Sailing from St Augustine to Fort Pierce.... twice.

Hello from warm and sunny (and crowded and windy) Fort Pierce, FL! This last hop took me from the southern limit(perhaps) of pecan trees to the northern limit of coconuts. 

Monty sure loved St Augustine: he really enjoyed streets and alleys where he could check what other dogs had posted and loved visiting all the other dogs and people.

And then there is the street food: 

Moving farther south isn't too hard: one can glide down the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway) if one does not mind running the engine a lot or waiting for favorable winds... or run down the coast: anyone guess my choice? I found what seemed to be a passable weather window: no fighting against heavy winds or headwinds.... although MAYBE a bit uncertain if I would have enough time to get there amid fluctuating wind strengths and directions before strong headwinds tossed me back. Still, I had been off of the open ocean for over two weeks and the worst possibility was that I would sail back north in nasty wind and wave. (Hmm.... CLEARLY I should have kept a record of forecast screenshots, but I'll do my best with words.)

SO, into the great wide open! Rough night on the first night, but morning brought calmer waves and less jolting and evening brought a beautiful sunset and practically calm weather. 

Ah, well: I heaved-to and relaxed and watched shooting stars, including fireball that drew a line of flaming debris past the full moon. VERY cool! Once the moon set, phosphorescence made the water glow. The next day brought sunshine and light breezes, but not a lot of progress: less than 1/3 of the distance done and nearly half the time.... time to turn tail and head back to St Augustine, *sigh*.

After another lovely night at sea and a day progressing SLOWLY north,

I finally entered the river at around 1am on an incoming tide. Dropped anchor at 2am and fell asleep, my soul well fed with terns, dolphins, starry skies, sunrises and sunsets, quiet, and sunshine.

My next window came a few days later. Much more consistent wind directions forecast, maximum around 15 or 20 knots.... and a SpaceX launch! 

I set out and, purely through luck, managed to see the delayed launch as it lit up the southern sky at 8:30pm and rose into the sky. Dolphins visited in the daytime, sometimes greeted ferociously by Monty. For one half-hour period I spotted a many Portuguese man-o-war jellies looking like small plastic bottles or baggies floating on the water. The water color turned a lighter blue as I moved south.

My one concern was that the wind direction would turn into my face before I could reach Fort Pierce and, sure enough, that final night I got as far as Vero Beach, but then began to lose ground as I tacked into the current and very light wind. Fortunately, the wind increased the next day and I managed to reach the entrance....on an outgoing tide against incoming waves. I'm sorry I don't have a photo, but I could hardly steer the boat, occasionally turning sideways and rolling a bit wildly in the churning current and waves: not quite whitewater, but certainly would have overturned a canoe! Finally, I reached smooth water and the wind pushed me slowly against the current, into the very crowded harbor (I've never seen more than half this many boats anchored here). I dropped anchors in one of my favorite spots and made dinner, my back spasming painfully. The next day was entirely calm and I managed to drop the dinghy, walk Monty, and purchase ice.

In the week or so since I have been trying to get my back to recover. I've had it this bad before, but not for at least a decade, maybe even two decades. Lots of ice, ibuprofen, yoga, rest, swimming, and an improvised rack have brought things back to the point that I'm enjoying life again and can move about the boat with only minimal concern. What a relief! And, of course, this sort of thing makes me really appreciate feeling good! 

Monty cuddles with me a lot,

but I'm very short of hugs....

Cynthia's next available time to meet is last week of March, but airfares to the Bahamas are really pricey due to spring break.... so I'm considering sailing east to the Sargasso Sea, then south/south-east to Puerto Rico or the US Virgins. I'd really enjoy meeting her in our old spot by the airport in St Thomas, although PR or Culebra would be fun, too. Of course, it all depends on my back and the weather: next window is in about a week...

Facing fears...

Terror? HERE'S terror: engine trouble! 

OK, so I've had times sailing when I actually shook with fear... like at night, wondering if the weather “disturbance” had risen to a tropical storm and would drag me and my anchor onto a rocky shore with 6' waves... or when I faced a line of thunderstorms at midnight and tried to figure out my best route through them. Mostly, I think we fear the unknown, the thing we haven't faced before and aren't sure how to address. Now I know that my best option when I fear dragging is a second anchor and a location pin on the map and my best option in an impending night storm is reduced sail and a notepad with the heading to various storm cells to see if I am going into them or avoiding them. 

Now I'm facing a great fear and something I generally detest: engine work. Why do I dislike it? Well, engines epitomize much I dislike: they are noisy, smelly, polluting, dirty, complex, and expensive. Figuring out where the oil or fuel is leaking, how often to change the raw water impeller, where to find the sacrificial zinc, how to change the coolant, how to repair the alternator, how to even get TO the bolts on the fuel injector pump, how to prevent dust and rust and paint flecks from getting into the injectors.... UGH! 

This is all especially fraught since I have not dealt with most of these issues. SO! I have been trying to fix the fuel leak on my injector pump. In order to even get at this leak, I need to remove the exhaust header, starter, oil pressure sensor, the steel fuel lines, and the thermostat housing.

I had to grind down a wrench to reach a very inaccessible nut.

Taking this all apart and reinstalling it required three days: sometimes I'd wake at midnight, unable to sleep, and put in a few hours on it. FINALLY, I got it all back together... and the engine ran far worse and smoked,

the coolant leaked very badly, the salt water pump leaked badly from the pump shaft, the oil pressure gauge went nuts.... and fuel still leaked. 

UTTER DEFEAT! Is it time to abandon this fricking boat? Hire someone? Go 100% electric? UGH! Despair! Despondency!

Still.... More research and some scraping away paint to find the hairline timing marks helped me get the engine running well and stopped the smoking. This makes me SO happy! And it looks as though the fuel leak is a new one and easy to fix. Advice from my friend Asa helped me figure out my electrical issues:  the oil pressure sender is probably OK, so I can just get a new meter from West Marine. And I think I know how to seal the thermostat housing well this time and should replace the thermostat anyway. Not so bad, then: action, progress, success...

Today I'll remove the header again and see about installing the new “olives” that should stop the fuel leak,

a little work tomorrow should handle the thermostat & housing, Tomorrow I'll walk to the auto supply to get a thermostat and to West Marine to get a new oil pressure gauge (chilly day: good for Monty to go walking) and install those... I've gotten through the fear and loathing and into the calm waters of some knowledge and competency. What a relief!

And, of course, Monty has been walking an hour or two each day, some folks visited with their beautiful homemade dinghy,

and we often have wonderful sunrises..

Hello from St Augustine!

(Written January 9)

Monty and I survived the trip! This was my longest trip without autopilot, made far harder by single-handing. The only problem we had involved the winds picking up to an uncomfortable level on the first night. How bad was it? WELL.....

I had the choice of setting out just before dark and sticking close to shore or heading out earlier, when winds would force me to swing farther out to sea. I made the mistake of departing earlier. I have sailed in fairly high winds along shore, where waves did not have a chance to build up, and it worked well.... but that first night, the wind picked up and up and up, probably to 25, gusting 30knots.... although I didn't pull out the gauge to test things. I took down the main sail and sailed along under mizzen and 1/3 of the jib and it was still too much. The torrents of salt spray, the boat pitching, the crack and slap and creak.... Monty (who detests noises in the dark) repeatedly wanted to go out on deck to look for land and, after taking him out to (maybe) pee (again!) and seeing him getting washed toward the stern by a wave rolling along the deck, I dried him off and locked him in his crate overnight. With him out of the way, I could sail better and decided to heave-to. This reduced noise and chaos by about 2/3, a huge relief.... although occasional waves loomed up in the dark before tossing our 30,000 lbs around like a cork, moving about the boat was hazardous, and much in the cockpit was wet and salty before things calmed at the blessed sunrise.

The remainder of the journey felt nice and peaceful by comparison and, by Saturday PM, I sailed SLOWLY against the current into St Augustine harbor entrance, waited for the Bridge of Lions to open at 4:30 (they will only interrupt the busy street traffic at half-hr intervals), and sailed past mounds of oysters

to raft up with my friends Skip and Jane. Cynthia arrived the next day, Skip generously drove me to the airport to get her, and we spent the night rafted up to their boat.

Now I'm ten miles south of there, relaxing on the ICW with Cynthia, Monty, and Lucy.

Cynthia is cooking and talking about fishing, I'm planning to rip into engine repairs (alternator) once she is out of the galley, and the dogs are enjoying being aboard with their special humans. Monty especially is enjoying the leather-ette handbag I found on the beach in Charleston and uses it as a nest or seat...

Cynthia is STILL waiting to find out if her work will fall through or if she will return on Saturday as planned. I will head south asap, once I've made a few repairs and have received my new autopilot.... and maybe ship out the problematic one. Of course, the problematic one is working now...

I can't wait to get to Bahamas! I haven't been there since pre-Covid! Maybe by Feb 1? 

PS: Jan 16: Cynthia caught four very tasty bluefish on her visit and she and Lucy are now back in MI. Monty and I did a bunch of errands and dropped her off at the airport in a rented car, then enjoyed a party with Skip and his friends and family. Here is a bowl of local shrimp they cooked up:

Monty shows his anger at me by growling and showing his teeth: he seems upset that Cynthia and Lucy are gone and has gone back to sleeping in the cockpit away from me.

And I'm on a mooring in the busy harbor right out in front of St Augustine, watching the busy tourist scene and making repairs. I'm hoping to finish enjoying coffee in the morning sunshine before Monty gets too impatient to get to shore....

Next stop is either Ft Pierce or Bahamas, depending on weather window...

In a fog

Charleston Harbor. Monty and I arrived here a few days ago: tired, autopilot on the fritz, winds turning against us: time to relax, regroup, repair, and review options while awaiting favorable winds. Our final sunrise at sea was a knockout, something really special.

Yes, all three of those are the same sunrise!

I dropped anchor near Fort Sumpter, launched the dinghy, and rowed an ecstatic dog to shore to a vacant beach. Then we returned to the boat and slept and slept...

Every day we have awakened to heavy fog and have had to warn off boats a few times Sunday and Monday. People seem to just make their way slowly through the fog, but I can at least hear their engines as they approach.... and there are not many now that New Years weekend is done. 

I like the contrasts here: I look in one direction and see Charleston a couple miles away, look the other and see miles of salt marsh with low cedar trees on the higher bits.

I walk the beach and find deer tracks,

baby horseshoe crabs,

foraging shore birds, egrets, and a multitude of shells. As we row in or out (a quarter mile each way!), dolphins visit us in mild curiosity: last night I heard one coughing nearby...something I've never heard before and probably not a good sign for that individual. 

I love the windrows of shells on the beach: they tell such stories. I found shells of striated mussels, razor clams, jackknife clams, quahogs, jingle shells, and numerous cockles;

but by far the majority of shells here are oysters and some tiny clams I don't recognize: perhaps coquina?...

but those are supposed to be far more colorful. Hmm..

Speaking of oysters, a boat motored up and the folks offered me some oysters. I've been working on opening them since, typically sneaking a knife in when they open up to feed in the bucket of water. The really cool thing, however, is that I've found pea crabs in about half of them so far. In Stalking the Blue-eyed Scallop, Gibbons talks about these crabs, but I've never seen them, as far as I recall. Living their whole lives in the protection of an oyster shell, possibly eating bits off the oyster, these crabs need no hard shell, so are always soft. I fried them up like soft-shell crabs and they start out tasting like oysters, but after a few seconds the crab flavor comes through. Tasty! (Let's see if I can get a pic later today....nope, the final ones were crab free.)

Thunderstorms arrive around sunset today and winds will preclude a second trip to shore for Monty: sorry pup! I may, however, take him to shore tomorrow AM before departing on the outgoing tide. Since the autopilot is kaput, I plan to steer by balancing the sails, steering by hand, and by heaving-to as needed. This SHOULD work.... Also, my red navigation light is kaput (I use another light to light up the boat from that side for now), alternator has died, fuel injection pump is leaking, and the fog has left the interior of the boat very damp. Ah, the joy of boat life! 

Actually, I have parts being shipped to a friend in FL and am really looking forward to repairing things. I find a great satisfaction to getting things back in working order.

Monty and I should be in St Augustine by nightfall Saturday. Wish us luck!

Chilling in NC, watching for a weather window, dreaming of warmth...

(Written December 24)

Yesterday started out with great wind and nice temperatures, then winds picked up to around 35 knots from the NW and temperatures plunged.... as did water levels. I've never seen water levels so low: winds from the NE cause high water, but this NW wind just sucked it away, leaving various boats in the marina a bit tilted. 

A project boat anchored off the marina dragged anchor or broke free and is sitting on it's side. I sure hope the drain for the sink is closed or that boat is probably full of water and will sink when the water returns. (It is floating! Hooray!)

Temperatures are supposed to be around 17degF and water to the docks has been shut off. 

Cold? YES! I've never seen foam freeze like this:

I've borrowed a heater from a friend and plugged it into dock power, so that keeps me around 50degF.... but it DOES suck to be in this cold. I have a car-seat heater warming my back and butt and Monty insists on spending a lot of time in the cockpit, but at least is willing to burrow under a sleeping bag I gave him. He also is quite willing to snuggle to get comfort from the noisy storm and cold.

Anyway, winter brings nasty storms, high winds, headwinds, big waves.... I'm looking for a decent weather window to head south as it does NOT pay to be foolish. Heck: I've already read about two catastrophic cruises this fall, one ending when the two fellows (who, inexplicably, CHOSE to go into the open just north of Cape Hatteras and then round it) were rescued after drifting ten days and another young and inexperienced fellow single handing who simply disappeared with his boat after nasty winds south of Long Island. I want to tell stories, not be the subject of one. A friend of mine once said that good planning and preparation should make for uneventful cruises and I'm just fine with telling people about shooting stars and whales rather than about getting dismasted or rolled or injured.

I thought about departing on Christmas, but sailing at 20degF sounds pretty lousy, so I'm looking at Tuesday when temps will be above freezing. It looks like I can get out into the open and start sailing by that evening, then make Charleston area within a few days, sailing a bit slowly due to low (but nice) winds. Then I'll wait for another window...

Anyway, stay warm, my friends, and let's count our blessings.

Happy Anniversary, Monty!

On December 3, one year ago, Monty came into our lives. Now that he is no longer as food-aggressive and we understand his growls (after all, he IS 45% growly, stubborn Shih Tzu rather than sweet Cavalier), most of our relationship issues have been solved. What a wonderful little friend he has turned out to be!

Night sailing

I often love night sailing, especially when conditions are good: open ocean, minimal traffic to worry about, clear dark skies, nice wind, phosphorescent water, comfortably warm.... but there are other times, too.

In July, about 18 months ago, I wanted to head from Bucks Harbor to Bar Harbor, ME to meet Cynthia's flight. Weather forecast was for hurricane remnants dying off by dark, then decent but dying winds all night.... and then unfavorable winds until after Cynthia arrived. So.... I headed out at sunset and set sail down Eggemoggin Reach. As the light diminished, the wind increased.. and increased... and increased, well above forecasts, as the eye of the storm passed and the wind returned. Fortunately, I had dropped sails just after dark when I wondered about increasing winds and we raced along under half of the jib. 

By the end of the Reach the wind had died down and I raised all sail... and found that NONE of the buoys in Maine seem to be lighted! No worries: I have good charts, GPS, and AIS... and it means that very very few random high-speed idiots are out at night.

The moonless skies had cleared to reveal sparkling diamonds of stars for the first time that foggy summer as I sailed along using my GPS to tell me where the invisible buoys, islands, rocks, and ledges lay. At one point I sailed over a bar (at least ten feet deep) and the sudden change in wave, current, and accelleration would have revealed the subsurface ledge even if my chart had not... and a bell buoy and gong buoy told me I WAS where the map claimed and that I was moving rapidly past them. We depend so much on vision that it is delightful to use other senses to investigate my surroundings in the pitch darkness!

Another night found Cynthia and me sailing into Beaufort Inlet in the dark, keeping a sharp eye out for obstacles. A storm was approaching and time was short, so it made sense to enter this wide and easy harbor and drop anchor.... and any boats or other obstacles legally had to be lighted... but we turned sharply when a dark thing loomed suddenly ahead. Some huge item of dredging equipment was anchored and the red lights on board had burned down to being barely visible at 100' rather than the mile or so required. Anyway, "all's well that ends well".... 

Sailing north in the spring I ran into a line of storms at night and tried to figure out where the lightning cells were going so that I might be able to adjust course to avoid them. I find that worrying about storms is often worse than being in them. Anticipation of sudden gale-force gusts and lightning leaves me terribly anxious: I actually did far better once I had decided how the thunderheads were moving and set a course, and even better once the winds struck and I could sail along through building waves and whitecaps, hands on the wheel to fight the forces trying to head me up into the wind, trying to hold a bearing through the trackless dark. 

Another night on our first sail in the Bahamas, Cynthia and I were struck by a squall and found ourselves unable to figure out how to sail in the shifting wind, unable to keep a straight bearing. I can't recall if we jibed or tacked or what, I don't know if we sailed in circles or the wind shifted, but I recall noise and shouting and swearing. Something very similar happened when I was helping transport a boat from FL to the Virgin Islands: the crew on deck had trouble with steering a straight line, although there wasn't a storm. Now that I'm far more experienced, I would just heave-to and let the boat sit like a duck in the chaotic wind: much much easier and safer.

Long ago, a friend helped me sail from NC to MA and we tried to run downwind at night in very windy conditions. My friend wanted to make as much progress as we could, so I fought the wheel and tried to keep things safe and stable, nearly damaging the boat in the process. Finally I told myself to quit being stupid and heaved-to, reducing speed from 7.5 knots to 5knots and reducing our situation from dire to unpleasant-but-fine. FAR more relaxing than attempting to sail, even if the occasional "BANG!" of a crashing wave striking the exposed bottom startled me. I've heard about folks actually losing spars or sails trying to sail through this sort of weather rather than being wise and patient...

Avoid all this? Well, maybe.... but I think that the high points in our lives are often defined by the low ones, that happiness is defined in comparison to it's opposite. The lows are very fair payment.

BTW, the photo is a long exposure taken with my cell phone in Sonoma in early November rather than on the boat, but gives a darned good idea of dark sky views from the boat. 

I'm delighted to discover the excellent night photos my cell phone takes: I can even see the color of different stars and the nebula on Orion's sword!