Got into Lauderdale about 1630 Friday, second of the crew to arrive.
Charlie, who had just purchased a Tayana 42 and is in the process of moving
it to it's new home in Charleston from Palm Beach was already there. Tom,
(Beneteau 47) from Bay City, MI, Fran -DC area, lost her boat in Isabel, and
Marsha, a boatless obnoxious tourist from Chicago arrived later in the
evening, we sat around, had a few drinks, barbecued dinner and discussed the
passage in general terms. John mentioned that we wouldn't be shoving off
first thing in the a.m. as he had to run down to Miami to take care of some
business, he had to do a piece for BBC world(short-wave) service and
wouldn't be back until 1100 or so. Which would work well, we could go out to
eat and I could make a last minute purchase, an idiot string for my hat that
I couldn't find at the WM store in Toledo on my drive down. My first hint as
to potential problems with Marsha, who accompanied me to the Boat/US store,
was her suggestion that we make a detour to check out the WM store in
Lauderdale, which is huge and the largest in the chain. I pointed out to her
that the skipper said he would be back by 1100 and we didn't have enough
time and that it would be bad form to keep everyone waiting for us whilst we
lollygagged at WM. She seemed slightly taken aback by this thought, but it
was my car, so she couldn't do much. We ended up waiting for John until
around 1400, it turned out that the piece he was doing was actually a panel
discussion on travel safety with John's field of expertise being piracy. He
apologized, we shove off around 1530 with a stop at the gas dock on the way
out. On the way out John mentioned wx from various sources, ne winds 15-20
kts and reports of 16 ft. seas out in the stream, he offered us the option
of going south to Miami, or heading straight out. We all agreed that going
south was probably the better option, would give everyone a chance to get
their sea legs and the winds were forecast to subside and start heading
east. Fran drove all of the way down, she was feeling slightly queasy and
still suffering the loss of her boat. We arrived in the port, close to
sunset, only to be accosted by the local marine police. About 4 of them on
the boat, shouting questions and barking orders, at one point asking us to
drop our main and stop! John quietly pointed out the absurdity of their
request(in a busy shipping channel, we had just passed a large cruise ship
heading out) one of the cops asked us if everyone spoke English(no kidding)
and they sped away. Dropped the hook in front of the "Rusty Pelican", we had
turned on the running lights at this point and noticed that they were
non-functional. Had a nice dinner, everyone hit the sack around 2200.
Sometime in the next 5 hours or so I had the strangest dream, I was looking
up through the open, screened, forward hatch and there was this strange
mixture of loud music and someone talking in a Hispanic accent. I wanted to
sit up and shout "Shut the f__ck up", but I couldn't be bothered to undo the
screen so I went back to sleep. In the morning John and the others were
talking about the music coming from the restaurant that started at midnight
and played till after 0300 and how they couldn't sleep. Nice to have
earplugs. We weighed anchor around 0930 Sunday, John discovering that the
electric windlass wasn't working in the process. Had beautiful weather,
winds from the same direction but down to 10 kts.Things being what they are
by 1700 the winds had died and were firmly on the nose for the most part, so
fire up the iron genny and motorsail for the next 27 hours or so with
varying degrees of efficiency. As an aside, the diesel on this boat burns
around 1 gph at a speed of around 6 kts., not the most efficient way to get
around. I missed one of the potential great photo ops of the trip, the
fellas cast out the fishing reel on the transom and hooked a 3 ft. mako
around 0800 Monday, of course I was still sleeping at the time. Sometime
around midday I notice that the newly installed rigid vang was separating
from the boom, screw holes completely stripped. Removed the remaining
screws, lashed it to the deck, reinstalled the old vang. We were finally
able to shut the diesel down around 2000, had an absolutely beautiful sail
on my watch with Fran, 15 kts from the east and we were able to average 8.5
kts. Another aside, we were doing 1/2 on/off for our shift and I did have to
practically pry Fran off the wheel. We were able to make SS by around 1700
Tuesday, first unpleasant surprise was the swell across the entrance. We had
tried unsuccessfully to raise the marina at Cockburn Town for tidal
information, the boat draws 7' and the depth in isn't much greater than
that. Oh, almost forgot, the depth sounder wasn't working either. After
mulling options the skipper decided to head in, just as we crossed the bar
and were just getting our nose in we grounded. This attracted an audience in
short order, we were able to find out at this point that the tide wasn't
coming back in until 2230. After about 45 minutes of careful engine work we
were able to free ourselves, and tie up to the gas dock and figure out where
we were going to park the boat for the night. This is not the best place to
park(the marina), very healthy surge and fairly unprotected. Got the boat
parked finally, spent a great deal of time teeing up, for obvious reasons.
Walked into town for dinner, decent meal, expensive by most standards.
Another taste of Marsha, we had to split the bill, I did the math, Marsha
wanted to argue about the tally even though I actually paid more than I had
to. On the way down she spent most of her time in the cabin, on the only
watch I had to suffer with her she never drove the boat at all. John points
out in his literature and on his website that these are "working" trips,
everyone is expected to do their part, but my friend did almost nothing the
whole time, which was crictical on the way back. Wednesday morning the wx
reports were forecasting 25-20 kts, there was still a strong surge at the
entrance, so the skipper decided to spend another day. The cruisers next
door(nice folks, beautiful boat) joked that they might spend another month
there, waiting for perfect condition before they set sail, having that
luxury. They were setting up their dish network dish on the dock that day.
John arranged a guided tour of this tiny island, "Snake Eye" (no typo) being
our guide and driver, for later in the afternoon, Fran and I decided to walk
down to Club Med to see how the other half lived. Of course, Marsha wanted
to accompany us, but it was about a 3/4 mile walk and we managed to ditch
her at the "Riding Rock" and continue on our own, much to our relief. After
the tour(guided, $5 tip which was disdainfully accepted by our young
Bahamian tour guide) we all met back at the Riding Rock for lunch and
drinks. The tour was as interesting as it could possibly be, there isn't
much on the island except a few ruins, a lighthouse at the northern
end(interesting) and the Columbus monuments just south of Cockburn Town.
Dinner on the boat, planning for a departure the following morning at high
tide, 1030. Should have known what kind of day it was going to be, it took 2
tries before we were able to tie up at the gas dock. The surge was gone
though, we timed our departure for about 15 minutes before high tide, just
in case. We did actually ground on the way out, for about 15 seconds, and
were on our merry way! Winds were honking out of the east around 25+kts, so
we should have had a nice though somewhat rough sail for the first leg back.
About a half hour after we got the sails up, the main ripped from luff to
leech at the second batten, well above the third reef point. Apparently it
got slapped a little to hard on the spreader, and was old and suffering from
some UV degradation. Somewhat ironic, we were waiting for a brand new main
on Friday that never arrived, we were planning on using it. John hauled the
main down, I got the happy chore of keeping the boat upright with the diesel

and the staysail, while Fran and John sewed the main. Fran was able to do
about a third when mal de mer took over, John had to do the rest, Marsha
disappeared into her cabin and didn't reappear until the following morning.
John later confessed that he was somewhat concerned at this point, the rest
of us were too stupid to be scared. Finally got the main back up and running
after about 4 hours, what a difference! Our only restriction was that we
kept the main fairly tightly sheeted in and that were to avoid flogging at
all cost. It was still tons of fun, but it was going to be a tough night as
John told me flat out that he didn't want Charlie driving, meaning we would
be doing the nights watches with 4 instead of 5. When we got up for our
first night watch at 2300, still had to pry Fran off the wheel! John had
decided to shorten our watches from 3 hours to 2, didn't sleep until after
the last watch, too much motion. The night watches were great though,
couldn't see a thing, didn't really care, probably better off not seeing a
thing. And good luck that we were where we were, not having any running
lights. The main lasted until sometime between 0500-0600, Tom and I joked
that it was nice it didn't let go on our watch. The winds subsided that day,
motorsailed all the way back to Lauderdale, John resewed the main but
decided not to redeploy-I think he got tired of sewing. Finally got back
around midday Saturday, nothing of interest except a close encounter with a
freighter on an early Saturday watch-I don't think he saw us, probably
wasn't looking either. The cruise ships were never really an issue as
they're lit up like x-mas and you can see them for miles plus their bridges
are probably fully manned around the clock. As an exclamation point, when we
got to the first opening bridge in Lauderdale, it wouldn't open. Had to run
Fran and Tom over to a nearby dock so they could catch flights, John asked
everyone if they wanted to get off. No takers. It's a bit of a chore tying
up here what with all of the surge form the heavy traffic on the river.1/2
hour later Marsha says she wants to get off. I almost told her to swim, but
after we got rid of her and Charlie we were both happy, we ended up waiting
2 hours for the bridge to open. I was telling John that everything was
"downhill" from here (bad choice of words), we were motoring at some
speed(no wake zone) to catch the next opening bridge, John had contacted him
on the radio to let him know we were coming, whaddaya know, FL marine cops
see us and order us to stop, write John a $50 ticket for not having a FL
registration on his boat, totally bogus as the boat is federally documented.
End of story. Posted up all of the pics worth posting, may have a few more
from other sources in the future.

http://community.webshots.com/album/129572627BLfVvi

John Cairns