RC Louise

Last week we entered Coast Guard Sector Long Island Sound, familiar waters from childhood, which brought up primordial memories of sailing in deep fog with a rope around my waist tied to the mast. We have been in unknown territories from Ft. new balance grigie bambino Pierce, FL, to Newport, RI. We were sure about this being unknown while driving our rental car from Orlando to the boat, where the highway stop was massive and Nelson Mandela quotes advertised bail bonds, to today in Newport RI, where the lovely Seamen’s Church Institute has been providing various services to mariners since 1919: a chapel, showers, laundry, rooms, cheap eats, wifi in elegant lounge, blazers, a library, and quiet.

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What I know:

• We have suddenly self-identified as Northerners, which we never walk around doing anyplace else.
• The mud in South Carolina is the finest we have ever anchored in: you drop the hook, it sets instantaneously and stays set, and when you pull it there is no caked mud to get off.
• When the heat index is 100-108, one is sweaty, stinking wet most of the day and night unless positioned in exactly the right place at the right time…and not even thinking of moving a muscle.

Of much else, not so sure:

• Is it easier to see history while traveling, or it the South specifically that pulls us in?
• Who was it that got escorted away by two fully armed boats of commandos on the dinner tour boat Spirit of Norfolk, military commanders aboard, after a police search of the harbor and its boats (including obvious simple derelict sailboat)? And who got let off somewhere else than the usual round trip? Foreign head of state? Hillary (Charlotte that day, DC the next)?

Steve and I flew from Portland, OR, to Orlando, FL. It was lovely to put my feet on board the RC Louise’s deck and feel the familiar ins and outs of a small, well-crafted space. It quickly became obvious that an aluminum sailboat in the US was a rarity and a magnet for boat builders, sailors, the head of the Chamber of Commerce, the junior counselors from the sailing school, young kids at a dock with grandma, and more. People are always rowing over or waving us down. Brandon Belt Jersey kanken fjallraven france We have been assumed to be French from a distance more than once. Nike Archive 83.M

Right away we met up with our friend John from Panama and his buddy Blades the dive rescue specialist. Both grew up in the Ft Pierce/Vero Beach area and we saw it through their eyes and hospitality. We bounced out dirt roads to orange plantations with ditch irrigation where John worked as a kid and talked about the laborers then and now. Chaussures Nike Milwaukee Bucks Nike Air Max 2017 Pas Cher We poked around at an eerie country lake and dark canals, replete with tortuous vines and twisted trees and alligators. We drove down our first street of live oak strung with Spanish moss and brown resurrection fern (which turns green with any rain). His mom asked us all to lunch at the Riomar Beach Club, simple and elegant; Steve was cajoled into wearing both a new shirt and shorts and we drank Arnold Palmers. Her home, an “Old Florida” house with walls of tropical paintings and graceful pieces and shaded peace, was offered for us to stay in if we wanted. Blades took us to the National Navy Seal Museum and talked history with the veteran guides and thanked them for their service as we sat in a life boat from the Alabama Maersk and pondered a Patrol Boat River (PBR) from Vietnam era. He made sure we had a private visit with the military working dog, a Belgian Malinois, and his handler.

We meet new sailors most every day, but it has been particularly delightful coming into a harbor and seeing people wave wildly at us…who we first met on a dark, rainy night up the Rios in Spain in 2013 or the San Blas Islands in 2015, or to call up a friend from the South Pacific to come for supper. We continue to fish offshore with our trusty hand line and have been eating Spanish mackerel, king mackerel, and blue fish, as well as scup caught on a rod.

The weather in much of the South was about very light and unstable sailing winds, nightly thunderstorms with bolt lightening, and mind-defying heat. Asics Pas Cher The weatherman had more of a data drop off than usual and often said “I don’t know” “Not sure which direction the winds will be” etc. Nike Air Max 2017 Kopen Canotte Denver Nuggets We anchored in a creek and prepared for a front which came in with 56 kt winds. A couple said there was lightening at sea for three nights so bright that they could barely open their eyes. new balance 1300 damskie Three times we elected to follow the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), the 3000 mile network of canals, inlets, bays, and rivers that runs from Boston to Brownsville, conceived and developed to avoid storms and military enemies. The official depth is 6 feet, but now that it is not a major commerce channel depths are closer to 4 feet; we did fine with our shallow draft. The fixed bridges and power lines are 65 feet, which is nerve-wracking after we measured our mast at 64 feet, but we ended up turning the antennas upside down and went through comfortably at 61 feet. goedkoop nike air max 2017 asics gel quantum 360 damskie As a result of this, we have put over 100 hours on the engine.

Our itinerary of stops was thus Cape Canaveral, Fernandina Beach, Cumberland Island, Port Royal (Station Creek), Beaufort (“Byew-furt” SC), Charleston, Dewees Creek, Winyah Bay, Georgetown, Southport, Wrightsville, Beaufort (“Bofert” NC), Pongo River, Alligator River, the Great Dismal Swamp, Norfolk, Little Creek, Cape May, Block Island, and Narragansett Bay.

Because we walk once ashore and rarely spend more than $10 to get into something, our explorations most often take us to small gems that just show up, and we often sail by the $35/head stuff. We take a lot of tips from locals, like the lock master at Deep Creek. Otherwise, we would never have scoped out an Art Deco dinner theatre, the Commodore Theatre in Portsmouth. Note the phones for calling the kitchen. At the Fernandina Beach museum, a history professor racontuer talked at length about the Native American cultures in the area. At the James Verdier House in Beaufort, SC, a dedicated docent showed just us around for hours, talking about tea poys and ventilation and architectural details which avoided taxes, but also talking what it meant to be Southern to him. We have been shown many small kindnesses by strangers. It makes us feel like rude, crude Northerners. When we step on a dock in a small town, often someone comes forward offering to drive us to the grocery, to take us to the local restaurant, to tell stories. This pleases us a lot. But we still sense that we get to the dark historical edge…Joke told to us: ”What is the difference between a Yankee and a Damn Yankee?” “Yankees go home.” We are quite driven, reading stretching to understand: “A Slave in the Family”, Pat Conroy, Flannery O’Connor.

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We have not figured out a lot.

In Charleston we ponied up for a marina and a free shuttle to downtown and were put on the megadock. As soon as we tied off the dock lines, a funeral procession for a man who had fallen off the dock and drowned arrived from a nearby bar, complete with bagpipes and flowers and toasts. Downtown the stunning elegance of houses and churches had us gawking for hours; the cultural capital of slave society persisted far beyond slavery. Its extraordinary wealth reminded us of Newport, RI. O.J. Howard Jersey So as not to be complete losers, we ate out at both a down home chicken place and a fancier nouvelle place (OK, it was only for lunches).

Mostly we went to many upscale art galleries including The Vendue, an art hotel, and saw breathtaking sophisticated works. Umbro Velocita homme We eavesdropped on a guide at the Dock Street Theatre (original building the first to be used exclusively for theatre, starting in 1736), who was also trying to explain to his clients what it means to be Southern. At the Avery Institute of Afro-American History and Culture, which was formerly the Avery Normal School, the secondary school for African Americans opened in 1865, we sat near closing with the docent and talked politics then and now. Cam Robinson Jersey

Between 1700 and 1775, about 40% of all enslaved Africans passed through Charleston. They were first brought to nearby Sullivan’s Island for quarantine, where many of those who had not died on passage did so before being sold. nike air max 2017 pas cher femme Perhaps half of all African Americans today have relatives who passed through here, so it becomes comparable to Ellis Island. For decades there was no bench or plaque or 300 ft tower; Toni Morrison noted this in the 1980’s and in 2008 a small bench was placed in memory. We arrived in Charleston shortly after the one year anniversary of the Mother Emanuel AME Church shootings. We left Orlando just before the Pulse nightclub shootings. Then in quick succession were Minnesota, Baton Rouge, and Dallas. New Balance 577 męskie Fjallraven Kanken Mini Though often while sailing we are removed from the news, this time we have a big old data policy on my smart phone and can take it in, if slowly, and reel. nike tanjun bambini new balance 574 femme noir et rouge While all this has been happening, we have been looking at things like this:

The Lowcountry coast is rimmed with endless estuaries. Grasses spread for miles, and tidal flats as well, with pelicans and terns overhead. Languid dolphins in twos and threes are swimming in creeks 20-30 miles from the sea, as common as crows. Areas that can be imagined to be small on a map spread out as far a you can see. The ocean inlets change so often that most of the buoys are not permanent nor on a chart; they are moved around as sand shift. Nike Roshe Run Dames zwart

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asics homme pas cher If no one is around, the estuaries have the immensity of African savannah. New Balance 996 mujer When a town is nearby, people are out in every sort of boat, fishing or hanging out. The big shrimpers are everywhere, ready to go out right off shore. adidas ultra boost uncaged uomo A fisherman came by and explained the coastal art of shrimp baiting.

Georgetown,SC, was our next big town. new balance roma rome italy The historic district has the classic newly developed boardwalk belting the town, with a main street of coffee shops, antique stores, precious children’s clothing, great ice cream, boutiques with handbags and accessories, and small art galleries that is the signature of locally owned US redevelopment. Soldes Asics 2017 The large scale commercial history is still writ large: indigo, rice, wood, shrimp, steel, paper, small manufacturing like landfill liners and lipstick filler

. The guide at the Rice Museum walked us through the story of the county which is a flood plain for seven rivers, grew half the rice in the country by 1840, and was a major world producer by 1850. new balance 577 napes sale In 1810, 90% of the Georgetown population was slaves. The enslaved Africans had been growing and processing rice in West Africa for years and brought their skills with them. scarpe adidas calcio It took years of labor to build dikes and trunklines on the tidal marsh in preparation for growing rice with tidal flow irrigation.

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The rice culture was never to be mechanized because the marshes were too watery to support machinery, and while sustained after the Civil War with indentured laborers and free slave, it died off by 1911. kanken mochilas Texas Longhorns I know I did not sleep through being an American history major, but I never heard it this clearly. Sac à Dos Fjallraven Kanken I walked to the commercial district a mile away and saw shut down businesses and signs of strife. Baylor Bears

The depth and breadth of military presence has astounded us, who routinely see a few significant bases. At anchor we often hear taps. I knew it intellectually, but the massive presence again reminds me of the overlap between military culture and Southern culture. Tom Brady Michigan Jersey

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We have sailed by Parris Island, the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, naval hospitals, the Joint Expeditionary Base in Little Creek, and many more. We have been invited to a launch party for the Titan IV rocket from Cape Canaveral and heard the take off while sailing by. We were working our way up the peaceful Cape Fear River and noticed a teeny tiny sign, almost homemade, for “Sunny Point”. new balance 997 on sale nike air max tn hombre ADIDAS ULTRA BOOST

?Shack selling fish and chips? County park? Nope, woefully ignorant me. Asics Gel Lyte 5 damskie adidas superstar 2 donna Out of nowhere came MOTSP (Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point), the largest military transfer base in the world, which has shipped out Army weapons, ammunition, explosives, and materials since 1955. It is 8500 acres surrounded by a buffer of another 2100 acres, with 65 miles of railroad, miles of docks and cranes and quonset huts, all quiet right now. Here is a sampling of what we see almost daily:

Once again, in <5 kt winds we elected to go all in and motor through the Great Dismal Swamp on the ICW. This is a vast area that stretched from its current eastern border to present day Virginia Beach. The highest point is Lake Drummond, a lake which drains water from the hills of North Carolina and Virginia through springs which arise under the lake, and produces the above mentioned extraordinarily clean drinking water. SMU Mustangs Jerseys George Washington tried to make a go of draining and clearing it for settlement (did not work), then was partner in a lumber company, which practice eventually devastated the ecosystems, before he became POTUS. A canal was built in 1805 and is the oldest continually operating artificial waterway in the US. Someone wanted to close the canal when commerce died off, but it was been pointed by the lock master that his main job is to control water levels and that if the canal were closed the swamp would stretch back out to the coast and take out Virginia Beach. tn requin noir et bleu

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We hiked and saw deer, fat turkeys, black bear prints and scat. We fought off the miserable yellow flies, who bite meanly but are very, very slowly.

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After Norfolk, VA, Cape May, NJ, and Block Island, we sailed to Jamestown, RI. We had a cool day with friends with the South Pacific who have been around all kinds of boats for work and pleasure their whole lives. They took the helm of RC Louise and just started playing with the rig in a way that we don’t do naturally, racing style, and came up with new ways to make her go. We look forward to my brother visiting and maybe doing the same. We sailed with an old friend of Steve’s and his wife, and tried out our new tricks tacking all afternoon on the bay. We are going to hole up enough to perhaps finally get our watermaker, which has been finicky and unreliable since installation three years ago, looked at by an authorized dealer.

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Nike Air Max Pas Cher High hopes. On day we spent our Sunday going through all the spares and such, throwing out stuff and reorganizing much. Made plans to make one of the berths a permanent storage area for stuff that needed just the right place to live. Spliced and caulked and surveyed the rig. We could not raise the waterline last time we did the antifouling because we had not imported quite enough paint into Panama; now there are barnacles there. Boat work. Canotte nba a poco prezzo nike air max 2017 femme rouge Mochilas Kanken Mini Cancer update is that slowly slowly I feel more energetic and my brain less full of holes, but it is very slow. nike air huarache dames zwart

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My head has grown enough peach fuzz that it could be a fashion statement, not a cancer ad, and it is not grey. Nike Air Max Thea Dames I started my next treatment without obvious side effects. We went swimming for the first time this week…every day. Nike Air Max 2016 Dames Before vibrio vulnificus, brown water, alligators, big cities, too many boats, too far to the outer beach, etc. adidas tubular dziecięce New Balance 998 hombre had others telling us not to swim or just kept us out. Nike Zoom All Court CK Jordan 11 Sale

Tomorrow night we may anchor off the Newport Folk Festival. We might even go to the beach.