Greetings from St. Augustine, FL! Yes we are back in the US trying to remember we have cell phones, traffic, dirty sea water we can’t use, radio stations, and mass communication! It’s been an adjustment but we are glad to be “home”… for the most part.
We left Compass Cay April 24; our journey is now taking us back to the US where we will wait out hurricane season. Our plan is to spend the summer in Annapolis, MD working and doing a few more things to the boat. We first head north to Wardrick Wells where we spent my birthday. Jared, Ruthie, Ben and Jamie decorated the boat with homemade streamers, cooked dinner and made a cake while we were out with Jimmy and Renee and their daughter Carman having drinks and pupu’s at the local Tiki bar. When we went back to the dinghies we found a huge, Happy Birthday Lisa, dug out in the sand… it was wonderful! A good time was had by all and once again I enjoyed the feeling of being so well loved by family and friends.
The next day we all got up early to head to New Providence. I have to admit we leave about an hour behind the other two boats. At some point during the day we will pass them, leaving them behind to be only a speck on the horizon. Catamarans are much faster than monohulls. We anchored on the west end of New Providence in a lovely bay surrounded by homes, docks and trees. I could not take in enough of the beautiful water knowing that all too soon we would no longer be enjoying this pristine ocean, no longer able to just jump in when the urge hit, no longer able to wash dishes in sea water and no longer able to see the bottom… all things that are part of our daily lives and routine.
We have a favorable south east winds the day we leave… we finally drag out the spinnaker, a sail we have not yet used. This is a big colorful sail that hangs over the bow of the boat and is used in downwind conditions. We reread our sailing book to refresh our memories and hook the sail up. Poof! She opens up out of her sock and we pick up speed! We love this sail! It’s so colorful and big… we make some sheet adjustments and sit back and relax for hours!
Willow, Diapensia (Jimmy's boat) and SongBird are now so far apart that we can no longer use our handheld VHF to communicate. We turn on the Big Daddy of VHF’s (OK this is just the VHF wired into the boat). We make plans to anchor on the bank where we will wait for the other two boats to catch up. We find a sandy spot where the three boats will comfortably fit. We avoid sea grass, as the holding is not as good as sand. While we are waiting for the other boats a US Coast Guard helicopter shows up and starts circling us… they hail us on our radio wanting to know if we have seen an upside boat with a red hull… they are searching for a boat that has sunk and turned over. Once again we are thankful for our seaworthy boat.
Willow and Diapensia show up, anchor, and head over to our boat for dinner. Jimmy ties a line from his boat to our boat so they can pull themselves over… this allowed him not to have to put his motor on his dinghy (the current was too strong to row over). Some of us girls are sitting outside, enjoying the fresh breeze and stars when we started to think that maybe Willow had moved a little. We asked some of the others to take a look, no one thinks she has really moved. We settle back into our pleasant environment and again relax. Once again, we check on the other boats, we are now convinced that Willow is leaving us all behind and with no crew! We all help Willow’s captain and crew into the dinghy with pots, dishes and cutlery and send them off to chase their rouge boat, but no one thought to offer a flashlight! Fifteen minutes later they call on the VHF letting us know they are all safe and sound and that Willow had dragged almost half a mile. They think they will stay put and get a head start in the morning… sure…
With some difficulty we get Diapensia’s captain and crew in their dinghy (the current and tide was making for some wild water) and on to their boat. We clean up a little and head to bed. I had noticed that Willow had decided to re-anchor near us, so once again we were all snug in our little group. Ten minutes later Jared calls us and says he thinks we are dragging anchor, I of course think he is just trying to play a trick on us since he moved Willow backup with all of us. He finally convinces me to go outside and take a look. Sure enough, we are no longer near Willow and Diapensia! We wonder why our anchor alarm is not working and if we had reset it. The anchor has reset itself, but will it hold? All of us are now wondering if we should just way our anchors and drift… we are after all headed in the right direction and there is nothing in site. I can't bring myself to want to do this. It is nerve racking, no one gets much sleep that night as we are all jumping up checking our anchors. We ended up dragging three times almost ¼ of a mile before we finally settle in. The thing about dragging your anchor is you don’t feel it. The conditions are such that the water is rough, since we are a light boat we easily bounce and move around so there is already a lot of movement going on. It's unnerving. Morning comes and we all head North West to Bimini.
We plan on spending a day in Bimini. We hope to do one last snorkel trip and find conch for dinner. We also hope to use up the last of our Bahamian money at the grocery store before we leave. I don’t feel so well so Carey and I pass on the water activities. We do head to town to see what we can find at the market. The stores are small and really don’t have much in them. You might describe them as an under stocked gas station market, and at half the size. There are three of these markets on Bimini, all on the same road about a mile in length.
The conch hunt is a success!! Nine conchs will be joining us for dinner. We make conch salad and conch fritters… truly a conch feast! The nine of us cram around SongBird’s table and dig in. Hands are flying everywhere, no one is really sure what plate they are using as we are all having to share since there is not enough room for everyone and everything. This is our last night in the Bahamas, we are all a bit sad.
Early Sunday morning we leave heading for Palm Beach, FL. We will be crossing the Gulf Stream so have to plan our course accordingly. The stream runs about 2.5 knots so will push us north. Again we set out the spinnaker and make 8 knots in 12 knots of wind. We end up being too conservative and come out of the stream too soon. We get into Palm Beach around dinner time. Willow and Diapensia show up a couple of hours later and with problems.
Willow has broken two motor mounts. The next day they get towed into the marina and wait for a welder. We stay in Palm Beach for almost a week, waiting for repairs, weather and the re-supplying of the boats. Palm Beach is your typical coastal city full of high rises and boats. The marina has the least expensive laundry we have seen yet… a dollar for a wash and a dollar for a dry. This beats $10 a load in Staniel where someone else does your laundry for you, there are no laundry facilities where you can do your own washing.
Our time in Palm Beach does not start off well. First thing in the morning we notice Diapensia has been boarded by the harbor patrol. Hmmm... not a good sign, but we can't imagine what they are looking for. Generally it's drugs but why Diapensia? We quickly head out in the dinghy to check in at the customs office. On our way back we notice Willow has now been boarded by harbor patrol. We know we must be next since we are all traveling together. Jared dinghys over to tell us they are looking for drugs. They had a tip two boats came in late at night that are smugglers. None of us are happy about the searches. We know we all look rough around the edges, after all we are cruisers, living a life of freedom and unconventionalism. Hair is long and wild, skin is darkly tanned, beards are scruffy and our clothes are rather well used. Jared returns to Willow and finally gets one of the rude harbor patrol guys to listen to his question: why are you searching us since we are a group of 3 boats? They don't believe this long haired, rough around the edges guy, so gruffly ask, where is the other boat you are traveling with? Jared points to us, anchored next to him. Who is that, he demands! My mom... They quickly end making a mess in Willow and leave. They had completely torn apart Diapensia and Willow, and were quite rude as well... based on a random, vague tip. We are all happy to see them leave.
May 9th Willow and Diapensia pull anchor around 9pm headed straight for Charleston. This will be approximately a 52 hour trip. We choose to stay the night in Palm Beach and get up early the next day to leave. We will not be able to make a 52 hour trip with just the two of us; sleeping 2 to 3 hours at a time for more than 2 days is not something we would like to do… anyway we don’t have to be north of Cape Hatteras until June 1st. We do hope to meet up with Willow somewhere along the way.
We leave Palm Beach the next morning at seven. We decide we will go ahead and travel a 24 hour trip so we have a better chance of catching up with Willow and Diapensia. It’s lonely sailing alone, as we have become accustomed to having everyone nearby and within radio distance. The winds are light and the sea is too dark to see anything in the water. This day I am missing the Bahamas tremendously… the water, the fish, the people and the closeness of all the islands. We are going to have to travel over 600 miles to get to our final destination… today it seems so far away.
They say sailing is hours of boredom and moments of sheer terror… the next couple of days are full of boredom. I find I can hardly stay awake on my watches and I only want to sleep when I am not on watch. We don’t have many sails to change as the wind is steady, but still light. Sometime around midnight Carey gets me up to help him take down all the sails, we will have to motor. The wind is all over the place, North East, South West, South, South East and only 5 to 10 knots. At 3:30 am I get back up, Carey is dead tired and needing to sleep. I try and keep myself outside so I don’t fall asleep but it’s freezing cold. I duck inside and decide I will read. This is what a watch looks like when you are inside reading… you read for 10 to 15 minutes then you jump up, go outside, look around for any sign of a boat, check your heading and duck back inside for the next 10 to 15 minutes. You do this for two reasons, one, this is about how long it will take for another boat to show up, and second, this is how you keep yourself awake. You can find yourself on the chart, but there is nothing there but water, and you may become painfully aware of how slow your progress is… I prefer not to participate in this exercise in the middle of the night.
Carey relieves me around 7:30 am and I head down for more sleep. I wake up a few times but nothing in me will allow me to rise or open my eyes, so I keep going back to sleep. I know Carey will wake me if he gets too tired. Finally I drag myself out of bed to find we are still motoring. Well, I knew this before getting out of bed since one of the engines sits right on the other side of hull from our berth. Carey has changed our course and we are headed for St Augustine, FL. We have run out of wind and are running out of fuel. The weather is just not cooperating.
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