It's a New Year, let's be good to our blog.

Rather than explain where I have been for the last nine months to a silent digital audience I will instead do a little of this: (and then tell a nice story about Quiet)

I have been tested by Beaufort.  But it’s a New Year and I am finally getting the F out of here.  Next stop-Savannah (more on that to come).  It’s not my style to really believe that there is much of a will behind the way the world works.  But looking back at my time here, especially knowing that I’m finally leaving, it’s a bit of a revelation to see the big picture of what this past year taught me.  The message is so clear now, and I admit my pride has taken a bit of a hit at realizing how obvious it all is.  January 1^st of 2012 I made the decision to make the final liquidation of my assets and move the boat to the coast no matter the cost, and disregarding that I knew I couldn’t afford it.  At the time I felt trapped, landlocked on a lake in the middle of the Carolinas.  I wasn’t saving money as I once was due in large part to an hour long commute inflating my gas costs.  I was having immediate relationship problems with my parents, and I was ready for a change of pace.  Funny enough I think I was in South Carolina when I had the urge to flee.  I was on my way back to Charlotte, on the highway (an excellent place for revelations, epiphanies, and prophecies).   Little did I know that S. Carolina would become my Davey Jones’ Locker, trapping me, testing me, trying to drown the dream with all hands aboard.  *Trying.

What lay ahead for me back then was discomfort, fear, anxiety, and a very tangible sense of ongoing adventure.  It is addictive, and when the miles tick by and the nights of fretful sleep anchored in the middle of nowhere end and you step out into the morning light realizing you’ve survived another night the exhilaration is delicious.  Underequipped and alone.  That kind of adventure got replaced upon my arrival in Beaufort with a different kind; how to make enough cash to keep moving.  That meant learning new things, making new contacts and trying to use my skill set to get the most out of my life and my time in a new place.

I don’t want this to be a forum for bitching like so many blogs can be, so I’ll leave it at that.  I also appreciate that a bulk of my trip has yet to be documented here.  However, I’ve sort of lost track of the chronology and my memory won’t do the trip justice.  But rather than deprive you of any decent plot I will describe one day and two nights I spent anchored just south of Myrtle Beach.  When I think of the trip down I always think of that stop for some reason.  I think it might represent in my mind the freedom I felt alone on the water.

I was here:

In the middle of nowhere, pretty inland South Carolina, I pulled up with enough light to carefully anchor and then dramatically do some work for my old job.  I had to use my phone to hook the computer to the internet and took care of some last minute work my coworkers in offices around the country needed done.  Anyway once I was finished with that I sat in the cockpit and watched a hawk bringing nesting material back to the top of a piling that had an ICW marker signpost mounted on it.  I could hear the baby hawks calling out to their mother when she flew off to find nesting material.  The water was as flat as glass and the spot was very well protected from the wind.  It was so quite that even though I couldn’t see the chicks I could hear them. 

Many quiet cups of tea and perhaps a wildlife documentary later it was dark and I got in bed.  Very quickly I realized how much I would need to get used to the quiet.  The mangroves came alive at night, the creature calls were vivid, and close.  Like predators were stalking... but I'm on a boat.  Can jaguars swim?  Cats...
As the tide drew water across my boat all night I could hear the myriad of minutia scraping along my hull.  Picture a night so still that a twig floating down a river bumps into the hull of a boat and because it’s the lowlands (they call it The Lowcountry here) the water is moving so very slowly along… well inside the boat it’s as if that sound gets amplified and you can’t hear anything else since you’re paranoid already that the anchor is slipping or something as bad, and you’re trying to go to sleep too early with too much energy after a full day of mostly sitting still behind a wheel pulling on some ropes from time to time. All. Day.  But you don’t have electricity besides some dim cabin lights- no company, no booze.

Then suddenly a slightly larger twig suddenly strikes causing you to jump every few minutes.  That first night was all about the primal ability to listen intensely, especially as you let your guard down.

By the next morning I was used to the twigs and was relishing the one day I didn’t sail and the only day I stopped for my entire trip into South Carolina.  I was looking forward to reading outside in the windless weather.  I had been battered around at the coast for long enough.  So I read an ancient copy of one of the Sherlock Holmes sequels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (whose name I love) that was passed to me when I was younger by my great uncle John Ash.  The best part was that it had been such a long time since I read the tales as a child that I didn’t remember a single one of the mysteries.

Drank more tea… PB&J again, it was really quiet.  All day.  I had gotten used to weeks of day in day out feeling pressed to keep moving, to keep running no matter what.  It was eerie to be fighting what I had gotten used to in order to sit and relax and enjoy the environment.  Probably gave in watched another nature documentary on my laptop to break up the silence with the soothing and subtly inspired voice of David Attenborough tell me about migratory patterns of the snowbirds… or whatever.  Phonebook.

 I made up my mind to leave early the next day and stock up on supplies by stopping at a marina down the way.  Middle of the night, I suddenly wake.  Something about the gentle movements the  boat was making had changed.  It was so subtle I immediately chalked it up to the paranoia that had been haunting my sleeping hours with its chaotic silence.  But I got up to check anyway.  Out in the cockpit looking into the oily black-dark water of the night with a flashlight there it is, the mother of all twigs.

I had a limb, a very large limb that had snagged somewhere beneath the boat.  It was big enough I could see it from both sides of the boat.  Crap.  It’s the middle of the night I’m not even awake.  Is it caught on the keel or the rudder?  Keel would be ok, but rudder would be bad.  I can’t see, much less operate the boat in this dark to free myself.  I tried poking it with the blunt end of my docking hook.  It hasn’t broken anything yet.  It’ll have to wait until morning.  A few more hours of light, often interrupted sleep later I got up at dawn and slowly make preparations to free myself.  I poked it some more. 

UPDATE: I found the documentation of this Limb!

Finally I decided that because the boat was pointed into the current my best bet would be to back off of the tree limb.  Started her up and gunned it in reverse and ran away from the dislodged massive tree limb.  When I got to the marina to ride my bike into town for groceries… I was a bit of a mess.  Like I had been camping and wasn’t quite ready to hop back into society.  I wasn’t.  But I lived.  It was a good time.

Oh, and here are some pictures...

A Letter

Dear South Carolina,

I have to admit, it’s a little embarrassing to finally write after so long… I guess we just have had a rough mutual past.  Not enough ups to go with the downs.  I’ve been avoiding coming to terms with you.  The idea was to largely ignore you, pass by in stealth mode, without getting snagged in your boggish swamps.  Not get hassled by your conservative wing-nut ideals.  Slip through the hierarchy of supremacist classifications, histrionics, and socially accepted racism.  I would have passed by observing you from a distance but keeping our eyes from locking.  Politely keeping the association between us as close to nil as possible.

I’ve been classified North Carolinian these many years.  I’m now 29 years old and I’ve spent 16.5 of those years in NC.  I can’t help but consider myself more North Carolinian as an American than anything else.  But you’ve never been very far away.  It’s the nature of North and South Carolina I think.  North Carolina is long and lean, broad and varied.  It stretches like taffy from the outer banks to a floppy end melting over the Appalachians.  South Carolina, you are stocky and vacant.  You are but a misshapen brick of a state, a land of golf carts and crocodiles; one massive mosquito breeding ground with your sweaty air and potent stench of decay.  Not much more than a massive compost heap just outside North Carolina’s walls.  Your muddy or sandy soil when dry is saturated with ant colonies, such that avoiding ant hills is the equivalent of never standing in one spot for more than an instant.  Keep walking, or South Carolina will devour you in agony.

That’s how I used to think of you, I know it sounds harsh, and I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness for being so ignorant and assuming.  Now I’ve been here for almost five months, I know better.  I’m not making the assumption anymore.  You really are all those things.  I actually still feel that way about you, in general.  So you can forgive me now if you like, but I won’t beg or recount my beliefs and teachings; just like you wouldn’t.  The fact of the matter is North Carolina is better… even though many defining principals are similar.

I’m going to stop making as many generalizations though and get through with this letter.  I’m going to write you as the man that you’ve gotten to know in the special, unique and somewhat uncomfortable way we’ve grown accustomed to.  After all, even though I did my best to shun you with the high level professionalism of a thirteen year old girl, we were forced together by circumstance.  I was effectively poured out from a dirty pitcher, naked and wet, hungry and desperate like an alleyway prostitute whose stolen clothes only bought her one lift to the seedy back entrance at the greasy drug den where her pimp is smoldering with anger.  We make quite the pair.

I’d like to think that maybe that’s why we got along, I came to you when I was hitting rock bottom, when I was all but broken, panicked and dehydrated.  I’d like to think that it wasn’t really my fault.  But, I don’t like to delude myself indefinitely.  I know it all falls back to the moment I made the decision to flee.  Like the well respected city council member who realizes his cohorts have squealed about the South American connections, that the local airport is swarming with feds and his home phones have been tapped.

New Year’s Day 2012 I decided that I wouldn’t be able to fix the boat and really prepare it for the journey ahead; but that I was going to go for it anyway, knowing full well that it would catch up to me.  I just hoped that my life as a fugitive would last long enough to creep across the border… that I’d be able to meet my South American connection at his dusty truck just across the border at sunset and that I could get my new life started before the needed repairs caught up to me.

South Carolina, like the expert assassin that you’ve always been, you snagged me in your low hanging moss, and cut me up on your oyster beds and withered and crushed me with your heavy heat.  Why couldn’t you have just let me go?  Is it my European lineage?  Is it retribution for your laborious defeat in the war against the pale faced settlers that would rape your few resources?  I have to admit your dastardly method of punishment is ingenious.  It hints at a level of intelligence I wasn’t expecting.  You beckon to the unfortunate or deceived, you offer a sweet indulgence or two, an anecdotal nicety that was unexpected, and just enough promise for a profitable stay; and then it gets a little warmer, a little wetter, and a lot more alive.  Next thing you know you are just one big extermination machine, an oven for kittens.  I’m not talking about the weather.

But it’s cool, cuz I made the choice… 

And…

I’m glad I got to know you after everything.  I mean, although it’s twisted, you certainly have a sense of humor.  Like the kind of guilty laugh you do when the guy hits his head in time with the laugh track, and the video ends before the paramedics arrive.  There’s a lot of that here.  You also know how to seriously relax, I’m not sure you know how to do anything but relax.  You also have this super convincing version of beauty going on.  You are full of wide open unpopulated places, and nature has a great hold everywhere here.  But I can’t get past this nagging feeling that it’s all a bit of over dressing to obscure the blatant reality that you are flat…

I’m sorry but the fact of the matter is that curves matter.  I know, I know- you think that the tattoos and the belly piercing and the fact that you pull off the unshaven “natural look” so well, make up for it.  But let me let you in on a little secret… it doesn’t.  There is something that tugs at the guttural unevolved spiritual libido- it practically guarantees mutual satisfaction- Elevation.  Get some.

Ya know, mix it up.

Some foot hills here and there, dunes, whatever you want.  Anything would be a big step forward.  I hear tell about some mountains that weakly cling to North Carolina’s chain like an almost functional extra limb, but I’ve never seen them.  If they do exist, they might as well not.  You’re a big lady South Carolina, they seem too far away to be true.

But it’s cool, I’m not so shallow to let one (if glaring) flaw keep me from, if begrudgingly, getting to know you, and convincingly believe I have feelings for you.  It may sound like I’m pulling a lot of 180’s in describing you, bait and switches if you will, or improvised compliment devices; but, that’s only because that’s how my relationship has been with you.  I wouldn’t give it up for anything, there will always be a place in my heart for you, I’ll always sort of love you, in a special kind of way, you know, like this one kind of love, but not that other love kind of love…?

There are things about you that you should never change.  Your cooking is amazing.  We all know a way to a man’s heart, and you’ve got that covered.  Sunsets here are hypnotizing gypsy spells made of cotton candy and vanilla fighter jets.  The tide mesmerizes everything and commands a sorcerer’s apprentice orchestration that sets the creatures abuzz, and the populous entranced.  The breeze melodically rises and falls threatening insect Armageddon before the sudden storm drops the beat, yo.  Then the lightening dazzles while the thunder keeps rhythm with bass that pumps your blood for you.  Marsh grasses twist, bend, and strain prostrate.  Allowing the gusts to really gain speed kicking up the sandy soil as if trying to mix it with the atmosphere above, a grey and black two-tone design that is stunning to watch as it invades. The sky follows the curling motion of a tidal wave submerging what was picturesque setting minutes prior.  What follows is a fierce rain that chills you in the accompanying wind.  The puddles form almost instantly and suddenly it seems as if water is coming from everywhere.  The water from above is cold and stings while the water from below is warm, instantly made comfortable by the still baking ground, gritty with sand and mud.  It’s a rain that makes you dirty.  It’s sexy, and kind of hurts.  Once you’ve been baptized to the bone, saturated in the most protected crevasses on your person, the gauntlet having been thrown down, the victor unanimously recognized; then it becomes steady fat rain, no longer parallel to the ground.  It falls directly down in a stormy slow breeze, a bit intimidating, but gentle and almost reassuring.

While I am really itching to get the proper start on what I wished had begun the way I envisioned; I am happy I got to know you.  I’m happy that you welcomed me, even if it was done in your plain language terrain, with the spike of dark slapstick humor, dosed using your patented brash unforgiving karma circus.  I wish you were more hospitable, but it’s not your fault, and although it was painful- I know it’s just the way you break us into your tradition.  I’m the only one to blame for any discomfort you’ve brought me; you have my pardon for any torture you might have wrung me with.

So this is my coming to terms with you South Carolina.  I hope I made my feelings clear, I have a tender sentiment in my heart as I write this; no, seriously.  I’m not surprised we have our conflicts.  I wasn’t meant to be here.  It was going to be inevitable that we would row.  But I wish there had been fewer games and deceptions, I wish we were both more upfront with each other, that we had taken each other seriously.  But I have learned that games and deception are a part of life with you.  I’ve learned that seriousness is incongruous with the fundamentals of living here with you.  It’s something that must be accepted for what it is, parts of you that have to be embraced.

So are we good?  What’s the score here?

Luv ya,

X

Ummm, an update?

So I've discovered that in my line of lifestyle a blog is difficult to keep current... if any of you follow my blog you've probably noticed dates listed in the blog that don't mesh with the published dates...  currently I'm writing about dates in March, while it's actually the beginning of June.

This post is to help explain that a bit.
I'm currently in Beaufort SC. and have been here for a number of months.  My reasons for the delayed posts mostly have to do with the lack of internet connections required for uploading images and videos, in conjunction with my frantic and sometimes failed attempts to get jobs here.  I am only now getting into something of a routine, teaching swim lessons at a local yacht club and working weekends at a restaurant... I don't want to progress the plot too much, but I thought it could use some explaination-

To keep this post from being an utter waste, I have filled it with images of the crazy South Carolina wildlife I've observed and bothered to take photos of.... enjoy!

Myrtle Beach, no further explanation necessary

My first successul dolphin shot (of many failed ones)

"Rock Snake" maybe?

The Marines have their own section at Walmart... front and center.

Blinded this guy in the middle of the night

A manta ray!

Crocodiles were much closer than they appear

A crab feeding on my hull

This one (about 1.5 inches across) was playing dead in the pool, until I pulled him out

ummm, yeah.

Keeping North Carolina to the North

I finally had my first day of making the kind of progress I could expect on my own.  Finally one day when engine trouble, getting towed, weather, or the military hadn't hampered my progress or messed with the statistics.  I had been for weeks, and even months trying to gauge how far I'd be able to travel in a given day, and after more than 100 miles from New Bern- I had a number to compare to; 36.4 miles.  Mostly under sail power on the Intra-Coastal Waterway.

It was 115 miles back to New Bern, but keep in mind we had done roughly 80 miles of sailing on the ocean (that doesn’t count), and I had been turned back by the military, so it had taken over 200 miles of travel to get half that distance.  Now I had an engine that had proved itself, and the wind seemed to be blowing in the right direction to enable sailing on the ICW, which was crucial because I couldn’t afford to spend money on gas.

It was a mere 30 miles to the Cape Fear River, which marked my goal destination of Wilmington.  It would be another 50 miles to the South Carolina border.  The race was against my bank account- I needed to get to Beaufort SC; another 280 miles away.  That put me nine days away from free dockage using my new benchmark.  There was work that needed to be done too- all I needed was an internet connection to do it.

Now I needed to make use of the favorable winds and get as far down the coast as I could.  After leaving Sloop Point I figured I could make the Cape Fear River in one day- and finally be where Antonio and I had planned to arrive when we set out on the ocean and failed.

Thursday March 8^th:

Upon departure I was able to fill the sails, although it was a tricky headwind

After having a pleasant morning talking to Ron, and securing my new anchor I bumped my way out of Marker 90 Marina just before noon.  I turned South on the ICW into wind conditions barely able to support raising the sails.  It was a beautiful morning and I was able to take my shirt off to get some sun right off the bat.

I played with the dolphins and basically took in North Carolina as I sailed along a necklace of small islands that bordered the ICW.  

Figure Eight Island Swing Bridge

Things were beginning to look more familiar as I got closer to Wilmington.  Marker 90 Marina had been essentially the beginning of the “Home Stretch”.  I had spent a lot of time in this area growing up, and the barrier islands were looking more and more familiar as I got farther south.

I passed through the Figure 8 Island Swing Bridge, and got to enjoy the sight a little more than the Surf City Swing Bridge the day before (which I had been rushing to get through).

I think this truss design (used in most of the retractable bridges I passed) is the most entertaining and creative way of getting a road out of my way

I was weighing the options out in front of me; I could head up to a cheaper marina further up the Cape Fear River and add about 20 miles to my trip, or I could forgo heading towards Wilmington-proper (which isn’t actually on the coast but inland up the river).  I needed to get online and get some work done- so as I approached Carolina Beach and took note of the time and the tides I could tell I would have to navigate the Cape Fear River in the dark if I was going to make it to the cheaper marina.  Instead, I chose to play it safe and stop at the closer marina that wasn’t so out of the way.

The Wrightsville Beach Bascule Bridge

But not before passing through the Wrightsville Beach Bascule Bridge.  This bridge is something of an icon to me personally.  It is the bridge that leads to the beach I’ve spent the most time out of any in my life.  I had crossed over the bridge an innumerable amount, but had never passed underneath.  

In middle school I swam off the beach as a hurricane approached.  When my dog was a puppy, this was the first beach she’d ever been on, and ran away in excitement at the smells carried on the wind.  With so many memories it was somewhat a triumph to see this familiar sight from a completely new perspective.

A most familiar bridge to me, seen from a new perspective

After passing the Wrightsville Beach Bascule I felt the urge to hurry and beat dusk to Joyner Marina, which was still 12 miles away, a distance in which anything can happen.  When I arrived it had just gotten dark, and the current was very strong as I approached the fuel dock at the marina.  The current was strong enough that in trying to dock I was able to secure the boat, but lost my hook (which is a pretty crucial tool for docking, especially when solo).  I had to push off, retrieve the hook (which floats), and re-dock… feeling somewhat awkward.

The motor-yacht opulence of Wrightsville Beach

Not where I was going to spend my coin...

Having gotten to Wilmington, and having found an internet connection, all that was left was to take a look at the entrance to a short and narrow canal that would lead me to the Cape Fear River.  The entrance to the canal is directly below a fixed bridge.  At night the entrance looked like a mouth big enough to eat boats.  I was glad to pause and delay what I considered to be the next stage of the voyage.  There was nothing familiar to me anywhere South of here until Charleston SC, which still isn’t that familiar.

But I wouldn’t need to be worried about the all consuming mouth for more than 24 hours, after which I would be rested, and have a day’s work under my belt…

Saturday March 10^th:

I started out early.  While I had picked out a few potential stopping points in the vicinity of the South Carolina border (using my new benchmark), I wasn’t sure where I would stop, how far I would get, or if the Cape Fear River might have something unexpected in store.

The gaping maw that would lead me to the Cape Fear River, appropriately marked by the Carolina Beach fixed bridge (or highway 421 if you want to get technical)

A short jump through the canal and I was off- today was my day to reach South Carolina- the Cape Fear river was before me- huge….!

It felt good to be on somewhat open waters for the first time since Antonio and I returned battered from our adventure at sea.  The wind was strong and constant.  I finally got to cruise the way it’s meant to be done, in great conditions.

A snakk but cute little civilization on the South banks of the Cape Fear River, the last I would see before entering SC

Over all too soon, I had run with it for 12 miles and in no time I picked up the ICW on the other side.  The wind was still at as usable angle, so it was good going that morning, but the wind was straying farther and farther West throughout the day and at various points I struggled to keep moving into the wind on the narrow ribbon of water I had available.

This picture gives decent description to the sliver of North Carolina I had left to travel that day

The farewell to North Carolina was a mostly rural one.  The environment was mostly marshland with several shallow passages out to the sea.  I passed many small private fishing boats and even saw one particularly energetic young man swimming (more or less) in the shallows here:

Lines of hundreds of mobile homes, a perfect reminder of North Carolina's economic status (this was right next to prime real estate)

The Sunset Beach bridge, a mere 3 miles from the border, the last great sight my home state had to offer

The general environs

My goodnight view

I anchored just across the border in SC.  It was my first time anchoring overnight alone, and with a new anchor- but I was confident that with the calm conditions and my two anchors I didn’t have much to worry about.  Consolations aside I was on edge.  But another sailboat of similar size anchored in the same branch I did which gave me some relief.  Due to the placid conditions I knew there was nothing to worry about and slept well, but couldn’t help but wake several times throughout the night and pop my head out the hatch to confirm I hadn’t drifted onto shore.

The view upon anchoring

My improvised anchor light...

I woke early the next morning with South Carolina, and entirely unfamiliar waters/geography ahead.

This entry's portion of the trip- two days of travel