Crusted in salt. When you take spray over the bow, the water evaporates and leaves a layer of salt crystals behind. There is enough salt on the boat to last us for a year of cooking.
On Tuesday, we had been watching the weather and original indications were to wait to Thursday to leave. Sometimes I think the weather people never look out the window the way they change their minds and miss forecasts. Their original forecast showed it being fairly rough out on Wednesday night but they later revised that to forecast east winds around 10 shifting to southeast late Thursday. We knew we didn’t want to wait for the southeast wind. For you who are geographically challenged, draw a line from Panama City to Tampa bay. The only direction a sailboat can’t sail is directly into the wind.
We were not planning to leave on Wednesday, so we had to “jump to,” as Capt Bob Bligh ordered, and get ready to go to sea. Instead of leaving at the crack of dawn we were clearing the sea buoy at about 11:00. We turn south to head to Cape San Blas. It was a beautiful sail, sails full, the gentle motion rising and falling on the waves. We rounded the corner at the Cape and adjusted our course to 120 degrees. As they say on the info commercials, But Wait!We can’t get to 120 degrees. About the best we can do is 148 degrees. For those of you who had problems in trig the sine of 28 degrees times the length of sail is 78 miles off course. That meant we were going to miss our destination a little. Hey, but that is not the type of things a true sailor worries a lot about. If you do, you go buy a trawler.
By about sundown the wind was beginning to die so we roll up the sails and take the opportunity to move east under motor. We correct the course to about 110 degrees, which will allow us to work our way back without loosing much forward headway. I can down load weather information from satellites on the boat (it is just wonderful to be a Geek). The SOB’s at the weather bureaus have changed the forecast. They are now calling for a “brief” period of 15 knot winds out of the east after midnight. Well I can tell you Mr. Webster doesn’t agree with their definition of brief. Shortly after midnight, the winds start to build and shift southeast. We continue to motor with the winds on our nose. Around 4:00 we are pounding into the waves. The bow raise straight up in the air and does a 180 back into the sea. It is not Olympic quality dive, water goes everywhere. You know that is a great exaggeration. The boat was taking a pounding and the winds were “dropping” to 15. Like the tom cat making love to the skunk there is just so much of that you can enjoy. We roll out a handkerchief main and jib around 5:00. Probably about 30% of the sail and settle in on a course of 170 degrees. Well if we are going to miss on our course of 148, going to 170 just adds a few more miles of error. We settle down some but are still taking a pretty good beating. I did see it get down to 15 about once or twice an hour. According to the sea buoy when I checked it, we are in 4 foot seas and labeled as “Steep”. I think they were more like 5 foot and very steep. Around mid morning, Cuba is looking like a good destination if we don’t do something so we tack thru to try to gain a little more east direction. If you were following us on spot it doesn’t actually record our 170 course change and how far to the west we had gotten but you can see about one half of the jog. After a few hours, the instruments are telling us we aren’t getting any closer to Clearwater. And, “Brief” time of strong winds it is 12 hours later and we have yet to see a steady 15, it is more like 18 to 20. Around lunchtime, we tack back thru the wind to head more south. The good news is according to the instruments we are only 30 hours out of Clearwater. The real good news is we are beginning to see 15 knot winds and a couple of hours later we are down to 12 with full sails out again.
The forecast has changed again with a wind shift to take place putting the wind out of the northeast. Now that is good news; we should be able to round up into Clearwater. The winds are beginning to die and the iron jib (the engine) is up to about 2800 rpm when we pull in the sails. After a while, the winds do turn to the northeast and we roll out the jib that gets up to 7.2 knots. Our destination is in sight somewhere out there with an arrival time at 9:00 p.m.
We have another beautiful sunset. Carole has finally after all of these years seen the “Green Flash”. For the past 20 years, she has thought I was lying to her.
We are buddy boating with the Caffery’s, who were leaving out of Apalachicola. They had a shorter trip and better sailing angle because of their more eastward condition. We didn’t want them to be concerned and were not able to make radio contact. We could hear the BoatUS site in Tampa and asked that they relay a message. But they were not able to contact them when they made the call. Later they heard them calling us and contacted them with our message that we would be in late. We were impressed that they would take the time and help us relay messages.
I guess some people never learn. How many more times is it going to take before I don’t come into a strange harbor in the middle of the night. Do you know how many lights on shore are red and green? We make it under the bridge with some trouble but then the fun starts. There are two turns we have to make off the channel going in. While we are in between the red and green we run aground not just once but three times. We finally find the channel against the red markers , apparently there is a shoal on the green side. It would have been a funny sight to see from the air. Because of the current, we are going sideways up the channel with our nose almost touching the markers. We probably looked like the Three Stooges with Michael and Carole trying to find the marks with a flashlight and yelling over the sound of the engine “The mark is right there, can’t you see it”. Thanks to the Caffery’s and several phone calls, we find the channel and yacht club. Damn that was one good Budweiser after the dock lines were out and we secured to the dock.
I don’t know if I should spend the rest of the day trying to get rid of the salt and make the boat “Yachtie” or wear it as badge of courage. It is kind of like the football player with a clean uniform at the end of the game, he didn’t get to play. Only the muddy guys had the courage to go into battle.
Crew Log Supplemental (Michael)
Being awoken at 8:00 to “Let’s Go!” wasn’t the way I had planned to start the day but seemed as good of a start as any. By 10:00 we were under way and enjoying a beautiful if not brisk morning. My enjoyment of the weather conditions quickly faded as we cleared Cape San Blas and the seas kicked up a rough wave. Being a huge fan of playing with the RADAR, I was highly disappointed to see that we were alas alone on the high seas. With the waves far to rough to read, I resigned myself to relax and enjoy the scenery. There is only so much open water you care to look at so sunset and nightfall was a welcome change. I was sent below around 10:00PM to get some sleep. Sleep I did not, but rather catnapped between being tossed about. I woke up around 2:00AM when I literally was lifted off the berth by a giant wave. The forward cabin is not the place to be in a 5-foot wave. I came on watch at 4:00 in very rough seas and high winds and stayed on deck throughout the rest of the day. After numerous changes to the winds and tactical course changes, we were all so beaten down that we just wanted to arrive as soon as possible so we set a course for Clearwater and motored.
Again arriving in the dark, at least this time we had a better idea of how to handle it. I’m sure it was still quite a sight to see me on the bow with the flashlight trying to point out the channel markers which apparently didn’t help a whole lot since we still ran aground three times (to the captain’s credit he was in the channel when it happened, all three times). Thankfully, docking maneuvers were very easy and we were connected to shore power within 30 minutes of arriving. Once settled I realized how very nice it felt to not be bouncing up and down and rolling left to right. Glad to say that I experienced the trip and survived the experience, though not sure that I will jump at the chance to experience those sea conditions any time soon.
Crew Log Supplemental (Carole)
Notes from the galley wench-Capt Bligh wants me to add my impressions. I don’t think that sort of language should be written down so I will just say that we made it and after 12 hours almost, really, of sleep I am feeling great. Working in the galley under those conditions is challenging but I learned a lot from it. Being uptop in the middle of the night by yourself wasn’t as frighting as I thought it would be. The boat handled everything great and except for never being able to rest , we did too. So glad Michael was with us. Helen and John were without an extra hand for watch, so I know it was hard for them, too. It is all about the stories you have to tell, so of course we have some more tall tales! Miss all you guys.
