After leaving Vero Beach on April 1, we made a beeline for Cape Canaveral, where a space shuttle was scheduled for launch on April 5th, weather permitting.

Along with three other boats, Mojo, Moxun, and Nauti RV, we positioned ourselves as close as the Coast Guard would allow to the launch site. The only problem… weather wasn’t permitting. The shuttle launch was delayed again and again, and finally the launch window passed and an indefinite delay was announced. So, we pulled up the anchor and proceeded northbound.

By the way, the “steadying sail” you see is sometimes used on a trawler to steady its motion. We found it cut down a side-to-side roll a good bit when the wind and water wanted to make our ride a bit uncomfortable.

(This lack of luck with launches was repeated every time we tried to stop for a launch. We saw at least 4 launches from far away, but every time we got up close, the launch was delayed. Maybe it was us!) Read the rest of this entry »

After all the refurbishing, we left Deltaville in mid-October heading south. As we got into the Chesapeake, we found ourselves in the middle of a pack of perhaps 100 boats headed south. Most were coming from the Anapolis boat show.

As we passed Norfolk, most boats took the slightly faster and deeper “Virginia Cut” route, while perhaps a dozen of us took the Dismal Swamp route, retracing the route we’d taken a couple of years earlier. This time, as the North Carolina visitors center, there were a dozen of us, instead of just one!

We stopped for a few days at the home of Robert and Elise in Wrightsville Beach NC, then went on to Charleston SC, where we spent a week visiting. Bill’s parents and aunt visited Dory for the first time. We made fairly rapid progress on down to Florida, where we anchored near Dragon Point, a decades old landmark that crumbled a year after our visit.

From there we went on to Stuart, where we visited Sue’s sister and brother in law for Christmas. Our son joined us there, and announced his intention of getting engaged soon!

We backtracked up to St. Augustine from Stuart, and were joined by our son Bill and his girlfriend Angie. What a sweetheart! Here they are on deck, in front of the Spanish fort in St. Augustine.

After their visit, Woody and Claressa Rustin, friends from Saudi who retired when we did, drove from Mississippi to visit.

Following the visits at St. Augustine, we went back south to Vero Beach, where we stayed until it was time to head north. Vero is a great place to stay, as the large number of cruisers are very social.

One reason for the large number of cruising boats here is that Vero Beach is perhaps the last city on the route to the Bahamas or the Keys with a well-protected mooring field, very easy accessibility to local shopping and entertainment, and plenty of room for as many as 100 cruising boats.

Boats waiting for the rare winter “weather windows” to cross the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas often wait at Vero for weeks, and make new friends among the other boaters while they await a period of several days with light winds for their crossing.

Here’s a group of North Carolina folks aboard Dory during one happy hour.

We decided to see the fireworks from the nation’s capital, so in late June 2000, we flew from Saudi to the USA, drove to Deltaville, and promptly set out for Washington.

We spent the first night in Point Lookout, MD, the next at Colonial Beach VA, and the third night at Occoquan Harbor, VA. We stopped at Alexandria VA the next day for lunch, before pulling into the Gangplank Marina in Washington.

The marina where we stopped was about a mile from the Washington Monument, and a great place from which to see the fireworks.

We arrived nearly a week in advance, and spent the time visiting Washington’s tourist attractions.

Our son Bill joined us for the time in Washington, and enjoyed his time aboard. My brother David and two of his kids came to Washington for the week and stayed nearby.

Our first cruise on Dory was from Deltaville VA, starting in December 1999. We stopped in Norfolk for a few days, then got underway.

We traveled down the Great Dismal Swamp, where we stopped overnight at the free dock at the NC Visitors’ Center — reportedly the only combination highway and waterway visitor center in the nation.

We continued south, stopping at the formerly famous River Forest Marina in Belmont NC, and finally New Bern NC, where we docked while heading inland to spend Christmas with family.  As much as we enjoyed visiting with family, the sunsets at the dock in New Bern were hard to leave behind!

After Christmas, our son Bill III joined us as we reversed course. At the end of the cruise, he flew back to Texas and we flew back to Saudi Arabia.

The purpose of the shakedown cruise was to make sure the boat was in as good a shape as we believed, and we would enjoy boating as much as we expected. Both tests were passed with flying colors!