Northbound 2003

Okeechobee Waterway: After crossing Lake Okeechobee (the 2nd largest natural fresh water lake in North America), we stayed a couple of days in the marina provided by the Corps of Engineers.

These spots are tiny, with room for only a half dozen boats or so, and adjoin campgrounds full of RVs.

Here's Dory on the right, and Sea Otter II on the left, with George and Jackie on deck.

Back to Vero Beach! The "flytrap" of coastal Florida is Vero Beach. Cruising boaters come for a couple of days, and very frequently stay for weeks. We stopped here after getting back to the east coast of Florida, and used it as a base for a couple of weeks while we take care of some errands.

In the photo, a couple of the ever-present dolphins swim between anchored boats.

Excitement at Vero Beach! Shortly before we left Vero Beach, Capn Bill awoke a bit before dawn (as usual) and was making coffee. Looking out the window, he had a good view of the motorsailor Ms Fitz (left) just a couple of hundred yards away. Suddenly, the boat exploded into flames! The entire boat was engulfed in flames, extending 15-20 feet into the air.

Capn Bill called a "Mayday" and called 9-1-1 on his cell phone. The local marine fire and rescue unit is based just beyond the bridge shown behind the boat, and they were on the scene even before Capn Bill finished his 9-1-1 call. Meanwhile, the skipper of the boat anchored next to us (Charlie, on Tea Time Too) had jumped into his dinghy and raced over to the flaming boat. He found the somewhat scorched owner treading water, plucked him out of the drink, and took him to shore, where a waiting helicopter took him to a nearby hospital.

The early assessment is that a 5 gallon gasoline can on the deck had developed a leak, and dripped into the bilge. The 90 degree heat caused the drips to evaporate into gasoline vapors, which, being heavier than air, settled into the bilge and filled the entire boat below the windows.

When the owner started the generator to make coffee in the morning, the fumes ignited.

Talk about lucky! The owner was standing in the doorway to the cabin when he started the generator, and was blown overboard. Had he been anywhere else, he wouldn't have survived.

Also, had the wind and current been any different, the mooring line would have burned through, and Ms Fitz would have drifted into the many other boats downwind and downcurrent, likely igniting them as well.

After leaving Vero Beach... we've been steaming steadily north, up through Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, with all their "no-see-ums", the tiny but extremely voracious bugs of this region.

The first visible sign you've hit North Carolina on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) is the Sunset Beach Pontoon Bridge -- literally, a bridge on a barge. This is the only such bridge on the ICW; even most of the drawbridges elsewhere have been replaced with high fixed bridges that don't need to open before boats can pass.

Because it's on a barge, the bridge is affected by low tides just like the boats traveling past. At low tide, the water is too shallow for the barge to move, so the Waterway is completely blocked for hours a day. At other times, the bridge will only open on the hour, so all the boats headed north or south must wait in this narrow channel.

Most of the bridges on the North Carolina portion of the ICW only open once an hour, while the bridges in other states open on request, or in some cases every 15 - 30 minutes. Since the bridges are never multiples of an hour apart, waiting at bridges for 30 - 45 minutes is just something you have to factor into boating through North Carolina.

We stopped at Oriental NC and visited friends Jo (Narnia) and Bob (Tiger), and visited family inland. We continued northbound after Father's Day.

After Oriental, we stopped at the River Rat Yacht Club for a few days, then continued to Elizabeth City, Deep Creek, and finally Norfolk, where we stopped for the summer.

The End... After some great years on the water aboard Dory, we have decided not to take her south again, but to head to Texas and live near our son and his bride. In our last trip aboard Dory as her owners, we took her from Norfolk to nearby Chesapeake for in-water storage at Atlantic Yacht Basin. There,she will belong to our friend Seth, who has helped maintain Dory through two different owners, never realizing that she would one day belong to him.

Now it's Seth's turn!