Offshore, again

We made it to Ft. Pierce this morning.  I'm so glad to be out of 4-6 ft. swells.  I cannot tell you how nice it is to not be going side to side right now.  When we turned into the channel to get into Ft. Pierce, the seas were directly on the stern.  I burst into the Hallelujah chorus, and I'm really not a singer.

In St. Augustine on Saturday we explored the area and the Fort there.  Is it Fort McHenry?  I cannot remember.

 We saw the 'soldiers' fire a cannon out to sea.  That was cool.

But before that, we hit the ice cream parlor.

Then we decided to go on a carriage tour of the city.  It was very enjoyable.

Yesterday morning we left to go offshore again.  As we motored out the channel we saw 2 dolphins.  That's always a good sign.  Then we saw a jumping tarpon.  We've never seen that before!  We decided it was a good sign as well.  The pass was a little rough, but not nearly as bad as leaving Hilton Head.  We made the turn and settled into as nice a rhythm as you can with 3-5 seas on the beam.  I stayed up top as much as possible, and that worked out well for me.  At bedtime, Ryan put the kids down and I stayed up to start my watch.  The seas and winds got squirelly as we dodged thunderstorms.  Lots of thunderstorms.  I began to feel like I was riding a mechanical bull that was sitting on top of a giant wobble board while I was fighting off the stomach flu.  It wasn't all that pleasant.  Every once in a while said mechanical bull (and wobble board) would jump on a roller coaster ride - something like Space Mountain in the dark.  Ugh.  But I didn't get sick.  When Ryan came up to take his watch I went down below, but I couldn't sleep.  There was just so much motion I couldn't relax. So I went up top and sent him back down for a couple hours more sleep.  There's no sense in both of us not getting any sleep.  Around 4:00 a.m. I got him back up and went to bed, where I finally succumbed to slumber until the kids got up at 6:30.

I have to mention how well the kids are doing.  They aren't crazy about being offshore, but they are handling it better physically than I am.  They were both able to eat some dinner, and Zachary could even go below and play Wii.  Ryan went down there for a bit and came back up saying no way could he handle that with all this motion.  It didn't seem to phase Zachary, who was thrilled at his unlimited Wii time.  Evan would play up top with me, or have really cute conversations with Ryan and me, then go down and hang with "Bubba".  They both slept fairly well considering how much the boat was rocking back and forth.

This morning we saw a rainbow.  Certainly a sign of better seas, right?

Evan was hanging with the Captain and munching on oatmeal squares happily this morning.

Did I mention how happy I am to be OUT of the Atlantic Ocean right now?  Ryan is thrilled to have skipped 7 or 8 days of constantly being at the helm on the ICW, so it's a win-win.  We are taking the ICW now down to Miami.  This family just needs a break from the rollers.  They had built to 5-7 this morning before we turned into the channel and I burst into song.

Tonight we have friends driving down from Sebastian to see us.  Curt and Eva were actually the couple that taught us how to sail on a learn to sail vacation in the Virgin Islands.  We spent a week on their boat, also an Island Packet, learning how to sail.  They were working for the Maryland School of Seamanship.  We met Lew on that trip as well, he was the captain on another boat.  After spending a week together we got to be good friends, so they invited us with them as they took their boat from St. Thomas to Jamaica that spring.  That was our first offshore experience and turned out to be a wonderful learning vacation.  This was all before we bought the first Southern Cross, so I guess that was 12 or so years ago?  My how time flies!  We are looking forward to catching up with them and sharing our sailing adventures with them.