Southbound to Florida – The Reality

We found a nice marina, Waterside Marina right in the heart of Norfolk, VA that had easy access to restaurants, laundry facilities, children’s museums, etc, and was a good jumping-off spot for the trip ‘round Hatteras. We stayed there for a week waiting for John and Larry to join us, and then for another week waiting for the right weather.

Once the weather looked right we finally left – the whole crew was really starting to get impatient on the wait, but it was worth it. We had a mostly uneventful rounding of the cape. We fired up the engine any time the boat speed dropped below 5 knots to make sure we stayed on schedule. This was important as the weather window was not a big one and we wanted to be in Charleston before the weather closed in. As it worked out, we motor-sailed about half the way.

The Gulf Stream did cause us a little trouble as it must have wandered in pretty close to Diamond Shoal Light. We passed the light close enough to touch up the paint and then turned south west. Even still, once past the light we did brush up against the current – we were fighting about a 1 knot current for about half a day. The winds were out of the Northwest and west, and made the sea state pretty lumpy and uncomfortable while we were near the stream. We were very happy once we worked our way closer to land and the seas flattened out some.

Once we made it to Charleston, we got off the boat and had a great dinner in the historic district of downtown Charleston. Great food and a beautiful town!We liked Charleston quite a lot so we decided to extend our stay and wait for a cold front to pass. We ended up staying about 6 days.

Many thanks to Larry and John. They were very fun to have aboard and made the trip both safer and more enjoyable!