Life On Orion

 Today was Tom’s birthday and we had a fun time celebrating with Dan’s family. We were up early to do cards and gift before the girls went to school and then we walked to school with them. Stopped to pick up bagels to bring home on our way back since they are Tom’s favorite! The whole family went in on Tom’s gift and got him a gift card to use toward new drivers for golfing. His clubs are 30 years old and too heavy for him now, so he was thrilled to be able to get new ones. Dan took him to the golf shop for a personal fitting and swing analysis and that was fun for them to do together. Tomorrow Tom and I leave on a Royal  Caribbean cruise to Bermuda for  a 6 night cruise. There was a great deal through Costco travel and we can leave right from here without pet sitting issues or airfare. We would probably never get to Bermuda on our own and it will be nice to have someone else driving the boat and worrying about the wind and waves…. We board at noon tomorrow, so this week ...

 And just like that our boating adventure of the past 2 years is over. We got up early to strip the bed and pack the last few items and made one last trip to the storage unit. We did one last inspection of all the nooks and crannies (with a flashlight) and actually found a small bag of acrylic glassware that had fallen down into a lower shelf unit, so we rescued that.  After loading the car to the gills, we took a couple of last pictures and walked away. I am sad on one hand because I loved our looping adventure on Orion, but by the time we left the boat it didn’t feel like “home” any more. We did something few people ever accomplish and I’m proud of that, and we always said we would know when it was time to move on, and it was. We drove to Baltimore with a stop at the Quantico Marine Museum that Tom has always wanted to see. Wow, what a great place! Reminded me of a Smithsonian. We spent over 2 hours there, ate lunch in their pub and drove the last 2 hours to Baltimore. Nothi...

 Another, and last, day of moving off the boat. 4 trips to the storage unit and one last one in the morning with bedding and we’re done. In addition to packing bins we cleaned up the bow pulpit where some adhesive was oozing out around the stainless plate, pumped up the dinghy, secured all fenders to the rails and hosed the boat off. Our boat neighbor, Richard, became the recipient of liquor, refrigerator items, cleaning supplies and some engine oil. He has started calling Tom Santa Claus.  LOL! Funny story for the last day on Orion…. When we moved onto the boat almost 2 years ago we discovered a new cubby filled with treasures weekly. The prior owners had just walked off the boat leaving expensive appliances, cutlery, knives etc behind. Everything they had was top of the line so I am leaving with wonderful treasures. About a year in, we discovered a cubby under the dinette seat containing a $900 Bluetooth printer! We were chuckling about finding those treasures when Tom point...

 It was day one of moving off the boat and we loaded so many bins! It’s not just packing, because as with all of our “moves” not everything goes to one destination. We like to keep it complicated! LOL! We have used color coded tape to mark which boxes are boat only, RV if that is what we do next, needs to end up in Hudson, but not this trip, and finally - things that must go with us now to Baltimore and ultimately Hudson. Sigh… We accessed our storage unit early this morning and made 4 trips with a fully loaded vehicle each time. Lots of empty drawers and closets now so we made really good progress today. Tomorrow Tom has a couple of boat tweaks to do while I finish packing and we should be completely done by tomorrow night. We will sleep one last night and pack up the last bedding and towels before leaving on Monday. We haven’t stopped meeting new boater friends - met the guy on the boat behind ours and found out he just bought the boat. He is an older guy alone, sold his house an...

 We arrived in Baltimore last Sunday afternoon in time to stay with Charlotte and Claire while Dan and Andrea flew to Indiana for her grandfather’s funeral. They got back on Tuesday and the rest of the week we watched the girls during the day while they worked. It was a week filled with lots of Lego building, reading books, board games, movie and popcorn nights and swimming at the neighborhood pool. Needless to say, we are pooped! God gives children to the young for a reason… LOL! We love spending time in Baltimore and having one on one time with the girls is a blessing for sure. But today we drove back down to the boat in VA and have started packing it up to move off. We can access our storage unit tomorrow to begin to load in the bins. It was almost 2 years ago to the day that we moved onto the boat so it is bittersweet for sure… We hope to be moved off the boat and have completed a couple of minor projects by Sunday so the broker can begin showing it and hopefully a sale will ha...

 What a luxury to sleep in! After a nice breakfast and hot showers, Steve and Kathy arrived to shuttle us back to New Bern to collect our car. We had a nice lunch here in Chesapeake at Lockside and then stepped into one of the boat sheds to see a historic river boat that has been restored. The owners happened to be aboard and invited us on to look around. What a treat! It has been restored to period but with modern materials and it is elegant! Our 3 hour trip to New Bern was uneventful as was our 3 hour return trip to the boat. Lots of packing and organizing had to happen, because we leave for Baltimore in the morning.

 What an emotional but wonderful day on the water… We pulled away from the dock at Coinjock around 7 am and after taking lines and fenders away for the last time I watched the marina disappear from view through tears. 😢 We spent much of the 5 hour trip remembering events from our one and a half years of travel and thinking out loud about what comes next. There was a lot more boat traffic today since we are so close to Norfolk so we got passed several times. (We are always the slowest boat). Also 3 bridges to go thru, two of which had to open for us. So it ends where it began in October 2021 here at Atlantic Yacht Basin in Chesapeake VA. We met with the boat broker we are listing the boat with from  Virginia Yacht Brokers and we like him a lot. I feel good about listing our boat with them and we hope for a timely sale. His wife stages the boat after we move off and makes a video, so I will post the link to that when it’s ready. Tomorrow around noon Steve and Kathy are driving ...

 What a difference a day makes! Yesterday we had to turn back and today the water is flat as a pancake. We had a very long 10 hour day of cruising, but it was stress free and we arrived in Coinjock in one piece. The only bit of excitement we had was some very early morning fog/mist on the canal right out of the marina. We left at first light and it was cool, so there was a bit of fog till it burned off with the rising sun. Minor inconvenience! We did decide to treat ourselves and eat an early dinner at the restaurant here at the marina and I even had a steak! Early to bed tonight in preparation for our last voyage tomorrow…

Well, today did not go as planned. Lots of activity - no results. We left the marina at 7 am intending to travel for 6 hours to our next stop and the first 3 1/2 hours were in a very weather protected canal. The weather deteriorated while we were in there so by the time we hit open water the winds were terrible and the waves 3 to 4 feet! We turned back and we are at the same marina in the same slip, but unscathed… We have traveled too long and too far to make a foolish decision and have a bad result. It sucks being an adult but we are going to try again tomorrow as the weather is forecast to be so much better. We ran into a diver at the marina here and paid him a small sum to clean some barnacles off the bottom of our boat and check the thrusters.He did that and cleaned out some of our intakes and cut some fishing line off our prop shaft.We borrowed the courtesy car and drove into Belhaven proper to look around and had a nice pork chop dinner on the boat. We won’t be up very late since...

 After several weeks of driving all over the eastern half of the country visiting kids, we are finally on the move to get the boat up to Chesapeake VA where we will list it with a boat broker to sell. While we were galavanting across the country, our boat bow pulpit was being repaired and the new steel plate installed.  We spent a week in Kenosha with Kate and family and got to spend lots of time with Ian. What a sweet boy!And he can say Mimi and Bapa like nobody’s business. LOL! We attended Taste of Kenosha, the farmers market, free concert in the park and shopped and ate out at some great restaurants. Tom helped Kate finish some door projects with new hinges, handles and some sanding down to close better. The next week was spent on Nashville with Johanna and the focus of the trip was to help them take the main bathroom in Ben’s house down to the studs and get them started on the remodel. Everything went - even the old bathtub! While we were there to help they replaced part o...

 After spending Sunday organizing and packing, today we are in Nashville. We left yesterday morning after spending an HOUR turning the boat around in the slip so Dave could work on the bow pulpit from the dock. The boat slips in this marina do not have a full length side dock so you have to position your boat so you can climb out onto that narrow 10 ft long piece of dock and for us that means backing into the slip. The front of the boat is then secured by lassoing tall wood pilings on either side of the bow with a loop of line around a boat hook. It requires a lot of agility and praying! In addition, since we are off the boat during hurricane season, we are required to double up on our lines. For Orion, that means a total of 10 lines! We knew Madison and I could not crawl over the bow railing and lower ourselves down to that ridiculous piece of side dock, so we loaded the car, secured the animals on the dock and got me off the boat. Tom had to undo all the lines, turn the boat arou...

 It’s been a long time since I have been in such huge rainstorms, but we have been having a doozy. We woke up yesterday to loud thunder, torrential rains and a lot of wind. Madison was freaking out and was basically trying to burrow into the wall of the boat in our cabin… Dewey was even a little scared and I’ve never seen that. The worst part of the day was that the winds picked up and the water began flowing out of the creek the marina is on. The water level went down about 2 feet and that resulted in us being unable to get off the boat onto the narrow little piece of dock for the whole day. Madison luckily knows how to potty on the boat, but it was a weird feeling being trapped on your own boat. The dock was so far above us I could look underneath and see the bottom of the boats in the next row! Today the wind has shifted and by daylight the water level was such that we as well as the dog could once again get off the boat. I did a couple of loads of laundry in the marina laundry ...

 Well, we have been busy doing some land travel now that we have a car and the boat is parked at the marina here in New Bern waiting for repairs. After the 4th of July holiday we loaded up the animals and drove the 10 hours to Orlando (Apopka) to stay at Mark and Kerry’s house while they went on a Mediterranean cruise. We watched their 3 dogs and took care of the house and pool, which was not tough duty for sure.  We got to stay in a beautiful house, have a pool in the backyard, enjoy our kitty as well as a total of 4 dogs and cook in a real kitchen and watch Netflix till we couldn’t see straight! All of the dogs were so good and they all got along with Madison, so that was a nice benefit. It is ungodly hot and humid in Florida this time of year, so the only time we poked our noses out of the house was to get in the pool - which we did every day! It also rains every afternoon this time of year, so we timed our pool time accordingly. Mark and Kerry got home last Sunday evening ...

 It was sort of a strange 4th of July weekend, but a good one none the less. Sunday we decided to go exploring the area since we have wheels now… Drove to Moorhead City, which is a coastal town that we did not stop at on the water and it was a nice place. After awhile all the beach towns start to look the same to me and this one was no different. The beach was packed since it was a holiday weekend, so we didn’t stop - parking also a nightmare. I wouldn’t mind going back there on a weekday for sure. It has been so stinking hot and humid, we Arizonans can’t even breathe! We stayed inside the air conditioning for the rest of that day and watched a movie via DVD. Monday we were in the car by 8 am on the way to downtown New Bern for a 4th of July celebration at Tryon Palace. It is a huge mansion that was built in the 1700’s and was home to the first governor of NC when New Bern was the capital. It was designed in the Georgian style and has beautiful symmetrical gardens and grounds. Guid...

 You would think we would have slept in this morning since we didn’t have to cruise anywhere, but old habits die hard and we were up with the sun as usual. First stop was a laundromat with a large capacity machine to wash our comforter, rugs, towels and beach towels. I also had 2 loads of regular clothes, so it goes much faster when you do it at a laundromat. While they were washing and drying, we grabbed a quick breakfast, went to Harbor Freight for some tie downs and gassed up the car. On the way back to the boat we stopped at Harris Teeter for a few food items and then decided to stop at Belk department store so Tom could get some new shorts. What a nice store! Great sales too so Tom scored in the shorts department. There is a tropical storm brewing off in the Atlantic and is is apparently headed for North Carolina soon, so although we just got some rain and a little wind today, we have to prepare the boat for higher winds. We are in a protected cove tucked away from any big win...

 As I predicted, today was bittersweet…. We left the dock this morning with Steve and Kathy for the last time and followed them to New Bern until we turned into the creek leading to our new marina and they continued on the Neuse River to their home marina near downtown.  It was such a weird feeling watching the space between our boats grow until they were a small dot on the horizon. We figured out that we have cruised with them for at least 7 months of our loop and we had it down to a finely choreographed dance. Our new marina is very nice, people are so friendly and it has great amenities, but we feel just a little lost right now and it will take us awhile to get our bearings. We are technically in New Bern, but 6 miles outside of town in a development called Fairfield Harbor.  There are several areas of homes, the marina, condos, pool, miniature golf and a beautiful golf course.  Actually we are considering it as a place to settle down in a home eventually.  W...

 All good things must come to an end, so we left Ocracoke this morning and traveled back to Oriental NC and are at River Dunes Marina where we stayed on our way north a few weeks ago. The water was calm and we made good time and the pool here felt especially wonderful due to the high humidity and heat. After an afternoon lazing by the pool it was spaghetti dinner at Kathy and Steve’s and a nice walk around the neighborhood with Madison. Tomorrow is our last planned voyage on Orion and unless we have to transport her north to list her for sale, it will be the last one period.  So bittersweet… We plan to enjoy our day tomorrow and will arrive in New Bern at a different marina than Steve and Kathy since our bow pulpit repairs will be done there. As Kathy pointed out, we both have transportation, so will be able to socialize for the holiday weekend before parting ways. Thank goodness for that!

 We took the Ocracoke passenger ferry today to Hatteras. It’s a one hour ride so we arrived there at noon and took the 4:30 pm ferry back here, giving us a few hours to explore.  Unlike Ocracoke, Hatteras is not a walking destination, so we were limited to the area around the ferry terminal for our exploration, but that was still fun. We ate lunch at a tiki bar, nosed around all the tourist shops, toured the Shipwrecks museum and spent an hour on the beach. The museum was fascinating - there are 50+ sunken ships dating back to the 1800’s on the Atlantic side of Cape Hatteras and they are still dangerous waters today. There was a nice boardwalk down to the beach and this beach was slightly different than here at Ocracoke as it was a steep decline into the ocean and you could tell there was a big drop off in the water.  Still beautiful and still pretty good shelling. Sad to think that it was my last visit to the beach for awhile…. Dinner was aboard the Orion and afterwards ...