We're back....

May 15, 2008

We’re back! With faithful crew Steffi and Charlie P. we made the crossing from Great Sale Cay to Port Canaveral, Fl, 179 nautical miles, in 28 hours with the engine on for only two-and-one-half hours. Winds were more northerly than recommended to cross the north-flowing Gulf Stream, but we had little choice. The forecast was for seas to grow the rest of the week in a building, northeast swell being generated by a powerful low pressure north east of the Bahamas. Another cold front was forecast to come off of the east coast tomorrow, generating more north winds and swells. We could have been stuck at Great Sale Cay for days.

It was rough and uncomfortable for crew, but no one got sick. Steffi is iron woman, reading down below when not on watch without any seasick medicine. Charlie took nothing and was fine. M and I used drugs. We stood two hour watches, but doubled up some of the time.

Journey was enjoying what she was designed to do. Our Course was northwest. The wind gave us a close reach. Forecast wind of 15 to 20 knots turned into consistently over 20, with gusts as high as 27. Forecast seas of three to five feet built to seven to nine feet, but we were angling across them, not pounding into them. Charlie said it felt at times like we were skipping from sea to sea. Our good little ship with reefed main and jib cut along at over seven knots for hours, most of the night in the bright light of a half moon. She never felt stressed, never pounded and we never had to tack the entire trip.

We spent last night at Port Canaveral in a place called Cape Marina and boat yard. It’s a big, first class facility. Port Canaveral is where Disney and other cruise ships berth. We are required to check into Homeland Security and the recording on the phone line gave an address to check in about a mile away from the marina. We took a cab, went into the offices and three guys in black uniforms, packing rods, sat at desks. Steffi noted later that it looked like a sitcom set. They were genuinely surprised to see us. A skinny, red headed guy was using google and was interrupted by a personal call on his cell phone. A very portly fellow was picking up four pages at a time from a stack of paper and stapling them, and the third was the unlucky guy who had to help us. He was clearly the new guy. There was a short discussion among the three of which computer screen needed to be filled out and once again this crack, Homeland Security agency, asked us for the name of our vessel, its length, make, coast guard registration, our names, addresses, telephone numbers, and passport numbers, all of it information that we have provided by pre-registering with them before we ever left and which they are incapable of recovering on their computers. They never asked where we came from, what was on board – not even if we had been on any farms overseas – and once the information was typed in told us we were all set. Pathetic and think what we’re all paying for it!

Today we left Port Canaveral on a canal runs due west for 5.6 miles to the ICW that requires passing under two bridges and through a lock that is a hurricane surge barrier. It was like motoring through a zoo. We spotted Manatee, dolphins, egrets, and an alligator. Several manatees joined us in the lock.

Last week in the Bahamas

We left Hope Town Thursday, May 8th. Lighthouse Marina changed the crankcase and lower unit oil on the reliable four-cycle, two-and-one-half horsepower Yamaha dinghy outboard. It’s a service job done on our own in Maine, but it would have been too tricky to catch the draining oil with the motor hanging on its mount on Journey’s stainless steel rear guard rail, and then hard to dispose of it properly. A giant Bahamian did the work, his first day on the job since graduating from a outboard motor trade school in Orlando, FL. He fumbled getting the overflow screw back into the lower unit while covering his nervousness with a constant patter about his prowess. He did a good job.

The dinghy motor has been just the right size despite cautions from cruising guides that you need a bigger outboard to move the dinghy faster, getting us where we want to go and burning about three gallons of gas in three months. It weighs 35 pounds so can be fairly easily hefted from the dinghy to its mount on Journey’s without the need for complicated block and tackles.

We cleaned the bottom of the dinghy for the third time since it was inflated and went into the water February 11. Plenty of green crud, but it only took a half an hour rather than an hour when last done three weeks ago. That seems about the right interval.

The last new friends we made at Hope Town are Amanda and Andre: Brazilians, fresh college graduates, caring for Andre’s father’s big catamaran they helped him purchase in Ft Lauderdale this year after a two-month odyssey with his parents in a rented, 22 foot RV looking at boats up and down the east coast. Andre and Amanda were translators and negotiators who had to bridge a tough-talking, no-nonsense Brazilian businessman and smarmy boat brokers. Parents are back in Brazil and will return soon to their dream of cruising and have designated Andre their captain. All four, Andre, his parents, and Amanda, his significant other, are new to cruising sail boats. So Andre and Amanda are devoting themselves to learning the boat’s systems and equipment, and these English-as-second-language Brazilians are frustrated understanding technical manuals written in poor English, and responding to his father’s remote commands. They needed someone to talk to.

The boat is a monster catamaran, 46 feet long and 25 feet wide, built in South Africa in 1999 with the living space of a small condo. It’s called Ubatuba, the name of coastal city in Brazil where they live and a native Indian word that appropriately means “two canoes”. Andre grew up by and in the sea and is an accomplished free diver, regularly cleaning fish that he has speared using a sling. On the cockpit bulkhead of Ubatuba is mounted a striking sculpture of the Neptune created by Andre’s grandmother. The face at first glance appears to be a man horrified over something, but Andre noted that his grandmother said she wanted to create the face of one who lives beneath the sea, and she did, wonderfully,but it is an image that looks familiar. Instead of boat cards they gave us tee-shirts imprinted with their Neptune.

We said good bye to acquaintances and friends at the Hope Town Coffee House and stopped by Epilogue to see Don and Linda who could very well visit us in Maine this summer. We settled our bill at Hope Town marina for the Mooring which we had occupied for nearly two months on a hand shake. Rudy Malone, his last year as proprietor, gave us a nice discount.

On May 8th, we departed Hope Town to discover the speedometer not working, so we anchored outside of the harbor, dove under the boat, scrubbed it off and with dismay noticed substantial new marine growth on the bottom. Not sure if it is a loose wire or growth, but after fooling with the speedometer transponder above and below the hull, it worked.

We sailed on to Marsh Harbor to the second most regular stop, Mango’s Marina, in time to have lunch at the restaurant when we spotted the boat of Browntip Diving services, a guy we’d heard of who cleans bottoms. When he surfaced, a whistle and shouted conversation resulted in an arrangement for him to clean the bottom the next morning. He must have done a good job. Journey seems a lot faster.

Charlie and Steffi P. joined us on the ninth in Marsh Harbor. Their bags were quickly dumped below and within minutes Ray helped us shove off for the last time from Mango’s Marina in time to beat the falling tide and the prospect of Journey resting in the mud. We sailed to Fisher’s Bay at Great Guana Cay, caught a mooring, had dinner at Grabbers beach bar and bounced in the short seas being built by the growing westerly winds.

It was fortunate that the next morning we decided to introduce Steffi and Charlie to the cruiser’s net on VHF as we sat in the cockpit having breakfast. Troy, of Dive Guana broke into the net, to announce that a dinghy had broken free in Fisher’s Bay. He’s the same fellow who had a few minutes before come with his two darling little girls in the boat to collect our mooring fee. We looked over the stern and no Zodiac. We looked behind us and it was merrily bobbing along towards the sharp limestone of the lee shore. I waved to a fellow on the boat not far from ours who must have also been listening to the net, he leapt into his dinghy, came by and picked me up, raced to the shore and we caught our dinghy a few feet from the sharp rocks. Apparently, the all night up and down movement of the boat had gradually loosened the cleat hitch, and while we sipped tea and coffee, it had finally freed itself and slipped quietly away.

This is the second time Troy has saved our dinghy. The first was when his dive boat was in Hope Town at Lighthouse Marina where M. went to do laundry, lost control of the dinghy in the strong winds, it blew under the dock and Troy, that hunk, came to her rescue.

We broke into the Cruiser’s Net not more than 15 minutes after Troy announced the loose dnghy to thank him and the fellow cruiser who came to our rescue. Patty, net stalwart said in response, “don’t you just love this Net”. It’s her life work and it is terrific in its own quirky way.

The next day it was around the infamous Whale, this time in the lee, to Green Turtle Cay where activities included, a golf cart rental, a somewhat disappointing dinner at the New Plymouth Inn compared to our first stop months ago, a swim off the Atlantic Beach and then the departure to Great Sale.

On May 11, 2008 we anchored in the crushed shell and sand of Northern Harbor, a bite out of the southern end of uninhabited Great Sale Cay, three months and one day from our first stop there on February 10, the second day in the Bahamas. We had traveled that day over 60 miles from Green Turtle Cay into a building southwest wind to wait for a cold front to pass and conditions to return for safe passage from across the Gulf Stream to the US. In cruisers-speak these opportunities for safe passages are “windows” and few have been open. It blew 27 knots that night, Journey pitched, we slept fitfully, but the anchor held.

Monday the wind quieted to calm that night. A check of the weather on the WX Satellite Weather Tuesday morning convinced us to leave a day earlier.

As we now sail north bound on the ICW to reach New Smyrna Beach this evening, it’s a bit much to do any digesting of this latest transit from the special place of the Bahamas to the special place of the US and its problems and people and energy and infrastructure and such varied beauty. Suffice it to say, it’s good to have made another safe passage in this very special journey.