Sailing Earendil

Well, today is the day that Dalton will 'squire' us to Oriental in the car.  We close up the house, pack our final belongings, and Miss Harmony, and move onto the boat for the winter. Most of our stuff is there already, so this will be minor. We are both on edge, pre-travel jitters, waiting to get started. The latest news is that there is a swing bridge broken in the closed position at Figure 8 Island, that we planned to go through on Tuesday, our second day. It's been broken since at least Thursday.  The bridge is old and they have to disassemble the gearbox, make a part and put it all back together for the bridge to open.  The last advisory last night was 'Not today but maybe Saturday'. Figure 8 Swing Bridge - Photo from Linda Robert Avoiding it means cancelling our Swansboro dock Sunday night and possibly going from Beaufort NC to Masonboro Inlet on the outside. It's about 70 miles or 10 hours plus an inlet I haven't been through before. We'll have to...

We depart by sailboat the end of this month for points south. It's the annual snowbird migration to warmer climes on the eastern seaboard and we are finally ready to join in. It's Wed Oct 26, 2022 about 6AM. I've been up since 430AM thinking boat stuff. Lynn and I are closing up the house and getting ready to take the ride to the boat Saturday afternoon with the final load of provisions from the house. We had been planning a trip south for the winter for a while. It's Lynn's first trip down the waterway and the plan is to go inside to enjoy the sights and hop outside if weather and timing allow. Earendil is an 1986 Endeavour 42 Cutter rigged sailboat, about 50' overall and 25000# displacement.  We bought her in 2019. Over the last 3 1/2 years we have done a refit to upgrade her systems and prepare her for liveaboard.