I HATE SHOES

I've been in New York (well, technically New Jersey) since February. I moved here to be with my new fiancee Elizabeth, and things were very quiet on the sailing front until recently. I've been working for a charter/sailing lesson company up on 79th Street and its been going very well so far. The Hudson River is known for its currents, fickle and shifty winds, massive amounts of boat traffic, very surgey unprotected marinas and things in the river that, well, shouldn't be. It does have some nice views of the city and Statue of Liberty though. All in all, not a great place to sail, but I'm on the water, and that's something.  I also managed to get my NJ teaching certification and hope to be using it in a classroom this fall. My sweet Soveraine  is docked in Florida, where I visit her every few months. I still plan to cruise on her extensively, but it will be more piecemeal for the next couple of years. I need to do some work on her anyway, including installing a win...

After spending a week and half over Thanksgiving at my brother's place in Stuart, it was time to weigh anchor and head over to the west coast. I had a great time over there, and even met up with Scott and Kitty again which is always a pleasure. Stuart was not my final destination though, and I'm now starting to realize I'm not sure if I have one. I was getting desperate for some other crew and wanted to leave by the end of the week when a guy Chris responded to my ad on a cruising forum. I had sailed with people from that forum before, it was how I got in touch with Alex and got on the whole Hawaii/Alaska/San Diego expedition. Two days later he flew into West Palm and we left the following morning. I decided to take the Okeechobee Waterway across the state as opposed to going around the tip of Florida and through the Keys. I've heard with the Gulf Stream so close to the reefs it can get a little intimidating trying to shoot between them. It only took us two days to ...

Fernandina Beach is an interesting place. It had a cute, quaint downtown area with more bars per square mile than Newport, which is definitely saying something. A few days after I got there my good sailing friend Joey joined me and we spent the next few nights reveling in the small town and waiting for the weather to change. A cold front had stalled out over the eastern Florida coast and was not making an easy decision as to when to leave. After a few days we kinda just said the hell with it and proceeded down the ICW at about 4 pm on a Thursday. I didn't think motoring down the ICW at night would be a huge deal, turns out I was wrong. Thankfully nothing dreadful happened, but when a day marker that's not on your Navionics app, nor your paper charts appears out of the pitch black darkness a mere 15 feet to starboard, its a freaky experience. I've done this in twilight before, in a much wider waterway with many well lit buoys, however the narrow, dark channel between Ferna...

I've wanted to title a post "Florida" for a long time, four years actually, and today I finally can. The reason I started this blog, nearly four years ago, was to document my travels south, specifically to Florida. I was living in Boston at the time, winter was coming on and I needed a way to get out. The desk job didn't have any transfers down there and there was just no way I was spending any more time in New England. This is how I came into purchasing Winchelsea . It was a pretty basic idea: buy a boat and sail it down to Florida. That started a four year odyssey involving three boats, two oceans, an engagement, a captains license, a galaxy of new and wonderful friends, and roughly 10,000 nautical miles under various keels. I can't emphasize the friends part enough, it is the thing that has really made this whole voyage worth while. Anyone who has met me in the past four years has known I've had this one and only goal, a one-track mind if you will, it w...

It was cold leaving Baltimore. Damn cold. Mid 40s during the day and mid 30s at night. The wind was right though and within an hour of leaving the dock the sails were up and we were going at a good clip in the northwesterly breeze. My crew consisted of Pearce, the son of a friend of mine with almost no prior sailing experience, and Zach, a fellow 12 meter sailor from Newport. The breeze really picked up during the day and lasted into the night. It felt really good to be sailing Soveraine  again, even if it was bitterly cold with the wind that night. We motored into Norfolk the next day and slid into a slip at the public, i.e. free, docks in Portsmouth. We were putting the boat away when a troop of three people about my age came down to the boat. "What kind of boat is she?" "Allied Seawind." "Oh nice! My wife and I were looking at those. We ended up buying a Hans Christian 38." I invited the three of them onboard and after a few beers we talked about ...

Exactly eight weeks to the day after injuring my foot, I am back in Baltimore ready to continue to make my way south. Soveraine looks as good (if not better thanks to the rain and not dragging up mud with the anchor) as when she left, thanks to Chris for putting her to bed so well. Not a moment too soon either, the temperature has dropped considerably and is supposed to be in the upper 30s tomorrow night. We'll head out tomorrow or Friday morning, depending on when Zach (a fellow 12 meter sailor) can get his butt to Baltimore. Pearce is the third crew, he has some 420 sailing experience and should round us out nicely. We'll sail down the Chesapeake into Norfolk and through the ICW/Albemarle Sound to Beaufort, with a possible stop to see another friend who lives on the outer banks. That should take a total of 5 days. From there we'll wait for weather and hop outside to Charleston, just about the same distance from Block Island to Cape May so that should take around 4...

What a nightmare, I thought to myself in that state of half awake/half asleep before even opening my eyes. My dream consisted of a trip to the ER and a diagnosis of a broken heel, which would have certainly put a damper on plans for heading south. But wait, why does my left foot feel tight and constrained? I cracked my left eye open and an unfamiliar ceiling lay above me. Tilting my head up and gazing down at a mass of cotton and Ace bandages confirmed reality. The plan was to head south to Norfolk on Wednesday morning. On Monday night Chris and I went out for dinner and, long story short, I jumped 7' from a wall along the boardwalk to the sidewalk below and when I tried to get up, couldn't support my own weight. Some hours later, the ER doctor told me I had broken my heel. I took a taxi back to the dock where Chris was supposed to meet me, but his phone was on silent so I asked the driver to take me to a cheap hotel. He ended up taking me to Willdwood, a bizarre grid of chea...