A brief account. Departed 11:00 Sunday after filling the port diesel tank
and taking on water.It was an overcast, gray day, winds were blowing fairly
strong as we departed St. George's Harbor.Some folks will be happy to hear
that the boat tied up next to us on the wall behind Tavern-by-the Sea was a
Beneteau 470. The skipper had pointed out the fairly extensive damage from
Hurricane Fabian, "Everest Horizontal" being one of the victims with a huge
hole in it's side, as we were strolling around Saturday afternoon, I was
told they recorded 150 kt. winds for 50 minutes, but the forecasts which I
had seen at home and immigration control at the harbor were showing moderate
to strong E-NE winds, no tropical storms in the foreseeable future. As we
passed through the cut and out into the Atlantic we were subjected to a
fairly rollicking ride, choppy 10-15 ft. seas, and at least 3 of the crew
were starting to experience the symptoms of mal de mer. One of the fellows,
Al, was looking positively green. He had made the mistake of not putting on
his patch until after we departed, Dana had put his patch on but it wasn't
helping. I was even struck briefly, was somewhat worried but the skipper
pointed out that my problems were probably caused by drinking a little too
much the previous evening, which turned out to be the case.It took several
days for Al to develop his sea legs, but he was probably aided by the fact
that after about an hour or so we turned to head towards Fla.and were
sailing downwind in smaller, less choppy seas. I would add that we sailed
away under staysail with a single reef in the main. And so it went, weather
wise, until we reached Fla., moderate winds with a fairly regular swell with
probably a 10 ft. maximum, E-NE winds 10-20 kt. average, with the mean
probably in the 10-15 kt. range. The highest I ever saw on any of my watches
was 25 kts.We were introduced to the watch schedule the first day, 3 hour
watches starting at 20:00 and ending at 8:00. With the number of crew aboard
this would work fairly well, ensuring that you would have at least 6 hours
between watches. And so it went for the next 6 days. I have sailed with John
before, we took Ed's Catalina 400 from Key West to Isla Mujeres then back to
Ft.Myers and he told me that two of the most important things for a well
adjusted sea life are eating well and regular bowel movements. I hadn't
thought much about the former until I went through immigration control at
the airport in Bermuda. The nice lady asked me the purpose of my visit, I
told her what we were planning on doing. Her first question was who was
doing the cooking? Yikes!! She was fairly amused at what must have been the
somewhat panicked look on my face. Who would do the cooking? I really didn't
know and hadn't discussed it with John, didn't know that Ed, who is a
fabulous cook, would be sailing with us. I was relieved to see Ed later
Saturday afternoon,aboard during the week he told me that the nice lady at
immigration, whom I'm fairly sure processed all of us through and Ed was the
last to pass through, said to Ed, You must be the cook! We all laughed at
the story. It really was a great sail, and we were thrilled to have a
working autopilot, which is nice when you don't feel like hand steering. We
had cast a line out, John has a reel mounted on the stern rail and hooked a
decent sized mahi mahi, maybe 10 lbs., on Monday, but the thing managed to
unhook itself as we were attempting to land it with a gaff. We hooked fish
everyday but they never even came close to the boat, we even managed to lose
a lure on what looked to be a whopper, judging by the amount of line it took
out. Finally on Thursday we landed a 20 pounder, which we had for breakfast
the following day, dinner already being on the stove. After that we left the
fish alone, in an amusing sidebar, Ed was somewhat distressed my our meal's
fate. As he pointed out, you don't look into the cows eyes before you
barbecue the steak. It really was a fabulous sail, it rained maybe once the
whole time down, we missed the few squalls that popped up from time to time,
I had the 23:00-2:00 watch on Thursday, several squalls popped up right
around midnight, we threaded a needle and watched one pass behind us and the
other track to the west, with the winds boosting our speed to 8 kts. for the
better part of an hour. Early Wednesday evening we saw something that the
skipper had never seen in all of his may years of sailing, indeed none of us
had ever seen in person. We were just NE of Cape Canaveral maybe 100 nm.?
offshore when Dana noticed what appeared to be some kind of aircraft
climbing steeply, headed in our general direction, with the strangest
looking light I've ever seen. Don't know who figured it out first but it was
a rocket launch, an absolutely incredible sight at a vantage point that few
ever see. I browsed the NASA website briefly but haven't been able to locate
any information on what exactly was sent up, will try to do it tomorrow at
work. We sighted Abaco and hole-in-the wall midday Friday, the last leg of
the trip was the most interesting, with a steady stream of mostly
cruiseships steaming between Florida and the Bahamas Friday evening, at one
time there were 6 in fairly close proximity to us, and several hours
earlier, just before sunset, we had a bulk carrier approaching our stern
flash it's spotlights and sound it's horn at us. It wasn't close to a
collision course but we bore off anyways, ignoring Neal's lectures on
COLREGS. We spotted Lauderdale around 11 or so Saturday, finally managed to
drive the boat on a beat with the winds picking up for a fast run for the
final 10 miles or so, the only disappointment being the squalls that were
quickly rolling in and obscuring the coastline. Indeed it finally rained,
ironic as we had put up all of the canvas for the enclosure Sunday afternoon
and had been removing it piece by piece as the seas subsided throughout the
trip. The last little bit before landfall and the ICW found us huddling
under the aft section of the bimini, but it wasn't that big of a deal as we
were all wearing bathing suits, we had changed into suits Tuesday for a
quick swim and none of us had bothered to change back! Total time, 6 days 3
hours, distance around 950 nm. Will post pics to webshots later in week.
John Cairns