Out of Norfolk and Into the Unknown

On the 15th of December, we got what looked like a good opportunity to sail south for about a day and then motor in calm winds for a day or two. Hoping to make it to Florida, we set out early with Evan as crew. We sailed along nicely in about 15 knots of breeze from the starboard aft quarter, making 8-10 knots in a good direction for most of the day. The wind died off late in the afternoon, leaving it up to the engines to make it around Cape Hatteras. We encountered rough seas coming from the east and had a pretty lumpy ride, with occasional waves breaking over the boat. We started seeing the depth go from 60-80 feet to around 20 feet on a pretty regular basis. The seas were steep and large, coming from some unknown weater event out in the Altlantic. Seas broke over the bow of Fantazia even though the wind was mostly calm. We altered course to go further offshore and hoped the rough seas were being caused by shallow water courtesy of the latest hurricane passing this area. We passed the cape in deep water early in the morning and headed south along the coast hoping for a counter current to the gulfstream to help us along. It was a beautiful calm day, which saw us catch a nice tuna for dinner. We tranfered most of the diesel fuel from the spare fuel jugs to the tanks while it was nice and calm.

There was a bit of a breeze from the south in the evening, but not enough to explain the rough seas which started to build as night came on. Had  especially rough water as we passed cape fear and frying pan shoals. The wind started building from the south, further slowing our progress. We had an issue with the rudder alignment which involved manually resetting the rudder angles by opening the rear facing engine hatches and using the bypass valves on the hydraulic system to free up the rudders for visual alignment. This was supposedly fixed by rebuilding the hydraulic rams, but here after two days we were in the same situation we had encountered coming down the Chesapeake, the autopilot couldn't keep course as the rudders became more and more misaligned. We got close to Charleston, South Carolina and discussed going in and  trying to wait out the southerly winds in favor of the northwest winds promised by a forecast cold from which would pass that night. We decided to continue south, expecting to sail as the wind shifted. About 5 hours later, the rudders needed alignment again, and we discovered that the wind speed instrument was giving erratic readings. Not wanting to sail at night without wind instruments, and the prospect of losing steering with the sails up was enough to make us head into Savannah to lick our wounds, or at least fix the problems we were having. We went to the Isle of Hope Marina and got a slip for a month while we tried to arrange some repairs. The next day dawned clear and cold with 34 degree temperature, better than the 24 we would have seen in Norfolk that morning. As it was we were a few days before Christmas and no one wanted to start any work until the next year.
We left the boat for 10 days and went to Portland to visit family.