(or how to move onto a sailboat)
With the advent of our 50th birthdays came the usual sorts of life evaluations that one goes through. At what have I succeeded? What contributions have I made? What do I have left that I want to do before I die? Living on the water was high on both our lists.
For any who share the dream, and for our family members who might not understand, this is our story. We don't know where it will take us, but welcome along for the ride!
First Light lived up to her name as the sun was just breaking the horizon when we started our departure prep. Around 0600 the lines were pulled on board. We motored out the channel into the river, then hung a right. The engines were running so smoothly that we started thinking the fuel pump problem wasn't just a fuel leak. We settled into an easy cruise at 1600 RPM making nearly 8 knots. The wind was blowing a little harder than forecast making the seas a bit choppier, but it was an easy ride as we searched around for our sea legs. Along the way, we saw several pods of dolphins, which always brings a smile. We also saw a whale, our first in spite of all the miles and years we have living on a boat. We were also kind of glad when the whale swam off. Seeing a critter as big as your boat not too far from your boat is a bit disconcerting.
About 2/3s of the way here Deb went down to do her engine checks. One of the cameras was a bit fuzzy, (we think it might have been the heat in the engine room) so she lifted the steps and crawled in to take a look. There was a bit of coolant under the engine and she noticed that the overflow tank was empty. The engine temp was showing normal but that was clearly not going to last much longer.
So, somewhere in the middle of the Delaware Bay, I brought the engines to idle and shut down the starboard side. I left the port side running to have enough steerage to keep us bow into the waves. Deb added some coolant and looked around to see if she could spot the leak. She didn't see anything obvious so we fired up and kept going, keeping an extra eye on the starboard engine temperature gauge. It settled onto its normal reading and never moved the rest of the way down the bay. After putting up the canal in the company of the holiday weekend boat drivers, we turned into the Coast Guard anchorage and, after a couple of tries, we found a place among those already here to drop our hook.
As we traveled the length of the bay, Mare's Tail clouds in the sky suggested weather inbound. The various weather apps we use agree. So we will be anchored here for at least two nights. Tomorrow will give us a chance to find the coolant leak and hopefully fix it without too much ado. If that happens, the weather forecasts suggest we might be able to head to Atlantic City on Wednesday. If the repair becomes more involved, we will have to come up with a different plan.
No more First Light at the end of the dock
If pressed, I would have to admit having a few pretty dark minutes out there in the middle of the bay with yet another mechanical. But what choice is there but to keep going? Right now the boat is our only home. But our home isn't where our home is. We like living on a boat. We like travel on a boat. (We don't really like working on a boat.) So, like always, we will just have to see what the next moment brings.
Early morning barge traffic headed to Philadelphia
Some photos and video from our trip between Crawl Key and Cape Sable in Southwestern Florida. It should be noted that you have no phone service for most of the way between these two locations.
It's impossible to overstate the amount of crab pots in the Gulf of Mexico along the West coast of Florida. I am told that if you go more than 20 miles offshore that you will avoid them, but these pots were over 20 miles offshore and in 26 feet of water. Some of them are so tightly packed together that it's like a minefield. Some of them have anchor lines that are too long and the line lays just a foot or two under water at a flat angle.Sometimes it's impossible to navigate between them as a result and you have to go way out of your way to go around but, as you can see, sometimes the lines can stretch for a mile or more.
I walked over a half dozen of these tracks, distracted by looking for shells, before I realized what I was seeing. These gators are huge. The tracks left the mangrove thickets and crossed the sand to the water, then return tracks were evident. I have to do more research on these reptiles, but I would not want to meet one in person. This is not a place to take a moonlit walk on the beach!
This gator was going from the water back to the mangroves
Two tracks side-by-side, one going toward the water and one returning.
This guy stopped to take a break. You can see the print from the scales on his belly where he rested it in the sand.
I laid y sunglasses by this footprint so you could get a feel for just how large these gators are.
While seeing the gator tracks up close and personal was amazing, I much prefer my sweet, happy companions, the dolphins. These bottlenose ran with us for over an hour. Some of them were the largest bottlenose we've ever seen and they were jumping completely out of the water.
We had a Least Tern spend part of the day with us on the bow pulpit. He took a rest and groomed his feathers, but when we brought the jib in he took off.
If you're tired of sunset progression pictures, then move on. I never tire of watching the sun go down from the boat.
…
manage to put up a whisker pole
without bending it in half. I would not be one of them.
The
day started out pretty well. Instead of enduring 2 more days of ICW /
opening bridges travel to get from Lake Worth to Ft. Lauderdale, we
took advantage of a weather window to jump outside. One day. Only 2
bridges. No debate. Kintala scooted out the channel on the ebb tide,
doing better than 7 knots. Once turning south there was enough wind
to fill the jib, but not enough to give the WesterBeast a rest.
A
couple of hours in we came upon a small gaggle of sport fishing boats
spread out over a couple of square miles of ocean. There are several
reasons to give sport fishing boats a lot of room. People who take a
million dollars worth of equipment out and burn a couple of hundred
gallons of fuel just to catch a few dollars worth of fish, look at
the world in a way that is beyond me. I'm never sure what they are going to
do. It also seems that sport fishers, so long as they have a
line in the water, are considered “commercial fishers” and thus
are the “stand to” boat. It doesn't matter if they are actually
charter boats who make money by taking people out to catch fish that
are never going to make it to market, or if they are just rich people
out playing for a day. They will still act like “commercial
fishers” and drive anywhere they like with little regard for anyone
else in the area. They also drag hundreds of feet of line behind
their boats, line that is impossible to see. And, as we experienced a few weeks ago in Stuart, when a fisher person has something on the line pretty much nothing else that might be going on in the universe matters to them because they are catching a fish!
So, when
one of the gaggle appeared off our port bow, heading north to our
south, I turned to starboard just to give him room. A
minute later he turned to port, and started closing in on our track
again. Okay then. I turned further to starboard, now getting really close to
the wind and risking back winding the jib. It was enough though, we
had plenty of room, except he turned toward us once more and was now closing
rapidly. Not okay then. Maybe he had caught a fish and wasn't paying any attention to where his million dollar boat was going? In any case he had put us in a bit of a bind. Just before I turned again to let the sail do what it may,
he fell off to turn parallel to us. He was close enough that I could
see the captain holding a phone in one hand. With the other he was
waving toward shore and shouting something that sounded like “Go
away, go away.” Which, in hindsight, seems kind of funny. I was making every effort to "go away" as he tried to run us down.
At least, I think that is what he said. At that moment I was sharing my own view of the last few minutes, along the lines of, “Please
gentle fisher man, would you consider putting down your phone and
steering your boat in such a way as to keep us from crashing into
each other?” (Okay, maybe not exactly along those lines.)
Anyway,
if you happen to be a couple of miles off shore and a few miles south
of Lake Worth, and happen to see a sport fishing boat named Great Day,
you might consider giving it an extra wide pass. Its captain is
apparently a bit of a wanker. If you happen to be a person who
enjoys chartering a million dollars worth of equipment and burning a couple hundred gallons of fuel to catch a fish, maybe there are better places to patronize than Great Day Charters? Surely there are companies who employ captains who are much more professional.
About
the time Great Day disappeared over the horizon the winds faded to the
point where the jib started to flog. We have been working out some
new rigging to make poling out the jib less dramatic. This looked
like a good day to test it out, but the deck monkey failed the test
and managed to trash the pole. The test that came next was getting
the bent pole back on deck. While struggling to get that done, a pod
of dolphins showed up. I think they were getting a laugh from the
deck monkey antics on the good ship Kintala. But here is the thing about dolphins. Even when
they are laughing at you they bring along some magic. Even better,
Deb had sent a float plan to Daughter Middle. Daughter Middle sent a
message back stating that Grand Kids 5 wanted dolphin videos. The dolphins,
including at least a half dozen mother / baby pairs, might have heard them and so came by to make some kids smile, staying with us
for hours. And yes, we got videos.
In
spite of it all the day turned out to be a really good day. Thanks to
the magic of dolphins.
ps: As it turns out the deck monkey made less of a mistake than originally thought. According to Forespar (who made our pole) the one we had was several sizes too light for a boat Kintala's size. It is a bit of a surprise that it lasted this long.
It is best, if one is going to start a
sailing day by visiting a water / pump-out / dump trash / get gas
dock, that it be a short day of sailing. Marina fuel docks are
reminiscent of passenger waiting lounges at airports, nothing seems
to happen in a hurry. Kintala eased onto the dock behind a very nice
looking Moody 46 already at the pump-out. We touched bases with
India, Dock Manager extraordinaire who became a new friend last
Spring. It was nearly 0900 when Kintala, now full / empty / empty /full, eased away from the dock and moved back into the middle of Fishing Bay.
A single reef in the main and the
staysail took over from the Beast, making enough HP to log nearly 4
knots on the GPS. Not fast, but fast enough for working the “U”
shaped channel leading back to the Chesapeake. As the day wore
on the staysail was stowed, the jib deployed, and the reef shaken out
of the main to work the basically beam reach winds hovering in the 10
to 15 knots range. Waves barely topped a foot. Thin, feeble little
things that slapped gently along the hull. Hard to believe this was
the same body of water that Kintala had romped through just a few
days ago, spray flying, lines tangling, deck monkey thrashing about,
sails jammed and poles hanging.
Turning up into Mobjack Bay meant
turning far off the wind. The main dropped easily onto the boom and
working on the barely rocking deck was like working at a dock. The
jib carried Kintala across Mobjack and deep into the Severn River. It
was barely a half mile to the anchorage when the last sail was rolled
away and the Beast went back to work. Along the way a pod of dolphins
dropped by to play tag in the bow wake and see how we were doing. It
was the first we have seen close up in several months. Such
encounters are pretty high on the list of “best things about
cruising” and it was an added treat to top a nearly perfect day.
Severn River is a new place for us,
talked up by many as a must see. Kintala is set secure in front of
the Severn River Marina; where friends have spent the summer working
on their Catamaran. There had been some vague plans of seeing them
tonight but, truth to tell, easy day as it was, launching the Dink
just seemed like too much work. Even a great day of sailing is still
a pretty busy day, and the four nights spent in Fishing Bay waiting
for wind and sea to settle down were not much of a rest. All in all
it took about 7 + 30 to cover the 34 miles from the last place to
this. At the end of the day Kintala's deck was well ordered and tidy.
Nothing was jammed or hung half way up the forestay. Which was good.
I would hate to have the dolphins drop by and catch us in a state of disarray like the day we went into Fishing Bay.
On Sunday we moved to the Charleston Maritime Center to get ready for jumping outside Monday morning. While struggling to get fuel onto the boat (there is something wrong with the vent system – Deb will add it to her list) a solo Cat driver walked over to admire our boat. (I never said she wasn’t pretty, only that she hates me. Come on, a fuel vent problem rears its ugly head right then?) A bit of conversation and it turns out he is part of a small handful of boats heading “outside”. He invited us over to his place for no other reason than to answer what-ever questions we might have. Pretty cool, that. We had already made the decision to go but it is always heartening to find that others, with the same information, have come to the same decisions. It was a very informal group and, come Monday morning’s departure Kintala was a member. At least it gave us someone to talk with on the VHF in the wee hours of the morning.
Then, 31h 25m and 170nm later, it was done, and now we are in FL. It might seem like a bit of an anti-climax, but that is a good thing. We love sailing at night. We love being out of sight of land in a big ocean in a small boat. It was cold and ocean waves are a whole ‘nuther animal when compared to a lake. (We each wore a patch and it was a good idea.) For the most part we stayed in the cockpit with the off-watch person curling up in the dodger to get out of the wind, catch a few winks, but be instantly available should some need arise. The full moon and clear sky made the first overnight run easy. We motor sailed the first 16 and the last two hours; sailed the rest, worked our way through the St. Mary’s Inlet and to the anchorage. Just another day in the life of live-a-board cruisers.
Only it wasn’t.
Motor sailing first and then having the breeze build enough at 0330 to silence the Wester-Beast left us with an awkward sail set; full main and stay sail. It works okay for motoring but the mismatch makes for an awkward helm once the motor goes away. But 0330 on the first open water night sail seemed a bad time to practice sail changes unless absolutely necessary. The boat was moving at better than 5 knots; best to live with the awkward until morning.
Come morning I was up on the foredeck for the sail change. Kintala’s foredeck is a disaster still evolving; baby stay, stay sail, four head sail sheets, dinghy, some fuel cans, jack lines, anchor and windless, and a soft spot in the deck (yeah, yeah, I’m getting to it) all jammed into a narrow bow, throw in the still-weird-to-me motion of a boat on big water and, if things are going to go wrong, the foredeck will be the place it happens. I had the main down when Deb yelled up to me that I needed to come to the cockpit.
Most of these dolphin pictures are taken through 3-6 feet of water
I did, and it was already filling with magic. On our starboard side swam two dolphins in close formation, near enough to touch, though somehow that seemed wrong. These were not pets; they were handsome alien visitors from another world. We could see others headed in from all direction, jumping and spouting and playing with Kintala the clear focus of attention. There must have been more than 100. They played in our modest bow wake, gathered and tumbled and shot by in streaks of grey and black. Sometimes they would linger alongside, matching our speed exactly and clearly eyeing us. For nearly an hour we were completely surrounded by this dancing cauldron of joy whose history far pre-dates the tribe of humans, clearly intelligent creatures completely at home in their environment. An environment we get to visit only for a short while, thunking along in slow blocks of fiberglass, thinking that going 170 NM in 31 hours is something special.
Yeehawwww! What a back splash dive that one was!
Yet the message from the dolphins wasn’t that we were awkward and out of our element. They seemed to be throwing us a party, a welcoming to their world while knowing this is the best we can do. Finally the party started to break up. Groups would wander off, a few youngsters would jump one last time, then there were only a pair swimming alongside for a minute or two more. Finally they left as well, gently shutting the door to let us know it was all good. We went back to the sail change, flying the big jib behind the stay sail then dropping the stay. Kintala settled down, picked up an extra knot of speed and started to respond to the helm instead of arguing with it.
We are newcomers to this land but I think we are welcome.
The bright light at the top of the picture is the moon
