My informal, stretch goal was to leave the marina around November 1st. I knew exactly how unrealistic that was, and since we’re still at the marina you probably have a pretty good idea as well.

We’ve been cranking out projects and it’s been going pretty well. Kyle was working on putting a toilet back together and broke a part over the weekend, so that came in this week. Our primary nav tablet stopped working, and even though it started functioning again, we’re seriously screwed without our primary navigation so at the last minute we ordered another tablet. Then when we were testing the watermaker we sprung a leak in the high pressure system, so we’ve got a part on order for that. Waiting on parts makes it seem slightly more worthwhile to put off leaving, but our main issue is weather.

We were going to leave on Tuesday (Nov 12) but that would have meant a couple seriously cold nights at anchor. Our next target was today (Nov 14), but if we leave today we’ll have a beautiful day on the Albemarle, followed by a windy rainy day on the ICW, and then we’ll be pinned down for at least two days in cold, rainy, extremely windy weather. Now, as much as I like being at anchor when it’s freezing and rainy and gusting up to 50mph…I actually don’t like any of that. We’ll be much more comfortable at the dock, waiting until this blows over. Windy is showing 28 ft waves offshore – TWENTY EIGHT FOOT WAVES.

One of the marina staff today joked that we might as well spend Thanksgiving here. Do you want me to cry? Because I swear, I’ll do it! Seriously though, this feels like a major repeat of last year and I’m so frustrated. The longer we wait, the colder the weather is going to get and we’re not really equipped for cold weather, despite how much time we spend freezing our butts off! Last year we were supposed to be in the Bahamas by Christmas, and we didn’t make it there until April – I’m terrified of repeating that failure.

So, that’s the bad. Now let’s get to the fun stuff!

We teamed up to caulk the hard top. We’d never sealed it up in the first place, and surprisingly it didn’t leak much at all, but now we have zero leaks. So that’s great!

In addition, we installed a track along the front of the hard top and I sewed a bolt rope on to our windshield, so now our windshield is properly installed and also doesn’t leak! I also put bolt rope on our side shades so those are much more secure.

Kyle got both of our wind gens installed, so now we can make power even when the sun isn’t shining! The six-bladed win gen is crazy loud though, listening to it spool up and slow down all night is like trying to sleep next to an airport. We’ll see how that goes.

I did some epoxy repairs. We have a weak spot in our bow, I sanded that down and added a few layers of fiberglass to strengthen the area. One of the cockpit locker hatches was cracking because it’s where we step all the time (it was like this when we bought the boat but it certainly hasn’t improved since then) so I reinforced that area as well.

Kyle went up the mast to attach our new main halyard and install the new wind instrument. Perhaps you remember last spring when he went up to retrieve the wind instrument and dropped it? We bought a new one. It still doesn’t work (naturally), Kyle thinks there’s a wiring splice that’s the root of our problems. All I’ve ever wanted was a working wind instrument!

Our neighbors at the marina are watching the same weather we are. They opted to move to the town dock this week before the wind blows away our water (the “tides” here are wind-driven, the strong wind will literally drop our water level by a foot or so). They’ve got a deep draft, they didn’t make it out of the canal without grounding. Fortunately there was a SeaTow boat at the marina who got them sorted out pretty quickly. Uh, the boat in the photo below is NOT the SeaTow boat.

We’ve done quite a few more projects, but it’s been gray and rainy and photography just isn’t as exciting when it’s not a beautiful day. I got our Iridium Go configured, now when we’re offshore we’ll be able to communicate, plus we can download weather updates. I tested it for weather GRIB files, texting, emailing, and we even did an SOS test! We’re stoked about this addition to our communications!

It hasn’t been all work for us, we managed to sneak in a quick trip to Charleston.

We’ve also tried a couple new breweries, although they are few and far between around here!

So, that’s our news. It isn’t the news I was hoping to share, but it’s still news. And! The countdown is on!