Tag Archives: Road Trip

Florida – by car

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We sat around discussing what to do a month or so back after a failed attempt to depart for the Bahamas.

Spending the day and well into the night sailing a long tack (40 miles total) off shore only to manage to make five nautical miles off shore gave me a reason to want to give up on sailing again.  That was a short lived thought though.  We sailed nicely under most sail and it gave me a lot of night experience, which was great.

Our extra crew member was disappointed, but he took off for California a few days later (and sooner I think than he’d originally intended).  But, in the end, all was good.  We got back in our own slip the next day and we’re back on the docks.

Our discussion turned to doing a road trip, which both of us are always up for.

So, contacting our son, who had wanted to meet us in February anyway, JoAnne and Nick planned a place to stay, dates, and so forth.  We also contacted friends there, and made a decision also to look at a second boat (maybe because it was supposed to have a new engine in it).

On the way to Florida, we were passing through Brunswick, Ga, and the car started acting weird, right after fueling up.  Finally, she sputtered and died at around 75mph going south on I-95.  We coasted almost two miles on the side of the road to get us closer to an exit, and presumably a tow truck.

I checked the car, the computer system, the gas (thinking I somehow stupidly put diesel into the gas tank, which I had not) and couldn’t figure it out right off.  It seemed like perhaps the ignition system was acting up, but I kept going back to the fuel system.  Eventually, we found a place that would take us ASAP and got a tow, and were towed to a little place within three blocks of four hotels.

As it turned out, the fuel pump failed.  Not sure why, but it did.  Ended up getting it replaced.  Wouldn’t get the parts until next morning, so we hiked with our bags to a hotel.  On the way out to hike to a place to eat, we spotted the street sign on the street the Hotel was located.

We spent two weeks and a few extra days bopping around from Ft. Meyers, to Tampa, to Largo and back over to St. Augustine.

Yeah, we’re cursed to remain in “Southport” forever, methinks.  Every time we’ve left Southport, something has happened to bring us back there.  Everyone says we’re fated to remain in Southport, NC.

Even our car seemed to find a home named Southport…. :rollseyes

We visited our friend, Ray (and his son, Dakota, as Ray’s wife, Amanda was out of town for work), the cats and peacocks down in the Ft. Meyer area, as he had a steel ketch he inherited.  I was considering buying it, but it wasn’t exactly what we expected, and I couldn’t see an easy way to move it. The engine likely had not been run in about 10 years.  Probably not a good engine at this point.  The rigging was pretty loose, a lower spreader having been rotted out and fallen off, leaving the majority of the standing rigging wiggly.  So, that was a “no”.  We did get to see Lake Okeechobee, rode on Ray’s boat, and found some cool Mexican food there.

We rode on Ray’s boat to see the sailboat, down the ICW towards Okeechobee.

We visited about half dozen breweries, ate out a bunch, JoAnne and the boys cooked at the AirBnB in which we stayed.

We had never stayed in a place like that.  Nor a place like this one in particular.  I’ve honestly never seen a place like the “Casa Loco”.

There is nothing better, sometimes than a picture, which it is said is worth a thousands words.  So, without further ado, here’s a few thousand words.

I’ll just leave those there.  The last one is the kitchen.  Those are Jello/cake molds, on the ceiling.  The second to last is the bathroom door…..

The bedrooms were covered in freaky “masks”, African, Spanish, Mexican, Demons… you name it.  I can’t imagine small kids sleeping in this house without having severe mental issues afterward. haha

We four, Nick, Levi, JoAnne and I, spent time on the beach, visiting places, friends and having a good time.

After “Casa Crazy” we went to stay with JoAnne’s brother, Paul and his wife, Cathy and met the new poodle pup named “Buddy” who is a biter. He nipped Paul, JoAnne, Cathy and me, drawing blood from all of us.  He’s a good dog, but he’s got to learn not to bite.

From Largo/Tampa we headed over to St. Augustine to visit with our friends from South Harbor Village Marina in North Carolina aboard “Enamoored”, Herb and Jan.  They left at the end of February, about the time we left, to go down to St. Augustine, and they found a nice slip there in the town.  We couple reasonably have walked from their boat to most places, if Jan and JoAnne both were up to the walking.  Instead we drove a lot to breweries and out to eat.

We visited Hurricane Patty’s, at River’s Edge Marina, and could see our friend’s (Stephen and Judy) old slip from where we sat to eat (they are up north somewhere now).  We had visited St. A’s before a couple of years back and stopped at River’s Edge to check the place out.

We stayed two nights with Jan and Herb and headed out early in the morning headed home for Adventure.  We discussed stopping at a hotel one more night (for a big bed, showers, hot tub, pool, and just to decompress) but that never happened.  I guess I owe JoAnne a night in a nice place somewhere with a big bed, showers, hot tub pool, or just decompressing. Haha!

Finally, we arrived back at our marina, tired and relatively warm.  That changed quickly because, well, apparently winter is nuts and it keeps coming back to bug us.

All in all, our adventures don’t have to be aboard “Adventure”.  We have just as much fun in the car as the boat, and it seems like it’s easier to do some times.  But, I don’t think we’re giving up the boat any time soon.

The last thing for this entry is a purely mercenary event for me, so bear with me one more moment.

Back in November, I published my first SF novel, the first is a series called “Estrellita Chronicles”, first book is called “Aftermath’s Children” and was a very, very long time coming.  I started writing that book in 1985 or ’86.  It was a collective work based on a role playing game that I ran as Game Master with friends back in the early to mid 1980s.

The book has been sitting around in mostly completely form now for many years, but I published it on Kindle.

This week, I completed the set up for paperback books, and yesterday (Friday, 9 March 2018) I posted the last files, cover changes and information for the book.  Today I finally got the price set properly.

So if you like Science Fiction and are interested you can get the book either as a digital version for Kindle (or kindle app, or Amazon Cloud reader) or paperback.  I’ll post the links here.  Normally, I don’t advertise anything with the blog at all or ask for anything, but I’d sincerely appreciate it, if anyone reads the book they write a short review on Amazon.  Here are the links, top one is for the paperback, the second for the digital version for Kindle.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1973270501/
https://www.amazon.com/Aftermaths-Children-Estrellita-Chronicles-Book-ebook/dp/B077BFKQ5W

This is my Amazon Author Page:

https://www.amazon.com/Rick-Donaldson/e/B00Q514LD0

This is my author blog:

https://rddonaldson.wordpress.com

Please visit those and leave comments, and PLEASE do a review if you read the book, it helps to bring the book into focus for those visiting Amazon (and helps get me sales, and by the way, I make a couple of bucks off each book, not as much as you think an author makes!)

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Two weeks ago my brother, Steve, who happens to be my baby brother and is significantly younger than me, went into the hospital.  He is suffering from kidney failure and congestive heart failure.  I won’t detail any thing else here due to his privacy.  But he has been on a ventilator for most of that two weeks.

I just got word that Steve will be taken off the ventilator today, which is a VERY good sign.  He’s awake, aware, and has even stood up and taken a few steps.  We can only hope he gets better in the next few days and can get his medical issues corrected.

We left last Tuesday morning by rental car to collect our own car sitting at Kurt’s place in the Northern Neck of Virginia.  The car issue was in and of itself an “adventure”.

Enterprise Car Rental loaned us a car for a one way trip.  I’d had the vehicle over the weekend and we did the required “walkaround” and there was some damage to the left front fender where it appeared something had gone up inside the wheel well, bounced around and then probably went out.  I pointed it out, and the guy there (Ben) said they had it on the paperwork and were aware.  There was also a window ding, where a rock had hit the window.  That too, was known.

When I tried to turn the car in on Tuesday, they told me to “keep it for my trip” and they would adjust the paperwork and not charge me the extra few hours.  All good so far.  We departed more or less on time and headed for Tappahannock, VA where we would eventually try to turn in the car.

It was a five hour trip.  Now, mind you, we are very careful with our cars (whether ours, or someone else’s cars) and there were no accidents, no bumps, no crashes, no demolition derbies or anything in our trip.  The trip was completely without incident except stopping to put gas in the tank.

I called the rental place in Tappahannock to tell them we’d be arriving around 4pm and would require a ride to our car along with all our stuff. They told me they couldn’t give me a ride after 4:15 PM.  So, I said I’d call if we couldn’t make it until after 4pm.  Henry said he would have someone take us around 4 anyway.  Cool

In fact, we made it at 3PM.  When we arrived, I explained that JoAnne couldn’t drive the car all the way back, so we wanted to drop off then and get a ride to the house where our car was located, and we didn’t know if it had enough gas, would start or we could get the keys.  There was some issues with calling the drivers and they pretty much refused to get back before 5pm and told him they weren’t staying to do the drive.

Of course, Henry didn’t know I could hear these people giving him crap on the phone.  A good manager doesn’t let on there are issues, and Henry was polite and told us we could simply call tomorrow and leave the keys with the car and they’d pick it up.  I told him I would TRY to return it myself that evening, but would call at 0800 if we could not.

Next morning I left the keys in the car under a floor mat and tried calling.  They didn’t open until 0800, and no voice mail.  So, JoAnne and I got on the road and were two hours away when we finally reached Henry.

I gave him the address, told him where the keys were located and that the car was in the drive way at the house and should not be an issue for him.  My car sat there for three months with no problems.  Henry assured me he would call when they recovered the vehicle.  Still, no problems.

At 1830 on Wednesday evening, in the middle of rush hour traffic in downtown Detroit, he calls me to tell me they recovered the car and “there’s a problem”.  Starts telling me about a “rocker panel”.  I wasn’t even sure what a rocker panel was.  Said there was “damage”.  After an explanation of what it was I said there was indeed damage to the car on that side (driver’s side) under the wheel well and on the fender from something that had happened and it was clear that any damage on that side likely had to do with that previous accident – and Enterprise WAS aware of the damage.

He insisted that it “must have happened while you had the car”.  Ummm… no.  I contacted the other office and had them talk.  Next day (Thursday) I get a  call from the manager in Southport asking questions.

After I explained it all to her, she said she would take care of the issue.  Today I plan to drive up to the office and see them face-to-face and see whether this has been resolved or not.  They promised me pictures, which I haven’t see yet.

So, here we are in Southport with a ship and a car.  I need to figure out what to do with the car, and plan our escape from here.

JoAnne and I discussed making Southport our “home port” though, last night.  Not necessarily this particular marina, but this area to be able to sail in and out of Cape Fear and down the ICW.  Why would we do that?

When we arrived last night no one was around. The place was quiet, and we unloaded our car and moved our stuff aboard.  Then we decided to head over to Check Six (a local brewery) that we’ve been visiting.

When we walked in…. wow.  The people here are wonderful.  They all knew about my brother, and they asked about Steve.  There were hugs all around, the owners came over to hug us, patrons and people we barely knew treated us like family.

Southport has been wonderful.  All of the people are nice, helpful and it’s not very stressful here.  It “feels” like home.  Though, for us, Home is where ever we drop anchor or can stay a few days normally.

No matter what we decided to do, we have to decide by 6 Feb 2017 as that’s when our paid time on the docks is up and we either need to move on or pay (and it’s not cheap here in this marina either).

Now we’re faced with finding a place to store the car (or sell it, which we’re both opposed to doing at this point) and move down the road to Florida, or we have to go south to Florida and find a place to get a mooring ball or slip (and pay for that) and leave our car THERE.

No matter WHAT we decide though, we will be coming back to Southport to visit.

Today I check on prices for marinas here, Florida and have a chat with Enterprise.  I’ve rented from them almost exclusively for years and if they attempt to charge me for damages to a car that I didn’t do and were already on the vehicle, I will never rent from them again and I’ll be spreading the story far and wide. (There’s more to this story than I’ve told, about how they give out damaged cars, and what they do if one comes in damaged… more on that later IF necessary).

On a boat note here, batteries seemed ok with sitting here running only the bilge pump and charging on solar.  Then again, we don’t have any leaks that could cause the bilge pump to go come on often (if ever).  So, she sat here at the dock a full eight days without any maintenance, checking or supervision. 🙂

Thanks to the Dockmaster at South Harbour Village Marina, Bill and crew for looking out for us, and a special thanks to Jay Beard, another full time cruiser friend for “keeping an eye on her” for us.  I appreciate all of you.

Finally, IF you’re ever passing through Southport and you happen to like craft beer, I strongly suggest you do NOT miss the Check Six Brewing Company over on Southport Supply Road  (http://www.checksixbeer.com/).  Good friends, good beer, good company!!!!  (And to be sure, I RARELY give such endorsements!)

rick_joanne_adventure

s/v Adventure and Crew at South Harbour Village Marina, Southport, NC