Long Journey down the Intracoastal Waterway
Ten days after recovering from my appendix surgery I felt ready to head back out on our journey. Doctors orders prohibited me from heavy lifting, thus we opted to take the more sedate journey down the ICW instead of out at sea. The plan was to make our way far enough south to then cross the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. On April 15th we said goodbye to our friends at Green Cove Springs and made our way back up the Saint Johns River, stopping for the night at a small side river to anchor overnight. The next day we entered the ICW and began a long and rather tedious voyage which involved a tremendous amount of concentration to keep the bottom of the keel off the shallows. Tides, currents, bridges and an endless array of channel markers kept us well on our toes, and we would usually arrive at our destinations truly exhausted.Our first stop was at the "oldest town in America", St. Augustine. We anchored at a rather shallow anchorage in front of the Salt Run Lighthouse. A stiff breeze kept us lined up into the wind, and we were grateful our anchor held well. Tom and Laurel drove down from Green COve Springs the next day to have dinner with us and loaded us up with a care package of fresh vegetables and fruit. We had a delightful evening at a local restaurant, and then bid them farewell and dinghied back to our tiny home on the water.
Are we there yet?
Red marker, green marker, red marker, green marker... binoculars, chart, magnifying glass (to check the marker numbers on the chart) and a constant eye on our depth
gauge required every bit of our faculties while underway. Relaxing it wasn't, although some stretches of the ICW were magnificent in their beauty. Dolphins
greeted us often, as did many birds and beautiful stretches of nature.
Sometimes the ICW runs through residential areas, with breath taking villas on either side
of the river, lined with private docks and their respective boats. Most of the time my stomach was in an anxious knot, for the river is murky and the bottom cannot
be seen at all. One is at the mercy of the chart, and the chart plotter, which sometimes had us going over land, when in fact we were not. Due to currents and strong tides
some areas see constantly shifting shoals, and thus charts are often inaccurate. I just prayed a lot that we wouldn't run aground, as we had heard horror stories
from others, even about hitting uncharted rocks underwater and holing the hull. Another challenge on the ICW is the lack of anchorages, and
so we were often comitted to travelling all day before being able to stop for the night, and as such would arrive somewhere exhausted, drop the hook, have a bite
to eat and go to bed, only to repeat the same thing the next day.
Some of our highlights included catching up with our friend Irene, who had left Saint Marys after us, but was now ahead of us due to my unexpected hospitalization.
We caught up with her in Titusville, and spent a lovely day with her provisioning and trying out all the coffee shops in Titusville. We admired her more and more for
doing the same journey on her own. How she manages is beyond my comprehension! Having a toilet break or even eating a snack is out of the question if you don't
have someone else to take over the wheel for you on the ICW! There were a few places that we rather enjoyed, and occasionally treated ourselves to a "rest" day. One of these was
the small cove at Vero Beach, where we took a mooring for $12 a night which allowed us to use their showers, washing machines, and even a free little bus which goes around
the town. The weather was lovely, and we had some nice walks along the Atlantic beaches looking out to the east where we dreamed of the turquoise waters of the Bahamas.
On my birthday we hired a car to
drive to Fort Lauderdale to buy a few more things we needed for our trip. Primarily charts and cruising guides, which we found at Bluewater Books & Charts, a fantastic
place for anyone dreaming to sail off to far horizons! Two hundred dollars poorer we left with what we thought we needed - passage charts and cruising guides
to Panama and the Central Western Caribbean where we planned to spend the summer out of any hurricanes way.
Our biggest challenge on the ICW was that every night our bilge pump ran. Our packing gland leaked more and more. Poor Dave had to pull out
three hundred items out of our lazarette every night to climb down into the tight little space and adjust it. Finally the point came when there was no adjustment left
in it, so we had no choice but to stop at yet another boat yard, this time in Fort Pierce. To our dismay it turned out that the drive shaft was seriously
corroded and so no tight seal was possible. The seal in these dripping glands are created by using a certain type of flax material which are soft enough to allow
some moisture through to keep the steel shaft lubricated while turning the propeller. It should drip a few times a minute. In our case it had turned more of a steady
stream of incoming water. Not good. Our only option - haul the boat out yet AGAIN and have the shaft replaced. We swallowed our disappointment for yet another
delay and expense, and took the boat over to the hauling dock when the boat yard asked us to. Our day deteriorated even further as we tried to leave the dock in
a strong unfavorable wind and lost control over the bow of the boat trying to get out of a tight slip. Now we faced towards the land without room to turn around, and
no matter how hard Dave tried to "back and fill" the bow kept falling off, the wind setting us dangerously close to other boats and the land. A lot of shouting, and
unsolicited advice came from all directions to make matters worse. Finally we managed to turn the boat around and were now pinned to the pilings with the wind
pushing us onto them. Eventually we managed to scrape ourselves off, with only a damaged navigation light and a few more frayed nerve endings. Alas were that the end
of the saga!
On our way to the haulout lift the boat suddenly stopped moving. Have we lost our steering or our power?? NO, we are AGROUND! Oh Joy! The boat yard neglected to tell
us that they have had a recent shoal build up in front of their lift! Eventually Anam Cara floated free again, and we made it into the lift. But Murphys Law prevailed: the tide
was now too low, and the straps could not get below the hull, as the depth was only six feet, which is what we draw. So, here we are in the lift with more drama.
We can't spend the night here, even though at this point we would have gladly done so, just to put an end to the excitement, but policy has it... So we had to leave the
lift and promptly run aground AGAIN onto the shoal that still nobody had pointed out to us. Here we are about 20 feet away from the dock we are to spend the night at to
await the next high tide in the morning, unable to get to it. It took about six or seven big guys, lots of rope, lots of sweat and cursing to finally pull our boat
across the mud bank close enough to the dock to tie her up. My blood pressure two octaves higher than before, I was very pleased when everyone finally
disappeared, and Dave and I could calm down and let the adrenaline slowly dissipate in our bloodstream.
Ten days on the hard
"What is the best day you have had so far?" Dave asked me one night while we were frying in the heat of the boat in the dusty boat yard, climbing up and down a precarious ladder to get on and off the boat. "The day I woke up from the surgery" I replied jokingly, or... was I??? I realized that it was actually true! The best day of our cruising career to date had indeed been the morning after the surgery.
This insight was a horrendous shock to me, which caused me to pause and to analyze.
In spite of all the trials we had encountered along the way, surely this seemed a bit extreme. I realized then that it must have been the drugs they gave me, which I admit put
put me a state of euphoria. Combine that with the joy of being alive after the misery of an acute appendicitis offshore, it suddenly made me realize why people crave these drugs! Now I have
never even drunk alcohol in my life, and am surely not likely to fall into any drug habit, but it made my hospitalization seem an incredible experience! We laughed at that, especially
since one of my biggest fears in life had always been to end up in a hospital as a patient!
During the same time, I found in one of our cupboards an underwater camera I didn't recognize. Asking Dave about it, he said that he had bought it on an airplane once in the "mistaken belief that cruising was about paradisical anchorages and snorkeling on aquarium like tropical reefs". We laughed about that one too, because our sixth month anniversary had yet to come which supposedly would end our trial time with Neptune, the Judge of whether or not we were worthy and capable of becoming true sailors!
What was it like this time on the hard? Like I said, hot, muggy, dusty, loud, and with a train roaring through our cabin thrice a night (we were right next to the railroad tracks!). The best thing- we took the opportunity to redo our non-skid paint on our decks. This was an intense five day job, which we thought came out very well, and made our boat look much much better, not to mention safer to walk around when wet. A most unfortunate incident during the process was the bath my laptop computer received while Dave was powerwashing the decks. It leaked right through the butterfly hatch onto my beloved computer, which gave up its ghost shortly afterward. I had specifically left it in that spot thinking nothing could happen to it there! I could have cried! This was my computer that would keep us in touch with the world, and make me a famous author one day, when I got around to all the writing I was planning to do!
The little highlights of our stay were the two rickety bikes we could use while there, that took us to a nice pastry shop in town, as well as to the Farmers market and once to the beach for a swim! The smallest delights are always the best ones!
During this time we also began receiving the bills for the appendix surgery. Ouch! Twenty-seven thousand dollars for one night in hospital tainted the wonderful experience I had there! Luckily I had insurance. Unluckily I had increased the deductible to 10,000 before we set off cruising to have a lower monthly premium. So the bill definitely hurt our cruising budget, and I struggled with accepting that two foam pads that they wrapped around my calves could cost $77 - but that is health care at its best and worst. While the care is excellent, the cost is, no other way to say it. outrageous. Dave kept trying to put it into perspective for me: "but you are alive!", and yes indeed, looking at it that way...
We were tremendously relieved when we finally were splashed into the water again, this time at HIGH tide, thank you very much! Many thousands of dollars poorer we continued on our journey south!
Final stretch on ICW
Our friend Irene had tried and failed to cross the Gulf Stream from Fort Pierce. The strong current and the adverse winds took her nineteen hours of making a few miles headway, a distance which she
retraced in less than two hours once she finally gave up! The Gulf Stream flows up to three knots, and is one of the main issues when crossing from Florida to the Bahamas.
As such we didn't even try to leave from Fort Pierce, but instead, followed her advice, and spent a few more days motoring down the ICW to Lake Worth. On our
last day on the ICW we ran aground in a bend in the river where three rivers merge. While aground and trying to kedge ourselves off with an anchor, an
unsuspecting gentleman and his daughters came by on a water scooter. He wanted to engage us in conversation about our windgenerator, as he was interested
in alternative energy. Unfortunately this was not the moment we really felt like discussing the merits of our wonderful wind generator, so we explained to him
our situation, and instead convinced him to help us throw out a kedge anchor. By now, though, we were thoroughly in the mud, and so Boat-Tow US came to the
rescue and towed us off in no time! We were most grateful, as we still had quite a few bridges to maneuver before making it to Lake Worth, and we did
want to arrive before dark!
We arrived just at sunset after a long day, and caught up with Irene, who was getting ready to make her crossing to the Bahamas. She left on a perfect night, with a full moon guiding her way, and we wished we were ready to go with her, but we still had a bit of provisioning and preparation to do. Finally the day arrived when the dinghy was strapped to the deck, all lockers were full of food and we had no more excuses! We were about to leave when a thunderstorm threatened, the sky turning ominously black, so we stayed one more night so as not to get caught in a storm on the ICW at dusk.
Crossing the Gulf Stream
May 12th, 2009. We had strategically anchored near the entrance to of the West Palm Beach Inlet, and rested up, relaxed and swam a bit, ready for a night crossing. We calculated the angle we would have to sail so that the current would set us right onto the Little Bahama Banks just north of Memory Rock. The weather prediction seemed okay too. So at sunset we set sail in a light southeasterly breeze. As night fell, we started to see lightning all around us. Lots of it. We pressed on. The sea was sedate, the wind fairly calm. I was excited to finally be at sea. We were finally on our way to foreign ports, to clear blue water, to the cruising life we had so long dreamed of! We took turns keeping watch, checking for lights, checking our radar. One of us slept curled up in the cockpit, the other kept a lookout. Suddenly Dave shook me awake: "What do you think this is?" he asked pointing at the radar screen. A big blob of yellow stared at me across the screen. Moving towards us alarmingly fast. "A squall??" I wondered. "Yep, that's what I think too". This being the first encounter for us, we decided to alter course to avoid it. We could see the lightning coming out of it, and the blackness that made the moon disappear. Then another blob appeared on the radar screen, and yet another. All night, it turned out, we zigzagged around them. By dawn we were surrounded by them, and there was no escape. Within minutes a black wall appeared, and seconds later the world changed to Armagedon. Fifty or more knots of wind, torrential rain, deafening thunder and lightning bolts all around us and dark dark dark, like the perfect storm. I headed the boat into the wind, as it heeled alarmingly in the wind, and then we just waited. Fifteen minutes later - sunshine, calm seas, and a smile on our faces. We had survived our first squall. Except our radar. It stopped scanning. We were too tired to really worry too much, and it was daylight, a and we were almost on the Bahamian Banks. Even though land was still far off, we could then see the bottom, which somehow makes everything seem better...