This post is part 5 of 8. If you have missed some, you may want to scroll down and read them first.
The morning dawned gloomy. We were in a position approximately southeast of Port Lucaya. All around were big, dark cumulonimbus clouds. I was making breakfast when Larry called me up into the cockpit. To the northwest we saw a huge wall of clouds, and the winds were beginning to pick up. We could see lightning and hear thunder. It looked ominous. We were about to learn what Chris Parker meant by his term “nasty.”
We had reduced sail at sunset the previous evening. We were running with one reef in the main and only the staysail forward. We could not see any real reason to change this configuration. We had been through a lot of fronts during our three-plus months in the Bahamas. We took them all at anchor or on a mooring. This would be the first one we had met at sea. We turned into the wind, hove to and hung on.
The last time we had hove to, we were enrolled in the Annapolis Sailing School. We took three days of Basic Keelboat and a week of Bareboat Cruising at the Marathon location in 1996. I don’t suppose that location is even open any longer. In fact, maybe the Annapolis Sailing School isn’t open any longer. Anyway, during the Basic Keelboat class, we learned to heave to. Our instructor told us that it is a good way to ride out big winds or get some rest in a storm. In the Northwest Providence Channel, we learned that he knew what he was talking about.
The winds hit us hard, as they always do at the beginning of a frontal passage. I usually feel that if I can manage the first assault, the rest of the ride is downhill. In this case, that ride was many hours, but having hove to at the beginning, we were ready for it. In fact, we were able to catch up on sleep by turns.
Our boat does not actually heave to very well. Maybe in the future we will devise some scheme to make it work better. Even though it heaves to at the beginning, the nature of the mechanisms that control the mainsail – the traveler and its downhaul – are too elastic to hold the hove to state forever. Eventually the wind catches the staysail and instead of hove to, we are close-hauled. However, with the main reefed and the staysail close-hauled, we make very little headway.
One of the beautiful experiences during this passage was my growing confidence in our boat. We knew when we purchased it that it had been designed for bluewater cruising. We have done some bluewater cruising. However, this was our first time to be in a storm with no engine, entirely dependent on sail, rigging and hull to keep us safe. Well, not entirely dependent on them, because throughout this whole experience we knew that God was present with us. We prayed together every day. When Larry had to do something dramatic on deck at night or in heavy seas, I prayed. As we cruised around in circles in the Northwest Providence Channel battered by storm winds, I prayed.
Some people think that miracles are the sort of things where a blind man suddenly sees or five thousand people are fed with only a bit of bread and fish. I think miracles happen when two people and a boat stretch themselves as far as they can go and God fills in the gaps. That is what happened to us.
That entire day is a blur of wind and wave. Yet never did we feel desperate. In fact, I think we felt no more at risk than we ever felt on a mooring in Warderick Wells. We stood our watches, we took naps, we ate three normal meals.
Sometimes it rained, rather fiercely at times. As we were eating lunch, we noticed a bedraggled bird hopping around on the aft deck looking for shelter. The poor thing appeared to be waterlogged. His feathers were in total disarray. He looked longingly through the closed windows into the cockpit, but we did not invite him in. We learned our lesson about hospitality to birds at Warderick Wells. He hopped up the line for the boom’s downhaul, apparently hoping to find some way past us, but no luck. The last time we saw him, he was huddling beneath the sparse shelter of a dorade.
When night fell, the wind continued. We saw few other boats, as you might expect. We saw a huge cruise ship headed into the wind, just as we were, and we recalled our pastor’s experience in a storm on a cruise to Bermuda. We chuckled, commenting that he could be glad he wasn’t on our neighbor ship (or certainly not ours!) at this particular time. Cruise ships may be immune to some of the motion, but not all. They are afloat just as we are.
It was a furious night. Yet despite the fury, it was beautiful. God makes the most magnificent waves! As the sun came up, we were able to see more clearly. The ocean is staggeringly beautiful when it roars.
As the sun climbed higher, the wind began to die. By noon, it was almost calm. We gave thanks and began to pick up the mess around the boat. We caught up on our sleep. We had a very relaxed day, and we even allowed ourselves a glass of wine with dinner. We knew not to relax too much. We didn’t even change our sails. Another front was due within 24 hours behind the first.
Just after sunset it arrived, striking us furiously to get our attention. Even though the winds were not any worse than the previous front, it seemed that the water was more turbulent. I had slept just fine during my sleep hours before, but this time I simply could not rest. It was a bumpy ride. I went up to the cockpit and stayed there until almost dawn. Larry went down to sleep at his appointed time, and I remained on watch.
By mid-morning of Wednesday, April 28, the second front was gone. The stormy weather was done. The forecasts all said that the next five days would be clear. Wednesday would be light and variable winds, Thursday would be east 5 knots building to 10, and Friday would be east at 10 knots. It was time to get ourselves poised to make the crossing whenever the winds allowed.
This year was a furious year for cold fronts. Many people spoke disparagingly of the Bahamas weather this winter. Having never been there before, I don’t know how to make a comparison. I will only say that it was quite interesting. I actually did not feel any more threatened out in the open water than I felt at a mooring or at anchor. The real problem with all these fronts is that they confine us wherever we are at the time they hit. We can’t navigate the cuts or roam around in the dinghy ogling the sights. We don’t want to snorkel in 25-knot winds. So many fronts so close together changed the character of our experience. Nevertheless, we did not have to shovel 60 inches of cold front out of the way afterward, and we still didn’t have to wear shoes. I don’t need any more cold fronts for a while, but I don’t think I would let them stop me from enjoying the Bahamas.
February 25, 2010
Aboard No Boundaries
As I write this blog, we are moored at Warderick Wells Cay, Bahamas. The wind is blowing steadily in the range 22-27 knots (up to 31 mph) with gusts over 30 (nearly 35mph). Since 6AM this morning, the highest recorded gust was 35.7 knots (41 mph). We are fortunate to be in the inside channel where the seas are only a foot or two. We can see the boats on the three outer mooring balls bounce a lot more than we do. Beyond them, we see the 6-8 foot seas rolling in from Exuma Sound breaking dramatically against the little cays to the north, sending spray more than 20 feet in the air. The sun is shining on the clear, aquamarine blue waters, and it is a beautiful sight, but I am glad I don’t need to navigate through that cut in this wind. In fact, I would not dream of trying that cut in this wind. We would definitely be safer, even though severely uncomfortable, riding out the wind in Exuma Sound on the big waves than trying to cruise through any cuts in the Exumas today. A cold front passed through in the wee hours of the morning, and today we can expect winds to continue to rage out of the north for most of the day. It is the twelfth cold front to pass through the Bahamas since we arrived on January 18. This is not what we expected.
When we set out to cruise full-time last May, our impression of the future was formed by complete ignorance. We had certainly sailed our boat to a variety of locations. We had experienced a few storms. We had lived aboard for eight years. We had read every book we could find on the cruising life. Nevertheless, we were not prepared for the realities.
When we went north in July, our ultimate destination was Maine. Our 3-week cruise in Penobscot Bay in 2003 shaped our expectations for our cruise in 2009. Three weeks somewhere do not give anyone enough information to form appropriate expectations with regard to weather. In fact, it is now apparent that a lifetime of studying and forecasting weather does not give anyone enough information to form appropriate expectations, either. Everyone was blind-sided by the cold summer in the Northeast in 2009.
When we headed south at the beginning of November, our ultimate destination was the Bahamas. Never having been there, we nonetheless mined the comments and stories of cruising friends and formed a mental picture of sunny days and warm temperatures, punctuated by some very high winds during passing cold fronts. Nothing, however, suggested that those fronts would march through the islands in a relentless parade every three days. Well, maybe a few were spaced four days apart. To make up for that, a couple were only two days apart. We listen to Chris Parker for our weather forecasts daily, and last Monday he said that this winter is the most turbulent with such a parade of cold fronts since the winter of 1999-2000 – ten years ago.
We are learning that weather is what it is, regardless of what you expect, and there is no use complaining about it. I used to feel quite free to complain when it was too hot or too cold or etcetera. I could go home to air conditioning or heat, even when we lived in the marina full-time, and make my environment more to my liking, regardless of the outside conditions. As a cruiser, I live much closer to the real world and the real weather. I have learned to flex with it, and I am gradually learning not to set my expectations in concrete.
It was a big lesson for me to realize that marine forecasts do not give me anticipated temperatures. When we went to Cumberland Island on New Year’s Day, the temperature was in the forties, and it was raining. We didn’t think it would be fun to explore in the rain, so we put off our adventure until the next day. We had listened only to marine forecasts, so we were not prepared at all for a temperature of 18 degrees Fahrenheit the next morning, and the next, and the next for six days running. Still we developed strategies for keeping warm there until we finally gave up all hope of exploring that park and headed south. As we approached Palm Beach, Florida, the unexpected cold continued, and the radio forecasts and news reports made it clear that nobody had expected such weather. And there was nothing anyone could do about it.
When we moved to Lake Worth, we thought the predictions indicated a window for a crossing to the Bahamas in a couple of days, but the cold fronts that have dogged our tracks in the Bahamas were just getting started. They all start somewhere else, drive over Florida and then assault the Bahamas. We found a window to cross, we had a couple of nice days, and then we were socked in again. We have been slaves to the progress of those fronts ever since.
Every cold front has its unique qualities, but the pattern is predictable at a high level. A low moves from west to east, or maybe northeast, in some latitude north of the Bahamas. (According to Chris Parker it is exceedingly rare, and fortuitously rare, that the actual low pressure center moves across the Bahamas.) The low center drags a cold front that trails across Florida and into the Bahamas, moving roughly north to south. That pattern produces winds that clock from east to south to west as the low moves and the front approaches, and the winds move from west through north and toward the east behind it. The pattern is recognizable even as the details take unique dimensions with each front.
The gradient winds associated with a front are rarely in excess of 25 knots, but if the front spawns squalls, the squalls may carry strong convective winds up to 40 or 50 knots. It is the likelihood of squalls that imprisons us as much as the fronts themselves. We definitely do not want to try to maneuver through one of the rocky cuts in the Bahamas with a 25-knot wind pushing us toward sharp rocks. However, we could manage that situation by simply hovering about offshore until the wind settled down. A squall with 40- or 50-knot winds, however, is nothing to trifle with. We have been in such a situation by accident and ignorance. Any time we have advance information, we would choose to find a safe place to ride out such a storm.
Navigation in such winds is not the only issue, however. Assuming that one is off the big water, behind shelter of a cay or a bank, there is yet one more issue: security. A sailboat can anchor and be secure on the anchor in many conditions, but winds of 30 knots or more challenge most anchoring options. In the Bahamas, those big winds often come out of the north after a frontal passage, and there are not a lot of good northerly shelters. Add that to the fact that some sheltered locations do not have bottoms that hold an anchor securely. If a wind of 30 knots is expected, most captains will choose a mooring or a marina.
Most boaters appear to have the same mindset. When a front is predicted, the mooring fields and marinas across the Bahamas fill up quickly. Nobody moves. Boaters who wait till the last minute to plan their strategy for the front find no place to go. Exuma Park operates on VHF9 every day at 0900 to accommodate requests for relocation, departure and arrival. On any given day it takes about an hour to get everyone settled. Today, however, nobody is going anywhere. There is no traffic on VHF9. The park has queried a few boats about their plans, but nobody plans to leave just now. Nobody here has any appointments that require them to take their lives in their hands and depart.
Some people have cruised the Bahamas in recent years and experienced very little of this. They saw little or no rain. There were a few cold fronts, but in between there were many peaceful days. This non-stop parade is a new wrinkle, and we lucked out to be here to see it! What do we do?
We kick back and make the most of it. No matter how hard the wind blows here, the setting is beautiful. We can sit in the cockpit and enjoy much better scenery than anyone trying to dig out from under 6 feet of snow. I can bake or write or read or do just about anything that occurs to me, except go sailing. From the cockpit, I see 20 other boats doing the same thing.
Life could certainly be worse. I could be getting up at 5AM in order to be at work at 6AM in order to meet at 8AM with crabby clients whose expectations about the project are more unrealistic than my expectations of the weather in the Bahamas. I could be working overnight to restore a database that was erased by someone who forgot which server she was working on. I could be stuck in an airport, in line to try to get a flight to any location within a hundred miles of my destination, because my original flight has been cancelled. Oh, it could be a lot worse. Instead, I lean back on the cockpit cushions, take another sip of coffee and exhilarate in the ferocious beauty all around. You get what you get, where weather is concerned, and that is fine by me.
Sunday, January 24
This morning’s weather reports confirmed our analysis yesterday. It didn’t look good for us to negotiate the entrance under sail before Tuesday. We just had to be patient.
Larry planned to take another stab at making the diesel engine work again, but before anything else we set aside time for worship. Even before we started cruising, we planned that if our circumstances prevented us from visiting a church, we would worship on board. As we talked about the situation, we both felt that we had a great deal to be thankful for. It felt like the worst possible decision not to spend time in worship on this day. Our wonderful new friends on S/V Duet who had helped us learn how to get off the reef, the help we received from M/B Cutting Edge, and the safety of our anchorage after all these troubles were all gifts from our God who never abandoned us. We played Dr. Davis’ CD of music on the organ at Christ Church and got ready for worship. It was wonderful.
Afterward, we felt reassured and confident of the presence of God. We had a nice breakfast, and then Larry went to work on the engine.
Everyone who has done trouble-shooting knows the difference between trying to solve a problem when you feel that there really is not time to do the job. You need to get done and right now is already late. On this wonderful Sunday, Larry started on the job knowing that our condition was one of safety and relative comfort. It certainly was a concern that the engine wasn’t running, but it was no threat to us. We had a boat full of food and supplies. Our generator kept us supplied with electricity. Larry could take his time on this problem and cover all the bases.
My only job thoughout was to push the start button. When asked, I pushed. Sometimes nothing happened. Sometimes there was a tentative cranking sound. Then came the moment when he said, “This time, keep the button down until the engine starts or until I tell you to stop.” I pushed. The engine cranked. I was about to despair when it roared to life. I felt like floating on air. I turned to run down to the cabin and there was Larry with a big smile on his face. “Praise the Lord!” he shouted. “Amen!” I shouted. I think we danced or flew or something. That big loud engine sounded like the finest music we had ever heard.
We left the engine running for a while, just to be sure it would keep going. We were ecstatic. It was like finding the last piece for a 5000-piece puzzle behind a dust bunny under the bed. We were giddy.
This experience was very challenging, but it was never a disaster, and we were never in real danger. Everything we needed was provided for us. How could we ever doubt that God knew exactly where we were and knew exactly what we needed?
The beauty of it all was that the moment the engine caught, we were no longer the victims of a wrong turn trying to get by; we were cruising again! We could enjoy the beautiful location in which we found ourselves, and that we did. In fact, we remained there for five more days, just because it was a neat place to be.
As for the devil and the details, the night before, S/V Windseeker II had anchored nearby, and while Larry was working on the engine, I had seen the mast of Windseeker from where I was working in the cabin. Just as our engine came to life, we saw Windseeker throwing out an anchor in a very strange location in the cove. They had been anchored in a very calm location west of us, but as we watched they were trying to anchor in a part of the cove where tidal currents and wind create a very confused surge, not a place where most boats would want to anchor. We wondered why they moved on purpose to that location.
Then suddenly, we heard them calling us on the radio. It turned out that as they were trying to leave the cove, their engine quit. It was running one minute, and it wasn’t running the next minute. They threw out the anchor where the engine quit, which wasn’t the most congenial or comfortable place for them. Larry and Windseeker’s captain talked over the problem and shared their miseries. Windseeker’s captain said, “Isn’t there an island around here with ‘Devil’ in its name. Maybe that is the explanation.” After a couple of hours, they got their engine going and left us behind.
Several days later we decided to bypass Nassau and sail over to Royal Island near the island of Eleuthera. It was a wonderful sail, and the harbor is grand. By the time you read this log we will have moved to Spanish Wells, just a few miles from Royal Island. We are truly cruising now and discovering new adventures daily. This is what we came to do.
This experience has taught us a lot. There may not be a log to follow this one very soon. Or we may get to post another before we leave Spanish Wells. The reality is that we cannot predict from day to day what our access will be. People who have traveled along the coast of Eleuthera and through the Exumas tell us it will be intermittent. So don’t worry. We will be fine. We will share the adventure when we can.
Saturday, January 23
A new day did, indeed, dawn on Saturday. The first thing we realized was that we would not be able to sail the boat out on this day. The wind was coming in from the east, pushing large waves right into the entrance to our cove. The waves were somewhat reduced by the shoals at the entrance, but they still rocked us very much. However, a check of our GPS coordinates showed that our anchors were holding firmly. We were not moving.
That was good news. After breakfast, Larry undertook to work on the engine again, but he had no luck. Sometimes the engine coughed. Sometimes it did nothing at all. Sometimes it made sounds that we did not like.
By mid-morning, we felt that we had to assess our situation realistically. The engine was not working. Our best chance to leave appeared to be the following Tuesday on the ebb tide with a southerly wind in the 10-15 knot range. We had never taken this boat out of an anchorage without engine power, but we used to do it with our MacGregor, and we felt that Tuesday looked doable. If we succeeded in getting out of the cove, then we knew we could negotiate the big water to get to a location with a diesel mechanic.
No matter where we went, however, we faced the prospect of paying someone to tow us into the harbor. If we went to Nassau, we would have to pay the Bahamian rescue service for a tow. Bill had told us that cost might be considerable. We would also be completely out of our element looking for a diesel mechanic in this unfamiliar community. If we went back to Florida, however, we could call TowBoat US, which is covered by our insurance, and we could go to North Palm Beach, where we have a friend who might be able to help us find a good diesel mechanic. We felt that this option made more sense for us.
As we were talking through these issues, Bill from Duet called on the radio, just to see how we were doing. We shared our thoughts with him, and he said he thought our logic made sense, too.
When this conversation was over, Larry went forward to check our anchors, as he had been doing frequently during this ordeal. He came back with a worried expression. “We have a problem,” he said. The problem was, indeed, worrisome. When we deployed the anchors the day before, we put the primary out first, as you might expect. Having established ourselves in a safe position with that anchor, we still thought that since we were in the path of the daily tidal flow, it would be a good idea to have two anchors. When we deployed the second one, we actually set ourselves up for a problem.
The primary anchor has all chain rode, but the secondary has only 75 feet of chain. The remainder of its rode is rope. When Larry inspected the anchors, he discovered that the rope rode was chafing against metal on the bow. We needed to put something around the rode to prevent the chafing. If we couldn’t put a stop to it, the rode would part and we would lose that anchor. It was a serious problem.
We tried a couple of ideas, but they were not very good. It was hard to add this gear when the anchor was under so much stress, and as the boat bobbed up and down in the wave, the anti-chafe gear moved, leaving the rode exposed to more chafing.
We were in a bad way. We could not leave, because you cannot sail a boat into the wind. We could not stay, because we were in danger of losing our anchor. We struggled with the anti-chafe gear, but it simply would not stay put.
Then we heard Bill call on the radio. “No Boundaries, No Boundaries. Duet.” It turned out that he had seen a big powerboat with two huge outboards pass by. He hailed that boat, and the captain agreed to come and help us move. The captain of M/V Cutting Edge must be another angel. He was very patient and helpful. We pulled our two anchors, and Cutting Edge towed us to a safe and comfortable anchorage beside the white sand beach on White Cay. The water was much quieter, and we felt very safe there. The holding was adequate with one anchor, because we were out of the current. We breathed a sigh of relief and gave thanks to God for this safe and comfortable place to stay.
By this time, it was late in the afternoon. We still didn’t have engine power, but we could relax a bit. With a safe and peaceful anchorage, we could take our time worrying about the engine.
Many times during the day I thought of my son. It was his birthday, and it was the first time I had ever been unable to wish him a happy birthday on the day itself. I had sent cards and notes ahead of time to wish him well. We were all more or less prepared for the reality that we won’t have internet every time we might like it. It still felt strange.
We had a nice dinner, listened to some good music and got a good night’s sleep.
Day 3 will post tomorrow.
Friday, January 22
Aboard No Boundaries
When we left Port Lucaya, we warned all our readers that it would be a while before we had internet again. We were right. However, I did not think it would be as long as it has actually been. This is a learning experience for all of us. My expectations for the interval were probably shorter than yours. We had a plan that didn’t turn out, and that is likely to be a pattern with us now. We are into a cruising experience that does not lend itself to schedules or multi-tasking or productivity planning.
The most important variable every day is the weather. We are very faithful to listen at 6:30AM every day to Chris Parker, the resident meteorologist for the Bahamas and the Caribbean. We try to hear some other broadcasts as well, but we make it a point not to miss his. The weather forecast guides our preparations. If we are at anchor, we evaluate our setting for its value as shelter for the winds predicted that day. If we are planning to cruise, we study the forecast for a good opportunity to reach our destination without bad weather, big winds or ugly seas.
I describe this process, because it is important to help you understand our past few days.
We left Port Lucaya early on the morning of Wednesday, January 20. Our destination was Great Harbor, a large anchorage just south of Great Stirrup Cay. If you look on Google maps for the Berry Islands in the Bahamas, the Stirrup Cays are on the northeast tip of that group of islands. We spent a couple of days there enjoying the clear water and watching cruise ship passengers play in the water.
On Friday, January 22, we headed south planning to go to Frazers Hog Cay. However, as happens sometimes, along the way we spied a little cove that looked interesting and decided to stop there first. We thought that if we didn’t like it, we could continue the next day to our original destination. This little cove is bounded by White Cay, Devils Cay. and Saddleback Cay. Here is where the devil comes in.
We studied the chart and the guide books. The entrance is narrow and bounded by rocks. One must pay close attention going in, and it is important to make a turn to starboard at the right point to get to the marked anchorage off the lovely white sand beach of White Cay. However, sometimes little islands like these do not look the same in reality as they looked in our minds when studying the chart.
We turned into the entrance, and that part worked well, Unfortunately, as we passed the rocky shoal that guards the entrance, we became disoriented and continued too far past the spot where we should have turned. Before we realized the error, we ran aground on a rocky reef. The tide was coming in, and the tidal current no doubt moved us toward the reef faster than we recognized. We attempted to use the engine to back off and then to turn around, but in the middle of our efforts the engine stopped. It refused to restart. We were in a mess.
Experienced Bahamian cruisers say, just as ICW cruisers say, that there are two kinds of cruisers: those who have gone aground, and those who lie. Experienced Bahamian cruisers are fairly nonchalant about this sort of a predicament. We were not and are not yet experienced Bahamian cruisers. We are still learning how to do it.
In the US, a situation like this is very annoying, but no big deal. You call a towboat, you pay the bill, and you move on. In the Bahamas, there are no official towboats. The Bahamian volunteer rescue service focuses on life-and-death emergencies, which our problem was not. However, we made a radio call attempting to connect with someone who could help, and thanks to the kindness and experience of Bill and Barb on S/V Duet, a catamaran anchored nearby behind Devils Cay, we received the help we needed.
Bill and Barb have been cruising the Bahamas for 34 years. They are quite humble about their experience, saying that they have already made all the mistakes, so they know how to help other people. The fact is that they give of themselves without any accounting. They are generous and kind and they go above and beyond any sort of obligation to help one’s neighbor. We think they are angels.
When Bill and Barb arrived, we had just deployed our dinghy. Larry was in the dinghy with the anchor, and I was hauling anchor chain out, loading it in the dinghy. Our plan was to set the anchor in deeper water and use it to pull ourselves off the reef. We had the theory of the process right, but we might never have succeeded without Bill and Barb.
Before they arrived, we had set all our sails, hoping to catch the wind that was blowing in the direction we wanted to go toward deep water, but every time the wind pushed us toward deep water, the current pushed us back to shallow water. We were making no progress toward deep water, and the sails were doing what sails usually do, pulling us forward. By the time they got there we had moved dangerously close to Saddleback Cay, but we were so busy trying to deploy the anchor that we had lost our focus on the effect of the sails. Bill and Barb boiled out of their dinghy and doused the sails. That stopped our crawl toward Saddleback and allowed everyone to focus on the goal of getting the boat back into deep water.
The whole situation was made much more difficult by the wind and current that buffeted us and tried to take us all where nobody wanted to go. However, we were quite fortunate that we ran aground on a rising tide. Even though the current of the rising tide was against us, when it finally turned, it worked with us. The wind was blowing in the a helpful direction, but until the tide turned, it could not give us any headway against the tidal current. After the tide turned, the wind, the current, and all our efforts were pulling the boat toward deep water.
Larry and Bill worked together to set first one anchor, then the other. Barb and I were on deck pulling the anchor rode in. That is how we caused the boat to move.
It was a time for celebration when we finally had the boat floating. We used both of our anchors to pull us into a better position, and finally we were in a location where even the swing of the boat on our primary anchor was unlikely to run on the reef again. Because we were in the path of the tidal current, however, we deployed the second anchor to assure that we were not pushed to a less desirable position. Whew!
Our location was exposed to the cove entrance, but it was a good jumping-off place for us to sail out whenever the wind was right. Since we did not have a working engine, it seemed possible that we might have to do that. We thanked Bill and Barb profusely, and they went back to their day, planning to do some diving in the time remaining.
Several times throughout the days to come, Barb and Bill checked on our well-being. It wasn’t enough that they had put their lives aside for us at the time of crisis. They continued to be concerned for us. When another boat ran aground in a different nearby location, Bill and Barb again made time to help them and followed up with them, too. Both we and the crew of the S/V Mary Rose agree that the S/V Duet has a crew of angels.
Larry and I sat quietly in the cockpit trying to collect ourselves. We were both exhausted. We could not imagine how Bill and Barb would be in the mood to go diving after wearing themselves out helping us. Larry made a few stabs at starting the engine, but it simply refused. We were in a safe place, we could take our time working on the next step, so we simply let go of the problem. It is hard to describe, but we both felt that God was very much watching over us, and we could be at peace about this situation. We had a nice dinner, we took showers, we got a good night’s sleep. A fresh new day would dawn in the morning.
Tomorrow, Day 2 will post.
When we travel by car to unfamiliar places we use a road map. The map shows us the roads we should follow in order to reach our destination. Sometimes there is more than one reasonable choice, and we choose whether speed or sightseeing is more important. Sometimes construction projects in progress interfere with our free choices and send us along bumpy, constricted detours. However, our travel in a car is pretty much limited to actual roads. In a car we seldom take off across fields and hillsides, although someone with a free-wheeling jeep might try it from time to time. This method of travel is the only automotive option that much resembles cruising.
When we cruise, we have maps that we call charts. They show us the boundaries of the water and its depths where the depth has been measured. Nautical charts also display a wealth of other information: shoals that may or may not be visible, the boundaries of routes and channels frequented by commercial vessels, secure areas where we are prohibited from sailing, rocks, radio towers, shipwrecks and so forth. All this information is intended to help us choose a route that will get us safely to our destination or safely allow us to view beautiful shorelines or reefs.
It is hard to say which element of information we use most, but the depth is a heavy contender for top spot. In a sailboat, we are very concerned with the depth. Our deep keel, which keeps us safe in rowdy waters at sea, limits the depths in which we can maneuver. Our boat, No Boundaries, has a keel that rides 6 feet 4 inches below the waterline. The measurement means that if we know that the water ahead of us is only 6 feet deep, we don’t want to go there. We would run aground and we might not be able to get off unassisted.
We pay a lot of attention to the depth when we are deciding where to go, how to get there and where we can anchor at the end of the day. We rely on the measured depths that are reported on our charts, but we have learned that those measurements only represent what was known at the time the measurement was taken. When we are cruising, we may discover that some of the measurements are no longer true.
As we have cruised southward, this sort of thing has happened more than once. As we approached the Alligator River Bridge, we carefully followed the chart around the markers on a convoluted path toward that bridge. Despite all our best efforts, even though the chart said we had 10 feet of water beside the red marker, we ran aground as we rounded that marker. Fortunately for us, the bottom is silty mud and Larry was able to back up and try again successfully. The measurement may have been accurate on the day somebody recorded it, but the passage of time and the movement of the silt in the river changed everything.
We grounded on something in one of the many land cuts in the ICW, too. We were in the middle of the channel. As perfectly centered as we knew how to do. Yet, we felt a thud, heard a rubbing sound and then floated free. Right in the center of the channel. We are not the first to have such an experience. There are many places in the ICW where people have run aground in the center of the channel.
They run aground other places, too. Yesterday, we passed a boat grounded right beside the channel. We arrived just as Tow Boat US arrived, and it wasn’t long before that boat was moving again behind us. We could see that the chart was a little confusing right there, and we were happy that we didn’t become equally confused.
However, we had our turn in the barrel. It was our intention to turn upriver into the St. Lucie River and anchor about a mile upstream in 9-10 feet of water. The entrance to this river is noted in all cruise guides as a shoaling nightmare, and so it is. We turned into the river channel, charted at 8 feet. That is plenty of depth. Right between the first two markers, the chart says 7 feet. That is plenty of depth. Just past those two markers, the chart reports 9 feet. That is plenty of depth. All this depth was completely lacking as we came even with Red Marker 2. We felt a gentle thud and then another, and then we stopped moving.
We were not eager to make friends with Tow Boat US, so Larry began to maneuver the boat in an attempt to get free. The bottom was very soft, but not deep enough for forward progress. At first he tried backing, then turning. The marked channel was barely wider than the length of our boat. I think we plowed a big circle there and finally floated free back in the ICW.
We had no desire to go back north in the waterway. The ICW channel we had followed to St. Lucie inlet was not very wide or very deep. It set off our 8-foot alarm numerous times. The chart problem at the river entrance did not enhance our faith in the chart overall, but we had to have faith in something. We headed south. We found ourselves in a mangrove swamp. The channel depth varied, and it was hard to find the deep part. The alarm sounded frequently. We thought we would anchor in Peck Lake, because the cruise guide said it should be deep enough, but our Raymarine charts did support that notion. Just as we reached the lake, the channel depth increased. We could see two boats anchored in the spot recommended by the cruise guide. Still, the chart did not indicate adequate depth. They could have been shoal draft boats.
Larry said, “Do you want to try it?” I said, “Do you want to explore it?” Larry said, “I think I have explored enough.” And that was it. We continued. The next opportunity for an anchorage was on the west side of Hobe Sound. There are three little spots just off the channel where depths from 7 to 12 feet are reported. When we arrived at the marker for the first one, there were four boats in the area already. There was nobody in sight at the second one. We cruised in, carefully watching the depth finder. The chart said 9 feet, and the depthfinder reported 10 or 11. We threw the anchor out, waited to see if it bit, and we were home. Safe at last.
There is a note in one of the cruising guides that many people opt to run outside from Fort Pierce to Lake Worth due to the shoaling problem around the St. Lucie inlet. We made it, and we are not much the worse for wear, but I think we have seen all we need to see on that path. We know exactly where the bottom is, and we don’t need to find it again.
Aboard No Boundaries
January 5, 2010
What do you do when you plan for a tropical winter and wind up in a deep freeze?
Our sailboat is a really good boat, and it is a comfortable, safe home for us. It has been a good home through some pretty harsh winters in Baltimore, but in Baltimore, we were tied up to a dock, running on shore power, which is not a lot different from being in a house. A boat like ours is not insulated the way a house is, but we kept warm.
We were not really sure what we would do about really cold weather when we arrived at Cumberland Island on New Years Day, but we have learned a few tricks. We keep thinking things will get better so we can visit the island, but so far, we don’t have the guts to get in the dinghy and run over there in this cold. I don’t know if we will ever get to see the island.
If we did not have a generator, our situation would be a bit more dire. We have electric space heaters designed for boats, but without electricity, they are worthless. There are propane heaters for boats, but they have their own problems, not the least being the need to store more propane than is required for cooking. Some boats even use wood-fired stoves, but we have never thought that sounded like a good idea. The electric heaters take up little space, they don’t require special ventilation, and we are going to run the generator anyway.
Our first line of attack on the cold was to dig out one of the little heaters and run it during our morning generator run. We closed the doors to the forward and aft cabins, heating only the main salon. I cooked breakfast, and all that heat was quite comfortable during the morning. Then we turned off the generator, and we turned off the heater. The temperature began to drop. We managed well until mid-afternoon. I made some hot tea, but it was still uncomfortable.
Then I remembered why we don’t use our oil lamps in the summer – they put out heat. We have three oil lamps, one in the forward, one in the main salon, and one in the aft. We lit them all, and it was amazing how they took the edge off the cold. Cooking dinner put more heat in the cabin during the early evening.
We always run the generator after dinner in order to have hot water and top off the batteries. This time it also allowed us to run our heater in the main salon, and we dug out another to heat our stateroom. We were comfortable until it was time to go to bed.
We don’t run any of our heat sources when we are asleep. The generator is under the bed, and we wouldn’t want to sleep over that noise, even though it seems pretty quiet when we are in other parts of the boat. We don’t want lamps burning when we are asleep. That doesn’t make sense. So we bundle up with two blankets and a quilt. That keeps us toasty until we get up in the morning.
The final element of our strategy is the oven. I try not to light it unless I actually need it, but I also try to plan my baking to coincide with otherwise cold times. Today I started baking cookies in late afternoon, just as the heat of the morning was dying down and the outside air was cooling as the sun goes down.
So far we are fine. They say that tonight will be the coldest so far, and then things will let up for a few days. We are trying to figure out if we have the courage to cruise out in this cold and go south far enough to get into the fifties. Can you believe that this is even a problem in Florida? Our problems seem big to us, but I am glad that I am not a farmer with orange groves. We will figure out something.
Christmas is over. The generator is back in its proper place aboard the boat. Larry is testing and retesting and verifying everything about it. When we leave St. Marys, it will be a long time before we are in a convenient place to get help if we need it.
It is time to make that big step – crossing the Gulf Stream and arriving in the Bahamas.
Are we ready? I doubt it. We have tried to get ready, but we have never done anything quite like this before. I used to go around thinking I was prepared to stay out for three months, but as we plan ahead to this adventure, I have learned how little I knew. We have been blessed with friends who have done it, and they have shared their experience with us. We are trying to make sense of it all.
Food. When I sat down with calendar pages for three months and imagined how we would eat three meals a day for that whole time, it proved more challenging than I realized. I tried several different ways to put it all together, but I am convinced that all I have is my best guess. We bought food twice, because I could not bring myself to buy that much the first time out. We bought supplies. We bought things, just in case. Now the boat is a maze of items counted and stacked, uncounted and still in bags, inventoried and put away. I keep telling myself there is room for everything, but I’m still convincing myself that I can cram in one more thing here, one more there.
Money. We have cash for the trip, but like any other trip, I am sure it will cost more than we plan. And we understand that, in the Bahamas, cash is king. Do we need to get more? hmmmmm.
Weather. The Gulf Stream is a great river within the ocean. It goes north with such energy that we are told it is very, very important to plan to cruise when the wind and wave reports are right. The force of the current combined with a wind in the opposite direction is reputed to create conditions no sane person wants to fight. So we scrutinize the reports and the forecasts and pick the brain of experienced cruisers. But sometime, we have to get going.
Thinking. Thinking. I wonder how the original polar explorers ever did it. For that matter, how did Columbus do it? He had much less information than we have. No charts. No idea how far he had to go. Nobody to tell him what it would be like where he actually landed, so all his expectations were completely in error. Yet he departed, he arrived, he returned. Surely we can do the same with charts, radio and all kinds of friendly advice.
When we swooshed across the Francis Drake Channel in February, 1995, on our first sailing adventure, we knew we wanted more of it. It is now upon us, and it looks a little different from this side. We worked hard, we dreamed intently, and we persevered. Here we go. Hurray!
We had our Christmas card on our home page for the past week. Now it is time for an update to that page, so this is a repeat, in case you missed it.
Christmas 2009
I can’t believe that it is only a week till Christmas. I should have done this letter long ago. Our days really are full, but it is hard to believe that Christmas is sneaking up on me nonetheless.
What a year!
I hardly know where to start, because 2009 is a year of first and highlights.
In the spring, I taught a class at Christ Church, and it is probably one of the richest spiritual experiences of my life. The title of the class was “Faith Foundations, Faith Practices.” We used the catechism as a doorway to Bible study, focusing on the practices that help us grow and mature in faith. It is always the case, I think, that a teacher learns more than the class does. I can’t speak for what my class learned, but I confess that I learned a lot. It was a small class, but that size promoted sharing that would not likely have happened in a larger class. After I left, Marlene Phillips took the class forward with a focus on prayer. I was able to visit her class when we were in Baltimore again in October, and she was doing some great things. This experience was a great blessing to me, and I hope the other people felt the same way.
On May 1, we pulled No Boundaries out of the water for some routine maintenance in preparation to embark on the cruising life for real. At last! We remained in Chesapeake Bay during May and June, continuing our final preparations. Every time we accomplished something, it seemed that we discovered two new things that needed doing. We were at Harborview for a while, and then anchored in the Bay, spending time here and there while we finished getting ready.
On July 1, we weighed anchor in the anchorage beside Baltimore Marine Center and departed Baltimore for points north. On July 2, we transited the C&D Canal. That was a big moment. We were finally and fully on our way to the new cruising life!
When we started this life, we thought we were pretty well prepared, but we have learned that there is no such thing. We are always learning. There is so much to learn that nobody could ever possibly be bored. We learn about the sea, we learn about weather, we learn about the boat, and we learn about each other. Sometimes the learning is fun, like watching dolphins, and sometimes it is not so fun, like tacking up and down in the middle of the night while Larry works on the diesel engine.
We spent several weeks of the summer in Maine, cruising around the islands. The first week or so we dealt with thick fog, but in August, the fog relented and we had many sunny days. We enjoyed the cruiser get-together on Islesboro Island very much. We met a lot of interesting people and not once did any of them discuss medicine or doctors. It was great! While we were in Maine, we hid out from Hurricane Bill in Smith Cove and learned that the Off! repellent candle really works. We highly recommend it for managing insects in the outdoors.
We met a lot of wonderful people while cruising this summer. Complete strangers offered us rides to grocery stores and elsewhere. A man in the east branch of the Johns River pulled us off a rock and gave us the use of his private mooring while we waited out the passage of tropical storm Danny. This way of life restores a person’s faith in people.
When we got to Boston, Clinton joined us for a few days, and that was one of the highlights of the summer. We all walked the Freedom Trail and immersed in the history surrounding the birth of our nation. We also visited Mr. Dooley’s pub where we were the only tourists in sight. Clinton recommends their clam chowder highly!
We spent October in Baltimore and headed south in November along the Intracoastal Waterway. We are both glad we have the ICW experience, but we do not yearn for any more of it. When we go north again, we will go outside. We like the idea of letting the Gulf Stream do some of the work. The ICW is not the best place for a sailboat.
We have had some pretty exciting moments. When we moored in Apponagansett Bay, popularly referred to as Padanaram Bay, we got the last available mooring, and it was at the mouth of the harbor. That night, a storm system roared through Buzzards Bay, and we were rocked by 40-knot winds. Enduring that storm was like riding a galloping horse. Later, at Port Washington on Long Island, we had to try to catch our mooring in 40-knot wind. Our best boat hook was bent double in that exercise. We thank the people at Port Washington for helping us get that job done.
On another occastion, we left Block Island at midnight in order to catch the currents at Plum Gut going the right direction. We knew when we left that the winds would be 20-25 knots for a while, but we could not wait them out or we would have missed the right time to clear Plum Gut. As we left the lee of Block Island, we were exposed to the North Atlantic for a couple of hours. The wind roared on our beam and it rained sideways on the aft deck. No Boundaries was up to that challenge. We safely arrived at Port Jefferson the next afternoon.
Probably the highlight of our year was the day the dolphins visited. We had dolphins with us all day. From as much as a mile away we could see them leaping and hurrying to visit us. I could almost hear them shouting, “A boat! A boat! Yay!” They gathered at the bow and jostled each other to get as close as possible. At one point there were eight of them in a row. We cannot figure out how they keep up, let alone overtake the boat with no apparent effort.
Another delightful surprise was the day we spent with whales north of Cape Cod. We were on course toward Penobscot Bay in Maine, and we simply happened upon a pod of whales. After we passed that group, whales swam along beside the boat all afternoon. I don’t know what it costs to go on a whale-watching expedition, but our day of whales was priceless.
As I write this letter we are tied up in a marina in St. Marys, Georgia. After Christmas Day, we will use the first weather window to cross to the Bahamas. It will be the start of a new year and a new adventure.
We don’t know where God will lead us next. He has given us some magnificent experiences so far, and we trust that he will continue to keep us safe and inspired. We are grateful for his blessing, much more than we could ever have imagined, and we pray to follow his leading faithfully wherever he wants us to go.
May this season be blessed and may your new year be a wonderful, blessed adventure for you.
We love you and we miss you. We hope to hear from you in days to come.
Love,
Larry and Katherine Harms
Aboard No Boundaries
December 14, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
Our stay in St. Marys, GA, has been a mixed bag. We love the price, but here’s another truth: you get what you pay for. We can use the wifi service “Waterfront” whenever it is working, and that is anybody’s guess. We can use the showers/restrooms, reliably supplied with hot and cold running water, and not much else. There is no laundry in this marina, and there is only one disintegrating Laundromat in the whole town. Grocery stores are miles away.
There are quite good features, over and above the price. We love the landscape – a river with marshes on the shore. We love the songs of the boat-tailed grackles, but we hate the fact that they flock to sailboat rigging in huge numbers, where they eat juniper berries and leave the trash and etcetera on the boat. We enjoy the solitude of this location compared to a marina in the downtown of a large city. We could do without the insects.
The real delight of this location has been the opportunity to reconnect with friends.
Before we came here, we knew that our Harborview friends Mike and Suzanne Pillola, had moved here recently. They invited us to dinner one evening, and we all caught up on the news. That was only the beginning.
While we were visiting my uncle in Pensacola, we received mail from another Harborview couple, Ed and Karen Cogswell, who were cruising into St. Marys that weekend. They were still here when we returned, so we joined them, along with Mike and Sue, for dinner at Trolley’s on the waterfront Monday evening. It wasn’t Havana, but we had a good time, anyway.
Since we were driving to Pensacola anyway, it was easy to make a side trip to Panama Beach City where we visited with Malcolm and Brenda Ameter. We had a wonderful time, and we enjoyed Malcolm’s birthday party. We won’t tell you the number in this blog, but Brenda was really proud of it, and everyone in a ten-mile range of Panama City probably knows already!
Finally, on Tuesday evening, we (Mike, Suzanne, Larry and I) met Roger and Bonnie Ford and Dave and Annie Levigne for dinner at Chilis near the Jacksonville airport. The talking never stopped as we all tried to share news and get news.
We cruise and see all sorts of great sights, but it is still true that friends and family are the best part. We loved visiting with Ray and Elise in Pensacola. They have many bird feeders and large flocks of birds which we enjoyed watching through their big patio doors. They have some serious health problems, but they have wonderful attitudes. They are enjoying life. They don’t sweat the small stuff!
I don’t know how long we will be here, but it’s been lovely to reconnect with so many old friends.