You Can Pick the Time or the Place – but Not Both

Miss Fe – weighing anchor! Photo courtesy of S/V Cohort

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After our late spring return to the USA, we were very fortunate to have many things fall right into place. Paul’s company hired him back for seasonal work in Miami. My job also was able to take me back for 50% remote work, though a communication mishap meant I accidentally got to have the summer off, and I didn’t return to work until October. With Paul’s 10-days-on-4-days-off schedule, we had an epic summer and fall which included:

-trips “home” to both PA and TN
-a cruise ship to Cuba (it’s amazing, you should go)

Across from Havana
Cuban Cigars in Cuba
Fusterlandia in Havana

-my 10-year college reunion
-scuba diving wrecks in the Florida Keys

Barracuda on the Spiegel

Invasive Lionfish speared for dinner
Looe Key

-diving with sharks and 300-lbs goliath groupers in West Palm Beach
-spotting way too many gators and crocodiles in the Everglades
-hiking and hot springs with friends in Utah

Arches National Park

-trying lots of new Cuban and Peruvian food
-bicycling from Florida’s East Coast to West Coast
-and exploring Miami with Paul’s awesome coworkers.

Jonas and the possum
Wolf licking Lindsey’s deoderant
Paul not loving the snake

We are not taking our good fortune for granted!

Paul’s job ended two weeks earlier than expected, and by early November, we found ourselves in  Indiantown Marina with the boat in the work yard. Our goal was to depart for the Bahamas around the 1st week of December.

Major projects on the table included bottom paint, fridge expansion, and repairing damaged topside paint under our rub rail. It only took a day or two to start to overwhelm Paul with boat projects – especially with me still working a job. But I pointed out to him how this was so different from our days in Maryland, where we would watch the powerboaters go out to play while we slaved away with paint brushes. Here in Indiantown, there were over 50 other boats in the work yard, full of people just like us to banter with about problems and ideas! At last, acres of people willing to subject themselves to physical, mental and chemical abuse. Kindred spirits!

We were lucky to meet a lot of awesome people in the boat yard – mostly Canadians, as they seem to be 75% of the marina’s population. Apparently they don’t do well with cold either! After listening to so many other people’s stories of traveling the world by boat, motorcycle, train, or with kids in tow, we started to feel like we’ve done zilch in comparison! (Paul says this is a great feeling because we didn’t come this far to come this far: We came to go a whole lot further.)

Other than the mosquitoes and no-see-ums, Indiantown is not so bad. Though the food choices are limited (3 taco trucks, a BBQ joint, and a few others of similar varieties), it’s really pretty good and pretty cheap. The marina staff are all super nice and two of the guys even live on site and are always up for drinks in the evening. During the week of Thanksgiving, the marina hosted 4 nights of parties with free food and drink!

As our boat work progressed, we realized we weren’t going to be in the water “on time” and pushed our launch back a week. By the time we had launched we had:

-painted the bottom and put on new zincs
-removed the rub rail, repaired the paint under it, and reattached it (with the help of friends)
-turned our fridge into a freezer/fridge spillover, nearly doubling the storage size
-replaced an aluminum plate on the windlass
-painted/ziptied length indicators on the anchor chain
-installed the brand new Mantus anchor
-applied Cetol to most of the teak
-repainted the bowsprit and hatches
-installed a second bilge pump, which allows us to actually use the sink in the head

That list doesn’t seem big enough for 5 weeks of working every day! But believe me each of those projects involved ridiculous amounts of tedious sanding, drilling, cutting, painting, fiberglassing, or wiring that would drive anyone mad.

It was around this time that we began to realize our friends who might cross the Gulf Stream with us were not available, and we began to discuss the possibility of Paul’s parents Dave and Naomi tagging along – his parents were thrilled that, in theory, this would mean spending Christmas in the Bahamas with us. But they weren’t aware of the #1 rule of visiting someone’s boat – “You can pick the time or the place, but not both!”

Once we launched, the stress of trying to make a pre-Christmas crossing happen set in. When we tested the engine, Paul easily fixed the seized starter – but then just as easily broke a hose barb on the engine’s cooling system. Removing the broken hose barb led to the discovery of some near-tragic carbon build-up, which turned out to have an easy fix discovered only after a solid half hour of intense cursing. After paying a lot of money for overnight-Saturday-delivery for the replacement part, the wrong part arrived, causing a 4-day delay. After tripling our previous record for money spent on groceries in a single day, the larger fridge seemed to be struggling to cool, and Paul was so worried sick about it that we had several 2 a.m. fridge temperature-taking parties. Well, he did at least I mostly tried to sleep through it. One day, when we were still on the brink of possibly leaving by Christmas if the weather cooperated and we didn’t break anything else, I asked Paul how he had been feeling that day.

“Pretty terrible,” he said.

“Me too. I’ve had a constant, overwhelming feeling of dread,” I replied. I’ve felt nervous many times in my life but never had I felt this type of stomach-twisting, heavy-chested anxiety caused by the dread of potentially being at fault for cancelling Christmas on parents.

Another relevant sailing saying is “The most dangerous thing on a boat is a schedule” – though I think this is supposed to refer to dangerous weather, not dangerous levels of stress!

We had been watching a potential weather window the Sunday before Christmas, but when the forecast showed that opportunity would no longer come to fruition, a wave of relief washed over. Sure, it sucked that we wouldn’t be spending Christmas in the Bahamas or with our parents, but this also meant we didn’t have to rush to Miami in high winds to attempt staging for that Sunday.

Departing Indiantown on a good weather day!

We sat out several days of bad weather in Indiantown Marina, before departing on a nice and sunny December 22. The next week ended up being amazing! We anchored across from Stuart where our friends from Indiantown Catherine and Stefan were hanging out. We explored the market, boardwalk and downtown section of Stuart – this was a fun change of pace since we tend to get off the boat for exploration very infrequently when in the US.

Stuart Boardwalk – thanks Catherine for the photo!
Stuart Boardwalk

A few days later we anchored in West Palm Beach, where friends we’d made in the Bahamas, Susan and Jeremie, were hanging out. It was wonderful to be reunited with them! We had Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas Day drinks with them. Paul’s local extended family picked us up for the family Christmas dinner and gift exchange, which was delicious and fun.

Christmas tree in a house…
…. vs Christmas tree  on a boat

Catherine and Stefan anchored next to us a few days later.  Paul’s coworker Richie and his wife were vacationing nearby and stopped by to see the boat and have lunch. WPB is street after street of cool shops and restaurants, plus has a free dock and free trolley. It was an awesome place to explore with friends. Shout out to WPB for being our favorite spot to be stuck in Florida!

West Palm Beach Magical Sand Sculpture that is not destroyed by rain
Reunited and it feels so good!
WPB Mural

After we left WPB, we headed to Lauderdale and then on to Miami. You never really know what you are going to encounter on the ICW. We saw many manatees, mansions decorated for Christmas, jumping eagle rays, a jumping shark, and even a captain wearing a t-shirt but no pants and no underwear! Miami was pure insanity as it took our comparatively slow sailboat hours to get passed the area where literally thousands of powerboats party on the weekend.

Busy day near Port Everglades
Miami power boat party

The channel was very narrow in several areas with shallow spots, just outside the channel. We ran aground once and heard the crunch of scraping bottom against gravel, but a water taxi wake gave us enough water to power off the shallow spot immediately. We got held up at the last bridge and ended up traversing downtown Miami at night – this was fairly terrifying as there is a ton of boat traffic, confusing parts of the charts, and many shallow spots. The auto routing feature on the Navionics app was a lifesaver as far as helping us quickly find a viable route.

New Years Eve was spent at a fuel dock somewhere in Biscayne Bay – we had called twice before showing up but they didn’t mention they were closing early, so we spent the night there after checking in with the police officer and security guard. We celebrated the New Year by taking outdoor showers at the adjacent county park and cooking up steaks. We also managed to get an oil change in. Luckily we could see the 10pm fireworks perfectly from our boat because Paul was on antibiotics and didn’t feel like getting up for the midnight show.

Our final few days in Miami were spent at Dinner Key Marina in Coconut Grove. We picked up a mooring ball – for the first time, on the first try, with no yelling! (Side note: we’ve decided there is no yelling on our boat… just speaking loudly with love!) Over 4 days, we ran errands, had dinner with my summer sailing buddy, bought packing peanuts to reduce the size of our functional but power-hungry fridge, ate a lot of Sushi Maki and carefully watched the weather. In a consultation with forecaster Chris Parker, he said he had enough confidence in the weather that we could give Paul’s parents the go-ahead to start their 2-day journey from Knoxville to Miami. “It’s time!” we excitedly told them as we knew these couple weeks of waiting felt twice as long.

Paul’s parents arrived the afternoon of the 4th. They stayed in a hotel and caught the 8am marina shuttle to our boat the next morning. Unlike the nights prior to our previous crossings, I slept through the night and woke up feeling fresh! The forecasted storms had already passed, so we untied the lines and were motoring across Biscayne Bay by 8:40.

When we hit the Atlantic late morning, the West wind was in full force and we raised the sails. When the Gulf Stream current started pushing us, the boat was making 7-9 knots! The wind clocked north – you may hear advice to “never” cross the Gulf Stream with a north wind, but in reality this depends on the strength of the wind. The forecast said the wind would back up to West, but this never happened. After 4-5 hours of sailing, the wind died out and the seas had reached 5+ feet – the boom clanged while I tried to find an angle that would work, and a few of the slides on the mainsail broke. We decided keeping sails up was pointless, and we started motoring more directly East to Moselle bank. Between the current and dodging a cargo ship, we were already a bit north of our waypoint and would have to make up the ground when we were closer to the Bahamas.

We motored through the night, switching off in 4-6 hours shifts, Paul with Naomi and me with Dave.  Between experience, scopolamine, and getting a good night’s rest, this was the most comfortable stream crossing yet for me, even with not quite reaching the “flow” of steering in the waves that I had mastered the last time. The lights of Bimini were in sight before 9 PM, and we soon crossed onto the banks where it’s only 10-60 feet deep. We saw a lot of cargo ships through the night, ensuring we were staying awake. Shortly before sunrise, Paul woke me to raise the sails as we were making only 2 knots under motor. I raised the main.

“Weird, that didn’t help at all!” Paul said. “Where are we, the Bermuda triangle?!” (Actually, yes….). I raised both foresails and we sped up to 4 knots. The wind helped us almost the rest of way until the final couple hours when it shifted completely East and we couldn’t sail directly into it.

Naomi, Dave and Paul happy to be in the Berry Islands!

Thirty-four hours and 131 miles after we left the marina, we were setting our anchor next to Great Harbour Cay, Berry Islands, Bahamas! Free again at last…

The Shark Before the Storm

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Calm weather was predicted – finally! For most of our time in the Bahamas, the Atlantic had pounded the east side of the islands, and therefore the coral reefs, so we hadn’t had the scuba diving opportunities we’d been hoping for. For the next several days, no wind and no waves were expected, so we departed Green Turtle Cay and headed for Moraine Cay. We saw one boat “sailing” that looked like they were sitting still, so we kept the motor running. But even the clang-clang-clang of our motor couldn’t keep us from enjoying the Gatorade-blue water.

Moraine Cay sunset

Moraine Cay is a private island – you can rent a villa there and have it all to yourself! Or you can purchase it for less than $3 million! There is a fair weather anchorage marked on the charts on the southeast side of the island. Even with the ocean laying flat and looking like a swimming pool, our boat still rocked with the slightest motion of the sea. But we were so excited to take advantage of the calm ocean!

Calmest seas in the Bahamas!

We had a big day planned – snorkeling, fishing, and diving. We took the dinghy out to find the reef in the morning – we couldn’t believe how gorgeous it was! The best part of the reef is smack up against the island and its rocks – we explored some of the outer patches but the reef was less stunning the farther out we went. The reef near the island was dense with coral, with lots of pretty sea fans, reef fish, and hogfish in 10-30 ft of water. Paul even spotted a tuna. Visibility was near 100 feet.

Paul snorkeling Moraine Cay reef

We snorkeled for a while, and when we hopped back into the dinghy, I saw a large silhouette pass beneath us. I hung over the edge of the boat and threw my masked face into the water to see – 4 eagle rays were gracefully swimming past! Paul immediately hopped in after them with the camera.

Eagle Rays at Moraine Cay reef

To scuba dive that afternoon, we picked a spot a little further north on the reef. It was only around 20 feet deep, but there were lots of coral heads and crevices to explore. We were greeted by big angelfish. Paul went to face to face with a curious grouper. For nearly an hour we went up, down, and around the coral heads.

Fish swim among the coral heads at Moraine Cay

When we turned around to head back to the dinghy, Paul pointed to something, his hand in a closed fist. Oh crap, I thought, I cannot for the life of me remember what that means. I didn’t see anything in that direction.  I figured we were heading back, so maybe his closed fist was a navigational cue? But the thing was…. Paul kept checking over his shoulder….. and Paul NEVER checks over his shoulder when we’re diving. So nervously, I checked over MY shoulder. Still nothing. Maybe I’m paranoid…. nope, there he goes, looking around again. At this point, I knew what he was looking for, but without confirmation as long as we were under water, I could trick myself into thinking, nahhh, that can’t be it….

“Did you see the shark?” Paul asked as soon as we surfaced, at least 20 minutes later. It was far enough away that he could barely make out its shape, but even at that distance, it looked to be at least 7 feet long and was definitely NOT a nurse shark. The closed fist pointing was a danger signal – oh yeah, now I remember! I requested he hold his hand over his head like a fin to signal shark from now on! “People just don’t realize that every dive is a shark dive!” he exclaimed.

Sea fan at Moraine Cay
Sea fan
Elk horn coral

After that excitement, we took the dinghy out to some other areas for exploration. Eventually we passed into an area that I called conch city! Once we were in less than 10 feet of water, I started to jump in after them. It took us only 20 minutes to limit out. Here’s the thing about conch – they’re just too easy to catch! They poke their cute little snail-like eyes out of the shell, stare at you in fear, tuck the eyes back into their shell and start to run – at a pace of about 2 ft/minute. It just makes me feel guilty!

Private dock at Moraine Cay

The  next morning we did some fishing, but only got a little snapper that we tossed back. We jumped back in for some more amazing snorkeling. Then we took a walk on the island. Unfortunately, the end of the calm weather was coming, so we motored to Allans-Pensacola to tuck in for a few days.

Villa for rent at Moraine Cay
Putting the machete to work!
Paul’s gotten pretty decent at free diving.

On a side note, regarding food in the Bahamas: If those frozen burgers seem unusually and reasonably priced, there is a reason. The reason is that when they say it’s beef with “chicken filler,” they really mean it’s chicken filler with a little beef! They were seriously the grossest burgers I’ve ever tried to stomach. And we bought way too many of them. And with only grocery shopping about every 3 weeks, I knew we had to eat them. They are slightly more tolerable as meatballs than burgers. Just an FYI in case you ever make this mistake too.

Relaxed and not biting my nails… aren’t you proud, mom?!

We spent 5 windy, rainy, stormy days anchored at Allans-Pensacola Cay. We had wanted to explore this uninhabited island more after our short visit early in the trip.

Rainy day boredom = breadmaking

We checked out the maze of trails – the signing tree trail beginning at the “free beer” sign is still the best. We continued our hunt for remnants of the US missile tracking station with some success – we found a set of stairs and what we believe was a radar mount. You can tell it’s been hidden by the brush for a long time because the dates graffitied on it were more than 10 years old.

Matty's Track
One of the many trails – this short one lead to a rocky beach

US military ruins on Allans-Pensacola – and unfortunately the visitor trash dump
Head east from the signing tree – this marks the barely-there path to the ruins
Possibly a radar mount from the US missile tracking station

Two Bahamian guys had towed a big, motor-less powerboat onto the beach. They were camping in it while they conched and fished.  They told us there are at least 2 wells on the island. They let us take a photo with the huge sea turtle skull they found elsewhere on the island.

Sea turtle skull

We met some American powerboaters who invited us to their bonfire that was later cancelled due to rain, so when they were gone the next day, we made our rounds to invite everyone else in the anchorage to “our” bonfire. We had limited success – 3 boats didn’t answer our “ahoys” – but we did get invited aboard one boat by a couple who were only briefly in the Bahamas but the boyfriend had been living on his boat for 18 years. We had some beers and some laughs, but the guy had too much pre-dinner tequila so they didn’t make it to the bonfire.

We were thrilled that another boat did join us on the beach once the fire was lit – the owners were fellow Tennesseans who had just bought their catamaran and had a captain along to help them learn the ropes of their new boat. The captain, who was younger us than us, had worked in Andros and Florida, so she was full of good information about diving in the Bahamas and the Florida Keys. We put out the fire just as the rain was setting in, and we got soaking wet trying to unload the dinghy. My logbook notes about that night say, “Paul was happy and singing rap songs” as we scurried through the rain, so I guess we were having fun!

My other note says, “Paul said the wind howled overnight, but I slept like a baby. Luckily this is a very calm anchorage.” Well, in this case, I spoke too soon….

Watching the next storm roll over Allans-Pensacola Cay

When people express their worries about our trip, it usually involves sharks, or pirates, or the Bermuda triangle. However, my worry has been dragging anchor in the middle of the night during a storm, close to land, and having to be on deck of our metal boat with lightning striking.

After dark the next night, a thunderstorm set in. The wind suddenly picked up over 20 knots and our boat swung rapidly, putting us 180 degrees from where we’d first anchored days earlier. My eyes shot to the chartplotter. The alarm hadn’t even been triggered yet, but I knew: “We’re dragging!” I yelled to Paul. We were only a few hundred feet from the shallows and the boat was quickly picking up speed.

Instantly we sprang into action. Somehow, in the time it took Paul to start the engine, I managed to don shoes and padded gloves and got up on deck, trying to avoid contact with the metal as much as possible. In reality I have no idea if this would really help should lightning strike (Paul insists it wouldn’t do much), but I shouted to Paul to put on some shoes, when I saw that he was already at the helm – wearing only his boxers and sitting directly in a puddle of water on the metal seat.

I ran to the windlass and furiously pumped the handle back and forth, raising the anchor with record speed.  When I saw lightning apparently strike the water miles off, I honestly screamed, “I don’t want to die!”

“The faster you go the sooner we get out of this shit!” Paul yelled back. Once the anchor was up, Paul drove forward, carefully, in pitch black with only the GPS and his memories of where the rocks lay for a guide. Paul aimed for a sandy spot in very shallow water. When there was only a foot of water left under the boat, he gave the command and I dropped the anchor with gusto.  The boat drifted sideways for a nerve-wracking stretch of time until the anchor bit, and then our boat swung into line – and held! It was a miracle – this was our 3rd time anchoring here but the only time the anchor had set on the first attempt.

The “C” shape was our path for several days at anchor. The rest is our path as we popped loose, drove away from the shallows, and reset the anchor.

We looked around the anchorage and could tell by the lights and the crew on deck that some of the 8 other boats were dragging too, but there was no risk of collisions as long as the wind direction stayed relatively steady. We were setting alarms to wake up and check on things, when I saw a message from Other Paul, who was back in Florida. Florida had  just been hit with 35 knot winds and boat-damaging waterspouts, and it was heading our way.

My adrenaline was still kicking from resetting the anchor in the storm. Now my mind started racing over what we should do to prepare for dragging again. Paul insisted that I was being overly fearful and there was nothing to prepare because there wasn’t much else we could do besides what we’d already done. To begin with, it was unlikely that we’d drag again. If we did and our anchor wouldn’t reset, we’d either end up aground, hopefully on the sandy beach, or be trying to motor out of the anchorage into the spacious Sea of Abaco. We would not be tossing in our second anchor (Fortress FX- 37), which is what I was asking about, because it would be harder to raise if needed, would risk tangling the other anchor, and stood almost no chance of setting in the grassy bottom. What he said made sense to me, but I could not convince myself that doing nothing was the best plan. What about just in case? It turned into a pretty fierce argument.

Finally, under the principle of having to give a panicked person something to do, Paul told me to ready the anchor as long as I promised not to throw it in the water under any circumstances.  I debated if I should even bother, knowing he said this just to stop the argument. But thinking better safe than sorry I did it anyway, and I tried to think through what other actions I could take to prepare.

I checked the Facebook sailing groups to validate the forecast, and there were rumors that Chris Parker was predicting 40-70 knot winds (46-80 mph – yes land lubbers, Cat 1 hurricane starts at 74 mph). This was crazy! There was nothing but minor thunderstorms in the earlier forecasts (this was also months ago, so it was well before hurricane season if you were wondering). Once I saw that forecast, I knew then I wouldn’t be sleeping.

I stowed some of the sails below so they wouldn’t get shredded in high winds and to reduce windage. I closed the galley and head seacocks to prevent taking on water if the boat  were to end up sideways in the shallows (though Paul later explained that our boat is set up so this wouldn’t be a problem like it is on many other boats).

Ultimately, this was the worst night on the boat – not because of the weather, but because Paul and I will never see eye-to-eye on what happened that night. We fell from our most glorious moment of teamwork into the ugliest moments of discord. He saw me as panicked and irrational. I later admitted that I was afraid (of course!) but I felt I was logically thinking through possibilities. I saw him as careless while he felt he had thought through the facts and had the most realistic plan.

In Paul’s defense he remained calm throughout the night. Actually, I think he slept a little too well. In later discussions he said simply, “We weren’t prepared for hurricane force winds and there was nothing we could do in that anchorage that we hadn’t already done to be prepared for that”.

Paul’s take on the situation was this:

It was a sort of checkmate scenario we were staring down. Several boats and shallow waters made making our way out of the anchorage in the dark highly risky at best. Even if we could make it out, there were no other anchorages around that we could navigate into at night offering better protection. Furthermore, our boat doesn’t have the engine power to make headway against 30+, knots severely limiting our options if we did go out into the narrow Sea of Abaco. In reality, we had the anchor dug in hard and deployed with the absolute maximum amount of chain we could deploy without putting ourselves on the beach. If the winds really hit with hurricane forces and our anchor gave out, we probably would have been on the beach before we could do anything about it. I knew that on land we would be wet and miserable but safe. There would be no need for the life raft,  no weeks spent adrift at sea, no treacherous reef to tear us to pieces. Just a sandy beach and knee deep waters to wade through to get to safety. Knowing that if the worst happened we would be safe was enough for me, even if it meant we might lose the boat in the process. It was a freak storm well beyond what forecasts were calling for. We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow we were out of good options and left only with the choice to take the least bad option. 

I stayed awake until 3:30 am, and then I woke up every hour until sunrise, waiting for the winds to come.

Thankfully they never came.