Where has the summer gone

Where has the summer gone, I mean really.

It was only yesterday we had arrived home in Kilmarnock Va with a big list of things that needed to be done. Now we are talking of heading south again next week. The summer days seemed to melt one day into the next. It was certainly hot enough, now it is pleasant and comfortable. It seemed we had no real hard deadlines and plenty of time to do things and now we are working to get things ready, while it is  great, it is mentally jarring!

Backing up and putting events into perspective we had a wonderful summer. It was H-O-T and humid, maybe I am getting older but it seemed to be worse than normal. Since Katie and Max announced their engagement and the wedding to be in our back yard, it was a call to action. So for 6 weeks early in the morning, Jeannie and I were out in the yard planting, hoeing and in general working to make things perfect. But boy what a drought, half the time was spent keeping plants alive. All in all we did ok but it was a lot of good healthy work.

We became member of the Virginia Yacht Club ( http://sites.google.com/site/vayachtclub/ ) which is a fun group in the Chesapeake Bay cruising club. We had a blast and met a lot of new friends and traveled a bit in the bay in-between home chores.

Our plans have changed a bit this year. We had originally planned to travel to the Bahamas but scaled that back  because of the wedding and our youngest son, Johnny is in his Sr year of college and is an acting major at Washington and Lee University. We wanted to be within reasonable striking distance for  performances and to work at home when needed on the house/yard. So we decided to winter in Charleston SC. Not terribly warm in the winter but not too bad and a way cool city. It is one of our favorites. 

Now the summer is over. We had thought we would head south in mid November after a number of family commitments were over and we voted in early November. Jeannie noticed that we have a brief 2 week calendar break starting next week and why not head out sooner get the boat to some place further down the waterway and travel in warmer weather. The Charleston City Marina ( http://www.charlestoncitymarina.com/  ) has a winter special with reduced rates and is in the center of town. We will be there for four months starting in December. We decided to travel to Isle of Palms for the month of November( http://www.iop.net/Community/IOPMarina.aspx )  To do this there is a bunch of things that needed to be sorted out.

Prior to leaving we went into hyper drive to complete a number of home projects. We have had erosion along part of our shore line so after many months of permitting approvals we rip rapped 154' along the south facing shore. Our big unplanned (ouch) project was to replace our dock. The old one was 23 yrs old and the pilings were so bad that it  was becoming dangerous. So out with the old and in with the new. This time we added tide slides ( http://www.tideslide.com/indexr.htm ) to help manage the tide surges with various storms.


So as the yard work completed we have departed south today on Tuesday October 19th and hope to arrive in Isle of Palms Sc on the 26th.
Pictures and notes to follow. Check out our track on the SPOT link