January 8, 2007 Wrightsville Beach, NC

The Tierney’s have left the dock for the second leg of the adventure, this time going south! Our grand plan is to go to a rendezvous of our boat association (Defever) at the end of January in Palm Coast, FL which is below St. Augustine. Then south, maybe crossing southern Florida through the Okeechobee to the west coast then down to the Keys for awhile. At some point we hope to make it to the Abacos in the Bahamas. Our boat insurance requires us to be at or north of Savannah, GA by mid-June in order to be out of the way of any hurricanes (but we aren’t having any of those this year, either). So, that’s the big picture.

This is Swansboro, NC at twilight with the shrimp boats in the backround. Pretty.

We woke up at 5:30 AM (yes, AM…very early for us retired guys) on Saturday, January 6 with the hope to travel about 9 hours to Wrightsville Beach, NC. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t cooperating. The winds were blowing at 25-30 mph which is a bit much for our slow boat. By noon the winds had died down so we decided to just go to Swansboro, NC. We could have driven there by car in 45 minutes but it took us about 3 hours in the boat. It ended up being a beautiful, sunny day and we had a nice anchorage in Swansboro. We can’t believe that it is the middle of winter vs. spring as we had temps in the middle 70’s. Rick had on shorts and a T shirt! On Sunday we weighed anchor and headed for Wrightsville Beach, another 50 miles or so south, where we are now. We arrived yesterday, just before the rains and winds. We are here for a couple of days. Rick’s son, Matt lives here, so we got to visit last night and he came back today for lunch, and just to hang out, so it was real great. We love visiting with him. Just before he left he brought his “work” boat over to the fuel dock and filled up. It was fun to see how he makes a living while not doing science for NOAA. In the meantime, we are doing inside boat chores and, hmmm, might have to have a nap later.


The ICW from the aft deck.

Going by Camp Lejeunne.

This was the welcoming committee.

I knew that attitudes were changing when we got back from a walk, (a break in the rain) and Rick said he ‘wanted to watch…’and I thought he was going to say the CNN news show…but he finished with ‘the rest of the sunset’. Cool.

Matt's work boat.

Below are the new wine glasses that Jayne made for us. We love them. You might expect that from the size of them (but Rick and Jayne have the same size glasses so we don't feel too bad!). The bestest part is that Jayne put our Rickshaw logo on them.

We hope that everyone had a great holiday and is ready for 2007. We look forward to hearing from you. We will miss seeing you all as often as we do, but hey, you now have the choice to come and visit. Let us know when you can. Love to everyone.