July-August 2008 Cruise to Lake Champlain

Compass Rose will be headed north from the Chesapeake Bay to Lake Champlain starting July 14th. Route will include the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, Delaware Bay, the Atlantic Ocean off New Jersey, New York City, up the Hudson River to Burlington, VT.

We have created a new blog for this trip; click on the Link to the right....

Trip from Ft. Lauderdale to Annapolis

We departed Ft Lauderdale, FL on April 7th arriving in Annapolis on May 2^nd. We had a wonderful time with Rob and Sue on Papillion who accompanied us for the three weeks. We are always surprised at the end of our trips how 40 to 50 miles a day adds up to 1000 miles. The weather was great with only 2 or 3 cold days early in the trip. Compass Rose ran great with no major mechanical problems to deal with. Coming up the ICW in Florida, we lowered the mast to get under the many bridges between Ft. Lauderdale and Titusville. Don’t know how much time it saved but it does save some of the aggravation of waiting for the bridge openings, sometimes in very strong currents.

Vero Beach: On mooring ball for two nights waiting for Rob and Sue to catch up to us.

St. Augustine: anchored and spent a wonderful day walking around “America’s Oldest City”. Took a guided tour of the Flagler Hotel/Flagler College, built by Henry Flagler in 1887. Bridge of Lions is still being rebuilt.

Photo: Flagler College

We spent 2 day in Fernandina Beach/Amelia Island. Fernandina is considered the birthplace of the shrimping industry. There are shrimp boats everywhere trawling the waters from dawn to dusk, dragging their nets along the bottom for their daily catch. Pam can’t get to the market fast enough to buy our many pounds of this culinary delight. Like Bubba says, you can barbecue it, boil it, bake it, sauté it ….. we love them.

We rode our bikes to Fort Clinch which is at the northern tip of Amelia Island This Fort is one of the most complete brick forts in the country and was originally built on this point during the War of 1812 to prevent any more British invasions. We took a self guided tour of the fort’s restored buildings, including furnished barracks, jail cells, and the fort hospital. The park like setting includes biking, nature trails, fishing piers and a museum of the fort. We had a wonderful 12 mile bike ride and a picnic in the park.

Photo: Rob, Sue, Pam & John at Ft Clinch

We were able to spend two days in Beaufort, SC one being our 39^th wedding anniversary. This is one of Pam’s favorite stops along the ICW so it worked out that we were able to celebrate our anniversary in Beaufort.

Photo: Harbor in Beaufort, SC (at a very low tide)

Georgetown – Great dinner at Goat Island Grill; an afternoon spent walking through a very old cemetery with some very old trees.

Photo: South Carolina's "Champion Oak"...over 570 years old!

Photo: Headstone of two British officers killed in 1779 during The Revolution in Georgetown, SC

Photo: Papillion being borded and inspected by the Coast Guard. Passed with flying colors.

Myrtle Beach – Dinner aboard Papillion

Oriental, NC – Dinner at Snappers with LadyHawke, Happy Feet and Papillion

Belhaven, NC- like many small towns in America, Belhaven’s stores are closing and the stores still in business were closed after 2pm on Saturday. We could not even get our afternoon ice cream. Spent some time in the hardware store and we were able to do our wash. We took Rob and Sue to the famous Belhaven Memorial Museum. The museum, located in the old Town Hall, is filled with artifacts collected by Mary Eva Blount Way (1869-1962). She was an avid collector of everything, such as 30,000 buttons, a two headed pig in a jar, many old framing tools and this goes on and on. If you have to, and I mean “have to” stop in Belhaven, this is a must see point of interest.

Photo: Sue and Pam doing laundry in Belhaven, NC

Elizabeth City - Anchored overnight to get an early start through the Dismal Swamp. It was a cloudy morning and we had rain most of the afternoon. The Swamp was truly dismal. Pulled into Portsmouth about 3 pm.

Photo: Locking Through the canal

Photo: The Dismal Swamp Canal

Portsmouth, VA- Compass Rose and Papillion pulled into the south basin in Portsmouth, VA. Pam, John, Rob and Sue walked around town visiting antiques shops and seeing the on- going renovations to restore this quaint histories seaport. The winds were blowing 15-20 so we decided to stay another night. We took the pedestrian ferry over to downtown Norfolk to take in the sights. We toured the Mariners Museum and the decks of the battleship USS Wisconsin. That evening we enjoyed a movie and

dinner at the Commodore with Rob and Sue. The Commodore Theater is a luxuriously restored 1945 Art Deco style motion picture theatre presenting first run films with a very good restaurant within this one-screen movie palace . Great place and a must-do every year.

Photo: Departing Portsmouth

We departed Portsmouth at 7:30 am (4/29) and headed out through Hampton Roads. We entered the bay with 3 to 5 foot waves on the bow. After three hours of very uncomfortable seas we pulled into Mobjack Bay to wait out the winds. After a two hour wait the bay calmed allowing an easy trip to Deltaville.

Deltaville, VA– Rafted with Papillion Photo: Early morning departure from Deltaville

Solomon’s – Feels good to be in familiar surroundings, farewell dinner aboard Papillion

Photo: Sultana welcomes us to Annapolis\

Photo: Thomas Point Light....first signs of home.

Three Days in Ft. Lauderdale

Compass Rose spent three days in Lake Sylvia, Ft. Lauderdale waiting for the weather to improve for a Bahamas crossing. We had a wonderful time waiting with the thirty or so other boats. We were there with Papillon and Avalon.

You can dingy around Ft Lauderdale from the Lake. We were guided though the many canals by Mike and Pegge McLaughlin who had local knowledge after living there for many years.

The turtles were nesting on the beaches and as you can see from the signage they take this very seriously. All of the lights along the beaches have covers that block the lights from the beach front. Otherwise, the turtles will crawl towards the lights and away from the ocean. Guess they don't have much of an internal compass.

We were in the midst of spring break so the beaches were very crowded. It was great to feel the sand between our toes. This was as close to the Bahamas as we were going to get.

Winter in Jensen Beach, FL

After spending four glorious months in Jensen Beach, Florida we are now on the move again. We gave up going to the Bahamas after spending 3 days in Lake Sylvia waiting for the winds to stop. The weather did not cooperate so we have started our trip north.

This winter we drove our car back to Florida after our Christmas trip home. This made our numerous trips to Naples much easier. We helped John’s Mom with her move back to Maryland. We also made a trip to Disney World to meet the kids for a day in the park. That was great fun but we have to say that one day is about all we can do at their pace! We made another trip home over Easter to take the car back north. .

Our stay in Jensen Beach was fabulous. We stayed at the Four Fish Marina which is located on the ICW just north of Stuart and south of Ft. Pierce. The area has so much to offer in the way of things to do, all the shopping anyone could want, great beaches only 5 minutes away, many public golf courses and you can ride your bike to anywhere you might want to go. But the most wonderful part of our stay was “The Hood” as we called ourselves. At any given time there were no less than six Krogens at the marina and there were as many as thirteen at the height of “The
Hood”. This was truly a community with a personality that we call the Krogen Family. We were all there to support each other in what ever way we could. Great times were had and new friendships were made.

Pam’s sister Jan made a visit for 10 days in February. We had good weather the whole time she was here. We had great days at the beach and 5 o’clock happy hours in The Hood every night. Bob and BJ were able to spend some time with us in March as did Chuck and Lisa Gorum. We also had visits from Bill and Geraldine Falk and Richard and Michelle Sanger. Jensen is a good place to have company with so much to do in the area.

Pam and Casey took Jazzercise classes every morning and got to know some of the other ladies in the class.

John did some major repairs on the boat. He worked tirelessly for three weeks on the fuel tanks.

We are sorry to have the winter-stay in Jensen end but we are anxious to start our trip back to Annapolis. We will try to keep the blog going as we move north up the waterway.