The bottom got a little too close…

June 8, 2023June 8, 2023 / FloatsOurBoat / 1 Comment

They say there are two kinds of sailors on the ICW – those who have run aground, and those who are lying and say they haven’t. Just north of St Augustine, we joined the first club.

It was a long, fairly boring day of putt-putting along. Capt Mike was at the helm, and I had gone below to get a head start on dinner prep. Suddenly, I heard the sound of the engine change dramatically and I popped my head up into the cockpit like a groundhog to find out what was going on. Capt. Mike just had enough time to say “I slowed way down ’cause I’ve got to figure out where the deep water is” when we stopped cold. Dinner forgotten, I grabbed an extra copy of the charts for reference, and I scanned around us for red and green channel markers. In the meantime, Capt. Mike had thrown the throttle into reverse and gave it a ton of revs, hoping to simply back off whatever shoal we had hit. No luck. The 2-knot current was pushing the stern into even shallower water. We tried swinging the boom way out to one side to tilt the boat over and hopefully to slide off. Nope. Mike dropped the dinghy into the water and tried to push the bow into deeper water like a little tug boat, while I steered from the helm. Nope. I started talking about BoatUS towing service and the captain shushed me. “We’ll stay here until high tide if we have to, but we don’t need to call for a tow”

A giant motor yacht passed us just as we got stuck and hailed us on the radio. “Have you run aground? Need anything? Ok, good luck” Gee, thanks. A small sport fishing boat came by with two huge outboard motors and offered to help tow us off. So once again, I took the helm, Capt. Mike moved the dinghy around to port midships and started pulling in reverse using our 20hp outboard. The fishing boat stayed on the forward starboard side and pulled with their two 75hp motors. Between the towing, our own engine revs, and a few short bursts of the bow thruster, we were off and floating! Unfortunately, I almost swamped Capt. Mike in the dinghy as we went from zero to 5.5 knots in an instant and he was still holding onto the boat going backwards. Oops! All’s well that ends well, and we thanked the fishermen warmly and continued on our way. For the rest of the trip north, we both stayed on high alert any time the charts said “shoal warning”… even when the channel markers were in plain sight.

We anchored off Fernadina Beach on Amelia Island that night to lick our wounds. Feeling like ourselves again the next day we went ashore to experience all that the annual Shrimp Festival had to offer. Garlic shrimp, shrimp quesadilla, shrimp and corn boil, a parade of decorated shrimp boats. Even people wearing big orange shrimp hats. We ate and danced and walked and had an excellent time, topping it all off with some of the best upscale Mexican food we’d had in ages, enjoying the night out with our friends Hayden and Radeen on Island Spirit.

From Amelia Island, it was just a short hop north to Cumberland National Seashore, which I’d always wanted to visit. From the anchorage, it’s an easy dinghy ride to the park where most guests arrive on a ferry from St Mary’s, Georgia. Yay – we made it to Georgia! I really enjoyed getting the chance to stretch my legs on the shady park trails where I saw the cutest armadillo, wild horses, and even a glimpse of a bobcat! This park has a little bit of everything: natural beauty, the ruins of the Carnegie’s summer home, a long white sand beach. And we’d almost have to be backpacking and camping to be able to cover the many miles of trails. It was the perfect final stop on our floating ICW vacation!

Exploring the ICW

June 5, 2023June 5, 2023 / FloatsOurBoat / Leave a comment

After our busy stay in the boat yard in Fort Pierce, it felt great to be back on the water and on the move! We slowly made our way up the Inter Coastal Waterway, or ICW, from Fort Pierce to Brunswick GA exploring local communities along the way and getting familiar with our boat systems and electronics as we went. The ICW is generally protected water compared to traveling in the open ocean, and to keep in the narrow channel we mostly motor. Each day, we passed several bridges and it’s always a challenge to plan ahead, researching which bridges are tall enough for us to pass safely underneath and which we have to time just right around scheduled draw bridge openings.

It’s surprisingly challenging to get used to helming a new boat! Absolutely everything works differently than on Sanitas – the throttle, the chart plotter, the autopilot, the AIS – luckily, the previous owners left all the owners manuals behind, so I spent a few hours each day studying up and figuring things out. Capt Mike mostly prefers the “Just hit all the buttons and see what happens” approach 😆 We each learn in our own way, right?

The best part about being back in the USA, is that we get to catch up with friends and family we haven’t seen in person in ages! Our first fun friend meetup was just north of Melbourne Florida where we had lunch with Paul Brickman and his family. We’ve been friends since before Mike and I were married, back when I used to spend weekends at Dewey Beach just after college – talk about ancient history! So fun to catch up over a yummy lunch at Grills Riverside, and we were so grateful to them for bringing us a few groceries.

We took our first day off since leaving Stewart with a beach day at New Smyrna Beach ⛱️ The city has a great “on-demand” bus system. We walked to a stop only about two blocks from the dinghy dock and caught a bus that basically could bring us anywhere we wanted within city limits, so of course I voted for the beach! It’s a loooooong white sand beach with cars allowed to drive and park on it – how weird is that? We walked for miles on the hard sand before haggling over the price of beach chairs and umbrella and enjoying a lovely little picnic on the beach. Now that’s more like it! Now I remember why I bought a boat! I was starting to forget with all those boat projects!

Another couple of days of putt putting along, and we made it to St Augustine.

St Augustine is a beautiful city – the oldest in America – and a $30 mooring ball at the municipal marina is the best deal in town. We explored the historic fort and lovely Flagler College, did a big grocery shopping trip, and went out for ice cream with cruising friends. We even had the chance to connect with sailing friends we last saw almost five years ago in the Bahamas! We had a lovely sushi picnic with Natalia and Andrey on SV Bella Vita under a full moon 🌙

Welcome to the Jungle – a visit to the Treehouse Bush Bar

January 7, 2023January 7, 2023 / FloatsOurBoat / 4 Comments

When Capt. Mike and I heard rumors of a secret rum shack built in the forest high above Admiralty Bay and only accessible by foot path, we knew we had to find it!

On our first visit to the Treehouse Bush Bar we joined a tour and took a bus up the steep concrete road to the trail and then walked about a half a mile to the bar. Well that wasn’t so hard! So for our next visit, we called ahead to make sure the owner Ken would be available and we organized a big group of cruisers to walk there from the main dinghy dock in Port Elizabeth, Bequia.

What a fun afternoon! I’m glad I wore running shoes, not flip flops, because island roads climb straight up! With warm weather all year round, they clearly don’t build roads to accommodate snow and ice! It took our motley crew about a half hour to trek through town and up, up, up, huffing and puffing all the way. After a break to catch our breath and gather the stragglers we turned off road and onto a lovely, shaded path. As long as you keep right at every fork in the path you can’t get lost – left turns lead to local homes and small subsistence farms.

After crossing a small bamboo bridge and following cobblestones for the final 100 meters, we got our first glimpse of the Bush Bar. It’s so cool! Ken has spent at least three years, clearing the land, carrying building supplies in on his back, and building a small wooden and bamboo building all by hand and all by himself. Small trees grow through the boards on the porch, providing a bit of shade. The view from that porch is stunning – it really does feel like you are looking down on the yachts in the Bay from a tree house up in the clouds.

Ken has a solar panel rigged up to a set of golf cart batteries that power a small cooler of beers and a speaker for music. If you’re not a beer drinker, there’s a big thermos jug of rum punch. What else do you need? A few tree stumps provide somewhat rickety chairs, and there’s a table or two for playing dominoes. Ken really deserves to be proud of the little oasis he has built here!

If you’re going to sit on a “chair” you need to have good balance!

The next time you find yourself in Bequia, I highly recommend a trek to the Bush Bar!

On the road (water) again!

April 7, 2022April 7, 2022 / FloatsOurBoat / 2 Comments

Once we got Sanitas’ engine fixed, we didn’t waste any time! Laundry, groceries, filling the water and fuel tanks, moving from the marina to the anchorage…in about 24 hours we had Sanitas ready to move. A good weather window was coming up at the beginning of April and we wanted to be ready to take advantage of it.

Take advantage of it we did! Around noon on Tuesday we raised anchor and started north. The engine purred like a kitten (or maybe more like a tiger) when we used it to navigate out of the anchorage and get ourselves on our point of sail. But as the Captain says, “We’re a sailboat!” and we didn’t use the engine for long. We had a glorious sail up the west coast of Martinique, past Diamond Rock, and anchored in St Pierre just before sunset.

We set the alarm for 4am and were underway well before sunrise. Setting off in the dark is always a bit disconcerting, but the harbor in St Pierre is wide open with few hazards, so it wasn’t dangerous. We mainly had to watch out for fishing boats and floats for lobster pots. Sunrise at sea is always glorious, and this morning we even had a beautiful bright double rainbow to welcome us back to the sea.

Conditions were perfect for a fast, salty sail. We had easterly winds pretty consistently from 90 degrees between 12 knots and 20 knots. However, we encountered a lot of variation in conditions as we traveled part of the day between the islands of Martinique and Dominica (where seas can be quite big, and winds are strong and sometimes swirl as they are funneled between the islands) and partly in the leeward protection of mountainous Dominica (where wind and waves were lighter, and we actually had to motor sail for about an hour when we had no wind at all). Capt. Mike was kept on his toes putting in reefs and shaking them out. Bringing out the headsails and furling them in. We both ended up with callouses as our soft little hands had to become accustomed to line handling again.

Seas hit us on the beam which makes for a very rocky and rolly ride. There was a period of about an hour when we experienced the worst of the wind funneling effect with consistent 29 knots and I mostly just held on for a very wild ride. Capt. Mike took a picture of me in what he calls my gecko pose. You probably can’t tell from this photo but we are heeled over about 30 degrees so I’m bracing myself with my legs and holding onto the companionway and the winch. I’m kind of huddled in the protection of our bimini because waves on the beam create a great deal of splash.

Speaking of splash! We had a huge wave hit us without warning, and Mike and I were both soaked. The cockpit was swamped – good thing we have good scupper drains – and both bilge pumps turned on, and an alarm started beeping loudly. The worst part of the chaos was that we had forgotten to close the companionway with the sliding boards. So at least a couple of liters of that huge wave ended up with in the cabin. We spilled a bit of wind off the main and once I was sure that the Captain had things under control, I went below to survey the damage. Bilge pumps seemed to be doing their job. The alarm came from the lpg propane gas sensor, so I turned the propane solinoid off at the breaker panel. Mike disconnected it back at the tank just to be sure. I mopped up the saltwater lake on the cabin sole, rolled up the rugs, and did my best to dry off the port settee. I wiped down the breaker panel and port bulkhead. It’s the first time ever that I had to wash saltwater off the INSIDE of the portlights as well as the outside. Looking back on it, we weren’t in danger, but things were pretty darn exciting for a while.

Speaking of water in the cabin, I found a new leak, or what sailors call euphemistically “saltwater incursion.” I noticed that small drops of water were landing on the cushions of the port settee. I first thought that we hadn’t closed the cowl vent well enough. Nope. Watching for a while, I observed a drop forming on the zipper of the headliner, growing, growing, and then falling onto our lovely comfy couch. Darn it! That’s a problem to investigate for another day.

All in all, we averaged over 6 knots today which is crazy fast for little Sanitas. We made it to the mooring field near Terre-de-Haut in The Saintes, Guadeloupe with plenty of time to pick up a ball before sunset. After a day and a half of very active sailing, we were much too tired to go ashore. But after taming the chaos of the boat a bit, we could enjoy a magical view of the island during dinner and then a well-deserved early bedtime.

Our diesel engine has “un mal de tete” (a headache)

March 22, 2022March 22, 2022 / FloatsOurBoat / 2 Comments

On the last day we sailed with our guests Micki and Nathan, we had a bit more adventure than they signed up for.

We sailed down the western coast of Martinique and then east from beautiful Anse d’Arlet to Sainte Anne. For most of the day, we were heading straight into the wind, using the diesel engine as well as the sails to give us a little boost in speed while cutting through big waves. All hands were safely wearing PFDs, and our guests got a lot of practice tacking. It was a bumpy and salty day for sure.

A couple of miles out from Ste Anne, with the masts of that massive anchorage in sight, we could no longer keep the staysail full of wind, so we attempted to furl it. Nope! The furling line was snagged on something so every attempt to put the sail safely away for the day resulted in loud and violent flogging instead. Capt. Mike went forward to investigate and discovered that we had an overwrap on the furling drum. It was going to be much too difficult to resolve it in the rough seas and high winds, so he decided we were better off simply dropping the staysail to the deck and fixing the furler later when we’d arrived in the protected anchorage. I took the helm to keep us pointed into the wind. And Mike, Micki, and Nathan went forward to wrestle the sail to the deck by dropping its halyard. Good thing it was the small sail!

While I was at the helm, I discovered a new and even more disturbing problem. Even with the throttle fully open, I couldn’t get enough power from the engine to keep us moving forward. And a sailboat needs to be moving at about 2 knots in order to be able to steer. We’d dropped down to less than a knot of speed-over-ground, so I really couldn’t steer at all. I got the Captain’s attention and explained as calmly as possible what I’d observed. That convinced him to stop messing around with the staysail and come back to the cockpit pronto!

Capt. Mike did a quick bit of troubleshooting and confirmed I was telling the truth. Almost no power coming from the engine. So, after an already long and difficult day, we were looking at another hour or more of sailing upwind and tacking in slow motion through the anchorage. We probably could have dropped anchor in deeper water far back in the harbor. But with guests aboard, we prioritized calmer water closer to shore, and a shorter dinghy ride to the dock when we had to offload people and luggage in our little dinghy Bug. Capt Mike took over at the helm and did an excellent job maneuvering Sanitas through the crowded anchorage, finding a spot just barely big enough for us to drop anchor between all the other boats.

We were all pretty much exhausted. Micki and Nathan helped clean up the boat from our rough passage, and then went ashore for an hour or so, giving Capt. Mike and I time to get the rest of the place organized with fewer adult bodies in the small space. Dinner was simply cartons of french vegetable soup – surprisingly good! – and we went to bed early. We’re safe and sound, and we’ll worry about that engine tomorrow.