Day 23:
April 17, 2014
And Now the Trip North
Our original plan for this trip upon completion of
our journey, was to take the boat to the home of our friend, Stuart
Harshbarger, in the Baltimore MD area where we would leave it for about three
weeks. We plan to return and sail in the
Chesapeake, Janine in a women’s sailing class and me sailing Second Wind single handedly for about a
week. But now with a broken motor, we
had a dilemma. I contacted Stuart and he
found a Suzuki dealer who seemed to be able to solve our problems. There were problems, however. This was Thursday, and the repair shop closes
at 5:00 on Saturday and closed on Sunday and Monday. The boat is still in the water fully rigged,
and our truck and trailer are in Stuart, some three plus hours north of
Plantation Key.
The Dock Master told us that the Thrifty rental
car company would bring a car to us at the marina so getting to Stuart would be
easy. I called Thrifty at 8:00 and she
said she was short-handed and would not be able to get a car to us until 10:00. We realized that we had a significant
deadline (one of several coming up). The
marina puts a gate across the launch ramp at 6:00pm so everything would have to
go smoothly for us to get to Stuart and back and get the boat out of the water
before 6:00. We opted to rent a cab and
go to the office.
We were underway north by about 9:00. It was past rush hour and the Florida
Turnpike is designed to handle large volumes of traffic so the trip towards Stuart,
although busy, was relatively uneventful.
We needed to stop by the Seaward factory to pick up some supplies for
the finish repair on the boat but we got there at 12:00 and they were all at
lunch. We went to lunch ourselves and
were waiting at the office door at 1:00.
From the factory, we picked up the truck and
trailer and headed south, Janine in the rental, me in the truck. The time was now 2:00. Plantation Key was 3 plus hours away. The Deadline!
As we traveled south, the traffic continued to build and by about 3:30,
we noticed a sign alerting us to the fact that the Turnpike was blocked north
of Miami and that we were to find an alternate route. UGH! I
didn’t have a city map so we pulled into a service area and found a guy who
worked there who advised us of an alternate route. It was good, busy but longer. We began to see our window for getting the
boat out of the water slowly closing. We
pulled in to marina at 6:15. There would
be no way to get the boat out before 8:00 tomorrow morning.
I decided to walk down and look at the ramp any
way and realized that they were still pulling a boat out of the water. The gate was still open. I ran to the Dock Master and asked if we
could still get our boat out. She literally
pulled her hair and gnashed her teeth but finally agreed with, “Are you
actually going to pull that sailboat out tonight?” I quickly backed the trailer in and with the
help of the Dock Master and another fellow on the dock, we had the boat loaded
in about 15 minutes. That would have
never have happened with the Balboa.
We began taking down the mast and got the boat
ready to move to the parking area a bit after dark. We still needed to tie down the entire rig and
load Damn Dink, but by now we were
really tired so we decided to go to bed and get up early to finish the
job. We crawled up into the boat and
fell asleep.
Day 24: April 18, 2014
“On the Road Again”
Mapquest informed us that the trip to Baltimore would
take 18 hours and we interpolated that to mean at least 20 if not more. I awoke at 3:00 and began packaging the boat
and truck. Janine joined me at around
4:00 and we found ourselves heading north at about 6:00. We got to Miami at about 7:30 – the heart of
rush hour. The boat is wide; the traffic
was heavy and fast. I was pushing the
truck trying to maintain traffic speed but at the expense of lower gas mileage.
 |
| A bit of a "Red Sky in the Morning" as we passed Miami |
But, in the middle of the afternoon, the sky
indicated that there was a massive storm blocking our pathway and soon we were
driving in a true “gully washer.”
Visibility was not good but during the daylight hours, traffic continued
to move at a relatively good pace.
However, as night began to fall, traffic started slowing down. Our goal was to make a good 12 hour, 70 mph
day, but, by around 7:00, the very heavy traffic was moving along at about 30
mph. We were just not making the miles
we needed to make so that we could meet our deadline tomorrow.
At near Savanna GA, we saw a sign that alerted us
to the fact that there was an accident on the highway about 20 miles north of
us and that the Interstate was closed.
We decided to pull into a motel and get some sleep before beginning
journey early tomorrow morning. We had
been on the road 13 hours and had not made the progresses we needed.
In our room, we turned on the TV to check on the
weather and they reported that the storm in which we had been driving was
massive and was causing potential flash flooding in South Carolina. Of course, our continued path to Maryland
passed through South Carolina. So, to
bed with a plan to get on the road very early in the morning.
Day 25:
April 19, 2014
Still Traveling
I was again up at 3:00. While Janine got ready for the day, I walked
to a McDonalds and got a couple of breakfast sandwiches in an attempt to
jumpstart our bodies.
We were on the road by 4:00. The heavy rain had stopped but a light
annoying mist kept visibility down for the first half of the day. Traffic was light in the early morning but
began to build as daylight approached.
We droned on north in heavy traffic. Near Richmond VA, MapQuest suggested that we
take the outer belt around the city but the map showed that it was quite a bit
out of the way so I opted to head straight through the city. It turned out to be a good decision.
Traffic was heavy all of the way from Richmond to
Washington DC. During this stretch, we
encountered several groups of guys driving high-powered “crotch rocket” motorcycles
who would swarm at a very high rate of speed through, around and between the
slower moving traffic. It was
amazing. There would be no way that law
enforcement would be able to apprehend these guys. It was really denerving.
We came out of DC heading for Baltimore between
3:30 and 4:00, again in very heavy, bumper to bumper traffic traveling well
below normal Interstate speed. I
contacted the outboard motor repair shop, Goose Harbor Marina, and told them
that I had gotten close but that the traffic was slow and we might not make it
by 5:00. The guy I spoke with told me to
continue coming that he would wait for us.
A Relief.
It turned out that we pulled into his lot at
4:55. He helped us unload the motor,
filled out some paperwork and agreed to have it fixed by the time we returned
in about 3 weeks. And then he was out of
there.
From there, we drove another 1 ½ hour to the home
of our friend, Stuart Harshbarger.
Stuart has a nice storage building that he has recently rented. We
backed the boat in andput a few more items that we would need on the next phase
of our adventure into the truck and went in search of bed. We found one in Fredrick MD. We were both asleep by 8:30. We had met our deadline!
Day 26: April 20, 2014
And Then Home
We slept until around 6:00 with on this trip is
fairly late, ate a leisurely breakfast in the motel and drove leisurely home
with no deadline to stress usS.
We pulled into the drive and were merrily greeted
by our ever enthusiastic dogs. They were
obviously most happy to see us. We had
arrived at about 3:00. Our own home bed
will really feel good tonight.
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