It has been an eventful few days. We said good-bye to Tiffany’s parents on Saturday morning and headed out the Boca Raton Inlet. There were many recreational boaters and some shallow shoals to contend with, but soon we were out of the channel. The winds were from the north (they are typically from the south this time of year—the same direction that we are trying to head), so we thought we might be able to cover some ground early on using our nice spinnaker.

Exiting Boca Raton Inlet

Attempting to Set the Spinnaker

We settled for using the mainsail and genoa and headed offshore. The seas were not too intense, but having been on land for a few weeks, the motion was enough to make us all a little queasy. Moreover, the southerly current pushing against us from the Gulf Stream was amazingly strong. Wes kept track of our average speed early on in his watch and informed us that at the rate we were going (around 0.5 knots per hour), we would reach Miami in a week or so! This was obviously frustrating, but we persisted at adjusting the sails to maximize our speed and ended up plugging along at two to three knots for the remainder of the day.

I took my first solo watch Saturday evening. I had requested my own so that I could experience the independence and freedom of it, and let’s just say that my expectations were met. I felt pretty confident at the helm after reading It’s Your Boat, Too by Suzanne Giesemann, a former Navy commander. As you might guess from the title, the thesis of her book is that women should take a more proactive, participatory role if they want to fully enjoy boating as their partners do. For me, this reinforced what we had already planned in terms of my role on Pura Vida, but I learned quite a bit from the section on the basics of sailing—navigation, communications, weather, boat handling and docking, etc. and felt that I was up for the challenge of taking the helm (with Dallas nearby of course).

 Speaking of challenges, Suzanne posits in her book that women often are spectators on their boats because they are fearful of looking like they don’t know what they are doing. She points out that men start out as beginners, too, but their excitement about the challenge and adventure involved in boating overcomes their desire to save face. In my case, I have learned to love a good challenge, and moreover, to laugh at myself in the process. It’s a good thing, too, because I’ve been making a lot of mistakes! My first real mistake at the helm didn’t happen until midday on Sunday, when every man and his dog were fishing off the coast of Miami. Apparently I got too close to one of the small fishing boats for the captain’s liking, leading him to throw an empty can of beer in my direction. Oops!

 

By monitoring channel 16 on the VHF radio (as the Coast Guard requires), we learned that there were many utterances of “oops” (or perhaps another word) at sea on Sunday. There was a sailboat that hit a fishing boat pretty close to us such that we could hear the initial “may-day” call to the Coast Guard. There was also a woman who was very upset about her dog going overboard, but the Coast Guard put out an alert, and the dog was found soon after. Wes and Tiffany heard another distress call in which a sailboat was dismasted during a collision with a motor vessel and the two remained entangled waiting for the Coast Guard to arrive. The most serious alerts from the Coast Guard were about a 17 foot fishing boat that was overdue at its destination. We later learned that the boat had been found, but the man and child that had been on it had not. Needless to say, the Coast Guard was busy over the weekend, and we were reminded of how important it is to sail safely. In fact, I am pleased to report that Dallas is wearing his inflatable life jacket at the helm as we speak.

 

The only time that I felt nervous while at the helm (and woke Dallas up repeatedly) was on Sunday night when we were tacking through the shallow reefs at the top of the Florida Keys. For those of you who are not sailors, tacking is necessary when you are trying to go in the direction from which the wind is coming, because it is not possible to sail directly into the wind. Tacking involves sailing a zig-zag course in which you sail at an angle to the wind, switch directions, and sail from the opposite angle (see diagram below). Naturally, it is slower than sailing in a straight line, and when you also take into account the contrary current pushing us backwards, it no surprise that we fell short of our goal to arrive in Key West by Monday night. The good news, however, is that rather than sailing all night through the cold front with 20-30 knots of wind on the nose and 6-8 foot seas, we enjoyed an evening at anchor in Key Largo (and only got up once in the night to make sure the anchor wasn’t dragging!).   

 

Tacking 101

 

For the sailors out there, we have a 25kg Rocna anchor that we’e been very pleased with so far, as it’s always set the first time and held, but that wasn’t the case in Key Largo. Our first three attempts to set the anchor were in a grassy area near the entrance of the Key Largo channel that all resulted in the anchor filling with grass and soft sand and dragging along the bottom. After three unsuccessful attempts we considered trying our CQR, but decided instead to move to less grassy area where there were a number of other boats anchored. This time the anchor set on the first attempt and held as we swung with the backing winds from the front.

 

A good night’s sleep was just what the doctor ordered, and we woke up raring to get back out there. We decided to stay inside the reefs where the seas are calmer and there is less current. Initially, the seas created a condition of, as Dave on www.maxingout.com put it, “no-bruising cruising”. We took full advantage of it— Wes did some morning exercises while at the helm, Tiffany caught up on her reading, I cleaned and started blogging, and Dallas started in on his continual to-do list of repairs, only to discover 45 gallons of sea water in the forward port bilge! While this sounds like a serious problem, it took no more than a couple of hours for Wes and Dallas to empty the bilge and for Dallas, with the help of his tool-getting assistant (moi) standing by on the family-band radio, to reconnect the bilge pump hose that had become dislodged, plug up the hole from the broken holding tank vent through-hull, solder new bilge pump connections, and check to make sure the switch and pump were working.

 

Down in the Bilge

 

 

Now the winds have picked up, and we are getting some violent motion created by the pounding of the bridgedeck of the boat against the waves as we beat into the wind (i.e., sail as close to the wind as possible). To me, it’s as if the boat is doing belly flops! However, there has been no “feeding the fish” on this, our second multi-day nearshore/offshore run. It seems that we are in fact getting our sea-legs.

Well, that’s all for now. Stay tuned for more about our adaptation to sea life, including taking showers using a bug-sprayer!

We awoke to a cool, beautiful morning at anchor between Key Largo and Rodriguez Key.  Soon after we left Boca Raton, the wind shifted to the south and we’ve been fighting both the wind and the gulfstream current for the last couple days.  The going was getting pretty slow off of Key Largo and a cold front was forecasted to come through later in the day so we came in to anchor and let the front blow through.  We now have a cool NNW wind that should allow us to sail the rest of the way to Key West.  We’ll post a blog with details of the trip and pics once we get to Key West…

Not a lot to report from yesterday.  The wind was blowing strong out of the south again so we motored down the ditch from north of the Jupiter Inlet to Lake Boca Raton, where we had another beautiful night at anchor.  There were about 15 bridges we had to pass through on the way.  One or two of them were tall enough for us to pass under, but the other ones were opening bridges with bridge tenders that monitor VHF channel 09.  About half would open on demand and the other half opended on a set schedule (every 30 minutes), so we spent a couple hours of the day just standing by waiting for the next scheduled bridge opening.  The bridge tenders had a wide variety of personalities, some gruff and seemingly annoyed at times, but all were very professional, and Tom, at the George Bush bridge was very friendly and funny as well.

We saw more mansions on the water and megayachts than we can count in the Lake Worth / Palm Beach area.  There doesn’t seem to be any end to it in the south Florida area — just mile after mile of mansion on the water and megayachts.

We tossed the bikes in the dinghy and Lauren and I went ashore last night to make a grocery run.  The bikes are great.  We still have my Blackberry, so we know right were the grocery store is for now.  Things will be more interesting once we get to a foriegn country.

The wind is weak out of the north this morning and we’re talking over the various options for heading south today…

The big news is that the autopilot and rigging repairs are done and we’ve left Ft. Pierce.  We’ve had lots of e-mails asking if we’ve left yet and finally the answer is yes.  The e-mails are great; we’ve been surprised at how many people we’ve heard from already.  The autopilot installation was more involved than we’d expected but it was finished on Sunday and we’ll try to sea trial it Friday offshore.  The rigging work completed as expected on Sunday but we decided to replace one more rigging item and couldn’t get the work done until Thursday morning.  The good news for us was that in order to expedite the work we moved from Ft. Pierce down to Manatee Pocket in Port Solerno, near Stuart.  Manatee Pocket is only a mile and a half from the Mack Sails so it was easier for them to get over and finish the work and we got to move 25 miles or so south, so we were happy.  Because the rigging wasn’t complete and the wind was on the nose, we motored down to Manatee Pocket Wednesday afternoon and spent the night at anchor.  It was actually our first night at anchor on the boat and it went surprisingly well.  Our bridle, windlass, and anchor all did great, though we’ve added a long-handled deck brush to the anchor gear to clean off the mud when we’re anchored in a muddy bottom.  There isn’t a lot of water depth in the pocket and the first place we tried anchoring left us aground in the mud instead of swinging on the anchor so we moved right at sunset to a different spot with a little more water.

On the Hook at Manatee Pocket

This morning we got up early moved the boat over to a day dock, Rich & Jay from Mack Sails finished up installing the new rigging and tuning it up, then I spent a couple of hours up the stick sewing on spreader boots (leather wraps that keep the sail from being torn on the rig), putting rigging tape in some other areas the sail might chafe, re-installing the radar reflector, and doing a couple other things to finish up the rigging repairs.  Once we’d finished things up there we headed for the fuel dock to top the tanks off and then into a protected area in the pocket where we raised the jib back onto the roller furler and stowed it for the move south.  We hoisted the anchor around 8:30 am and finally motored out of Manatee pocket around three in the afternoon.  The wind has been pretty stiff and out of the south, the direction we’re trying to sail, so we motored down the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW, or “the ditch”) until about a half hour before sunset when we anchored in a nice spot just north of the Jupiter inlet. 

Pura Vida anchored by the "Ditch"

Tiffany’s parents are visiting for a week or so (Tiff will post a blog with more details later) and her Mom Brenda, who is an avid boater, took the wheel for a lot of the way down.  Her Dad Mike has been pitching in with repairs, helping with the anchoring, and treating us to some fun meals out.  During the motor south I worked on some small boat items and then laid in the trampoline with Lauren, who’d just put a four-flour bread into the oven.  After sunset she and Tiff treated us to a dinner of fresh warm bread, olive oil and rosemary dipping sauce, farfalle arrabiata pasta, and cabernet in the cockpit under clear night skies.

Wes, Tiffany, Brenda, and Mike

Tomorrow (Friday), we’re planning to head offshore if the winds seem reasonable and try to make Ft. Lauderdale or Miami to get Mike & Brenda back to land in time to make their Sunday flight home.  We’ve just been in the ditch the last couple of days, but it feels great to be moving again.

As I thought about what to include in this blog, I recalled a saying that was on the psychiatrist’s door at the community mental health center where I used to work: “Blessed are the flexible, for they shall never be bent out of shape.” Well, I think that cruisers as a group must be pretty flexible, having always to wait for a “weather window” before heading to their next destination. Of course, their lifestyle lends to this, as most of them are retired and have the freedom to create their own schedule. Furthermore, they typically spend their days in exotic locales that appeal to them. Unfortunately, neither of these really pertains to us at this time.

Granted, we are extremely fortunate in that we do not have anywhere we need to be on a daily basis, but as we have noted in previous blogs, we are under pretty significant time constraints as we consider big-picture weather windows (i.e., hurricane seasons). In accordance with these, we had planned to be in Mexico by now, but as a result of the unplanned repairs and near-constant 20 knot winds, we are spending our 12th day in Fort Pierce, Florida (or as Tiffany would say, Fort Prison).

Fort Pierce is not exactly exotic. It has its merits in terms of resources for marine repairs and supplies, but in terms of culture and recreation, it does not have much to offer, at least within a five mile radius of the marina. Dallas and I were able to find an area of town that seemed to have a Caribbean influence with its brightly colored buildings and unique architecture, but I was later told that this neighborhood was a haven for drug dealers. Oops.

Anyway, I think it is fair to say that our flexibility has been tested over this last week. Tiffany, for one, has been quite a trooper. I know that it was not at all easy for her to cope with the fact that we were likely going to miss seeing her parents in Cancun, but she handled it gracefully. Her positive attitude was later rewarded when her parents changed their travel plans in order to meet us here in Florida. They are arriving tomorrow and will join us on our trip down to Key West. (Tiff would like readers to know that changing their travel plans was not a simple matter, as travel insurance will only allow you to make a change to your reservation in the event that someone dies or weather is impassable. Just FYI.)

Dallas has been coping in his usual way, remaining focused on what needs to be done in order for us to leave. (As a result, we should be ready to leave on Monday evening, just in time to catch the weather window created by the front that just passed through.) I tend to cope in a very different way, getting a little emotional at first, but processing it very quickly and moving on with the help of some sort of distraction. When it comes right down to it, I think that all of us require some kind of diversion to boost our spirits.

One such diversion has come in the form of our new single lens reflection (SLR) camera. It is a definitely more advanced than our prior point-and-shoots and should serve us well during the course of our travels. Wes, Tiff, and I fancy ourselves amateur photographers now, using the abundant wildlife around the marina as our primary subject matter. Here is a sample of our work thus far:

Pelican Statuette by Wes

Descending on Prey by Wes

Manatee Tail by Tiffany

Other diversions include Wes’ ethernet connection and board designs, Tiff’s long chats on the phone (at least we still have cell phone reception!), and some new foods from the galley such as homemade tortillas and other new concoctions that I made using the canned, vegetarian food that Dallas and Wes’ mother so generously donated. Hopefully this unexpected down time is serving to prepare us for the long passage across the South Pacific!       

I also want to mention that Tiffany and I took advantage of the opportunity to attend an event held at a local marina by a couple that just finished a six-year circumnavigation. There were several people there, but eventually we had the opportunity to get some face time with Annette and Edmund from sailing vessel Doodlebug. Annette was quite a charismatic, red-headed go-getter, and apparently it was she who initiated their trip around the world. She provided us with numerous practical suggestions on topics ranging from health and safety (e.g., don’t forget to brush your teeth and scrub your feet) to interpersonal interactions (e.g., don’t leave the peripheral vision of your men in Muslim countries, take inexpensive items such as beach towels and earrings to barter with the locals in the South Pacific). Annette especially piqued our enthusiasm for finding simple ways to make the lives of the islanders a little better. For example, she shared that a young boy had very grudgingly approached her to ask if she could give him a pencil, of all things. Needless to say, Pura Vida will be well stocked with pencils.

All in all, not a terrible 12 days, but we are hoping this will be the last blog from Fort Pierce!