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!

Sailing south: Cape Cod to Lookout Bight

 A couple weeks back, Cynthia and Lucy and Monty and I finally raised our sails, dropped the mooring line, and headed south. 

The moving parts of life dictated that I leave the boat in NC or FL for a month while visiting CA and that Cynthia and Lucy fly out of Norfolk. Wind and waves dictated that we stop in Delaware Bay for a couple days to wait out a storm.

Moving along, we entered the Chesapeake around dawn, actually needing to motor a bit across the glassy water. 

Monty eagerly sniffed the air and looked at the shore, obviously aching for sandy beaches. Lucy, as usual, relaxed in patience, probably cuddled up beside me or Cynthia.

The Chesapeake is BUSY around Norfolk, full of active military bases and commercial shipping and recreational boating. Even has some crumbling old forts: here is Fort Wool: 

The fort is cool; but I dislike the crowding, the developed shorelines, the giant container ships and tankers, and (especially) the military vessels that are all over the place with no AIS to show up on my instruments. Sailing here requires constant attention, somewhat like sailing in Maine with a sailboat that snags lobster pot lines: not pleasant.

SO, once Cynthia and Lucy had taken a taxi to the airport I found myself aching to head to the open sea AT ONCE and did so, despite low wind forecasts. I made it into the open, a few miles off Virginia Beach, before the sun set and the wind died to nothing. 

What to do? So I heaved-to and cooked and took photos.

At around 10:00pm, with little traffic showing, Monty and I crawled into bed to await the forecasted wind. And at 2:00am the boat heeled over slightly, the boat movement and noises changed, and I rose from bed to raise the sails; leaving Monty tucked into the blankets.

Gentle wind moved us along nicely through the dark (I saw two shooting stars!) until sunrise, made unique by clouds and contrails.

Waves built up during the day as I headed for Cape Hatteras and the deadly shoals that extend out for many miles. This is one of the many places where I feel a great gratitude for modern charts and GPS, letting me know where I am at all times... although I have seen plenty of issues with charts, especially in Cape Cod where shoals move often. Anyway, I am always concerned going around Cape Hatteras as the Gulf Stream clips the end of the shoal, causing the north wind I typically ride on my trip south to kick up far bigger waves than in more normal conditions..... and this time I would be rounding the Cape around 1am with winds around 20kts....

In the darkness, I tried to get little naps, hoping to be better rested for the shoals. Wind picked up and overpowered the autopilot, so I had to go out on deck a few times to adjust things... and this was complex. You see, Monty kept wanting to come out and pee; so I would put on my harness, set him on deck while blocking any access to the non-netted sections of the boat, lift him back into the cockpit, zip down the enclosure so he would be OK, then CAREFULLY make my way to the mast, never moving without a secure handhold and timing my steps with the boat motion. Once at the mast, I clip my harness to a secure point, do my work, and then unclip and head back. 

My movements made me think of a sloth, moving along slowly and deliberately, never rushing. When I had a construction business I would tell new employees that no item is worth an injury and sailing is the same. And a nightmare scenario I've often seen in my head is myself in the water, watching the boat sail away unmanned. This has recently gotten even WORSE: now I imagine Monty on board, alone and helpless. And I think this is a good thing to think of as it really really increases my caution.

Along with these thoughts, as I stood at the mast I noticed the shock of two small waves slapping the hull, the roar of the bow wave as I slid down a rushing wave, the whiteness of a large cresting wave behind the boat, the vibration of the propeller turning to a judder as our speed reaches 7 knots or so as we surfed down a wave. And I noticed that this is one of the times I feel most alive, most in tune with the universe. I MISS this badly when I live in a house!

Anyway, we rounded the shoal, avoided the unseen unlighted marker that may exist only on the charts, and headed for Cape Lookout Shoal, another 12 hours sailing in pretty good waves. 

Another several hours (upwind: ugh!) took us to Lookout Bight at sunset.

We dropped anchor, took a walk, and fell asleep.

Monty LOVES this place!

Geology

 I've been musing on geology. Since spring, Monty and I have sailed up the Chesapeake Bay, down the Delaware Bay, through the Cape Cod Canal, and up to Maine a few times.... and are now in Cape Cod again. I grew up sailing Cape Cod and thought that a loose mix of rock... from silt to sand to gravel to house-sized boulders... was normal; but it is simply the result of a glacier scraping a huge pile of debris ahead of it and leaving it as it retreated. We call this heap of debris Cape Cod.

This was driven home to me as I sailed and, especially, anchored in the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay. Everything there has been washed down slow rivers and particles range in size from silt to sand, so any larger rocks are rare, brought in by people. Ironically, this is the only place that I've ever snagged a boulder with my anchor, clearly one shipped in as ballast in a ship or for part of a breakwater. 

And up in Maine we have the remains of rock after the giant glaciers scraped over it leaving smooth surfaces or weathered surfaces where the rock has crumbled since the glaciers departed. 

And the weathering has produced rocks and sand since the glaciers departed. I love seeing different patterns in the metamorphic or igneous rock, 

some looking like wood grain, 

even some mica crystals flashing in the sun, remnants of bits of rock that cooled slowly and formed large crystals. Here I am pointing out the edge of the largest mica crystal I've found:

My son, Cody, and his partner, Katrina, have been traveling around the country and creating a video blog of their adventures and misadventures. You can google "Second Nature", I think, or watch them on youtube at https://youtube.com/channel/UCOeSUYMdZjpDBllr2KS0C8Q. I'm sure they will have one that shows them sailing with me up in Maine...

So, what next? I am waiting for Lucy to recover from surgery and get her stitches removed, then Cynthia and I plan to head south, assuming weather cooperates. We may stop in to the Chesapeake or at Cape Lookout in NC or may make it all the way to FL. Then time for me to visit CA, then off to the Bahamas or Virgins....

Stay well, my friends!