 |
| On the beach at Vero |
From there we motored all the way to Jacksonville Beach to get a good start on the river currents the next day as the current in the St. John going up to Jax can be fierce if it is running too hard against us. It meant staying at Beach Marine rather than anchoring out at Pine Island but as it turned out it was a good move for unexpected reasons.
We got off early the next morning but as we motored up towards the river we heard the Coast Guard announce a notice on the VHF that the St John River would be closed for approximately 4 hours that morning starting around 0830 while an underwater pipe was laid across the river. The exact location wasn’t clear ( I will eventually learn to understand southern drawl, even over the VHF) and we proceeded on while trying to find the location we were hearing on the chart.
When we reached the junction of the ICW and the St John River we held up for a large container ship to pass and began to follow him up the river. (He quickly outran us). At one point we passed two Sea Tow boats anchored and passed close enough to ask where the closure was and were told we were in it but that they hadn’t started yet. We made it through with about 20 minutes to spare. Had we stopped at Pine Island the night before we would have been held up for several hours while they laid the pipe and then had maximum current against us.
The rest of the trip upriver to Lamb’s was uneventful. That afternoon we drove back to St Augustine where we had a nice dinner with George and Jane from Time Out, stopping in Green Cove Springs to get our mail on the way.
The mail stop provided another surprise in buying a car in Florida. We had expected to pick up our permanent license plate for the car in that mail but it wasn’t there. We called the dealership to find out what to do and learned that Fl. does not mail the initial plate to the owner but instead sends it to the dealership. Luckily, the dealership had just received it and we told them to hold it as we could pick it up the next day.
Our plan had been to take the rental car from Jax back to Jensen Beach and pick up our car (about 225 miles each way), dropping the rental in Stuart. The dealership was in Palm Beach another 40 miles further so we added about 80 miles to the overall trip but were at least able to secure the plate before leaving for Maine which we had planned for the next day. We took Bill to dinner, said good by and got back to Jax tired but still on schedule.
We were 5 days and about 1800 miles in getting back to Maine. The highlight of the trip was stop to visit Lee and Carol of Carol Ann at their home in Maryland. We took their jet skis and did a +/- 25 mile trip up the river to Salisbury where we had a nice lunch at a restaurant on the water. I’d had little experience driving a jet ski and Jean and I had difficulty at times keeping up with Lee and Carol but it was a lot of fun with nearly perfect weather conditions for such an outing. It certainly is different traveling at 25 to 30 miles an hour over the water!
The following day we stopped in Cape Cod for a visit with my mother and brother and family. Mom is doing great for 90 plus and we were able to take her out to lunch twice while we were there.
We found the house in very good condition when we arrived and soon settled in and got organized. The house is under contract to sell with the closing scheduled for July so we had a lot of work to do. Our plan was to store the things we wanted to keep at son Steve’s house and set it up so we could stay there when we in Maine. We quickly discovered that the renovation project which Steve had started last fall was no where near complete so Jean and I spent most of the next month sanding, mudding and painting sheet rock, installing knotty pine wainscoting, cleaning up construction debris, organizing and cleaning the rooms downstairs and painting the floor at Steve’s while at the same time sorting and organizing things at our house. By mid May the project at Steve’s was finished but we had barely started! At least the project came out looking very nice.
On top of that Bill came back to Maine earlier than planned and we spent Memorial Day weekend at his place cleaning, organizing and fixing things to help him move back in and begin the process or readying that property for sale.
We did take some time to have a little fun. We went to two daytime Sea Dogs (Double A baseball) games, had dinner with Larry and Cathy at their home and on their boat, had dinner at Eldon and Dianne’s, went to a cook out at Dan & Meredith’s next door, attended a couple of CYC events and spent a beautiful day sailing Trader from South Freeport to her mooring at CYC. It was good to get out on the water again, this time under sail. I also was able to have lunch with my office partners and got a tour of the new office facility. It looks great. Nice job G! The picture to the right and below is Hadlock Field in Portland where the Sea Dogs play.
By the end of May, we had moved most of what we wanted to store to Steve’s and I had packed up what seemed like countless boxes of glassware and dishes. We should be able to wrap up the rest fairly quickly but that will be in July as we need to get Sun Cat out of Florida by June 15. While we were in Maine, Lamb’s was working on Sun Cat. The front windows had been leaking for some time and the wood around them had rotted. We had been able to slow the leaks by covering the windows with sunbrella (which also is an effective and necessary sun screen). Therefore we had Lamb’s rebed the windows and replace all of the rotted teak around and under them. Also, we had been having trouble with the aft cabin windows leaking and after their removal determined it would be better to replace rather than refurbish them. So back in April, new windows were ordered from a place in Miami. In addition, I’ve been concerned with the rust spots on the engines so we had the engines cleaned and repainted as a step toward preserving them.
The new windows were supposed to take 3 to 5 weeks which would have been before Memorial Day. So we left Maine on June 1, stopping at Cape Cod again as well as to visit Jean’s sister Gail in NJ and my niece Kelly in SC. We had planned to leave our car at Hilton Head and drive a rental to Jax but since the windows are not in we decided to continue on and are presently at Jensen Beach at the condo. We hope to return to Jax on Tuesday or Wednesday and leave on the boat on Thursday or Friday. We had a nice dinner last night here with Alan and Suzanne of Kaos.
The weather in Maine this spring has been beautiful and we hope the summer will be more of the same. The temperature here in Jensen Beach Florida is in the high 90’s and we are about to head for the pool.
On the road again!
Steve and Jean
