Hello from Florida!
We have been charging down the East Coast at 6 miles an hour! We made it through S. Carolina and Georgia. We stayed on the ICW and have been trying for 50 miles a day with 63 being our record. We are in Vero Beach right now. Though I don't think that qualifies as Southern Florida, it is close enough.

Observations in Florida so far...

1-Floridians like large houses!

2-Floridians are not scared to build large houses in the buggiest areas. They are resourceful and build a whole house of netting over their house...

3- There is lots of shallow water in Florida... We couldn't get in to our anchorage because it was too shallow, and we had to motor 19 more miles to get to another spot that had 7-8 feet of depth.

4- ballerina pink can go with pastel green....and canary yellow, and turquoise on everything from homes to bridges..... If you are in to that.



5-Florida likes bridges! some they build, then tear down to build another. In St. Augustine, they had a bridge, then built a "temporary" bridge next to it so they could repair the old bridge, then they were going to tear down the temporary... And these were big bridges!!! With a lift so boats could go through.

6-Floridians like HORSEPOWER! But don't we all?

7 It is not always warm in Florida. Our first day in Florida it was about 33 degrees and blowing 25 knots. Just about the coldest day yet! There I am enjoying the Florida weather in five layers of thermal and an arctic hat.

8- It doesn't stay cold for long in Florida! It popped right back to 70 the next day! (as you can see at the top where I am in nothing but my board shorts grilling hot dogs on the way)

9-lots of boats in Florida.

10 Everybody waves in Florida!

11. No Alligators in Florida...or sharks for that matter. We were told that the spot we are currently in is a breeding ground for hammerheads, so despite the fact that we haven't seen anything scary in the water we are staying out.

12. The water is brown & dirty. I saw a floating diaper yesterday. (yet another reason never to swim in Florida.)

So anyway, St Augustine was really beautiful! Amazing old buildings! Truly one of the coolest old cities I have seen.

here is our beautiful boat underway.

To the far right is a picture of a house with netting around their house. Surprisingly enough this is not one of the more elaborate versions. This is standard.

There's the ocean! Nope, we didn't get to go in it this time, almost though.

This is "Night rider" & "My life" We traveled with them for a few days. Justin & Holly & Jake the cutest basset hound we've ever seen were on the midnight rider & Trevor & Brenden were on my life. We will see them in the Bahamas soon hopefully.

Here we are again anchored out in a really nice spot up Wahoo creek Georgia.

Well, hope you all like the pictures!! We have really been slacking on the updates lately. We will (again) try to be better!Hope everyone had a great Christmas & got over the pass safely!! Crazy weather you are having in Washington!! We are especially excited for "second Christmas" in 2 days when we get to open the presents & cards you sent us!!! Thank you all again.

Thanks for all the comments too!! We see some new people wrote too so thanks for that!!!

Merry Christmas ya'll

fogged in

Hey everyone!

We made it to Beaufort SC & met some really nice people on the free dock they have in town. Actually we met 6 people on 3 boats about the same age as us doing the same thing. Funny! There were two Canadian guys who are 20 & 21!!!!!, a couple who are 24 & 25, and a couple who are 28 & 30. Nuts! We didn't think we'd run into so may people our age, or actually younger than us out here. Especially in one place!! They all said the same thing.

Anyway, we invited some of our new friends on the boat & ended up adding more & more. We had 16-18 people on our boat at one point. We had so much fun! There were two guitars being played,a violin, a harmonica, some little drums, and an accordion. (not all at once) and three singers! Everyone was awesome!!

The next day we headed into town & got a coffee (which is really really good here! Finally!)then checked on some parts we were looking for for the dink. (It still doesn't run) And made it to Bull creek. We actually ended up anchoring next to the Canadian boys & the younger couple Holly & Justin from Beaufort & had dinner no their boat.

We left the next morning, but not too early, because we were waiting on the fog to lift. We only made it 8 miles, which is a record low for us. I love our chart plotter!!!! We hit a huge bank of fog about a mile out of our anchorage & couldn't see 50 feet in any direction. I'm not sure if anyone's ever been in fog that thick, but not seeing the sky or the water, or the banks was really disorienting. It felt like you were sure you should be going one way, but the GPS was telling you that you were supposed to be going the complete opposite way. (we followed the GPS obviously) and I stood on the bow with my fog horn kept an eye out & listened for oncoming vessels & Ben was at the helm unable to look up from the chart plotter.

The cool thing about it was the dolphins. I almost screamed the first time one came up to the boat in the fog. You can't see beyond the bow & all of a sudden out of the silence a huge dolphin jumps up right

next to the boat and sprays out of his blow hole. Freaky, but really cool!

You never knew when they were coming or where they were going to pop up next.

*Here are some pictures of Ben up on the bow preparing to raise our radar reflector up high, so big boats will see us! As you can see it's pretty foggy.

We ended up anchoring at the first safe spot we came to & called our friends to advise them to stay put. It was nice to have an excuse to sit & work on the boat, then relax for the afternoon. We couldn't do anything else! We ended up using our fog horn a lot towards the end. I may have overused it a bit, but it made me feel better to have anyone who might be out there know where we were. We met some barges & small ferries along the way & a small fishing boat tied up to a green marker, because they couldn't see where they were going. They would blow their whistle whenever someone sounded a horn. They directed us into the anchorage actually

No incidents at all. We were fine, just couldn't see!!! There were plenty of other boats still trying to make their way south, but we felt safer just staying there in our safe spot. We kept the radio on & every 15 minutes or so we would here a boat call out that he was near our anchorage & was looking for other vessels he might run into. Then other boats would call in & say "we're there too where are you!?!" and then horns would start. They were close enough that we could hear their engines, but we couldn't see anyone.

Ben fixed the broken autopilot belt & I baked bread & worked on some other small stuff. * Here he is taking the steering wheel off.

We used it today & the autopilot works great!!!! YAY!!!

The fog has gone away and it's clear as a bell!! We can see for days! The sun is shining & Ben is crazy enough to be out on deck in board shorts & a t-shirt. ( I'm still in a heavy sweatshirt & Jeans.

* Here is a picture of the fog breaking at our anchorage. The sun was slowly making it's way through.

We should make it to about mile marker 585.5 tonight. We were told there is a good place to anchor & there is a town where we can provision up & take showers & stuff. I'm very very excited!! We will fill up on water & fuel also. We are at MM580 currently, so only a few more miles to go!! It's about noon here. I'm looking forward to seeing our new friends again. I think they will anchor in the same place.

We miss you guy sat home soooooo much & are extremely excited to get to Florida & receive our packages!!! Thank you sooo much!! I hope you all got yours by now!! Let us know. Please remember to check the labels, because you are supposed to open some early. They are supposed to get you into the Holiday spirit & if you open until Christmas you won' really get to enjoy them as much. Mom, please give the Madsen's their early gift for us! Thank you!!!

*The picture at the top & the one to the right were taken about 15 minutes ago. It's weird how it can be foggy one minute then perfectly clear the next.

Write us & let us know you are there!We miss you all a lot!!

Kristen, Ben, & Skippy.

Anchors Aweigh!

So we got stuck in Charleston for a while... Could have been worse! Such a cool city! Old beautiful buildings everywhere... Just look at the three master sitting at the city marina!


Skippy lends a paw where he can!

Here is one of the most haunted cemetaries if you believe in that stuff... It definately is one of the most beautiful...



Here I discover the interesting choice of wiring of the previous owner... Have we mentioned that our chartplotter GPS has been down... We got our new wiring harness in Charleston. I think we are much the better off for not having one for the first few weeks, but it is very nice to be back in the 21st century!

Charleston has lots of derelict boats anchored out. This is a pic of two that cut free from their anchor, slipped under the bridge to our side of the bridge(scary)during the night and then got wedged in to the bridge bulkhead... We found them moored next to us this night when we returned from town. At least they weren't anchored.

Speaking of derelict boats anchored out... We finally hoisted the hook and found quite a mess, but it came up all right. We are now owners of 2 Danforths, one lewmar, one bruce and one delta. That's right 5 anchors!

Very Beautiful S. Carolina scenery. It is like half jungle and half bayou...

I liked this boathouse/dock. It is a good place to be a piledriver or a dredger... These docks are like a quarter mile long to get through the marsh out to where you could have a boat... And there are tons of docks!

So we made it 40 miles today and dealt with some shoal (shallow) sections. We powered upstream on one river that you could see the elevation drop. All in 9 feet of water. One section we made it through about low tide was 5.5 feet deep. We draw 5.75... Gotta love that 55HP Turbo Diesel. The tides here are huge compared to the rest of our trip! Almost 10 feet tomorrow! WE had 2.5 foot tides around North Carolina... Somebody has got to teach me why this is someday...

An top of all this I headed to shore to take Skippy for a walk, then might have blown the motor on the way back, so started rowing, but the current had switched from when I went in, so I had to row hard, which ripped the oarlock out of the dinghy. After a half-hour of one paddling it off the bow, finally losing ground to the current, I called for my lovely wife to pull the anchor and fire it up and come save me and Skip! My Hero!

Family members should be receiving gifts today or tomorrow!!! Make sure to check the gifts as some need to be opened early!

Happy Holidays!!!

Ben and his lovely wife who makes white chicken chili and cornbread for dinner, Kristen

Sea Dogs

Well, we are in, Charleston South Carolina! And I do not know how to turn underlines off, not sure how I turned it on... We left Wilmington Beach Tuesday and motored to Southport and decided that the forecast looked all right for heading out into the Atlantic, so we kept going... Out Cape Fear river inlet about 3:30 PM.

Here I am making sure we are seeing all the bouys( they looked black in the light...) So the swell was building up at the inlet and it was a little bouncy, but straight forward. We then sailed through the night west-southwest toward Winyah inlet. Winds were from the northwest at 15 to 25 pretty steady through the night, so we were heading into it pretty hard... We had to hold between 50 and 60 degrees off the wind to keep our course. The swell was not huge, but it came at such a short period that the bow would bounce in the air off one and land right on top of another and it was a bit hard to keep up any speed. We were slamming pretty good down belowdecks. It was also a really cold night which made the night long... Kristen snoozed after cleaning up the bed that she made in the salon after Skippy decided to pee all over it. She held her watch for almost 4hrs until I was on again. I think her watch was a bit of a pound and a bit wetter than mine. When I came on, the winds finally shifted to the North and we could fall off the wind a bit which made all the difference!!! Wind-Borne and the Crew all like sailing further downwind than 60 degrees! We rocketed off on a beam reach(which is about 90 degrees to the wind) sorry for all the sailing talk! We no longer pounded and everyone was happy! I think Skippy most of all. He is a downwind Doggy!

Here is the Salon after the night... Pretty trashed!

And here is Skippy after the night. Pretty trashed also!

We hove to outside Winyah Inlet for the sun to come up for a couple hours. Heaving to is like setting the boat to stall mode where it doesn't move very fast anywhere... Anyways, when it got light we proceeded in to Georgetown, SC which is up the river 5 or 6 miles. When we finally got fueled up and back to a dock to sleep, it was noon. We had been going for 26 hours or so and slept pretty well!

We both felt pretty good about our dip offshore and our first overnighter!

Pretty Excited to see our first Palm trees! Hopefully warmer weather soon!

Lots of beautiful places and anchorages!!!

In Charleston, we walked around and enjoyed the city a lot! So much history and old buildings!

We saw this fountain and after reading the rules, couldn't help ourselves!

Not sure if you can read them, but #1 is no Solo wading, #13 states the maximum amount of waders should not exceed 25, #5 states that those with diarreah illness should refrain from wading, #7 No persons with open lesions or wounds should wade, #11 all those wading should take a shower prior to wading. Despite the rules and the cold temperatures, Kristen decided to go for a dip...

Charleston is really a beautiful City though! We have a few things to fix, and should be here for a few days.

We miss you all and hope everything is going well!!!

We have an address!!

Ok guys,
So here it is...
We have two options for you!
The first & prefered one is:

Ben & Kristen Davidson
general delivery us post office
3200 North federal hwy
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33306
Place Ben's cell number here at the bottom of the address.

they will hold the packages for us up to 30 days.


The other option is:

Ben & Kristen Davidson
UPS store # 0181
"Attention Charlie"
6278 N Federal Hwy
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33308
put Ben's cell number here so they can contact us.

This second option is good, but they will charge us 3-5 dollars per package, so if you only have a letter or something small the post office would be a lot cheaper for us.

Also, please let us know if & where you are sending things, so we know where to go to get them & figure out how many to expect.

Thank you all so much!!
Also, please make sure you put both of our names on the packages, so either of us can pick them up. Thanks again!!

Ben, Kristen & Skip dog

pictures of the last few days

Here Ben is navigating our way to Wrightsville beach three days ago

He is the red dot under the green canvas.

I forgot to mention that we had a second boat parade two nights ago!! It was really cool!

They circled our boat! Very pretty!

This one above was a ship in a bottle

The one above had sooooo many lights on it!

The one below was a big blue sleigh

We had a long fireworks display at the end as well!!

It was great!

The whole sky lit up for an hour with all the fireworks going off!!

Ben made these snubbers below all by himself.

They are the reason we are holding strong in our anchorage!!

They attach to the bow & hold the anchor with a semi-strechy rope that gives us a longer

line and puts less tenion on the anchor.

It's pretty awesome!!

Below is our current anchorage! As you can see the wind is making the water pretty choppy.

We are getting tossed all over, but still holding strong!

I can't wait to row to shore to do laundry when I'm done writing this.

Wish me luck.

At least it's not raining anymore!!!

Have a good day!! We will keep you posted on news when we can!

Hope you all had a nice weekend!!

P.S.

we are working on finding you an address to send things to. I hope to have it later today. I'll post it when I do.

-Kristen