Year: 2007

Report #1 from FERNANDINA FLORIDA! After having our boat delivered here by Ron and Paul, IP owners, while we stayed home to focus on our Drexel University Grad school work, we have finally arrived. The photos help to tell the story with Radeen packing up and provisioning the boat back in Rock Hall, MD with tons of food for the delivery and for living aboard in Florida. Four complete dock carts of food was secured, stowed and packed aboard along with a full menu plan and inventory of locations so Ron, Paul and Jeff could easily make planned meals. Once the boat was in Fernandina on a mooring ball, Paul and Ron flew home from Jacksonville. Two weeks later we drove our car down to Florida and moved aboard. Job #1 was to get the dinghy running, so I had to tear down the carburator and clean the fuel bowl, fuel pump, fuel line and fuel filter plus add a new spark plug. Once this was completed, we have a running dinghy. These ethanol fuels tend to clog up if allowed to sit for a while. Now the dinghy is running better than ever. Living aboard on the mooring ball, we completed our last papers for our course work and after 4 days, we submitted our work and ended the fall semester! WHAT A FEELING – Drexel is a ton of work. They make you write so much. As it turns out, the boat is actually a good place to study from, with no distractions and we have adjusted well.

Perfect Sunset in Fernandina, FL

This town of Fernandina Beach, Florida, is really a great town and the city should be commended as to the work they have done, focused on the boating community. With a newly built marina with floating docks and a clean bathhouse and wonderful restaurant, the location is very welcoming. The town is a short walk right over the railroad tracks and has cute shops, ice cream parlors, famous bars, a great Mexican restaurant, library and post office all within a few blocks of the marina. The beach is about 1 to 1.5 miles east of the marina, but with our car, we were able to explore the entire Amelia Island area. With rolling sand dunes and vacation homes on the beach, you can see why this location is so popular. Lucky for us, we have a very unusual warm front giving us 80 degree days and 65 degree nights. Now with our car shuffled down to Titusville, we are waiting out the fog, and as soon as it lifts we will head south for Jacksonville, then on towards an anchorage just below there for tonight. The we will pull into St Augustine where we plan to anchor off the fort and spend a few days before moving on south. So, our first Florida adventure NOW begins!

Radeen Loading up in Rock Hall, MD

Working Drexel University from Rt. 95

Job #1, Rebuild the dinghy’s (our car) fuel system and get running

Radeen exploring the wonderful town

Pelicans are everywhere!

Ron and Paul did a wonderful job of exploring the ICW from Rock Hall, MD to Fernandina Beach Florida and delivered Island Spirit to the destination right on time!

Now the Florida Winter Exploration #1 can begin as soon as we wrap up our Drexel University Quarter.

Here is a Google Map of all there points along the way and the many beautiful places they stopped.

Use this link to see the interactive map online.

Team Island Spirit is anchored down in Blackwater Creek at the north end of Currituck Sound in preparation for tropical storm NOEL to pass off the North Carolina coast. (on this chart Currituck sound is the northern most sound) Tonight will be a long night as it looks like the team will have to stay put all day Fri as they deal with this storm. She has come in closer to the coast than originally forecasted. Below is the current NOAA forcast as of 1 hr ago!

Anchored location is:
36-35.635 N

76-02.807 W.

CURRITUCK SOUND-7:06 PM EDT THU NOV 1 2007

GALE WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 2 AM EDT FRIDAY THROUGH SATURDAY MORNING

TONIGHT N WINDS 10 TO 15 KT…BECOMING NE 25 TO 30 KT WITH GUSTS TO AROUND 40 KT. WAVES 1 FOOT…THEN 3 TO 4 FT EARLY IN THE EVENING. A CHANCE OF SHOWERS EARLY IN THE EVENING. A CHANCE OF RAIN LATE.

FRI NE WINDS 30 TO 35 KT WITH GUSTS TO AROUND 45 KT. WAVES 3 TO4 FT. A CHANCE OF RAIN.

FRI NIGHT N WINDS 30 KT WITH GUSTS TO AROUND 45 KT. WAVES 3 TO 4 FT.A CHANCE OF RAIN.

SAT NW WINDS 25 TO 30 KT WITH GUSTS TO AROUND 40 KT…DIMINISHING TO 15 TO 20 KT IN THE AFTERNOON. WAVES 2 TO 3 FT…SUBSIDING TO 1 TO 2 FTIN THE AFTERNOON.

SAT NIGHT NW WINDS 10 TO 15 KT. WAVES 1 TO 2 FT IN THE EVENING…THEN 1 FOOT OR LESS.

12 hr.

24 hr.

36 hr.

After 12 weeks and 1,100 sea miles, it is great to be back in our home slip at Rock Hall, MD. (this Great Blue Heron was on a piling in our marina) You can get spoiled easily while in dock. Unlimited WATER, POWER, a CAR and no rocking, life is EASY at the docks! For 12 weeks we have carried all our water to the boat. We walked for all our food and carried it back to the boat. We managed our electrical usage and conserved power because all power has to be made via solar panels or an alternator. We slept on the anchor for over 79 nights and some nights were sleepless as we were up on deck for anchor watch due to high winds.

Now at the docks life is S I M P L E and we are living large. Driving a car is a real contrast because we have not driven a car for 12 weeks and we have not moved faster than 6-8 miles per hour for months. So getting in a car and speeding down the road at 55 MPH is crazy fast!

Water, endless amounts of water, long showers, hot water, water heater, no solar shower, bath house, and non marine toilets are also real treats as well. Life is simple at a dock.

So it is wonderful to be home and great to be back at our dock. Here is a video of our home dock area. You will see why we enjoy our spot.

Video: Great to Be Home:

Welcome to Annapolis, MD, where you will always see one of the best sailing cruises in the world, the mighty fine WOODWIND II. (see photo) Woodwind takes people out on day sails from the Marriott docks and this photo was taken as we sailing into Annapolis MD and Woodwind was sailing out. Someday I hope to be a crew member and work as a deck hand on this sailing vessel. That would be a great summer job!
Today was a long day as we pulled up anchor just outside of the C & D canal and headed for Annapolis, MD some 50+ miles away. Unfortunately the wind was blowing directly FROM Annapolis so we had to motor directly into the wind. With the bow rising and falling 3 feet each time due to the wind blown waves and the tide running into the wind, we were taking bow waves OVER the bow and into the cockpit ALL morning long. This is a real mess because the salt spray blows into your face as you sit at the wheel some 35 feet away from the bow. What a wet damp ride it was for the next 5 hours! This is always the problem when you have to be at a certain place by a certain date, you go when you would normally NOT go. So go we did.

Lucky for us, when you get to the Annapolis Bay Bridge the course turns to the right, starboard, by 30 degrees and we could sail in. We had a reefed mainsail up all morning, so out came the full 135% jenny and off went the motor. We had another GREAT SAIL moving along at 7 to 7.5 knots with the boat happy and the crew much happier. We sail into Annapolis maybe 10 to 15 times a year, and we never get tired of it. The Chesapeake Bay is HOME to us and we know the waters so well. It felt odd sailing right past our home of ROCK HALL, MD, but we did. It has been over 2 months since we left home as we sailed New England. It feels good to be back HOME., nome on the Chesapeake Bay.

Sailing into Annapolis, MD:

Sights and Sounds of Sailing (no narration)

What a perfect sailing day, no threat of storms, clear skies, a building wind from the stern! We left the Cape May, NJ anchorage, just off the Coast Guard Station, at 10am and made our way out the canal and into the Delaware Bay. I must be getting use to this leg because the RR bridge did not scare me this time for the first time in 5 years! Passing the ferry terminal we entered the Delaware Bay around 10:30 and rolled ou the jib. The wind was on the stern at about 7-8 knots and with our forward speed of 6, there was only an apparant wind speed of 2 knots, BUT THIS WOULD CHANGE!

NOT this Year, that is right we will not be returning to our teaching position this school year! We both have taken study sabbatical leave and we have returned to Drexel University to obtain current, updated and additional Masters Degrees. I am working on a new Masters in the Science of Instruction with an added certification in Information Technology. Radeen is working on a new certification in TESL, Teaching English as a Second Language. In order to qualify for a study sabbatical we need to take 24 graduate credits (12 per/semester) making us fulltime college students. Our sabbatical starts now, and we will return to our same teaching positions in September 2008. For now, we are college students once again but at the age of 50+.

This is a nice change, but as we tested out the course work this summer, it is a lot more work than first expected. We work on Drexel from 6am till around lunch time, which has become 1:30ish. Then we have lunch, pack up the laptops, shut down, and head off to the days explorations. We return to the boat around 5ish, hit the solar shower, make some refreshing drinks, share some snacks, and check back into the Drexel discussion boards where we chat and post reactions to the weeks readings. We enjoy a lovely dinner around 7pm, watch the sunset, pick up the boat, and do more reading. Around 9-10pm we hit the bunk, sleep and begin the day again with Drexel at 6-7am.

This sabbatical is a study sabbatical and with the new technology we are able to take all our coursework online via the Internet. We have full access to all the college libraries via online, we have an HP 5180 series all in one network printer, scanner, copier and a Verizon Broadband network distributed via wireless onboard. We have two Dell laptops which connect to our network wirelessly and Radeen works at the nav desk, and I work using the drop down table.

Power is a big issue since these laptops take about 8 amps of 12 volt power, so we have two solar panels mounted over the roof and they produce about 75% of the electricity we use. The extra power is made up from running the engine every 2 days to store back up the lost power in our 5 battery bank system.

We feel very fortunate that we can take this time to advance our degrees and at the same time enjoy living on the boat which we both love to do. It has taken some discipline because the boating life is really not a work environment but we are making it so. We have found that this IS a great place to read, study and write because there are no distractions for very long periods of time. We have a TV, but it has not been used since installed over 2 months ago.

Life is good aboard Island Spirit, our new college classroom, and college dorm room!

Links to our Drexel Online Programs:

Hayden’s Masters
http://www.drexel.com/online-degrees/education-degrees/ms-si/index.aspx
Courses
http://www.drexel.com/online-degrees/education-degrees/ms-si/curriculum.aspx

Hayden’s IT Certification
http://www.drexel.com/online-degrees/education-degrees/cert-its/index.aspx
IT Courses
http://www.drexel.com/online-degrees/education-degrees/cert-its/curriculum.aspx

Radeen’s TESL Certification
http://www.drexel.com/online-degrees/education-degrees/cert-esl/index.aspx
TESL Courses
http://www.drexel.com/online-degrees/education-degrees/cert-esl/curriculum.aspx