Editor’s Note: At seventy years young, Lois Wheeler has spent the last 25 years boating with her husband, David. Lois calls her boat a “Moving cottage,” and says of the adventures, “You can take your cottage with you and experience other places…there is a sense of solitude when you’re away, a sense of freedom, and my husband and I can spend all of our time together.” For the last fifteen years Lois has chronicled her travels as a way of sharing her boating experiences with friends. She sent Inland Boater Magazine an account of her August 2005 journey to the “Jazz on the River” concert at Elizabeth Park Marina.
By Gene Edgecombe
Cruising south to avoid the harsh northeast winters has been on my to-do list for many years. My wife and I call the Chesapeake Bay home, and typically enjoy a sweater-to-sweater boating season. It starts around mid-April and wraps up in early November. We wanted to get out of the winterizing routine and run south with the rest of the snowbirds, but that was more of a trip than we were comfortable making in our former boat, a 1986 34-foot Silverton convertible.
The door to adventure opened when we purchased a 50-foot Viking Sportfish. This battlewagon fit the bill, weighing about 60,000 pounds fueled, she has a wide beam and a hull designed to knock down waves off shore. We were heading to Bohicket Marina on Seabrook Island, SC. We own a condo slip at the marina, which is only about five minutes from the house we purchased on neighboring Kiawah Island.
