This post is part 7 of 8. If you missed earlier ones, you might want to scroll down and read them.
Crossing the Gulf Stream is not a trivial undertaking. Most people with sailboats still make this crossing under power. The Gulf Stream is a rough ride, and it is quite powerful. It seems to be the rule that whatever the weather is on either side of the stream, it is more powerful in the stream. Winds are stronger. Waves are higher. Turbulence is greater. It is, after all, a river within an ocean.
Without an engine, we knew that we had to be very careful. The Gulf Stream might carry us where we did not want to go unless we planned wisely. Our destination was the Lake Worth Inlet, because we felt that we knew enough about that area to find the help we needed for our engine. We knew we could not transit that inlet under sail, but as BoatUS members, we knew we could call TowBoat US for help.
As morning dawned on Thursday, April 29, we sipped our coffee with little conversation. We had a lot to talk about, but first we needed to get our heads clear. The first cup of coffee each morning had acquired a value out of all proportion to its normal image. Somehow, as soon as we had coffee in hand, it was as if the slate had been wiped clean, and the new day before us was a pristine opportunity for success. We sipped our coffee and allowed our minds to roam.
With very little wind at the beginning of the day, Larry decided that maybe he could finally look for the obstruction that had blocked the generator’s cooling water. We were far from Great Isaac and the only ships we had seen were on the other side of the channel. I took the helm and Larry went below. Happily, he quickly found the clog. Then he replaced the water pump. Finally, he coaxed an hour of charge out of the generator.
It was like a miracle. The batteries were charged to a level that would allow us to run our e-charting for the last two or three hours as we approached Florida. We could turn on the VHF radio whenever we wished. We felt that we had hit the jackpot.
Larry asked, “What do you think? Should we go now or wait a while?” The wind was only 7-8 knots. It was predicted to be 10 knots during the day, but we could not guess when it would increase. Yet I really did not want to sit in that channel waiting and waiting. It seemed as if we ought to use the available wind to move closer to the Gulf Stream. Maybe it would increase soon, or maybe we would need to wait somewhere before we actually hit the Stream. We concluded that waiting was not our wish, and off we went.
Happily, the wind began to rise very soon. It is hard to say exactly when we arrived at the Gulf Stream, but by the time we became aware that the roughness and the current indicated we were there, the wind was running about 15-20 knots.
I don’t think I will ever think that a Gulf Stream crossing is delightful. That water is rough. It gave us a thorough shaking, even though it was a different kind of roughness than storm waves. I guess it is what I think riding rapids might be.
There was another oddity. By sunset the wind was 20-25 knots from the southeast. We reduced sail, because that much wind combined with the rough water was taking a toll on us. It was hard work to maintain our course. Still, that much wind was definitely going to take us toward our destination. However, we frequently observed that the wind suddenly dropped to nothing. Zero. Or 5 knots. It was almost scary. Then, just as suddenly, it would zoom up to 15 or 20 knots again. We hung on and kept moving west.
My first sign that we were drawing near to Florida came at sunset. We had watched sunsets daily in the Bahamas as an evening ritual. We ate dinner in the cockpit and watched the sun go down. We had even seen the green flash a time or two. Often someone nearby would sound the conch horn at sunset. After the sun fell below the horizon it would grow dark in the west and the stars would come out.
Not this time. The sun went down, but the glow remained. It took me a while to realize that the glow was not the remnants of the sunset. The glow was Florida. How wonderful! We were actually getting there.
The last couple of hours were a bit of a shock. Larry had planned our course very well, but we both thought that the Gulf Stream wall was 11 or 12 miles from the coast. We thought we had a buffer zone between the Stream and the coastline where we could make a northward adjustment to get to Lake Worth. We learned that evening that the Gulf Stream is less than 3 miles from the Lake Worth Inlet. We had thought we were across and were ready to make our way to the inlet only the Stream was still carrying us north. When we called TowBoat US we were already past Lake Worth Inlet. We were steering southwest, but under reduced sail, we had not enough power to fight the current. Our track was northwest. It was the Great Isaac syndrome all over again.
Nevertheless, the towboat soon found us and pulled alongside. We tried to turn into the wind to drop our sail, but we could not get there. Eventually, we just pulled the sail out of the track and wrapped it up on the boom. The towboat captain said we drifted three miles north while we were getting our sails down.
I am always in awe of those guys. They are so calm and professional in all that they do. After the towing harness was attached to our bow, the towboat moved ahead and paid out some line in an attempt to give us a smoother ride. Compared to our crossing, I guess it was smoother, but we were still in the Stream and going against the current. It was pretty rough. We didn’t care. It was all in the hands of the towboat captain and we could relax. Larry steered to keep our boat following the towboat, but that was simple compared the adventure behind us.
The captain towed us to a dock at the Riviera Beach Marine Center. We tied up to that dock at 0545 on April 30, 2010. Our journey was over, just 2 hours and 15 minutes short of 6 full days after we started. We were home again, safe and sound.
We gave thanks to God for our safe passage, and then we went to bed. We thought we would sleep late, but I guess the habit of 2-hour shifts had become ingrained. We woke up about 8:30 starving for coffee. Our journey home had ended safely. We sipped our first cup and coffee and remembered.
Aboard No Boundaries
January 4, 2010
Before we ever set out to visit the Bahamas, friends with experience gave us a somber warning. “Be sure you get across before Christmas. The Christmas winds can keep you waiting for days and days.” I wondered what that meant, because I could not find that term anywhere – Christmas winds. I know now what that is all about.
One of our guide books tells the story in more scientific, therefore more cryptic, language. It talks about the fronts that line up to the west of Florida (I deduced that they must form first in the Great Plains) and roll across that state into the Atlantic and across the Bahamas. These fronts come in from the west, but they usually have a northerly component, a dead stop for any plan to cross the Gulf Stream. The description accorded nicely with the comments of other friends about the parade of fronts across the Bahamas in the winter. I filed all this information in my mental folder for the Bahamas and there it sat, waiting for a time when it would be needed.
Well, here we are, still in Florida on January 4. And now we are learning firsthand what the “Christmas winds” are all about.
We never intended to be here in January. When we cruised into St. Marys, GA, on November 30, we thought we needed a few days to do some work on the generator. We might even need to deliver it to the Panda shop in Ft. Lauderdale. We thought a week or ten days ought to do it. However, the math on the rates for Langs Marina showed that if we paid for a month, then, after ten days, the rest of the month was essentially free. We said to ourselves, “What if it takes eleven days, or even twelve?” We never thought for a minute that it would take a whole month.
In fact, when Larry called the Panda folks to tell them that he had done all the tests they recommended at first report of our problem, he expected them to tell him right then that he should put the generator in the shop. Instead, they gave him more tests to run. He did what they advised, and he talked back and forth. It seemed as if all this conversation went on forever. Finally, on Friday, December 18, we delivered the generator to the shop. All the dithering over what to do about this generator had taken almost three weeks, and we seemed to be no nearer a solution than when we started.
We were concerned about all the time it took, but we were more concerned about the likely cost. Even though the generator was still in warranty, we worried that somehow, the work we needed might be ruled out of warranty. You just never know. So here we were, one week before Christmas, and no generator.
The day we delivered it, Larry wanted to arrange to pick it up as soon as possible. He delivered it to Panda at 8AM on Friday morning, and he expected to pick it upon the following Monday afternoon. The service manager quickly disabused him of that expectation. He told Larry to call on Monday afternoon, and then he could give him a better idea when to pick it up.
Larry persisted in his faith that we could pick up the generator at least by Tuesday morning, but we deferred making hotel reservations for the trip until after that call. It was a very good idea. We learned on Monday afternoon that the service team still had no idea when they could give the generator back to us. They seemed not quite sure what it would take to get it working, and they were quite professional in their determination not to guess or string us along with promises or hints of promises that they could not keep. Needless to say, Larry and I speculated endlessly, constantly concerned that we would get a huge bill along with the repaired generator.
Despite all our worries, Panda made the generator good and completed the work under warranty. We are deeply thankful that they saw it that way. We would have loved to get the generator back a lot sooner, but when we pulled into the marina at 5PM on Christmas Eve with the generator in the back of our rented jeep, we felt good about its condition. Unfortunately, the long delay occasioned by the repair did not get us across the Gulf Stream before Christmas.
We enjoyed Christmas Eve with friends. Mike and Suzanne Pillola hosted the evening at their home in St. Marys. We sang and feasted and played games with Roger and Bonnie Ford and our hosts before attending Christmas Eve worship at Christ Episcopal Church. We relaxed on Christmas Day, enjoying a nice dinner and lovely Christmas music all day. (I think we have every Christmas album Mannheim has ever released, plus lots of other great stuff.)
Then it was time to get the generator back into the boat and working again. Larry put it through its paces to confirm that the repairs had, indeed, put it back in working order. All this work was not complete until New Years Eve. We were not ready to leave the marina until New Years Day. We were in for a big shock.
We had no idea the freeze of the century was about to drop in on us, not to mention the Christmas winds.
We had regretted for several days that we had never been able to visit Cumberland Island due to the constant confusion surrounding the generator repairs. We left the marina on New Years Day in a light rain. We said to ourselves that we would not like to walk around the island in the rain. We would visit it the next day. From that day to this it has not been a fit day to go strolling about in the outdoors.
We started following the weather the week intensely the week before New Years Day, and I was unhappy to see that the winds were almost constantly from the northwest. As I watched day after day, this state of affairs continued. When we left the marina, I remember saying hopefully that maybe the winds would change on Wednesday, the day after the last day in the forecast cycle. From that day to this, I keep hoping the same thing – that in five or six days the winds will change. The fronts keep rolling through, and the wind keeps coming at us from the northwest.
I don’t know when this state of affairs will improve. Not only are all the winds from the wrong direction, but we are also in the grip of arctic cold, something we certainly did not expect at the border of Florida. As we check cities down the coast, we can see that the situation is not dramatically better in any location we could reach in two or three days, even if we were willing to go out into the ocean at these temperatures. Wind from the northwest is not itself a problem when we go south along the coast, but a northwest wind at 20 knots and a temperature of even 40 degrees feels quite cold. The forecasts do not indicate that the deep freeze will relent soon.
So here we are still, trapped by the Christmas Winds. We will get to the Bahamas sometime. We take it a day at a time. Nothing enforces flexible decision-making like cruising in a sailboat,.