Two Bears is home again.

[Two Bears]

Two Bears is home again.

We spent 15 weeks traveling the US living in Two Bears, our CD 22. We spent more than 3 weeks on the Eire Canal in August. Then did the tourist thing and visited friends by truck in the Northeast for two weeks.

We trekked to North Carolina for the Gathering there in late September. We picked the brains of a lot of locals, borrowed some guides and plowed the waters of Pamlico Sound, out to Ocracoke. Did part of the Dismal Swamp canal and visited some local towns. Had a really great time and enjoyed the area.

Then to the Gulf in October. We followed 180 miles of the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway for a few days and attended the Gulf Gathering. Got lots of help also. We took up Bob Austin's offer and visied him. He loaned us some guides and got us started in Pensocola east to the gathering. Skip from Fishwife took me Rock Crab “noodling” and I learned a lot about boating in the Gulf.

From there we headed home arriving Oct 29th.

In all we were gone 104 days, 103 nights, of which 92 were spent in the boat. 38 were spend in the boat on the trailer, 53 in the boat on the water, and the rest at a convention or at the home of friends. We drove 11, 796 miles, most of it pulling the boat on its trailer. No serious mechanical problems with our road gear. Only boat problem was main engine failed to start after a day sight-seeing on our folding bikes. After a lot of local help and my own efforts proved fruitless, the next day I found a professional and he found the problem in half an hour. A wire used only for starting had come off it's “peg.”

For some reason I can't enter photos into the C-brat album, but if you want more info and to see some of the photos, I did a weekly blog. Find it at TwoBears2012.blogspot.com There is one more entry to be made which will summarize and identify our take home lessons and what to do in the future.

Chuck

[rogerbum]

Nice blog. I really like this photo

[thataway]

Great Blog and Great folks who we really enjoyed getting to know better. We had met Two Bears (Chuck and Penny) last year at the Gulf Coast gathering, and then again at Friday Harbor this year.

Spending time with the various C Brats is wonderful experience. We enjoyed reading your blog. Great photos. Go to the Gathering link, then click on photo--there is the album. Click on the right upper corner, and select "add photos". You may have to down size your photos, if they are too big, they take too long to load, and are rejected. Try medium JPED and Medium size of picture in what ever program you use to save your photos.
We use i photo--and save the photo we want in a down sized version to the desk top--the after putting it on the album, we put that photo in the trash, having kept the original picture in I photo. You can do similar maneuvers in photo shop elements.

[Larry Patrick]

Sounds like a great adventure. Would like to see more photos if possible.These reports get me wanting to get boat sooner ,still need a little time before being able to travel job free .Living in Pennsylvania,limits my access time to ocean and bays and cruising grounds,also vacation time ,so waiting until retirerment time to travel with boat,until then reading others adventures keeps me going.

[Captains Cat]

Larry. Go to their blog. Great stuff Chuck and Penny!

Charlie

[billtwymank]

***
Lady KC says it is good to hear you guys
had a great and safe trip.

Will we see you at another Carolina Gathering?

***

[Larry Patrick]

Captains Cat Charlie ,thanks I just got done reading Two Bears blog,good blog enjoyed the travel reports. Chuck and Penny wow that was alot of traveling,thats what makes great memories,thanks for sharing.

[El and Bill]

Great blog, photos, and trip. Thanks for sharing. You re-awakened
some fine memories of our cruising on many of the waters you cruised. Wonderful tale - keep up the journeys and bon voyage.

[Montana Kev]

Chuck and Penny, thanks for sharing. Enjoyed the blog and photos. Looking forward to covering some of these same waters in the future.

Kevin & Laura

[Munchkin]

Chuck and Penny,

It was great meeting you both. We are so glad you made the NC gathering a part of your trip.It was wonderful to hear about your adventures. Please plan to come east again sometime soon.


Erma
Munchkin

[Two Bears]

Two boaters have asked me to talk about what worked and what did not. After some thought Penny and I developed the following. It on the blog but only recently & not everyone has seen it.

Hindsight views of Good & Bad equipment both for boating & road trip.
Many years ago we attended at talk by a woman who had rowed across the Atlantic from the US to Great Britain. She talked about trip planning and gave us two terms: Bricks and Diamonds: Bricks are things you take and never use, and Diamonds are things you take along not thinking they would get much use and were surprised at the heavy use they received. We have been retired for 12 years now and each year have done a two or three month trip. Until last year we traveled in a "crushable" pick up camper; but in 2011 and this year we used our C Dory as our camper. After our trips we have listed the bricks and diamonds and there have been trips when an object that was a diamond one trip was a brick the next trip. I am somewhat bemused how things can be so different from year to year. I'll add another category: MISSED= things we didn't have but will next time. A background comment is: We are "minimalists" and are used to doing with little. We backpacked until Penny's arthritis cut that off in her 50s. Backpackers learn to get by with little and to make do with what is on hand and to make things do double and triple duty. The only people we've met who seem to get by with less is Bill & Eli and they are physically much smaller people than Penny and I. Size became important by the end of the trip. I'm 6'2" and ended up with a bed sore on my left hip because when lying in the starboard side of the V berth with my feet on the anchor locker my head was touching the back of the helm/ electric/ wiring cover. I think in my sleep I pushed into the curve of the bow trying to stretch out. That forced me to roll onto my left side and I spent too much time in that position. Also, as the days became shorter & the nights longer we were forced to spent more time in the cabin. By the end of the trip the cabin had become much much smaller than when we started.

MISSED or stuff we needed and stuff that didn't fill the need.
1. Heat w/ Humidity: As you probably picked up from the blog, heat with humidity was not something we had much experience with before this trip. I know that a lot of Southern US C-dory's have air conditioning. Many have bought a small window model and set it on a pad in the front window at end of boating each day. They use a 1 or 2 kw generator when away from the grid. I did not want to deal with a generator or be tied to the grid, so I refused to seriously consider air conditioning= mistake! When we got to the land of humidity & heat just 2nd day from home I began to notice that all RVs had air conditioning and that all campgrounds had power for all sites - including public parks such as Corps of Eng & city parks. Because of the heat we did not "boon-dock" as much as I expected. - ie Walmarts and highway rest stops just were too uncomfortable due to the heat so we were forced into many more RV parks than I expected / planned. Still, I refused to consider air conditioning and instead bought plain fans; 4 of them by the end of the trip. Doing it again, I would get the small air conditioner and just use it where we could connect to the grid. In hindsight, we could have used it for about 70 nights of our 91 nights in the boat.
2. Shade: We carried some fabric and tied it & used clothes-pins to hold it over the windows to provide sun shade. These two pieces of fabric weren't large enough at 3x 6 feet each and they should have been modified to cover the front berth hatch from sun while allowing air movement.
3. Bug screens/ bug stopper: The Bugs really come out in the hour before & after dark. I like to sit outside in the "veranda" and read and just watch the changing light, both at anchor/ dock and on trailer in RV parks. I paid a price. In the heat we didn't want to put up the plastic windows to our camper back. We retreated to the cabin but even there the bugs found holes to join us. Several nights we had to sit inside with a citronella candle going adding to the heat. Both of us were badly bug bitten, especially our legs& ankles since we were in shorts until the final few days coming home. Some of the bites turned into running sores that lasted the whole trip and have only healed at home. On Ocracoke we met a sailboat couple that covered their cockpit with very fine fish netting. They had a piece of netting/fabric about 10 feet wide by 30 feet long. It also acted as shade cloth, as it cut about 80% of the sun. I'm considering making window netting panels as duplicates of the window panel for the camper back. I'm also designing a "bra" to tie to the front top of the cabin and stretch to the bow rails and shade the windshield and provide shade and rain protection to the hatch in the V berth. Remember, warm rain is still wet especially when your bedding gets wet. 4) Electronic world. I installed a new Garmin 740s chart plotter/ radar this year and it worked wonderfully. However, you can't do big overview and detail at the same time. In a perfect world I'd like an I pad with electronic charts for the overview and depend on the Garmin for the details. In planning for this trip I was not willing or able to a) spend the money to purchase the gear; b) spend the money to have the wifi connections, and c) learn all I needed to know before we left: By way of background, our home in Orofino, Idaho is in a canyon and just got cell phone coverage last year Verizon only, no AT&T or other company. So I'm way behind the learning curve on the smart phone/ electronic world. We have depended on books and pamphlets for RV park/ campground info in the past but those are being phased out in favor of the web advertising (rv campground review.com was helpful). It looks to me like a mobile hot spot is necessary, but we are still procrastinating. Also, Active Captain is really important, especially in the east. Active Captain has an aps for a smart phone if you have that. So, another way of putting it, is we needed better overview charts of the Outer Banks and the Florida Coast. There are several out there with names like "fishing charts," "Spot-On" & etc, but finding them locally is difficult when you are traveling. I was able to borrow them both in the Outer Banks and in Florida but meeting the people and making the connections took a lot of time & effort. That was also much of the fun and good memories of the trip. In the future I think those waterproof paper charts will fade away and we will become more dependent on the electronic "gizmos."
4. Powerstrip. Since we were hooked to the grid so much we used power; lots of power but in little amounts. We always seemed to have at least one fan running, often two, battery chargers charging our "dumb" phone or the ipod or camera or something, and one or both laptop computers going. That means a lot of outlets. I got rid of the heavy marine yellow extension cord that came with the boat and instead use a 50 foot -16 gauge extension cord to the boat. (and several times needed all 50 feet.) I have all kinds of converters to change to and from RV outlets, marine outlets and back. I added a "standard" 3 outlet plug in cluster to the boat end of my cord before it went to the 12 amp to marine outlet conversion. From that cluster I ran a 6 foot extension thru the door into the cabin (which kept the cabin door from closing tight). In the cabin there are two outlets, both hard to reach: 1) behind helm seat & 2) over port V berth. I'm going to get a "Powerstrip" and plug it into the helm outlet and mount it in front of the sink along side the refrigerator. That will give 6 outlets within easy reach of the table and our "counter" created when the helm seat is folded.
BRICKS
1. Spares/ reserves: I gave a lot of thought to spare parts and emergency gear one might need, but my thinking was off base for this trip. It was "too" wilderness. = like I was planning to go to Alaska. A spare prop and spare anchor were on that list as well as tools and nuts, bolts, nails, string, wire & etc. In addition to a fair sized tool box in the boat I had two more in the truck. I built a box to hold the spare prop/ anchor and the "outside" propane stove / BBQ. The lid was made to hold the propane stove safely. The box is about 14 inches square and 30 inches high and ended up being filled with life jackets, 100 foot coils of rope, & other stuff as well as the planned gear. In hind site, the spare anchor was just ballast. One could, perhaps, make a case for the prop. Doing it again on the Eire Canal I would leave both in the truck.
2. Bad guesses: In the Outer Banks I left the bikes behind and took the dingy. Never used the dingy and missed the bikes (didn't use helmets but some gloves.) Not sure how to cure bad judgement.
3. Bumpers/ lock gear. Someone on the C-brat sitesaid that they needed lots of fabric covered bumpers and gloves for the locks. We took two big red bare bumpers and two fabric bumpers and lots of gloves of many types and sizes. By the end we found the two bare red bumpers were enough and did not slime up like the fabric covered bumpers. We put one about behind the helm seat, or about even with the sink tied off the top hand rail and one a few feet forward of the rear cleat. Entering the lock we would hook/ grab one hand line and hold it in the cockpit. Never sent anyone to the bow to hold a line or to hold from the helm window. Penny held the lines and I pushed off with the boat hook on two or three occasions water/ wind action pushed us around. Rubber covered gloves worked good in that application.
4. Spare carriers/ bags/ covers. Not sure if it is fair to call these a brick. When planning I thought I'd carry the bikes on top so I bought a roof top carrier. I put the dingy in it on the roof, but not the bikes. I covered the bikes with it in the back of the boat but it was not built right for that. Doing it again I'd make a bag to go over the folded bikes, but not sealed with a bottom, just a cover.

DIAMONDS
1. We purchased Folding bikes from a West Marine sale in February for $199 & free shipping. They are three speed and fold down to about 18 inches thick & 30x30". So the pair of them made a package in the back of the boat about 3 feet square. I wasn't sure how much we would use them and the 3x3 package in the cockpit concerned me so they were an "On & Off" the list in our planning up to the very end. They turned out to be very valuable and we never needed more than the 3 speeds.
2. Coat hangers. We took fast drying clothing and often did not take them off when entering a shower. Soaped them down, rinsed, and put them on a coat hanger to drip. We then hung them from the support bows on our "camper-back" and in the morning it was dry. That allowed us to get by with very little underwear, short & shirts. I'm going to rig some better means of hanging them in the future as the camper-back bows are only exposed on the outer two feet and the coat hangers had a tendency to slide off.
3. Little things: a) Backpacking towels that are quite small = one-quarter the size of standard towel, dried very quickly, and do the job of drying you after a shower. They feel different to use and looking at the 18x30" thin rags you'd never think they could absorb all that moisture. Ours are almost 10 years old and getting thinner so it may be time to replace them. b.)Tortillas instead of bread as bread became moldy in the heat very quickly. c). Laundry cubes instead of powdered soap that spills or gets hard, a mesh bag for dirty clothes so the clothes didn't get moldy in the humidity. I've hollowed out under the V berth and we stored stuff there but it is damp. d). I added a shelf under the sink and in addition to storing stuff on top, we hung baskets under the shelf for more itemized storage. e). I lined the inside of the cabin with indoor/ outdoor carpeting that has loops that clings to Velcro "hook" material. It really helped with organization and it reduced the heat/ cold transmission through the fiberglass sides. f). Penny made a bunch (20 or more) pockets for pencils, glasses, batteries, money, papers & all kinds of small stuff. They cling to the carpet covered walls with industrial strength Velcro. It really helped with the organization of the many small items we use daily.

[El and Bill]

Great hindsight views. Should be mighty useful for other cruisers in those waters.

Bet you are getting some snow now -- what a contrast from the Gulf country, eh?