After checking back into the States from our trip to the Bahamas, we took the ICW inside from Port Canaveral to St. Augustine, stopping in Daytona Beach for a couple of nights. After the usual provisioning and laundry, we met up with friends, Jay and Tanya (SV Minx), at the local brewery, Old Coast Ales, for some beers and tacos.

Our plan for the summer was to get Blue Turtle as far north as possible before renting a car and retuning to southwest Florida for Kim’s nephew’s H.S. graduation. We knew we’d spend at least a month in Florida catching up with family and friends and that by the time we returned to Blue Turtle it’d be June, so we wanted to position the boat far enough north to escape the summer heat and allow us to cruise to New England from there. Needless to say, we were hell bent on getting to at least North Carolina which gave us very little time. We decided we needed to make some big jumps on the outside to gain some ground.

From St. Augustine, we headed north outside, along with SV Minx, hoping to do an overnight. The weather started out nice as predicted but eventually became messy with 20 knot sustained winds gusting to 25. We decided to duck into St. Marys Inlet and anchored near Fernandina Beach for the night.

We motored out St. Marys Inlet the next morning at 6:30am and motorsailed on flat calm seas. When we reached the Georgetown, SC area, we decided to push on overnight. We cruised for 2 overnights on our longest offshore passage yet reaching Cape Fear and navigating into Wrightsville Beach, NC. The passage took us 2 day and 7 hours and we cruised 295 nautical miles. Needless to say, once we anchored in Wrightsville, we were exhausted, especially since the second overnight was very swelly and the crew got little to no sleep. Since it was too early to go to bed, we decided to go to shore and stretch our legs. We stopped at a bar and got a beer before getting takeout burritos from Tower 7.

From Wrightsville Beach, we motored inside to Morehead City and from there went north into the Neuse River to New Bern, NC. We chose New Bern Grand Harbor Marina as the place to leave Blue Turtle while we travelled south to see family. New Bern is off the beaten path so prices were a little better and Randy wanted to be inland away from the coast in case of a weather event. We enjoyed the time we spent in New Bern before heading to Florida and when we came back.

After spending part of April and all of May in Florida with family, we drove back north to Blue Turtle in New Bern. After a few boat chores and provisioning, we were ready to continue north. We left New Bern and took the ICW cruising 50 nm and anchoring in Snode Creek just before the Pamlico River. From there, we made it to North River and finally Hampton, VA. It was hot both days reaching 90º so we were highly motivated to get north ASAP. We had a weather window to go outside the next day from Norfolk and we took it.

We left the Hampton anchorage around 5:30 am and had calm flat seas most the day. We were planning to overnight to either Atlantic City or Sandy Hook so I went to bed early anticipating a 3am watch. I woke up sometime around 2am and we were in the middle of a squall. We had heavy rain and 40 knot sustained winds and it was a bit scary. Sophie and I remained in the aft cabin since the cockpit was soaked while Randy navigated our way through it. Once it lifted, we decided to duck into Lewes, DE to anchor and get some sleep.

We left Lewes, DE, later the same day after getting some much needed sleep. We continued our journey outside on the Atlantic. We had mostly calm seas and good weather conditions. As we neared Atlantic City, we had an issue with the engine temperature getting warm. Randy shut it off immediately to check to see what the issue was. We had coolant coming out of the overflow reservoir. Realizing that it would be too difficult to diagnose the issue in the wee hours of the morning since we were tired, we called Tow Boat US to take us into Atlantic City where we docked at Farley State Marina.

After getting some sleep, Randy was able to diagnose the issue along with Transatlantic Diesel. It appeared we had a faulty head gasket seal. Randy got to work ordering the parts and tools needed while we settled into Atlantic City and the marina, which is managed by The Golden Nugget. Even though Randy had to work on the engine in Atlantic City, we enjoyed walking the boardwalk and enjoying the many live bands that played at The Charthouse restaurant at the end of our dock. While there, we celebrated Randy’s birthday on the Boardwalk as well as our Anniversary. We also got to be there during Fake Fest which is a week long festival of the best cover bands on the East Coast of the US. We watched cover bands for the Eagles, Bruce Springsteen, and Billy Joel. Another perk of the marina there is that we got to use the fitness room at the The Golden Nugget for free. We loved being able to workout with real weights for a change!

After a couple of weeks in Atlantic City, the engine was ready to go, and so were we as we waited on weather window to jump out to Sandy Hook.

Port Canaveral to St. Augustine = 99.7nm
St. Augustine to St. Marys Inlet = 58.6 nm
St. Marys Inlet to Wrightsville Beach, NC = 295 nm
Wrightsville Beach to Morehead City = 66 nm
Morehead City to New Bern = 43.4 nm
New Bern to Snode Creek = 50 nm
Snode Creek to North River = 79.6 nm
North River to Hampton, VA = 65 nm
Hampton, VA to Lewes, DE = 144 nm
Lewes, DE to Atlantic City, NJ = 53 nm

TOTAL miles to date: = 6,533 nm