Saturday, December 31, 6am local time.  Sun not up, its cold but no breeze.  The crew does another check of all the engines and starts firing up the systems.   Everything checks out, we disconnect shore power, take in the lines and the captain maneuvers us off the dock and heads us downstream on the Cape Fear River.  We stow the lines, fenders and shore power cords and then watch as the town of Wilmington passes by.

At warp speed it took about 3 hours to get to the mouth of the Cape Fear River, and then we headed south. Once in the Atlantic we settled into a nice rhythm;  The captain and The Great Auk worked 6 hour watches with the captain’s son splitting time between the two of us.  The water was flat, very little wind and the boat had a nice motion that kept us all comfortable as we headed toward Florida.   Midnight New Years eve found us off the coast of South Carolina, we celebrated quickly with some apple juice and got back to our watch schedule.

New Years day sunrise over the Atlantic was wonderful…

And the water stayed comfortably calm all New Years Day with a nice sunset…

But about 4am on the second day the winds picked up from the south and we found ourselves with building waves right on the bow.  We did manage to find a high tech way of keeping our drinking glasses from spilling in the rolling seas.

Yep, turns out that duct tape is the perfect solution for just about everything.

The ride became uncomfortable (for the crew) and we decided to duck into the inter-coastal waterway just south of Daytona Beach and found a much more comfortable ride.  We found the inland waterway comfortable, but even in the channel we found some shallow water that required some care.

Also saw some wonderful sunsets…

After a couple of days in the inter-coastal we found our way into our new winter home; home base for a number of Nordhavns.

And had another couple of nights of great skies…

LFB is for sale, but until it’s under contract we will continue to offer charters.  We have a few weeks still available in February and March, so if you are interested drop us a line.