Here are some stats from the trip:

1. It took us 46 days to get here (just under 1,000 miles). We didn’t rush or attempt to keep to any schedule. We were conservative as regards weather and ended up waiting a total of 18 days in various places for weather to improve. Fully half of those days were due to Hurricane Matthew.
2. We spent 20 nights at anchor or on a mooring ball. We love to anchor, and mainly went to marinas to either wait out bad weather or tour a nice place. Anchoring was also quite cost effective. We saved almost $2,000 by not staying in marinas for those 20 nights.
3. We only used 95 gallons of diesel fuel for the whole trip, much less than we anticipated given that there was very little opportunity for sailing and the motor was on almost the entire way. Of course, we also went at an average speed of 6mph, so there was a trade-off.
4. We only used up one of our two propane tanks. We worried there might not be very many opportunities to refill on propane (there weren’t), and that we’d run out. We did end up going out to dinner more often than we’d planned when we were in marinas, which cut the use of our propane some. Even so, we made pots of coffee every morning of the trip and Paula cooked dinner on the stove every night at anchor and we only used half our supply. We carry two 2-gallon tanks.
5. We only had to use our generator a few times while we were stuck in Solomons in an anchorage for 5 days waiting for weather. For the remainder of the trip, our solar panel array combined with battery charging from the engine alternator while we were underway kept the batteries from ever going below a 60% charge. Most of the time they were fully charged.
6. Our longest daily run was 57 miles and our shortest was 9. We found that sticking to around 35 miles a day, which translates to about 6 hours at our typical speed, left us with good energy when we got to our destination for the day and able to enjoy the sights and sounds.
7. We brought more cash than we needed to. We used credit cards everywhere. We only spent a total of $90 in cash for the whole trip, nearly all of which went to tips for the dock hands who helped us tie-up at the various marinas.

We did a lot of research, planning and boat prep in the months before this trip. Thankfully, most of the things we provisioned and the way we equipped the boat worked out well. However, there were some things that didn’t work and things that we didn’t develop a good solution for because we didn’t know about or anticipate the problem. Here is a list of what didn’t work at all or didn’t work well (in order of frustration):

NOAA forecasts – We got our weather information from multiple sources, but started out the trip mainly relying on the National Weather Service (NOAA) for marine forecasts as had been our habit previously when cruising exclusively on the Chesapeake Bay. Once we got into the ICW (Norfolk on south), we found NOAA to be less and less reliable, particularly regarding the timing and strength of the wind. AccuWeather, Weather Underground, and local weather reporting were much more accurate. This was critical when crossing the big sounds and in the last half of the trip when dealing with high currents in anchorages.

Chart Plotter inaccuracies – This may be unfair criticism given the fact that we went through the ICW immediately following a hurricane and the shoals had shifted in many areas. We carried three versions of electronic charts – Garmin Blue Charts (on our Garmin Chart Plotter), Navionics (on an Android tablet using the BoatingHD app), and NOAA vector charts (on a laptop using the Rose Point Coastal Explorer Charting software). Since we were in the cockpit the whole time while underway, we used the Garmin Plotter primarily, and the Android tablet (Navionics) as a “2nd opinion” when entering tricky spots. These systems often disagreed on the placement of the “magenta line”, and on occasion, both systems showed the line going over land! In the bigger expanses of water (sounds and large rivers), this was inconsequential. But in the shallow and narrow areas identified as known ICW trouble spots, this was a problem. We could never be sure where the deeper water was if we got into trouble in a shallow area. In some places the coast guard had placed temporary navigation aids to guide you through (which worked well), but not everywhere. “Active Captain” was most helpful in these situations because quite often lat/lon waypoints were provided which we would then enter into our chart plotter to make our own “magenta line” to follow over shallow spots.

Wifi coverage – We thought we could rely on this at the marinas where we stopped. Wrong. While every marina advertised having free wifi, it rarely worked well, and was either too slow or too discontinuous. We have a Wifi booster which helped a lot, but there were still many times we had to switch over to the cell network and create a hotspot for Internet access. We use Verizon and were never out of cell coverage or the ability to create a decent hotspot. We did have to upgrade our data plan to 6GB/month to make it all workout though.

Bug Repellent Strategies – This wasn’t really a problem until we got into South Carolina and Georgia. Unless there was a 10mph breeze in the anchorage, we’d get eaten up by noseeums, mosquitos, and biting flies. We sprayed ourselves with “Deep Woods Off” which seemed to be effective for about 30-40 minutes before needing more. Citronella candles worked some, but not enough. The noseeums are so small they can get through most of our hatch screens, although staying down below was still much better than being outside. We never found a good answer for this during the trip, but we recently bought some other kinds of bug repellent products which we’ll be testing soon.

USB charging cords – You’re probably thinking, what??? We left with a large ziplock bag full of every conceivable kind of USB charging cord there is. Plus, Tom added several USB charging “ports” at various places around the boat right before we left and we never had much chance to give them all a “shakedown” (what could possible go wrong with these?). It turns out that a good portion of our electronic devices are equipped with the newer fast charging circuitry which requires a high current USB charging cord along with a charging port capable of providing the higher fast charge current. Tom didn’t pay attention to this when installing all the USB charging ports around the boat and ended up buying the lower current version of those charging ports because they were less money. When we plugged in a high current device like Paula’s iPad or Tom’s Android tablet, they either wouldn’t charge at all or charged very very slowly. We could go back to using original “wall plug” charger that came with these devices, but that meant having to turn on the inverter on every time we needed to charge one of these things. Anybody want to buy some original low current USB charging ports?

Flashlights – It was a mistake to rely on inexpensive flashlights from the hardware store for this trip. We had five flashlights on-board, four from Home Depot and one expensive scuba diving flashlight that can be used underwater. The Dive flashlight was the only one that worked perfectly for the whole trip. All the others had corroded battery contacts from being in the environment and ended up either not working, or turning themselves off at the most inopportune time.

Bananas – Most of our fruit choices either kept well in the fruit baskets (apples, melons, tangerines) or fridge (strawberries, grapes). Others kept less well (plums, peaches) and suffered accelerated spoilage. However, bananas were an unqualified disaster. They can’t be refrigerated without turning mushy and black, but keeping them in the fruit baskets, or worse, Paula’s attempt at keeping green specimens wrapped in black cloth to slow ripening resulted in a plague of fruit flies that almost deprived the first mate of her sanity. (See The Great Fruit Fly War). Since they are a vital ingredient in Tom’s morning breakfast smoothie, we found that fresh bananas sliced and frozen in ziplock bags worked well. The bananas browned in color, and developed some moisture in the bag, but flavor and performance in smoothies was unaffected.

What did work really well:

One of the most gratifying things that worked out well was the food and dry goods provisioning. This was a little scary as we set the goal of having 35 dinners frozen and available on the boat, and 4 cooked meals in the refrigerator when we left. This was a significant investment in time, effort and money, and if it didn’t work, or the freezer went bad, we stood to lose a lot.

This actually was a possibility we contemplated in Norfolk as we had to consider the choice of having the boat pulled in advance of the hurricane during the time when it was unclear where the storm would make landfall. Our freezer is water cooled and would not have functioned on the hard even if electric power was available.

About a third of the frozen dinners were pre-cooked and included such meals as regular lasagne and butternut squash lasagna, penne pasta with sausage and meatballs, pot roast, chili, shrimp and vegetables, pre-grilled and frozen chicken. To accomplish this, Paula made double meals for most of August and September and froze half. On some days she made one dinner to eat and a double meal to freeze in two portions. Our basic model Foodsaver was invaluable here and it was small enough to stow easily. It was great after a long passage to just warm up a home-cooked meal in the anchorage and serve in only a few minutes.

Substituting tortillas and Fiber One Wraps for use as lunch meat wrappings made a “sandwich ” easy to eat while underway and kept better than bread does in the moist boat environment. Our hanging fruit baskets kept onions, yams, baking potatoes, lemons, avocados, Granny Smith apples,and garlic cloves with almost no spoilage for the whole trip.

Island Packet boats are blessed with lots of storage space and we never ran out of paper towels, coffee or creamer, cleaning supplies or most other non-perishables.

We also bought and hid a number of treats to bring out when morale and calorie boosts were needed. Nut mix, dark chocolate, and a few bags of Pepperidge Farm cookies were a godsend. When Paula had more energy, corn meal muffins and baked apple crisp were good for cooler mornings and nights.

As regards laundry, using our dry-fit running clothes worked well. Sweat-wicking and fast-drying, they wore and washed well. Oh, and getting four rolls of quarters from the bank before we left kept us from having to scrounge quarters for marina laundries which we often wound up patronizing at odd hours.

We brought along the two Marmot Plasma 30F sleeping bags we had purchased for Tom’s participation in the Trans Rockies Run in 2013. These were invaluable during the windy nights that we slept and stood anchor watch in the cockpit. Light and easy dry when damp with dew, they were exceedingly comfortable and provided plenty of warmth and therefore, quality sleep on nights when sleep was shorter and interrupted. They were a high ticket item at purchase but we consider them worth every penny.

Anchoring system – Good ground tackle is critical for all the anchorages in South Carolina and Georgia because of the high current. Even if there is a moderate wind blowing all night in the anchorage, the boat will lie to the current instead of the wind and switch positions 180 degrees at least twice. When the wind and high current are in the same direction, there is a lot more strain on the ground tackle than what we were used to in the Chesapeake Bay. We follow the philosophy that the more modern anchor designs work well and that regardless of anchor design, there is no substitute for weight on the bottom. Our working anchor this whole trip was a 65lb Mantus (similar to a Rocna, but able to be disassembled). We have 150′ of heavy chain spliced to another 150′ of nylon rope for our anchor rode. We always put out at least 5:1 scope in the high current anchorages and never had a problem.