Getting sand bit

Hi kids!

Here is a picture of a nice man in a boat. That thing he is standing
beside that looks like a post with things sticking out of it is called
a 'tow bit'. At the back of his boat are two 250 hp engines. The nice
man ties a big fat rope called a tow line or a hawser to the tow bit,
and uses it to haul sailboats out of the mud when they get stuck.

Why do sailboats get stuck in the mud? Well, you might ask that,
mightn't you? The intracoastal waterway is not very deep and it's not
very wide in a lot of places. In Georgia swamps this is especially
true. And sometimes the chartplotters have mistakes in them that show
the route as being through a place that's too shallow for a big boat
to go. Unhappily, the paper charts show the same thing. The cruiser
guide book, which describes the route in words and pictures as opposed
to the map presentation on a chart, doesn't say anything about the
shallow spot. Neither does the Coastal Pilot, a book put out by our
friend, the big benevolent federal government. And the navigational
aids in the location are put in the wrong place so there's no warning.
Then the sailboat sails into the shallow place and gets stuck.

The nice man in the tow boat said he had pulled six people off that
sandbar this month. In the picture the nice man is adding up the
charges for his visit to pull us out of the mud. The nice man calls
adding up the charges "cyphering" as in "well, I have to do some
cyphering now". But he says,"waal, ah gots ta do sum sahferin' nao.".
He cyphered the charges to be $1200. If the nice man cyphers up
charges of $1200 for every poor, lost Yankee fool he hauls off this
mismarked, blesséd sandbar, how much money does the nice man cypher up
in a month?

You and the teacher figure that one out, then have a nice holiday.
Love from the swamps!

Salt water in my coffee!

Hi kids!

We are in southern Georgia, a state the established by England as a
penal colony back in the day. 'Penal colony' means it was a place to
send prisoners. Instead of locking some prisoners up in a jail they
put them on a boat in England and told them to go live in Georgia.
From what I can see this was one cruel punishment. The places we have
been sailing through are endless swamps. Mile after mile of swamps
with no houses, no roads, barely any solid ground to stand on. Just
acres and acres of water and swamp grass.

The winds have been really blowing lately. They blew so hard they made
big waves when we were in a really wide river. The waves got big,
splashed against the boat, kerSPLASH, and made spray go up in the air.
It came down all over me. I had a travel cup of coffee beside me and
when I picked it up to keep drinking it, the top was covered in salt
water! Yuck!

Here's a picture of a pelican up close. They are really clumsy birds.
They land by doing a faceplant in the water. When they are fishing
they land with their mouth open and try to snag a fish. They're quiet,
though. They never make a cry. At least we haven't heard any. So I
guess they ain't stool pigeons, huh? Ha!

Ok, kiddos, be good, have a good time off from school and don't forget
to come back after it's over. Your old teacher would surely miss you!

Spikey trees?

Hi kids!

Here's a picture of a palm tree. These things grow all around down
here in the south. They are some funny trees. The leaves are all in a
bunch at the top. The leaves are like two feet long, spikey and sharp.
The trunks are straight, thick and have just about no branches. They
are really different from Pennsylvania trees.

When you go a long way away from home you see lots of different
things. If you keep your eyes open, there are lots of things to see.

If you keep your eyes closed, you'll trip and fall on your face. So
keep your eyes open!

Christmas boats

Hi kids!

We spent today in Charleston, South Carolina, where were fired the
first shots of the great rebellion. We got off the boat and walked to
a mail box so Angel Jen could mail some letters. She writes long
letters to her mother about where we are and what we are doing (so
she'll have plenty of evidence against me if she needs it, she says).
We walked all over town looking in shops. We didn't find anything we
liked. Then we walked to a college library to do our Christmas
shopping. We took our lap top computer along, jived some computer geek
into letting us on their wireless network and shopped online. Man, do
we ever love the Internet!

It felt so good to take a walk! We had been on the boat for over a
week. On the boat you can only go a few feet in any direction before
you run out of room. We walked for MILES!

The houses down here in Charleston are grand. They are really big, old
and have huge porches. The porches are because in the summer it's so
hot people don't want to be in the house. They want to sit put on the
porch and have a mint Julip and watch the neighbors. They don't just
have one porch. They have a porch for the first floor, another on top
of that for the second floor and another on top of that for the third
story, all with big columns. Very nice.

They have palm trees, too! We were surprised.

When we came back to the boat we took our dinghy out through all the
boats in the harbor and we saw this boat all decorated for Christmas.
I took a picture because I thought it looked nice. I love Christmas. I
love the decorations. I love the shopping. And I especially love
singing along with the Christmas music. My singing is really good. It
cheers people up. And it gives them energy. At least whenever I start
singing along with the Christmas music, Angel Jen gets extra energy
and starts walking really fast. Sometimes so fast it's hard to keep up
with her.

Well kids, you be good and listen to the teacher because1) she's
always right and B) if you shut up and listen you just might learn
something.

We're Aground!

Hi kids!

Well, we really did it this time. We were boogying down the old
intracoastal waterway, minding our business and marveling at the tons
of egrets, pelicans, turkey vultures, terns and ospreys we were seeing
when, WHAM! A dolphin surfaced and blew his air out! It was a real
surprise because 1) we are miles from the ocean in 12' of water (I had
no idea they came into places like this) and B) it was really loud!
(he was only a couple feet from the boat)

A little while later I saw a bunch of water being thrashed around and
splashed in the air up ahead along the side of the waterway. There
are places down here called Alligator River and Alligator Bay and
Alligator Creek so we figured it might be an alligator. I stopped the
boat to see. Jen got the binoculars out but by then the commotion was
over and we didn't see any alligator. I went to put the boat in gear
and NOTHING! The gear shift mechanism was kaput! This darn waterway
is so narrow, the wind and current were so strong that before we could
get a sail up or the anchor down we were aground, nose right into the
mud at the side of the channel.

The boat was pointing directly downwind so there was no way to sail
her out. This all happened at full high tide (wouldn't you just know
it) so there was no hope of waiting for the tide to float her off and
no time to waste, since the ebbing tide would leave her high and dry
and tip her way over. I put the engine in gear by hand and tried
backing her off. Nothing. We tossed out an anchor over the stern and
tried 'kedging' her out by pulling on the anchor rope to pull her
backward while I ran the engine hard. Nothing. We tried taking the
anchor way out to the side with the dinghy, attaching it to the rope
that pulls up the sail (the main halyard) and pulling hard to tip the
boat over so it would come out. Nothing. While I was fiddling around
with the dinghy Jen saw the dolphin's fin and started yelling Shark!
Shark! Thanks a lot, Angel Jen. Just what I need. A stuck boat and a
heart attack. But it was an honest mistake.

We were really and truly stuck. I had to call a man with a tow boat
to pull us out. Boy, was that expensive!

After he pulled us out of the mud with his power boat we anchored in
the middle of the channel to pay him. After he left we pulled the
anchor out to go Then the engine stopped. I had to drop anchor anchor
again real quick and go bleed the fuel lines. By now it was about
dark. We were miles and miles from anyplace to tie the boat up. We
had to drive the boat through the dark using the chartplotter and
radar. The lighted navigational aids were almost two miles apart, the
channel was narrow and shallow. We were really nerved up with this
situation, I tell you.

When we got to the place to tie up the boat we had to sneak into a
curving side channel even more narrow, navigate around a bunch of
other boats and land against a dock in the dark with no lights on the
boat or the dock and no reverse gear to slow the boat down. I'm
telling you!

We made it. We snuck in slow and slid her up next to the dock, tied
her up and said, 'Whew!'. Were we ever glad THAT was over!

And through all that excitement not an angry word was spoken between
Angel Jen and I. We hollered, true, but just to make ourselves clear.
It's great to work with someone who can help when things go wrong and
who can figure out what to do next without yelling, 'You stupid head!'
or something. Angel Jen is a good old girl. And after it was over I
told her so. She said,'I think I'll keep you.'

Ain't she sweet?

Here's Angel Jen having a glass of soda under the Fat Tire sign in a
place where we ate the other day. I think I'll keep her, too.

Tree beards

Hi kids!

We sailed past lots of golf courses and stuff today and out into the
swamps again. We are seeing a lot of stuff we rarely or never see up
north.

Like the moss in the trees. The trees in this picture are all covered
with moss. It hangs down and blows around and makes the trees look
like they have long beards. That's funny!

Up in the top of one of the trees is a huge bird's nest. It was made
ny an osprey. This is a big muscular bird like an eagle that sits up
in the trees, looks for fish in the water then dives down to get them.
They don't just delicately pick the fish out of the water like the
eagle. They do a face plant right into the water with a big splash
then come up with the fish in their talons crying,'Cree! Cree!' big
show offs, those ospreys.

We are also seeing lots and lots of pelicans. They are really funny
looking and really clumsy. They have big heads with big long beaks.
Under their beaks there is a pouch. To fish they fly along a few feet
above the water, then, when they see a fish, they dive in with their
mouth open and try to get the fish in the pouch. It makes a huge
splash. And they never land in the water any other way. They just
crash land face first then flip themselves over. It's really funny to
see.

Angel Jen is writing her journal in the picture. She writes down the
things we see, the places we go and how much fun it is to be on a boat
with me. Then she sends it to her mother so her mother will know, too.

Just think. You could learn to write and someday take a trip to see
pelicans and write a letter about it, too. If you learn to write, that
is. So pay attention to your teacher and if you play your cards right
she might teach you how to do it.

Mansions

Hi kids!

Well, Angel Jen and I broke another interstate barrier thrusting
boldly into South Carolina, the state that struck the first blow of
the Civil War by firing on the Yankees' warships at Fort Sumpter. You
can ask your teacher about THAT mess. I think she remembers it.

Well, as soon as we got into South Carolina the waterway was lined on
both sides by golf courses, marinas, shopping malls and great big
houses. The town was called Myrtle Beach. I guess a lady called Myrtle
used to live there or something. People come from all over to vacation
here, play golf and enjoy the beaches. Why here and not right next
door in North Carolina? I believe it it because someone long ago
decided to try to make a good vacation place and began working on it.
It took years and years but they did it.

You can start to do things if you decide to and as long as you don't
quit you might succeed. Maybe one of you can start making Camptown
into a great place for something. Keep doing it and you might live in
a mansion like these along the intracoastal waterway in South Carolina
some day.