Morehead City, North Carolina

October 31-November 4

We left Aurora early in the morning on Halloween so that we could traverse the rest of our part of the ICW and arrive in Morehead City in time for trick-or-treating.  We had been so busy with Hurricane and passage preparations that we hadn’t even thought about Halloween costumes!  Luckily, Reese knew she wanted to dress up in her dance costume from her spring recital, so we brought her outfit with us on our trip.  I just had to dig it up from the deep recesses of the boat!  My mom gave us two sheets, so we conjured up a ghost costume for Bryson and a mummy costume for Porter while we were underway.  The kids had fun with it and I accepted the fact that I have had finer Martha moments.

I was feeling sad about missing Halloween in Ho-Ho-Kus.  Our street and the couple of streets around us are an amazing place to be on Halloween.  We get over 400 trick-or-treaters from 3:00-6:30pm each year.  It is quite a scene.  The homeowners sit outside on their steps or in lawn chairs and dole out candy to a steady stream of ghosts and goblins, who are, at times, literally lined up the driveway.  Parents roam the streets with wagons to carry children, candy, and some refreshments for themselves… I look forward to this holiday as much as the kids do.  Unfortunately, the hurricane forced Halloween to be delayed back in Jersey, so it was even stranger to take the kids out knowing all our friends were stuck without power.

Once we secured our lines, we hit the docks and were surprised at how many people were on their boats and ready for trick-or-treaters.  The sailing community is such a small world, and we were only half surprised to run into s/v Viento, a boat we saw in Seal Bay, Maine.  Doug is here in Morehead City also getting ready for his passage south.

I was so happy when our friends Jenny and Wil from Full Monty invited us to trick-or-treat with them.  We are both in Morehead City/Beaufort, getting our boats ready to go south, and we have enjoyed spending time with this great family.  They said they knew of a neighborhood with great trick-or-treating and they had a van to take us all there, which was perfect.  It ended up being an amazing evening.

 

 

 

We arrived at the neighborhood community center, where volunteers had organized a little party with hot dogs, beverages, and Halloween cookies and cupcakes.  Just as we finished eating, a man invited us all to hop on his tractor and trailer for a hayride through the neighborhood, with stops at every house for trick-or-treating.  Wait a minute.  We get lots of candy?  And we don’t even have to walk?  The hayride was great.  The adults sat together and the kids hopped on and off at each house together.  At one house, the adults really got into the spirit and dressed up, trying to scare all the kids.  It was great.

At the end of the ride, we stopped over at Jenny and Wil’s friends’ house.  They were hosting a Halloween Chili Cookoff Party, which was so much fun.  They had 5 different types of chili set up with all the fixin’s.  The hosts were a fun couple who clearly have a penchant for entertaining.  We had a great time listening to music, meeting new people, and eating lots of chili and treats!  In the end, I relearned a wonderful lesson about life.  Sad to be missing what was known and familiar, I risked not being open to an experience that was just as wonderful in a different way.  I’m glad our friends from Full Monty included us in their celebration.

Most people, including us, would give anything for a day of rest after the 80 mile sail and whirlwind Halloween celebrating, but we woke up on November 1^st and got right back to it.  This day marked the start of our fifth month at sea and our biggest challenge was only days away.  We worked all day and rented a car for our multiple West Marine runs.  Chris and I both plugged away at our To Do lists while the kids played and worked on schoolwork.  We were staying at the Morehead City Yacht Basin, which had a nice room for the kids to relax, play, and even watch some television.  They were well-behaved, so I let them do whatever they wanted since it allowed us to get a lot of work done.

On Friday, Chris drove to New Bern to pick up my dad.  He arrived full of excitement and ready to help.  But first we had to store all of his candy.  He thought he would get in trouble for bringing too much stuff, but we were more than happy to have Mema’s peanut butter balls, brownies, chicken and rice, macaroni and cheese, and lots of other treats.  We set him up in Reese’s cabin, and Reese moved in with Bryson and Porter for the trip.  My dad got right to work helping me to clean the dinghy and getting it stored up on the cabintop.

The next 36 hours was insane.  We had been following the weather reports and doing our own weather research ever since the hurricane.  Like all boats ready to go south, we had to wait for an appropriate weather window.  The offshore weather tends to follow a general pattern, but Hurricane Sandy and the impending Nor’easter were throwing a wrench into our planning.  We are a part of the Salty Dawg Rally, which is a group of boats all taking this passage at or around the same time.  We are sharing weather services from a well-known and respected meteorologist.  Most boats in the Rally are leaving from Hampton, VA.  We are well south of Hampton, so we have had to adjust our route and plans accordingly.  The same goes for the weather.  As the week went on, suddenly, the thought was that everyone should try to leave by Sunday, in order to get south and out of the way of the Nor’easter.  Anyone who didn’t leave by Sunday would have to wait until the following Friday for the next possible weather window.  We looked at each other in a panic.  We thought we had until Tuesday to get everything done.  Sunday would be a major push, but we decided to start working like we were leaving on Sunday and continued to watch the weather.

As the hours went on, more weather reports continued to come in and we reviewed reports from other weather services to compare.  Chris also pulled in grib files and did his own analysis.  Grib files are a map of the ocean that show wind speed and direction at intervals across time.  Chris was convinced that we were starting far enough south to avoid the Nor’easter, especially if we left Morehead City and headed directly south, instead of starting off east, as the usual Caribbean route calls for.  In addition, the Caribbean 1500, another Rally, had made the decision to press on and leave over the weekend as planned.

We took a deep breath and committed to leaving on Sunday morning.  What was left undone would have to wait.  We had parts, provisions, and our crew.  At the last minute, we realized we did not have my dad’s passport.  With only hours left till our departure, we changed our destination from Tortola, BVI to St. Thomas, USVI, since you do not need a passport to go to the US Virgin Islands.  This little glitch is just a small example of the flexibility we have gained from living this lifestyle.  In the end, it would work out well and would allow my dad to fly home much more easily than from the BVIs.

 

We woke up on Sunday morning and I couldn’t get my favorite Mark Twain travel quote out of my head.  It struck me quite profoundly that we were following his advice to the letter, right down to the catching those tradewinds…  We hope!!

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” –Mark Twain (attributed)