Southbound ’19 – Phase Two: The Plan

With Phase One of our Southbound ’19 Adventure successfully behind us and OLOH enjoying her time in Deltaville, Virginia, we are now looking to Phase Two which will bring us to the southern edge of South Carolina.  Rather than run continuously from New York to Florida we had made the decision to break the trip up this year which, so far, has proven to be a terrific way of doing it as well as serendipitous.  We don’t know what surprises the weather will have in store for us as we get underway for Phase Two, but we do know that had we continued on after arriving in Deltaville we would have been held up quite a bit from the unsettled weather that has been assaulting much of the area we would have been moving through.

Even though we’re taking a few weeks off from cruising, in addition to the weather, we pay close attention to what’s happening on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) where we’ll spend most of our journey.  As we are in the thick of the snowbird migration season, there is a lot of activity in the ICW Facebook Group and keeping a watchful eye there helps alert us to some of what we may face underway, from new hazards to changes in usual problem areas.  We occasionally also pick up a good tip like a suggestion for a great new restaurant that we’ll just have to try along the way.  We also take this time to update our charts and routes, order supplies (our UPS driver is becoming a close friend) and be sure our maintenance checklists are being attended to.

The Plan – Phase Two

Click on the pins for details on each travel day 

If the weather cooperates we expect to get underway for Phase Two during the first week of November.  We’ll be just a bit behind but on a very similar schedule to our last southbound adventure two years ago and while we didn’t have consistently warm temperatures then, it was a very nice time to be on the water.  There are certainly plenty of other boats on a similar schedule but it seems that the initial push of most southbound travelers has already happened by then so we expect ICW traffic to be lighter than it would have been had we kept moving through October.  Hurricane season officially ends on November 30 and a lot of boaters have insurance policies that keep them from traveling too far south before then or at least the beginning of November (the Florida/Georgia line is that demarcation for many).  Most migrating boaters we know time out their southbound travel with the end of storm season in mind as regardless of their policies, it just makes sense to minimize the risk of running into a major storm.

We anticipate doing phase two over ten days of travel.  We have no planned lay days but always allow for them should the weather or other circumstances dictate that we stay put.  And while we have a “plan” for all of our stops, we’re not married to it and have alternative/additional stops in mind to use as needed.  As shown in the map above, if the plan holds, we’ll head out from our current home in Deltaville, Virginia and will enter the ICW at mile zero in Norfolk, Virginia.  We’re planning to make our first stop in either Norfolk or Chesapeake, Virginia before crossing over into North Carolina with planned stops in Coinjock, Belhaven, Beaufort, and Southport.  South Carolina is next with planned stops in Myrtle Beach, Georgetown, Isle Of Palms or Charleston and Beaufort on our way to our final stop for Phase Two in Hilton Head which we expect to call home for the rest of November and December.

As always, we’ll be updating the blog regularly as we travel so be sure to subscribe on the top right of this page.  We’ll also be on Facebook every day of the trip with realtime updates so please be sure to like the M/Y OLOH Page and enjoy the ride with us!

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