathy sitting on the rail with one boat hook and Betty on the cockpit coaming with another and Maureen right behind her ready to grab whatever came her way. It took two passes, but on the second one, Kathy hooked the line under the thing and Betty was able to transfer one of the big rings on the corner to Maureen, she hung on for dear life, but it wasn't budging. With the engine in neutral, there was no need for me to remain at the wheel, so I jumped over Maureen and grabbed one of the rings on the outboard corner of this pyramidal monster and heaved. We got it over the lifelines and it took up the whole cockpit! Maureen spent the next half hour wrestling with it trying to deflate it while the rest of us worked on hauling in the miles and miles of anchorline! Once we finally got it aboard, I started up the engine and it took most of the trip in to get all of it under control, air out, lines coiled. WHAT a great crew!!
It was fully dark except for the full moon when we came through the Bridge of Lions at the 6:00 opening and crept through the mooring field to our mooring. Dan was waiting there at the mooring buoy to lend a hand. I shut down the engine at 6:15, and by 6:30 we were all in dinghies heading for the dock on our way the the trophy dinner. It was in full swing when we arrived as it started at 6:00! There was still enough good food for us and we were still chowing down when they started announcing the results. We still weren't sure if we had succeeded in beating the Hunter 50 on corrected time, so it was a long wait as they started with 7th place! When they announced Hunter's Child in 2nd place, we knew we had won! An exciting day for all, but far more satisfying for the girls!

~~~_/)~~~M&D

While the girls had to return and re-cross the starting line (we were over early) Sevilla sailed off to the north with lots of testosterone and too many "cooks" so they finished on hour after we did!

We finally tamed the thing and delivered it to Jay to return to the Yacht Club.

GIRLS RULE!! Our crack female crew won first place in the non-spinnaker class of the Commodore's Cup (7 boats in our class) held by the St. Augustine YC offshore on Sunday.
Top left clockwise: Betty checking out the starting line, Kathy took the helm all the way out through the rock-n-roll inlet. Maureen and Martha check the set of the sails. Sunset as we powered back in after being sent by the RC to retrieve the windward mark...we had over an hour wait out in the slop for the last two boats to round the mark! Maureen wrestles with the BIG YELLOW THING while Betty works on pulling the crappy 80 feet on anchor line aboard. CENTER: THE WINNERS!

Here is the official St. Augustine Yacht Club picture depicting Margo, the Rear Commodore of Sail presenting the crew of Brunelle with the 1st place plaque.

Saturday in St. Augustine

Everyone has been hearing about Sailor's Exchange, this great mecca for an amazing amount of used and some new marine STUFF, so all eight of us were set to descend upon the place this morning. Dan dropped me over at The Anchorage Motel dock so I could go get our car and Jay and his car to transport all of us to Sailor's. With all nine of us in the store at once, there was barely room to move around, but move around we did and everyone found treasures that couldn't be passed up. Dan found two of my dad's books which he told me to buy so I could autograph them for whomever! Well with both books on the counter, Maureen proclaimed she wanted this book because it was written by her friend's father. Little did we know that the owner of Sailor's Exchange was a great fan of Bill Robinson! He ended up giving us all incredible deals on our purchases and had all sorts of questions about the GREAT Bill Robinson. I had to laugh, because every other time we have been in there, we use Jay's name to try to get deals----little did we know! The morning wasn't complete without a trip to West Marine, and we all dropped another bundle! Jay then lead us to Hurricane Patty's for a very atmospheric and delicious lunch out on their deck.
The girls decided to ditch the guys and do a little shopping in the afternoon. We hit Christe Blue's consignment shop and enjoyed looking, only Betty had any success, but it was fun anyway. Then off to the Publix to get a few things, especially the makings for sundaes. We had decided to eat aboard our own boats for dinner, meet in downtown St. A after dinner to watch the lighting of the Christmas tree and all the decorations on the square, and then head across the Bridge of Lions to Jay and Pegg's for dessert. I actually think I overdosed on chocolate. I didn't think that was a possibility! Pegg finally arrived home just as we were finishing up our sundaes. She had been gone since Thursday taking part in a cross Florida relay run with twelve other women. They had done very well, so she was glad she had taken part in it. Tomorrow is THE RACE. Two years ago Jay had signed Brunelle up to sail in the Commodore's Cup sponsored by the St. Augustine YC, so when the race was postponed from last Sunday to this Sunday it seemed inevitable that we would race again. This time the CCYC has two boats entered in the race, Dan has convinced Glen and Maureen that Sevilla should also race. SO it's going to be the boys against the girls! We'll report on it tomorrow.
~~~_/)~~~M&D

As I walked up the dock at The Anchorage Motel I noticed this blue heron. He let me get pretty close before taking off.

Saturday evening was the tree lighting ceremony on the square in downtown St. Augustine.
My little camera doesn't do too well with low light without a tripod, but you get the idea of the crowds and lights.

Overnight from Savannah to St. Augustine

We did our calculating and decided that it would take 22 hours to go from Thunderbolt (Savannah), out the Wilmington River Inlet and on down the outside to the St. Augustine safe water buoy, so we scheduled our departure from the Bahia Bleu Marina for noon on Thursday. The weather was predicted to cooperate and we knew the moon was close to full. The ride down the river was easy and we noticed that the Catalina-Morgan 440 named Andiamo! was still tied up at the Savannah YC. We had seen her on our last trip two years ago and done quite a double take. Once out of the inlet, it was a straight shot for the buoy off St. Augustine, 137 statute miles (we were using statute miles because the ICW is calculated in statute miles.)
There was more traffic during the night than we had seen on our last offshore leg, but only one vessel caused us any concern. We spotted a large cargo ship heading across our path as we approached the entrance to Jacksonville. Thanks to AIS we knew the name, size, destination, speed, course etc of the ship and Dan called them. It looked like we would be less than half a mile from them if we each continued on our current course. Dan decided to cut back our speed and head 10 degrees to the east to make the gap between us larger. Worked like a charm. The ship was only doing 9.4 knots, probably because all vessels 65 feet or larger are required to travel at 10 knots or less as they pass through the North Atlantic Right Whale habitat. Their migration puts them off the coast of Georgia and Florida during November and December.
We arrived at St. Augustine's safe water buoy right at 10:30, and were surprised just how sloppy the entrance became when the outgoing tide met an onshore breeze. It wasn't blowing any more than 10-12 knots, but it was enough to have us rolling all over the place on the way in. Once we passed the jetty, the slop stopped, but the current kept our progress to a crawl, so we didn't make the 11:00 opening at the Bridge of Lions. We split with Andiamo as we entered because they have a slip at the Conch House Marina in Salt Run and the rest of us are taking moorings south of the Bridge of Lions. We made the 11:30 bridge opening and picked up our moorings. After lunch aboard we dinghied across the harbor to The Anchorage Motel and Marina with the hope of making some arrangement to tie up our dinghy as it is a short walk to Jay and Pegg's from there. The tie up fees are pretty steep, so we will have to work something else out, but they let us use it for today. Jay met us there and drove us and our dirty laundry to his house. We washed it and ourselves and were joined by all our group for dinner. Early to bed. Tomorrow we adventure about town.
~~~_/)~~~M&D

As we departed from Bahia Bleu Marina, we passed by Thunderbolt Marina and spied Neon Rainbow our nemesis from our rudder incident two years ago.... we're glad we are going outside from here. We also passed a working fishing boat as we went out the Wilmington River inlet. It was an easy exit with plenty of buoys. We settled in easily for the second overnight voyage of the trip.

Very little sea-life activity on this trip. We spent about half an hour sailing through a fleet, flock, flotilla (?)...don't know what you call the thousands of funny looking jellyfish that surrounded the boat. ....I just spent half an hour looking at over 1,000 pictures of jellyfish on the web and NOT ONE looked like this one!

Sunrise was a long time coming with the bank of clouds that hung on the eastern horizon.

Our peaceful moonlit trip offshore culminated with a wild ride through an outgoing tide at St. Augustine Inlet. We haven't rolled this much since the Neuse River! We made it through the Bridge of Lions and took a mooring in the newly established mooring field sponsored by the city of St. Augustine. They put us at the southern end of the field right next to a sandbar, but we did have enough water. We were welcomed by yet another harbor dolphin.

A tour of Savannah

I'd hate to jinx it by talking about how lucky we have been with the weather, but just have to comment on our perfect day in Savannah. Temperatures in the 60s and 70s all day and bright sun made our day in town quite enjoyable. Our joint decision to take the Trolley Tour of town turned out to be a good one. We started around 10:30 and got off four times along the way to do our own touring and for lunch and wound up back at our starting point a little after three. We then walked to city market but were disappointed to find it to contain lots of little eateries, but little else. After having gorged ourselves at Mrs. Wilkey's Boarding House at lunch, food was the last thing we needed!
The cab ride back to the marina proved to be almost as informative as the Trolley Tour. Our driver was full of enthusiasm for his city (he had attended the same elementary school that his mother and grandmother attended) and was also very knowledgeable about the history and architecture of areas not visited by the Trolley. We all assembled aboard Andiamo for cocktail hour but no one was interested in eating anything yet! We all retired to our own boats around 6:00 and we finally ate a few crackers around 8 pm. No need for dinner tonight. Tomorrow we plan to head offshore again for an overnight that will take us all the way to St. Augustine. SPOT will be tracking us, but I doubt we'll have phone signal until we hit St. A.

~~~_/)~~~M&D

We all spent the day soaking up the atmosphere in Savannah. A 10 o'clock taxi ride took us downtown to the river front at the Town Hall where we all agreed that a Trolley Tour would allow us to see the sights while letting us to get on and off at will. We started by seeing the golden dome of Town Hall that is supposedly featured in any picture of downtown Savannah. Dan and another unsuspecting passenger were asked to sing "Moon River" as we passed by the statue of Johnny Mercer, we all helped a bit, but it was pretty awful! Next we passed the park bench where Forrest Gump ate his box of chocolates. There are 24 squares in Savannah and we went by most of them, they each have a significant feature, often a statue, and all quite beautifully landscaped.

One of the destinations of the day was Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House, famous for the best in southern cooking. We had to spend an hour standing in line outside before being seated family style with 24 different dishes on the table. The staff kept the bowls full as we all chowed down. AMAZING! We had heard about this place from Dick and Jean Citron and they were right that it shouldn't be missed.

After our sumptuous lunch we felt the need to walk and enjoyed this park with wonderful old trees and this spectacular fountain before hopping back on the trolley and finishing the tour.

We certainly heard a lot about SCAD Savannah College of Art and Design. They are famous for having re-habbed many old buildings in town always maintaining the character of the exterior but making the interior usable and efficient. Dan's cousin Steve Bliss is Dean of the School of Fine Arts at SCAD, but was in Austin, so we missed seeing him.

Skull Creek to Bahia Bleu Marina in Thunderbolt

We headed out VERY early because weather predictions had rain and thunderstorms arriving in Savannah for the afternoon. We only had 26 miles to go, so we were pretty sure we'd be safely at the Marina when storms hit. As it was we could see "weather" all around us, but we escaped all of it except for a fair amount of wind. We had gusts over 25 as we crossed the Savannah River. We sweated our way through the Fields Cut after reading and hearing all about terrible shoaling. We weren't far from the cut when we gave a "slow pass" to Hinckley Talaria 55 and while talking to him asked him for a report of the depths he encountered as he made his way through Fields Cut. He called back several times and did warn us about a thin spot as you exit the cut. When we got there, there was a sailboat aground with his jib rolled out trying to heel him over enough to sail off. We tried passing him to port but found that was the WRONG side, luckily we backed down quickly and while we were backing he sailed off. He drew 6'4", so we followed him through!

The rest of the trip went quickly as we had picked up some current at that point and we arrived at the marina by 11:30 am. After settling in, we adventured a little in the area with a trip to River Supply, a marine store. We actually couldn't find anything we needed! Back at the marina we showered and gathered on the marina's screened porch for cocktails and then back to the boat for an early turn in. Tomorrow we head into Savannah proper.

~~~_/)~~~M&D

Red sky in the morning.....We were up and underway by 6:30 this morning in a rush to beat the thunderstorms fore-casted to arrive in Savannah this afternoon. Dan was delighted to see that my d... flowers were shedding- - -one of the drawbacks of sailing with a flower lover! As we left the Calibogue Sound and turned right into the Cooper River, I spied the Daufuskie lighthouse nestled in the trees. I always have had trouble remembering how to pronounce it, but not anymore. A little note in the Waterway guide explained how it got the name. Early settlers, describing where they lived, would say it was "Da Fus Key" (the first key)!

We passed several docks along the Cooper River, but only this one was the congregating spot, the others were free of birds. This pelican could barely be bothered to get out of our way as we slid past him.

We were very glad that we had already crossed the Savannah River before this guy went by. The channel is deep, but pretty narrow.