July 28 – August 3, 2018

    Midnight… July 31, 2018.

     Today has just become yesterday.  Tomorrow has just become today.  July has just become August.

     As I sit in the cockpit, a striking waning gibbous moon, still fairly low in the sky and only three nights past full, shines brightly through the dodger window.  It’s brightness is the only thing partially obscuring the millions of stars which veil the night sky above.  Not a single cloud can be seen from horizon to horizon.

     The moon casts an intense and coruscating beam of light across the surface of the unsettled seas, leading from directly under the moon straight to our boat.  Though it is purely the result of optics relative to our position, it has the appearance of a spotlight… Mother Nature in control of an imaginary light board at a concert, with Exit as the onstage soloist.

     A depth gauge is among the four screens on the instrument panel front of me, illuminated in a soft red light to minimize the effect on our night vision.  Normally, it would be displaying only dashes as we are sitting over a staggering five thousand feet of water (it’s depth limit is well under a thousand feet).  However, now it blinks sporadically, repeatedly showing depths ranging from thirty five to sixty feet.  Is it a pod of dolphins?  Kris heard the unmistakable blow of one surfacing a short while ago before our watch change.  Maybe a whale… or just a mundane school of fish.  Whatever it is, something has been tracking underneath us, shadowing our movements for the past hour.  Quite eerie.

     The loud creaking of the reefing line in the boom is constant, as it strains under the loads created by winds approaching twenty knots.  Just as constant, though much more subtle, is the hum coming from our autopilot Jeeves every time he makes a steering adjustment to maintain our course.  During the past eighty four hours, he’s been remarkably well behaved.  Bit of down time… now he’s back in the game.

    Occasionally, the disconcerting noisy snap of the mainsail or genoa sail overwhelms all the other sounds, as Exit rolls back and forth in the motion of the swell, causing the sails to relax as a roll to one side releases the load, and then snap and bang as the roll back to the other side reloads the sail with wind again.  

     Every now and then it is significant enough to send a vibrating shudder throughout the boat.  If it is allowed to advance out of control, it could tear the sail or even break the boom, so it must be heeded as a plea from the boat that a course adjustment or sail trim is in order.

     Powerful roars erupt from the water around us, sounding not unlike a passing semi-truck on a highway, as a passing wave breaks or is crushed underneath the weight of the hull.

     I have my jacket on for the second night in a row.  It’s been six months since the damp night air on deck carried enough of a chill to warrant wearing one.

     We glide through the night, floating atop a feisty sea at between six and eight knots of speed, a welcome turnabout from earlier in the day.

     We had started the engine at 7:00am, unable to maintain even one knot of speed, and it’s droning noise had carried on for seven hours.  Quite the departure from the previous three days which had been absolutely brilliant sailing. 

     In fact, apart from a two hour stretch on the second day, when a passing storm forced us to run the engine as we passed fifty five miles offshore from Cape Fear, this morning was the only time we had run the engine since raising anchor three and a half days ago. 

    Though we had been struggling somewhat with our sailing angle, we had managed to run the engine for less than ten hours of the eighty four hours we had been underway.  For us, this was a big deal.

     Now, under the power of our sails alone, the unnatural engine noises are replaced by far more organic sounds I much prefer.

     Our friend James, aboard S/V Nomad, expressed to us that three days offshore was merely enough time to “go feral”.  We still hadn’t quite deciphered the precise subtleties of that idea but were getting the gist of it.  Four days is what it takes to really get into a rhythm on an offshore passage as far as sleeping, eating and watch schedules, as well as getting to a point of coming to a state of Zen one-ness with the boat.

     Eee-ahh… Eee-ahh… Eee-ahh… 

     The moment of reflection vaporizes instantly as the annoying London police car sound blares out again… Jeeves is tired.

     Back to the reality of constant challenges that come part and parcel with cruising aboard a sailboat.

     Fortunately, a reset is all it takes this time, averting the need to rig up our backup autopilot, Schumacher, as we eventually had to do between St. Marys and Charleston.

     For us, this is truly a passage of passing states in the Atlantic.  

     Not just in the sense of nonstop passing of geographical states while fifty to eighty-five nautical miles offshore since departing Charleston… South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland… with Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut still to come before reaching our destination of Block Island, Rhode Island.  

     But also a continual passing of states of mind along the way – from bliss and elation to exhaustion and frustration.

******

     We set out from Charleston, SC at noon on July 28th with as promising sailing conditions and forecasts as we could hope for.  Nearly a week without major storm fronts forecasted anywhere along the East Coast; only the occasional unforeseeable thunderstorm or squall which is part and parcel to this time of year along this coast.

     Our Navionics program said this would be a seven hundred nautical mile passage… more than twice the non-stop distance we had ever attempted previously.  Six days and change…

     From the ship’s log:

July 28: 11:45am – Anchor up.  Making for Block Island, RI – 699nm @ 5 days 19 hours; Forecast is fair weather with <20 knot winds for a week

18:00 – Winds SSW at 10-12 knots; swells have increased to 3-4ft.

22:00 – Killer full moon if the ominous building clouds would just give way.

July 29: 00:30 – No rain but 20-25 knot winds blew through during Kris’ two hour 10-12 watch.  Having to delay pushing toward Gulf Stream to steer away from big swell.  Wind currently SW at 16-18 knots.  Winds making 4-6ft. seas surly and stacked up with some 6-8 footers passing through.

01:30 – Daggerboard down now; trying to keep waves more astern.  Wind SSW at just under 20 knots.  Seas are still very snotty with the occasional 7-9 foot monster crashing by.

04:20 – Winds <15 knots and seas settling slightly.  Just saw first ship lights of the night on horizon; currently 50nm offshore

     By 8:00am, the winds had shifted south and dropped below ten knots, and the seas had settled to between two and four feet.   

     We were even visited by a pod of dolphins. 

     The afternoon proved to be quite challenging.  Winds that constantly changed speed (from below five to over fifteen knots) as well as shifting direction, in addition to a two hour squall that forced us to run the engine, resulted in us continually having to change course and adjust our angle, relative to either the wind, or swell, or both.

     During our second night, we finally became aware we were fully inside the coveted Gulf Stream currents.  In a “south-ish” wind of only seven knots that was shifting all over the place, the speed indicator in our cockpit displayed a sad three to four knots of boat speed.

     Yet, when we checked the chart plotter (which monitors speed over ground via satellite GPS, instead of utilizing the paddlewheel under the hull which the cockpit speed indicator uses), we found our actual speed to be ranging from five and a half to seven knots.

     We were picking up two and a half knots of speed with the favorable current… yes!!!

     Throughout the night, things proved to remain interesting.  

     There is a ship’s log entry indicating:

02:30 – Spent last hour making sure we didn’t get run down from behind by a 1200 foot ship moving at 15 knots;  Never received an answer to our repeated hails on VHF – obviously no one on watch.  Have turned on transom light and been shining a light on our sails… thanks M/V Gerd Maersk… good seamanship.

     An hour later we passed by Cape Lookout.  Though we had been seventy-five nautical miles offshore all night, the shoals of Cape Lookout, stretching outward far from the coastline, sat less than forty miles off our port side.

     By 4:30am, as my watch ended, winds had finally climbed above ten knots.  That, as well as our better than two knot Gulf Stream boost, had combined forces and we were currently racing along at an impressive eight knots.  

     We had spent most of the the night flying under a full moon.

     Kris, who had the previous watch, definitely got the shit deal on that one.  She had enjoyed the privilege of sitting through over two hours of rain and slop… bad luck there.

     During our third day, we started seeing a lot of boat traffic, which had been conspicuously absent up to that point.

     At one time, we were converged upon by a two hundred foot Coast Guard cutter, a six hundred foot freighter, a thousand foot container ship, in addition to three other ships… eek!   We found ourselves threading a needle in an ocean of endless expanse.

Later our AIS display looked like we were at the outer edge of a literal armada of ships.  We were relieved, after recalling a conversation we overheard on the VHF not long before, to decipher what we were actually seeing on the screen as local fisherman using AIS to track and identify their fishing gear, not individual ships… whew.

Still, that had to be a mess of fishing nets out there just to starboard.  Best to avoid those as well…

     Another challenge we faced was the fact that we had been cursed for days with an almost nonstop stint of cloud cover, severely limiting our solar charging capabilities. 

     Sailing for days on end is something we aspire to do.  However, the downside of sailing for days on end involves not getting any sort of battery charge from the engine.  While we are underway, the electronics we run tax the battery banks much more quickly than while we are anchor…

      Not a problem if the solar panels are bathed in sunshine during the day.  But after experiencing extensive cloud cover for days in a row, we start running a power deficit that the solar panels can’t keep up with.

     So, for only the second time since installing our solar panels in February, we had to run the genset for the sole purpose of charging our house battery bank.  The previous situation was due to a week of rain and clouds while we were at anchor in the Bahamas.

     I had recently calculated that, since February, our solar panels had generated nearly 35,000 amp-hours of power.  The genset would have needed to run for over twelve hundred hours to create that same amount of battery charge.  That’s about a thousand dollars in diesel fuel, alone. 

The solar charging system install had already proven to be worth more than its weight in gold.  

     If we finally had to fire up the generator as a result of sailing in cloudy weather instead of motoring, well then… so be it… no brainer… no problem.

     With the autopilot being one of the primary offenders in the category of offshore energy consumers, in the future, we may just have to do more hand steering, especially when it’s cloudy out.

     As midnight approached on our second night, Cape Hatteras was about forty miles behind us, putting us right about at the halfway point of our passage… three hundred sixty miles… a solid six knots averaged consistently over sixty hours.

     We were impressed with ourselves.

     One hundred fifty six nautical miles in a twenty four hour period was a record for us. It was only the second time we had broken the one hundred fifty mile marker.  Plus, it had been almost entirely under sails alone, aside from the two hours we had decided to run the engine during the storm. 

     However, as is often the case, our luck would not hold out.

     The free push we had been receiving from the current quickly began to dwindle away.  As the Gulf Stream veered to the east, the four knots of current we had been riding on dropped down to only one knot.

     Around 10:00pm, a fleet of a dozen or so passing fishing boats had been clearly visible in the distance.  After that, we didn’t see a light from another boat anywhere on the horizon all night.

     By 7:00am, the winds, which were only about forty five degrees off our stern, had died to less than five knots.  

     Unable to maintain more than one knot of speed, our steering became sluggish and we struggled with the two to five foot swells coming from the same direction as the wind.  

     Any option of just sitting and drifting until the wind improved was ruled out.  Without steering, we would end up helplessly bobbing around in the swell until we were taking far too big of waves directly on our beam.

     Eventually we acknowledged that we needed to call on the Perkins for assistance.  One important compromise we have learned over the past year is that, as cruising sailors, we may strive to do things a certain way; yet, when push comes to shove, everything aboard the boat is a tool to be used at the discretion of necessity or safety.

     Not using the engine when it’s needed, based upon principle, is perhaps more block headed than using the engine when it’s not needed.  It’s just another resource in the tool box… maybe the question more often should be am I currently using the best tool for the job at hand?

     The wind direction had forced us to angle farther west, towards the coast, than we had wanted.  With the engine now running for the foreseeable future, we tried to push farther back offshore. 

     After seven hours of motor-sailing, the winds finally increased to above twelve knots.  Though we could sail again without the relentless drone of the engine, we were once again having to point ourselves far too much in the direction of Maryland instead of New York.  

     Another compromise we’ve learned is sometimes the wind just won’t cooperate, and you have to accept that.  We were seriously starting to consider the possibility of heading on in to the mouth of the Chesapeake.  

     The last thing we wanted to do was resort to motoring all the way from Maryland to Rhode Island; but we also had very little confidence that we would find winds more favorable to get us north once we were inside the Chesapeake. 

     We weren’t ready to give up yet.  As long as we could keep moving in a reasonably forward direction, we would continue on and remain patient.

     The strategy at this point was to just try to keep sailing.  

    Possibly a blessing in disguise, our navigational dilemma was temporarily put on hold when Kris discovered a large nylon washer on deck, near the mast.  It was obviously broken… it was obviously for a big bolt… big bolts hold together big things on the boat… not good.

    Further inspection revealed the washer to be from the bolt securing the boom to the mast, or the gooseneck; the same bolt Kris had discovered had lost a nut while we were at anchor in Marsh Harbor.  

     In Marsh Harbor, the bolt had unscrewed itself halfway out of the mount, leaving the boom hanging precariously.  Fortunately, we had been able to get the bolt re-threaded through the mount and secure the nut back in place.  Even more fortunately, it had been caught before we had gone sailing again.

     Now, one of the nylon washers had split and fallen out while we were underway, leaving an un-tightened nut on a bolt that kept our boom from falling off… a boom currently under the load of a mainsail in twelve knots of wind… not good.

     I found a spare washer in the locker under the salon table I refer to as The Hardware Store. The repair seemed pretty straightforward.  Much less dicey than the last time, since the bolt was still in place.    

     The big question was could I do this while we were sailing at five knots, with the mainsail up?

     As long as the boom didn’t get shoved around once I took the nut off, it seemed like a quick fix.  So I told Kris to manually take the helm… and keep the boom steady… please.

     The nut came off… Kris kept the boom steady… the washer went on… Kris kept the boom steady… the nut went back on… Kris kept the boom steady… Voila!  Another crisis averted.

     In addition, an important point was reinforced:  while underway, periodic inspections of the equipment, rigging, and deck area, even (and especially) in rough conditions, helps to maintain the safety of the ship and crew.

     Confident that the boom was, once again, secure, we could turn our attention back to trying to keep Exit headed in the right direction.

    We spent the entire rest of the evening and night adjusting our angles of sail to compensate for wind shifts.  Over twelve hours, our heading changed from pointing towards the entrance of the Chesapeake, to headed for New York Harbor, to pointing due east into the Atlantic Ocean, and eventually back towards Block Island.

     By morning, we still hadn’t given up.  However, winds approaching twenty knots and swells that were building again to upwards of five feet were forcing us to rethink our approach.

     Our biggest shortcoming had been an inability to sail dead downwind (with the wind directly behind us) under many conditions… our inability for sure.  Still unsure how to safely deploy the reaching pole for the genoa, we oftentimes couldn’t keep that sail from luffing.  And without a preventer rigged up, the boom and mainsail crashed and banged around far too much in many situations.

     Our few previous attempts at a wing and wing configuration (both sails fully sheeted out on opposite sides of the boat) had been marginal, at best, as we were never really able to get the sails even approaching perpendicular to the hull.

     But necessity breeds ingenuity.

     If we could just sort out running dead downwind, our course would be perfectly lined up with Block Island.  What was needed was a bit of open-minded experimentation.

     We agreed that trying to figure out how to rig up the fifteen foot reaching pole on a pitching deck, while moving at six knots through very confused seas in fifteen to twenty knots of wind, sounded like a recipe for disaster.  We would have to forego that part of the experiment for now, and rely on partially furling in the genoa to keep it from luffing if necessary.

    After some discussion, we rigged up a temporary preventer.  It was a line, just tied off near the back of the boom and run to a forward deck cleat.  I still had to go forward any time the boom was adjusted to release and re-secure the line to the cleat.   Primitive… but functional.  

     The preventer eliminated almost all of the boom movement and sail noise caused by our rolling motion in the swell; and, even more importantly, eliminated any risk of an accidental gybe.

     With at least ten knots of wind, we found that we could keep the sails filled with minimal slapping, and move comfortably dead downwind with three to four foot swells chasing us.

     We sheeted both the main and genoa farther out than we ever had before.

     This became a game changer for us.   Suddenly, we had the option of running dead-downwind, something that had caused us nothing but grief up to this point.

     We experimented with the wing and wing setup throughout the afternoon, as the winds slowly climbed to above twenty knots.

     At least one reef in the main overnight had become standard practice for us.  We figured it was better to potentially lose half a knot of speed overnight to insure we didn’t get caught unprepared if a squall hit, or have to wake the sleeping off-watch person to deal with an increase in the winds.

     Tonight, as the sky offered up another spectacular sunset, for the first time we put a second reef in the main before furling in the genoa.

     The winds had climbed to between twenty five and twenty seven knots, and six to nine foot seas were described in the ship’s log as downright stinky.

     With no certainty as to how the night would progress, we had to plan for the worst and hope for the best.  We weren’t sure if the winds would increase, and these were the most intense winds we had ever experienced off anchor.  Kris expressed more than a small amount of trepidation regarding the current conditions. 

     But, with two reefs in the main and no genoa out, we should have been good for up to forty or fifty knots, so we felt confident that we were solid with how much sail we had out.  After re-setting the main sail and preventer for the night, we rode out winds upwards of twenty knots through the night.  

     As an extra storm precaution, we had even removed the midship dorades (scoops to allow wind below decks) and replaced them with covers to further reduce any potential points of entry for the ocean.

     As it turned out, the winds never increased above twenty seven knots.  It was more than we had ever sailed under.  But, especially with the winds behind us, it ultimately turned out to be quite digestible.

     By far, the most intimidating element was the swell that continually rolled in from behind us.

     I realize that NOAA’s wave assessments can be quite distinct from reports sourced from the average sailor.  NOAA rates waves on a scale based upon average wave height, of which 50% of the waves are higher than.  But, as an “average sailor”, I must confess that it is actually those waves in the above-fifty-percent category that really grab your attention.

     So when I say, waves came up behind us that were seven to nine feet, I am not trying to stretch my semantics into a salty yarn.  

     Following swells, not all but some, crested above our stern arch and davit while we were in the trough of the swell… a structure which stood just above my head level… which stood six feet above the deck… which stood three feet above the water… nine feet in total… chasing us down from behind.

    Fortunately, we were maintaining six knots speed, barely slower than the passing swell. 

    Consequently, instead of following waves breaking on our stern and pooping the cockpit, we were picked up by the rising swell and, as it passed underneath us, we surfed back down the other side.

     This delicate balance continued throughout the night.

     With the rising sun came another day.  We had maintained confidence in Exit and she had delivered.  After sailing for twelve hours straight with winds in excess of twenty knots (reaching a high of twenty seven), we had, once again, learned about Exit’s capabilities.

     For us, it was an open ocean storm with unlimited potential for disaster.  For her, it was home.

     Day six seemed to be the day we fell into a real rhythm.  Two days prior we had struggled so much with wind that we began to doubt we’d make it past the Chesapeake Bay entrance.  Day five had been a great day of sailing; but experimentation with running wing and wing, as well as winds between 20-27 knots for twelve hours had made for some tiring, daunting, and stressful periods.

     By mid-afternoon of our sixth day at sea, we were only fifty five miles southeast of New York Harbor.  We had settled into a comfortable stride, and hadn’t used the engine in forty eight hours.

    As the sun set on what would most likely be the last night of our passage, the winds once again picked up to over twenty knots. 

     Flying along at between six and eight knots, our speed made the five to six foot swells that approached from our stern quarter feel remarkably smooth.  Inside of smashing through them, or being tossed from side to side as they rolled passed, we surfed atop the waves as they passed underneath us.  Considering the conditions, we were experiencing an unbelievably effortless sail.

     To cope with all of the shipping traffic, New York has three traffic separation zones just outside the harbor, extending out in different direction.  Each zone is ten miles wide, with an incoming and outgoing lane separated by a stretch of ocean median.  Large ships are required to navigate within these lanes.  Two of the zones end approximately forty miles outside the mouth of New York Harbor.  The third continues all the way around Cape Cod and into Boston. 

     We were far enough offshore that we only had to cross the third, and northernmost, traffic separation zone, which we anticipated could be somewhat nerve racking and tense.  

    In actuality, while we watched shipping traffic, displayed on the AIS, moving in the lane opposite ours, we saw no boat traffic in the lane we currently occupied during our entire crossing of the separation zone.

     The only exception was what appeared to be a fishing boat playing chicken with a huge freighter about five miles away from us.  Watching on the chart plotter, it looked as though the smaller sixty foot boat made three separate attempts to cut just in front of the passing freighter.  Eventually, the captain must have decided tonight was not a good  night to die, as he finally acquiesced, and ultimately made a course change that brought him around behind the freighter… a much smarter maneuver.

     We anticipated that we would get to Block Island around noon, or early afternoon.  However, at 4:30am we misjudged what we thought was a final gybe that would bring us directly to the New Harbor channel.  

      Swell direction and wind shifts contributed to the error.  But, more than that, it probably came down to the fact that, after six nights at sea, we were just a bit loopy in our timing.  Ultimately, the result was nothing worse than a few additional gybes required to zig-zag into the channel and a bit later in getting there.  

    Considering it had been an epic sailing passage, we were adamant that we were going to sail the rest of the way, and not fire up the engine just to shave off a few extra hours.  

     After all, we had come eight hundred twenty three nautical miles in one hundred forty nine hours, and used less than ten gallons of diesel the entire time – a much better result than our Navionics estimate which calculates projected fuel consumption based upon an assumption that we would be motoring the whole way, or one hundred forty gallons! 

     Our arrival at Block Island, RI provided one of those sensory overload moments which seem more and more common on the boat.

     After spending six days eighty miles offshore completely by ourselves, a crowded anchorage provides a dizzying array of information, noise, distractions, and hazards to try to process.

     But, as far as crowded anchorages go, this was one of the most crowded we had ever experienced.  There may have been a thousand boats in the bay.

     I said to Kris, barely joking, it’s like traveling for six days, only to arrive at your destination… a Walmart parking lot.

     We had been recommended this place by Dena and James, on S/V Nomad.  As like-minded souls, we trust their judgement and perspectives.  They wouldn’t steer us wrong.

     What we obviously needed was a long nap, a few cockpit cocktails and a trip ashore to gain a better appreciation.

     But, first, we needed a place to anchor.

     Considering New Harbor is approximately one mile long by half a mile wide, there is a lot of space.  However, in addition to the sheer volume of boats, Block Island residents have taken a very virtuous and honorable approach to conservation, prohibiting anchoring in certain sections of the bay.

     We weren’t about to slalom through the entire bay looking for the perfect gap.  

     And, we had one further problem.  Even after returning to depths our charts indicated were less than four hundred feet, then one hundred, then seventy, our depth gauge still only displayed dashes. 

     Depth gauge no worky… shit.

     We asked a couple of people on the decks of boats we passed alongside of what depth the gaps next to them were… forty plus feet.  We had never anchored in water deeper than about twenty five feet.  Even at that depth, just under a 5:1 scope was the best we could do.

     The decision was made to drop the hook, back down on the anchor at 3000rpm (instead of our usual 2000rpm), and keep an anchor watch overnight if we weren’t confident by then.

     After the anchor had been set, I dropped a lead line off the stern with forty feet of line on it.  It didn’t touch the bottom… not ideal at all.  This meant we were at a 3:1 scope, at the most… half of the minimum we’d like.

     In spite of that, we sat in that spot for twelve days and held fast.  Even given the option of moving a few days later, we opted to stay put.  

     Though we would never do that again if we could at all avoid it, it was reassuring to know that our ground tackle was solid enough to carry us through.

     Chalk another one up to the Rocna anchor and half inch chain.

July 21, 2018 

    I’m sure they are.  

     I seem to recall hearing about two guys who worked at a boat yard eating the barnacles they power sprayed off the bottoms of boats.  Either they didn’t get paid shit for wages, or they had some pretty expensive habits, or a lot of child support to cover.  

     Even edible, barnacles must taste horrible.  I’ve never seen them on a menu or in a grocery store… and I’ve seen some pretty weird shit for sale.  So they must taste worse than the weirdest shit you actually can buy.

     The boat’s anti-fouling paint that they attach to can’t be healthy to ingest, either.

     Not confidence inspiring… I’ll pass.

     Too bad.  

     Because our tiny upside-down plot of barnacle farmland (or more accurately, farm-metal-plate) produced a bounty of ripe-for-harvest barnacles that would have filled dozens of five gallon buckets.  Enough to feed the anchorage and probably half the marina as well.

     Cleaning the underside of the hull in the Bahamas was a far different experience.  The water was amazingly clear, so I could see what I was doing and everything around me.  Oftentimes, the water we were anchored in was shallow enough I could stand on the bottom while cleaning the boat.  

     Furthermore, in the Bahamas, it was mostly a bit of stringy algae growth that was being scrubbed off with a plastic bristle brush.  Only the occasional barnacle had to be popped off.  Even when we cleaned the underside for the first time, and we had spent the past five months on the east coast, there was surprisingly little growth.

     Here in Charleston… way, way different.  The water turbidity here reminded me of Washington state, where we learned to dive; visibility ranging less than a yard near the surface and not more than six inches within a few feet down.

     I will admit, the Ashley River water temperature was well warmer than I expected.  Warmer even than the Bahamas (which ironically seemed colder than I expected).  I never found myself cold, even diving without a wetsuit.

     The current, on the other hand, was a serious challenge to deal with.  Gearing up, and getting into the water during a slack tide, really made little difference.  The fact that cleaning the entire underside took nearly nine hours, over one and a half days, meant that I was in the water for the full range of currents.

     Even though Kris was not going to get wet, this was definitely a two person job.

     We had rigged up two extra lines with snap-shackles, and clipped them to the D-rings on my BCD.  

     One was tied off to a deck cleat at the bow, that Kris would release before taking in or letting out more line, then re-secure to the cleat.  Basically, I hung from this line in the current under the boat.

     The second line was a signal line.  One tug meant let out more line… two tugs meant bring some line in… three tugs meant there was a problem.

     As I slowly worked my way along the underside of the hull, Kris paid out an appropriate amount of line, and then tied it back off again.  

     In addition to working around the lines, I had brushes and scrapers tied off to my BCD with strings that seemed to constantly dance around in the current, just in front of my mask.

     A handled suction cup we found on the boat, which seemed like a brilliant idea to stabilize oneself against the hull, turned out a complete failure.  Apparently the aluminum hull has too rough of a surface for the suction cup to make a good seal.  

     When it repeatedly detached from the hull at even the slightest pull, it was quickly discarded where, it too, spent the dive dangling around at the end of the string to which it was attached, continually getting in the way.

     Knowing the Maxprop zinc replacement would be the most difficult task, given the need to remove and replace the screws, as well as clean the area where the zinc would be mounted, I made sure that it was done first, while there was no current.

     PYI’s prop zinc fit like a glove.  Hopefully, the specially reinforced sleeves around the screw holes live up to their reputation, as I don’t fancy having to do this yet again further north.

     With the zinc screws tightened down as far as I dared, I returned to the surface and declared the Maxprop zinc issue now resolved for the foreseeable future… Kris cheered.

     The prop zinc weight now off our shoulders, we could turn our full attention to the barnacle harvest.  While replacing the zinc, I had gotten a much better look at the extent of the buildup.  

     It was pretty stunning.

     The entire underside was completely covered in a carpet of barnacles, at least an inch thick, including the prop, centerboard, and even up well into the centerboard well.

     In the beginning, it was possible to hover alongside the hull and scrape the barnacles off with a plastic putty knife.  Without any real current, thousands of liberated barnacles literally rained down on top of me as I scraped them off the hull just above me.  Visibility was already less than a foot, so the snow like effect of the barnacle storm was rather amusing.

     As the current picked up, things got a bit more interesting.  It became harder and harder to maintain  position while trying to scrape a specific area.  One hand holding the scraper, and one hand trying to hold on to some part of the hull, left no hands to hold either of the lines leading on deck to Kris.  Signaling Kris became more and more difficult, as did stabilizing myself on the line I was hanging from.

     As the current continued to increase, the barnacles eventually began to cascade sideways as they were scraped off the hull.  

     Hovering upside down, underwater, in low visibility, with air bubbles (normally going up) and blankets of barnacles (normally going down) both streaming quickly past in a horizontal direction, proved to be quite disorienting.

     Ever so slowly, progress was made along most of the area around the prop and the underside.  Eventually, I was into the second tank of air, and an entire side was mostly scraped clean.  The time must have been approaching six hours when we called it quits for one day.

     The second tank was nearly empty as well, but the current had really become the insurmountable obstacle.  As the current approached maximum intensity, it became nearly impossible to stabilize myself while I was simultaneously fixed from one point on my BCD to a line, now with quite a lot of tension on it.

     Even adding six more pounds of lead to my weight belt, I found that, as the current eventually peaked, there reached a point where I couldn’t even get down anymore.  I was being kept in place by the line Kris held, with a wake passing around me as though I was being towed behind a boat, but I simply couldn’t descend.  

     Without a line to pull myself down with, it was a losing battle.

     The rest would have to wait.

     The following day, it took a third tank.  But, eventually Exit’s entire underside, including the through hulls and centerboard well were completely barnacle-free.

    During our previous stop in Charleston, we had never gotten off the boat… too bad in the sense that it’s a bit of a shame to be somewhere and not see any of it; but good in the sense that we got out of Charleston last time a mere forty eight hours before the cyclone bomb hit, which left our good friends who didn’t make it out in time with icicles on their lifelines and frozen hatches.

     Now, with both the prop zinc issue resolved and the barnacle epidemic contained, we finally had some time to go ashore.

     The neighborhood we wandered through, just outside the University, in the historic district of Charleston, contained some incredible architecture.  Civil War era mansions and estates, most in beautifully maintained condition with many converted to apartments and businesses, lined the roads.  

     Sprawling, gnarled trees over a century old, as well as mature and well-groomed *******and ******, exploding with the color of freshly bloomed flowers; carefully tended yards and gardens; imposingly thick natural stone walls and steel gates with decades of lichen and ivy growth; front doors that lead into open-air side porches; elaborate horse and carriage entrances at some of the mansions; intricate decorative wood and stonework; actual gas lanterns attached to the brick walls of some of the buildings.

     All elements that contributed to a real sense of authenticity in the neighborhood.  Not a contrived attempt to market something.  Rather, a conscious effort to preserve something.     

     One exploration ashore was ill-timed, as we were the recipients of a lengthy barrage of afternoon Charleston rain.  The only shelter we could find was a leaky trolly stop which we hid inside of, drinking a tasty beverage from the one liter Hydroflask container, which I had concocted before setting out.

    On the upside, as the rains temporarily tapered off, we sought refuge in a nearby bar/restaurant called Sticky Fingers.  It turned out to serve some of the best BBQ ribs and pulled pork I have ever tasted.  Nothin’ like ice cold beer, fried pickles, and BBQ when you’re in South Carolina.  Oh ya… and a Bloody Mary complete with a pork rib garnish… holy shit!

     Charleston also provided us another one of those rare moments of interaction with a really kind person.  While we were checking out at the Harris Teeter grocery store, a man approached us and asked us if we needed a ride.

     Both surprised and caught a bit off-guard, we were unsure what to say, and stumbled for a response.

     He said, You’re boat people, right?

     We laughed and confirmed that yes, we were in fact, boat people.

     He said he meant no offense, but thought we might want a ride back to our boat, which he’d be happy to do.

     Again, we laughed and confirmed that yes, we’d love a ride back to the boat.

     As we pushed the noisy steel cart down the outside ramp, full of probably about eight bags of groceries and two cases of drinks (way too much to have carried back, we had figured an Uber was going to be our only option), I turned to Kris and said with a laugh… Wow!  We’ve finally made it.  Someone picked us out of a crowd as the boat people!

     It was as genuine a compliment as I could have asked for.

     As Andy (I believe that was his name), drove us more than a couple of miles back to the marina our dinghy was tied up at, I had to ask him what gave us away?

     He replied that he was a very perceptive person; but the combination of having our own bags and backpacks, the flip flops, and the tans were the giveaways for him.

     He had owned a boat, was working towards retirement in the next ten to twenty years, and had married his wife with the declaration that he was buying a boat again once he retired.

     Andy recommended some tours, as well as a few things to do and places to go, dropped us off at the marina, and, after helping to unload the groceries to the dock, headed off.

     Exchanges like those can make the uniqueness of a cruiser’s situation really stand out.  So often we have to depend entirely on ourselves to accomplish things.  When, on that rare occasion an exceptionally kind individual offers to go far and beyond conventional hospitality, it makes the moment even more poignant. 

     We also met Stephen, aboard his Alden 40 Challenge, who we had anchored next to.  For days we couldn’t figure out why his dinghy just sat on his deck.  A bit of a recluse, Stephen had motored down after buying the boat in Maine (he said he hadn’t put up the sails since the sea trial), and had been anchored at that spot for the past three months.  He hadn’t taken the outboard off the transom rail since he’d arrived, and was currently using his dinghy on deck as a bath tub.  

     One day, we gave him a ride across the channel in our dinghy to get water at the marina mega-dock.  We had brought our two five gallon and two six gallon jerry cans.  Stephen, a resourceful guy, proceeded to pull ten empty, half gallon jugs of cheap whiskey from his duffle bag and started filling them at the spigot.

     When one of the marina dock hands walked by, he wasn’t sure what to think; so he just kept walking.

     During one ride to the dock, Stephen asked me what I thought of Trump?

     I said… I think he’s a fucking idiot.

     Stephen replied, “Oh.… I’m an avid Trump supporter.  I hope that means we can still be friends.”

     Hmmmm… not what I expected.

     But we now had everything in place… zinc sorted… hull clean… fuel tank full… water tanks full… provisions and beverages restocked… 

     From Charleston, if the weather held, we would be shooting for Rhode Island, over seven hundred miles away. For at least six days, we would be between fifty and eighty miles offshore.  The weather window looked as good as we could hope for.  An entire week with no low fronts forecasted along the east coast.

      Another go big or go home moment….

July 18-20, 2018 

    Just when we thought everything looked good.

     Out of the North River without hitting any mud…  I had insisted on a redemption re-match at the helm coming out this time.

     Outside the St. Marys inlet there was two to three feet of chop, but fifteen to twenty knot winds behind us seemed promising.

     Yet, by nightfall we had been struggling with the sailing for over eight hours, and had slowly extended our distance offshore to fifteen miles.  Our adjustments were intended to reduce the overall rolling motion the boat had been experiencing for quite some time, caused by the angle and size of the swell which was now three to five feet, as well as maximize our options for altering our angle of sail if needed.

     Even with the winds steady at fifteen knots, the relentless swell pitching the boat back and forth was causing insufferable slapping of the sails as they relaxed and reloaded with nearly every roll.  The noise was not only obnoxious, but also an indicator of a lot of unnecessary wear and tear on the sails, rigging, and mast.

     Experimenting… main only… genoa only…genoa and main with one reef… genoa partially furled… all still had the same end result.  The combination of sailing angle, as well as swell direction and size, made for slapping sails; and altering course seemed the only way to keep the sails filled and quiet.  

     Even so, we just couldn’t get up any speed whatsoever.  It seemed as though the speed indicator never got above three knots during our first twenty four hours.

     The following morning, we were visited by two inquisitive dolphins.  I have a note in the log joking that, we are moving so slow they must have thought we were a floating shipping container and moved on.

     At noon, we found ourselves in the path of a mahoosive thunderstorm.  Dark and very ominous looking, elongated and strangely shaped clouds stacked up on the horizon and bore down quickly towards us.

     Already fighting to wring even two knots of speed out of our sails, we chose to fire up the engine, drop the main, and furl in the genoa.  Within minutes, twenty to twenty five knot winds blasted through and the sea all around us was covered in messy white caps and breaking waves.

     Thirty minutes later, the wind had stabilized back to below twenty and we started putting sails up and turned off the engine as the breeze dropped back down to fifteen and then ten.

     Later in the afternoon, a pod of fifteen or more dolphins approached us.  We weren’t moving any faster, but they seemed much more content to show off for us, staying with us for over fifteen minutes.

     Still, we just barely crawled along.  Measuring speed at a sailor’s pace, quite different from the mindset of a typical dirt dweller, is something we have gotten more and more used to… yet this was ridiculous.

     We suspected that there must currently be a massive barnacle buildup on our hull and prop, causing enough resistance to affect our speed by what seemed to be 30-40%.   

     We had monitored bottom growth constantly in the Bahamas, and cleaned the hull a couple of times.  It was almost spotless when we departed the Bahamas, just over a month ago.

     Kris was adamant that I was not going in the water for a look, while we were underway… it simply was not open for discussion.

     I was adamant that some sort of visual confirmation was required here.  If there weren’t barnacles, then maybe we were tangled up in something that was being dragged along under us.

     As a compromise, I climbed down on the transom and stuck my dive camera down in the water with the video recording.  I randomly panned back and forth, in what I believed to be the right general direction and then pulled it out of the water and had a look at the video.

     The rudder could be be seen, moving in and out of the frame, as though the camera had been operated by someone who wasn’t looking at what they were recording.  The prop was beyond the field of view, but bits and pieces of the hull could be seen at times.

     Sure enough… the rudder and what could be seen of the hull was covered in a blanket, not of stringy algae, but rather, of solid barnacles that appeared to be an inch or more thick.  No doubt about it, this was the primary culprit responsible for our snail’s pace.

     The barnacle growth could only have happened while Exit sat at anchor on the North River for three weeks.  The river must have an amazing amount of passing nutrients and organic matter, because the speed at which the barnacles attached and grew to the degree they did seems rather remarkable.

     In hindsight, we had noticed a startling degree of algae growth on the top ten meters of the anchor chain and snubber as well.  It was severe enough that I had to scrape it off with a screwdriver and wire brush before we pulled up anchor.

     But, for some reason at the time, I never put two and two together, recognizing that our hull would simultaneously be suffering the same fate as the anchor chain.

At the same time, there’s no way we were ever going to be getting into the muddy  North River.  Even had we recognized the extent of barnacle growth on our hull and how much it would impact our speed, we would have been more than content with moving slow over swimming in water we had seen crocodiles inhabiting…

     Eee-ahh… Eee-ahh… Eee-ahh…

      Jeeves again.

     The barnacle situation would have to wait.  At least the autopilot reset this time, but Jeeves had become more and more temperamental on this passage.  It was becoming a problem.

     At 5:00pm, another thunderstorm descended upon us.  Again, we dropped the sails and fired up the engine, not knowing how full-on things would get.  Our current inability to achieve any speed under sail made things particularly dicey when the seas started kicking up a fuss.

      This storm was not as immediately intense as the previous one had been; the winds never reached twenty knots.  But what it lacked in wind, it more than made up for in rain and lightning.

     After two and a half hours, it was obvious this was no passing squall; it certainly didn’t appear that things were going to let up anytime soon.  We shut down the engine and ran with a double reef in the main and only half of the genoa out, hoping to keep just enough speed to steer, but minimize the amount of sails slapping around in all the messy seas.

     At 11:00pm,  Jeeves decides he’s had enough.  No amount of resetting the system makes any difference.  A couple of minutes pass and the alarm triggers again… Reset… Hand steering through the entire night in these storm conditions is going to be brutal… Alarm… Reset… Alarm…

     Jeeves is done… he’s thrown in the towel and already gone to bed.

     There seemed to be only one viable option, and in my opinion, it did not involve sitting at the wheel in the rain all night.

     This was the perfect time to break out our backup autopilot.

     A much older Autohelm model, it utilized a small and removable piston style ram connected between the deck and a short tiller attached atop the rudder.  We had fired it up during the sea trial for a few minutes, and it seemed to work, but had never gotten it out again since that day.

     In the dark of night, aboard a boat surrounded by rain, lightning and super sloppy seas, one is definitely not going to find ideal conditions to try to sort out a backup autopilot.  But, hey… it is what it is. 

     The ram didn’t mount securely to the tiller and, in the end, had to be lashed on with a line.  No problem.

     However, the geometry of the mounting angles and distances was such that the ram didn’t have enough piston extension to fully turn the rudder as far as it is capable of turning.  This would be ok in mild conditions, where the autopilot is only making minor course corrections.  But, in rough conditions, when the autopilot is fighting rudder pull, swells and wave action, and struggling to maintain a heading, it really needs the full movement of the rudder to keep up.  It either has to work much harder to try to alter course substantially or possibly, in the end, just can’t compensate enough and sets off an alarm.

     The conditions were severe enough that the backup autopilot had to work quite hard, given its’ limited control of  Exit’s turning radius.  Nevertheless, despite any shortcomings, it worked like a champ throughout the night.  We were blessed with not a single autopilot alarm during the course of the evening, to both of our delight. 

     We considered calling the backup Autohelm Otto, but decided instead that Schumacher was more fitting, named after the nickname given to a Indonesian driver we met in SE Asia, all the way back in 2008 (less than two months into our travels after leaving the US, Schumacher drove us safely through the endless winding roads of Sulawesi all night long to deliver us to the location of an extraordinary traditional funeral we were allowed to attend).

     At 4:00am, entering my final hour of what had been a very long six hour watch, we were pummeled by our third thunderstorm in twenty four hours.

     In spite of the intensity of the two earlier storms, this third one stood out as being the most memorable.  

     The wind, blowing at a steady fifteen knots (it had held consistently above ten knots, oftentimes at fifteen or more for the past day), suddenly ceased entirely.  Then, after what seemed to be a brief pause by Mother Nature, momentarily holding her breath, the sky opened up and unleashed a torrent of rain.  

     Without even a whisper of wind, the deluge of huge raindrops dumped straight down from above in buckets.

     And yet, the seas all around us were completely still… like a bathtub.

     It was a very surreal moment.  The volume of rain coming down.  The absolute lack of any wind.  The sea as smooth and flat as glass but for the surface disturbance caused by billions of raindrops, their impact on the water generating a loud and relentless sizzle of white noise that surrounded us.

     For over an hour, Exit sat… no wind to carry us… no waves or swell to push us… adrift on the ocean in the rain.  Not much progress, but no slapping sails and no loud engine either.  A fair trade.

     When Kris took over the watch at about 5:00am, the storm had mostly subsided, with the rain diminishing and a slight breeze returning.  

     Just as the sky was beginning to display the first glimpses of another sunrise, I crawled into bed, exhausted, and was sound asleep almost instantly.

     Six hours later, I awoke from a thoroughly fitful sleep, thanks in no small part to Schumacher.   After tagging in for Jeeves, our new ace in the hole had performed brilliantly all night without triggering a single autopilot alarm.

     As I climbed the companionway stairs into the cockpit, I was greeted with yet another surreal scene.

    Kris sat in the cockpit with a smile on her face, and promptly introduced me to her new friend – a bedraggled looking baby bird which stood on the opposite bench, not three feet from her.

     Apparently it had happened across us hours ago while flying through the storm, and decided to take refuge on the only solid object available to rest upon for miles in any direction… Exit.

     After landing, the young fledgling, exhausted from what must have been a confused flight that had carried it twenty miles offshore, seemed content to simply hang out with Kris.

    She indicated that, though uninterested in the crackers she had offered, the little bird had rested repeatedly next to her in the cockpit on my flipflop for quite some time, between curious explorations hopping around the entirety of Exit’s deck.

     As I hurried to grab Kris’ iPhone, trying to capture a classic moment looking up into the cockpit from belowdecks, with Kris sitting on one side smiling at a frazzled baby bird who stood on the opposite bench looking back, the bird hopped up on one of the lifelines and flew away, towards the coast.

     We half expected it to fly back to the safety of our cockpit within a minute or so.  Obviously, it had gotten the rest it needed because it kept on flying.  We didn’t see the little bird again… maybe it eventually made it home and is currently spreading the story of being rescued by a giant metal island while caught in an offshore storm on the ocean…

     By mid-afternoon we were inside the channel approaching Charleston, but still nearly ten miles out from the actual inlet into Charleston Harbor and Fort Sumter.  In the log, there is an entry of great exultation for the backup Autohelm last night.

     Thankfully, there was no opposing current to be dealt with at the inlet nor along the subsequent five miles up the South Channel and into the Ashley River, as we were still barely crawling along, even under engine power.

     We dropped anchor at almost the exact same place we had in 2017, the day after Christmas, when we were here last.  It was opposite the Charleston City Marina Megadock, just downriver (or upriver, depending on the tidal direction of the three knot currents) from a fifty five foot bridge we couldn’t get under.

     It had taken us two days and four hours to get one hundred eighty three miles… any speed records already in the books were well safe during that passage.

     It was self-evident that the barnacles needed to be dealt with immediately… but… the water wasn’t at all clear… the currents were gonna make things a bitch… it wasn’t the Bahamas any more; this was gonna be cold.

     I asked Kris if we should inquire with the locals regarding the potential for crocodiles in the Charleston Harbor. 

     Her response, it was probably best not to ask, made two things very clear.

     First, the hull WAS DEFINITELY going to get cleaned here in the Ashley River.

     Second, the person doing the scrubbing WAS DEFINITELY going to be me.

     Yep… this was not going to be one of those me-only dives that generated a great deal of envy from Kris.

July 17, 2018 

     Journeys back to Washington always mean one thing… overindulgence.

     And this trip was no exception.

     Too much food… too much drink… too much smoke. Ok. Probably about the right amount of each of those for a holiday.

     And a holiday was essentially what it was.  A holiday away from boat life.

     Though it may sound rather odd (some might say every day is a holiday living on a boat), full time cruising also has it’s routines and (sort of) schedules that need to occasionally be gotten away from.

     When we first bought Exit, a man whose opinion we hold in high regard told us, “You need to get off the boat sometimes.  Every year you should be sure to spend at least a few weeks away from Exit.”

     In a year, we had slept aboard all but four nights. 

     The seventeen days away were good for us.  Good timing and good times.  

     Now, after two and a half weeks, Exit was sitting quietly at anchor as we approached her in the dinghy.  

     Nothing changed… except for a conspicuous increase in the bird shit on the deck.  A day later everything was back in place.  

     We probably made a half dozen trips back and forth to the boat yard refilling jerry cans with water, and even arranged a ride to the filling station to get twenty five gallons of diesel.  This meant our fuel and water tanks were full sans docking the Mothership… yes!

     Before our trip to Washington, we had tried to deplete as much perishable food and freezer-stored food as possible.  We really needed to make a provisioning run, but still had plenty of food aboard.  We could hold out for a closer grocery store.

    We had brought back six prop zincs (five spares) that were PYI’s special reinforced design (so they wouldn’t fall off).  I just needed to mount it on the end of the prop.

     However, there was one problem… we had also seen crocodiles twice now (once near the boatyard dock and a big one once near the shore next to where we were anchored).  That, combined with fact that the North River water, a shade lighter than coffee, provided zero visibility to see these crocodiles, clearly meant that there was no way in the world I was going to be dealing with the prop zinc here.

     The plan was to make for Charleston, SC, which was a hundred sixty miles away.   Somewhere around thirty one hours, we figured.

     By then, we could assess our offshore status, and either continue north or duck into Charleston to install the prop zinc and at least replenish our fruits and vegetables.  

     The haul out could wait until we were headed south again.  For now… New England was reported to be brilliant for sailing this time of year…

June 23 – July 13, 2018 

    The North River is no hurricane hole, but the sixty foot tall dirt embankment on the south shore next to us provided about as much 180 degree protection as we could ask for.  

     Only very occasional small boat traffic.

     The tide-controlled reversing currents were relentless, but we had already been dug into the Georgia mud for three days with twenty five knot winds.

     We were confident our Rocna anchor and hundred feet of rusty half inch chain would just keep swinging Exit in the same figure eight pattern indefinitely.

     Worst case scenario, she would drift into the soft mud or marsh nearby… better than rocks or docks.

     Though we kept repeating, the day before our departure, that we were merely prepping her for a bit of wind, we had seen some pretty nasty storms crash through.  

     In the end, we stripped her decks of basically everything but the dodger and sails (which had been thoroughly lashed down).  Even the bimini cover was stowed belowdecks.

     Electrically, power was shut off to everything but the refrigeration, the mast light, and the automatic bilge pumps.  Despite our confidence that the solar panels would have no trouble keeping the house battery bank fully charged, we took the extra precaution of emptying, defrosting, and turning off the freezer to further reduce any unnecessary drain on the batteries. 

      All seacocks were closed, all hatches double checked, and all the bilges were clean, dry and had working pumps with functioning float switches. 

     A year ago, we worried about leaving Exit at anchor while we went ashore in the dinghy for a couple of hours. 

     Six months ago, we worried about leaving her on a mooring ball for five days while we galavanted off on a road trip to New York City.

     Now, we worried about leaving her unattended on a single anchor for seventeen days.

     Oh, the times they are a changin’…

      Packing only carry-on bags, we climb into the dinghy, and give Exit a reassuring pat on the side of her aluminum hull. 

     It’s more for us… she’ll be fine.  

     She’s established time and time again that all she needs to sort herself out is water underneath her.

     The dinghy goes on stands in Rocky’s backyard… no charge… sweet.  No North River low tide mud bath for Bart.

     A one hour car ride to Jacksonville, kindly offered by Mary and Christian…  a six hour bus ride to Atlanta…  an overnight plane ride from East to West Coast.

     Boom!  Back in Washington… the state.

 

June 20, 2018

    The easiest thing to do regarding difficult decisions is to just put off making them.

     Procrastination can be a beautiful thing.  Only problem is, by definition, it leaves those decisions unresolved.  And there comes a time when, instead of being conveniently satisfying, it becomes a nagging thorn that eventually must be dealt with before things begin to fester.

     Our hard choices revolved around things that we thought needed to be sorted out with the boat.  Prudent (and prideful) boat owners generally need to do a haul out on their boat at least once a year… so we’re told. 

     This involves having the boat lifted out of the water by means of a massive lift and put on stands in a marina.  Though many tasks can be done afloat, there are some things that mandate (or at the least greatly simplify) that the boat be dry.  More thorough inspections as well as certain maintenance issues of the underside and/or hull are much more feasible.  In addition, annual painting of the underside with an anti-fouling paint is required to help prevent barnacle buildup (every so often this paint needs to be sanded off before more can be put on).            

     Some very creative, very poor, very brave, or very foolish boat owners will insist that alternative options exist, but a haul out was what we had decided on.

     Our underside was still in fair condition; however, it had been nearly a year since we had applied the last coat of anti-fouling (just before we first launched Exit in Deale, MD).

     We also had a prop issue that needed immediate resolution.  The zinc* which had been attached with our new Maxprop last August (also just before we first launched Exit) had become nearly deteriorated after six months.  Thankfully, we had a couple of spares aboard. 

*The Readers Digest “A to Zinc” Overview On Prop Corrosion 

     Dissimilar metals can pose problems for each other.  In a nutshell, one type of metal will actually steal electrons from another, causing it to corrode.

     There are tables, the result of science well beyond my capacity, indicating the nobility of various metals and alloys.  Nobility is basically a pecking order.  The more noble a metal is, the less susceptible it is to corrosion and more voraciously it feeds on other less noble metals.

     Salt water (an electrical conductor) exasperates this process.

     Our prop is made of bronze which has a low nobility.

     Our boat is made of aluminum which is almost at the bottom of the nobility list (a potential issue we have to be constantly aware of).

     The solution is to attach an even less noble metal, called a sacrificial anode, which is consumed by the process instead.  Magnesium (in fresh water) or zinc (in salt water) are the alloys typically utilized for the anodes.  The zincs must be checked and replaced periodically to assure the corrosion protection is maintained.  

     Obviously, having the zincs fall off your boat is not very conducive to the success of the entire corrosion protection process.

     Anyway, in March while at anchor in West Bay on New Providence, I had donned scuba gear and switched out the zinc, which was a rather straightforward endeavor.  

     Unfortunately, when we arrived in the Bahamas, we discovered that the zinc had disappeared… 

     Shit… 

     We came to the conclusion that it actually may have fallen off only three weeks after it had been put on while we motored for six hours from Nassau to Rose Island.  Probably the result of bolts not being cinched down tight enough… 

     Sigh…

     We had one more prop zinc in our spares inventory which we installed while in Georgetown.  This time I opted to use locking washers and Loktite on the screw threads.

     However, we discovered soon after that the zinc immediately began to deteriorate around the screw holes.  By the time we had reached Charleston, SC five weeks later, our third prop zinc was gone.

     This meant our prop zinc situation was back to critical, and in need of immediate resolution.

     We also had ongoing chain issues that needed resolution sooner than later.  

     Old, tired, and rusty, the decrepit chain left piles of quickly staining rust flakes all over the deck every time the anchor was lowered or raised.  It occasionally seized up in the hawse pipe when rusty links stuck together in the chain locker (jeopardizing damage to an expensive electric windlass).  It jumped and skipped on the gypsy under any load when let out or brought in (jeopardizing the removal of fingers very dear to me) – either it was the wrong size or just excessively worn.  And, there just wasn’t enough of it.  We had one hundred thirty feet and really needed twice that.

     Yes, the chain could be sorted out without a haul out.  But, if we are already out of the water, getting chain off and on the boat while on stands might prove much easier than getting it aboard with Exit in the water.

     The only other haul out issue was being able to replace a through-hull whose handle had broken off in a stuck open position. 

      Yes, again.  The through-hull could be dealt with in the water, but it would be a lot less messy if it were dry than just had a towel stuck in the hole.

     The handful of other things on the to-do list… a proper inspection of all our rigging… resuscitating the dream of an onboard watermaker… battery bank replacement… all things that could be chipped away at without requiring a haul out of the boat.

     Rocky’s boatyard was an option if we wanted to haul out.  It was cheap and friendly.  Except we weren’t in close proximity to anything.  We didn’t have chain lined up.  The long anticipated revival of the existing watermaker, the primary task we were hoping Tom could help us out with, looked like it was never going to be possible, after all.

     Both the boatyard and Tom had lots of other things going on.  The timing was not ideal.

     Holding off on the haul out until late summer after sailing farther north to New York or even Maine (especially if we could sort out the prop zinc quickly) had a definite appeal to it.  Herrington Harbor North, where Exit had sat on the hard in Deale, MD, was well equipped with on-site resources and no more expensive than St. Marys.

     We had all but written off a quick July trip back to our old stomping grounds in Washington state.  Already told my folks we just didn’t see it happening.  If Exit was on the hard here in Georgia, that was one thing.  

     But… leaving her at anchor?  For over two weeks?

     My parents’ sixtieth wedding anniversary, on July 3rd, was the tipping factor.  The opportunity to be present for that amazing celebration, see my best friend Shannan for his 52nd birthday, as well as visit with other friends and family, made the decision much easier.

     We were at anchor about a thousand feet upriver from Tom’s sailboat, and he agreed to take an occasional peek to make sure Exit hadn’t floated away… no worries, mate.

     

June 19, 2018

    Thirty seconds…

     I swear to God…

     That’s all it took for me to run aground…

     Our arrival at Cumberland Island, GA after a three day and nearly four hundred mile open ocean passage from the Bahamas had sparked a multiple day recovery and re-acclimation period.

     We spent most of the 16th sleeping, and most of the 17th and 18th cleaning and relaxing.

     We were still yet to solidify exactly what our plan was, now that we were back in the States; but we knew anything we were potentially going to get done here required us to head up the North River and get close to Rocky’s boatyard.

    After an unsuccessful attempt to get fuel in Fernandina – stressful only up to the point that we learned the fuel dock we were circling in front of would not re-open until 2019 following the completion of long overdue hurricane repairs, we chose to head up the North River, trying to find a good place to drop the hook.

     Snaking back and forth, the North River winds its way three and a half mile through of marsh grass and lowlands before reaching the boatyard.  In some places, it stretches eight hundred or more feet from shore to shore; in others it is not much more than a hundred feet across.  It has severe shoaling around some of its’ turns and we became intimately familiar with its bottom twice a day while tied up to Rocky’s boatyard dock in February.

     As we left the wide, deep channel of the St. Marys River and steered into the narrow mouth of the North River, we had to stay far to the left.  We remembered the point extending out on the opposite side created a shallow area that extended halfway across the entrance.

     Sections of the river are twenty five to forty feet deep, even in some of the narrow spots.  But other sections can be eight hundred feet wide with less than one hundred feet of that being deeper than three feet.  

     Misleading… even tricksy.

     It was now low tide.

     I remember asking Kris, “Should we get out your iPhone?”  It contained a photo we had been given in February that clearly indicated all the shoaling areas along the banks before the boatyard…

     I remember her looking at the Navionics program running on our iPad, our exact position shown as a little red boat icon superimposed over the displayed chart.

     I remember her saying, “Nah… the shoaling is along the inside banks of the turns.”

     I remember Kris asking me if I wanted to take the helm.

     I remember responding in a possibly not exceptionally enthusiastic affirmative.

     I remember climbing behind the wheel, looking up, and immediately seeing the display on our depth gauge, surprisingly, in the single digits.

     I remember saying, “Seems kinda shallow, maybe we should raise the centerboard?”

     Plummeting depth gauge… now under six feet…     

     I remember Kris didn’t even have time to stand up when…

     Shhhhhhhhhhhhlop…

     …the unmistakable sound of our aluminum hull sliding on the soft bottom of the North River.

     And then… no more sliding.  

     We’re stuck.  No backing… no turning… just stuck.

     I immediately cried out “FOUL!”… followed by, “I was behind the wheel less than thirty seconds!” … followed by, “I hate this fucking river!”

     The next five minutes was spent sitting in the cockpit, trying in vain to prop up my crushed self-esteem, until the divine forgiveness of a timely rising tide picked us up off the mud, simultaneously freeing both Exit and what little was left of my dignity.

     As we retreated back, shadowing the track we had just laid down on our Navionics chart, Kris could be heard laughing continuously in the background of two short videos I made.  

     During one I lamented how much I hate this fucking river;  the other was a message for two Scuba Junkie friends/staff still working in Komodo who were considering buying a sailboat and cruising Australia whereby I expressed a belief that they would be much wiser to invest their money in a van.

Fortunately, this blog site does not currently support videos.

    The North River had been victorious on this day.

    Admitting temporary defeat, we slinked back into the St. Marys River deciding to anchor next to the town of St. Marys for the night.  Tonight we would drown our embarrassment in drinks and hopefully fried cheese Saganaki at the Greek restaurant.

June 13-15, 2018

    Three hundred fifty nautical miles.  Averaging five knots it would take us around three days to complete.  

     For us, ambitious.

     But we’ve found ambition is exactly what it takes.

     There were a lot of uncertainties.  

     Uncertainty regarding weather.  Mixed forecasts, depending on who you listened to and what resources you referenced.  Winds seemed to be from every direction at one point or another.  Could be no wind at all.  Could be good sailing.  Could be nasty squalls with bursts of high wind and rain.  

     Uncertainty regarding the course we’d chosen to take.  Around the north open ocean side of Abaco with a long straight northwesterly shot to the Georgia border.  The alternative route, picking our way through the inside shallows to the edge of the Abacos Sea, followed by a shorter jump west across to Florida, would offer better protection from building seas but force a longer threading of the needle through the rocks and reefs until reaching the drop off.

     We preferred the long open ocean passage to Georgia.  If the weather held, we could have some brilliant sailing.  If the winds died, we’d have a long and relentless grind under motor.  If the weather turned ugly, we’d have no where to go…

     Uncertainty.

     But, in the end, we had chosen the straight shot across more open ocean.  Eighty miles offshore from the nearest Abaco land we would still be eighty miles away from the Florida coast. 

     We were also hoping to get lucky with the Gulf Stream Current.  If we had calculated correctly, we would be approaching it’s apex at just about one hundred fifty miles into our course.  

     Depending on the strength of the current at any given point and our relative angle, we could hope to gain anywhere from a half knot to more than three knots of speed.  Once we found ourselves inside, we figured we could adjust our course to maximize the benefit of the free energy.

Ironically, we noticed that the course we had plotted would take us through the outer northeast corner of the notorious rocket impact area stretching seventy five miles offshore from the Cape Canaveral launch site.  It was part of the same block of restricted rocket recovery space, prohibited to boat traffic during launches, that we had been turned away from just prior to the launch of Space X in February.  

     We figured the chances of another launch being scheduled, once again, at the very moment we were passing through the restricted area to be pretty astronomical.  

     Although I did consider the fact that I had seen a rocket, being launched at Cape Canaveral, from all the way in the Bahamas one night while I was on deck after midnight.  I don’t think that, in the end, we even checked online to confirm there was no launch scheduled.  It would be pretty ridiculous if this level of complacency turned out to bite us in the ass…

******

     Eee-ahh… Eee-ahh… Eee-ahh… a sound reminiscent of a London police car.

     The near silence in the cockpit has just been shattered by a piercing alarm indicating our autopilot has lost its connection again.

      Jeeves, the name we have affectionately given our electronic chauffeur, or autopilot, typically alleviates our need for the sometimes relaxing yet mundane, sometimes arduous and exhausting task of hand steering the boat for hours on end. 

     We just input a heading in degrees.  Jeeves, tied into both navigational electronics and directly connected to the steering system, maintains that course automatically, making adjustments as needed.  Great… as long as it works. 

     Without obvious rhyme or reason,  Jeeves occasionally throws a fit.  He loses his connection link with the navigation equipment, can’t tell where he is, and simply disengages from the steering.  The wheel, no longer being controlled, begins drifting aimlessly… not ideal. 

      The London Police car sounding alarm is Jeeves belligerently announcing, “Somebody had better get to the wheel pretty damn quickly because I’ve just stopped steering and we’re drifting!”

      A probable corroded connection somewhere between the multiple units all communicating with one another has been plaguing us intermittently for months.  Having checked every connection possible, I am left with only connections behind water sealed panels that are constantly exposed to the elements.  So far, the fear of causing other problems by opening these panels has outweighed the annoyance of Jeeves’ periodic outbursts.

     Back to the reality of constant challenges that come part and parcel with cruising aboard a sailboat.

     After switching the autopilot breaker off and back on again to reset the system, Jeeves seemed content to carry on, at least for the time being.  When we are lucky, he’s good to go again for an always indeterminate amount of time.  When we’re not, he throws this annoying tantrum repeatedly until eventually either he gives up or we do, and resort to hand steering for a while.

******

     This passage turned out to be a roller coaster ride, both mentally and physically.  

     Some of the best sailing we’ve ever done.  Some of the most frustrating mandatory motoring stretches we’ve ever done.  Some pretty freaky moments of what have we gotten ourselves into?

     Only seven hours into very mild sailing conditions, vicious looking storm clouds quickly materialized and stacked up across the horizon.  Sitting on less than three knot winds, we had already dropped the main, furled in the genoa, and fired up the engine.  By the time the clouds, growing more and more ominous looking, were on top of us, we were already prepared.  

     In the blink of an eye, winds had catapulted from less than three knots to thirty knots.  We were glad we had already dowsed the sails.  This would not be the only storm encountered during this passage.

     We had plenty of opportunity during this passage to experiment more with the subtleties of downwind sailing.  Different configurations, adjustments and setups which had confused us when we were primarily sailing upwind now came more into play. 

     Now, sailing almost entirely with the wind aft of our beam, we experienced the slow paced evolution of better understanding:  6.7 knots of speed before in 8 knots of wind when the gulf stream gave us better than a knot of current and the sail trim was clicking… now less than 3 knots of speed in 15 knots of wind when six foot waves were tossing us around and the sail trim obviously wasn’t clicking.

Erratic weather and conflicting information became a bit of a theme during this passage.  Looking opposite directions often provided opposite perspectives and reversed your decisions…

      Ups and downs… as reflected in periodic ship’s log entries:

June 13: 7:50am – Anchor up under sail; making for St. Marys Entrance (350nm/3 days); forecast S-SE winds at 10-15 knots

9:20 – Outside cut; mild chop with 3-5ft swell well spaced; overcast but no threatening clouds in the sky

13:00 – Wind ❤ knots, Engine on and sails in

14:00 – Squall approaching; winds have shifted 180 degrees to WNW at 15-25 knots; seas building to 6-8ft

15:00 – Sailing a little, then siting a little, then motoring a little, then pooing a little… Squall came from NW… holy crap! Seas calming from 6-8ft; storm clouds still near but perfect sailing right now

20:00 – One reef in the main for the night; currently S at 10-12 knots

June 14: 00:00 – Engine on with main up, wind ❤ knots again. Florida coast and ship traffic lights on horizon…ick!

12:00 – Tired of 12 hours of engine noise; motor-sailing straight towards gulf stream for free ride hopefully

12:45 – Good choice.  Making 5 knots in 5.8 knots of wind… yes!

13:30 – Pod of ten or more dolphins came to play at the bow for a few minutes!

15:00 – Making 6.7 knots of speed in just over 8 knots of wind (1.3 knots from Gulf Stream current)… sweet!

16:20 – Making 5.7 knots of speed in 5.5 knots of wind (2 knots from current)… sweeter!

16:45 – Another bow riding pod of dolphins hung around even longer.  Just entered Cape Canaveral rocket impact area – no rockets in sight, no Coast Guard hails… think we’re ok.

21:00 – Minimal chop but lots of lightning in front of us;  One reef in main & full genoa; Winds SSW at 8 knots but getting 4 knot boost from the GS current – making 8 knots of speed

22:00 – Winds W up to 14 knots with 10.5knots of boat speed!  Seas kicking up fast

23:00 – Wind speed indicator freaking out again (reading 25-50 knots of wind on display).  Amazing bioluminescent light show happening all around us.

*****

     Approaching midnight.     

     Not a single light from shore is visible. 

     Not a single light from another boat to be seen.

     It is a feeling of complete isolation.  Fifty miles offshore in the North Atlantic Ocean, the only thing we’ve seen since last night have been pods of curious dolphins.

     Unable to locate a single outside reference point, my eyes strain to identify anything in the utter blackness outside the cockpit.

     Beyond Exit’s decks, there is only dark.  Clouds have completely smothered any ambient light offered by the stars and moon.

     Sudden streaks of lightning flash all around us, bursting intermittently and without warning, providing  momentary glimpses of a feisty, building sea all around us.

     And yet, in what could be a computer generated Hollywood movie effect, the water surrounding Exit literally is aglow.  It looks magical, in stark contrast to the impenetrable black curtain of rest of the night.

    Both hauntingly dim and distinctly present, churning eddies of sparkles and streaks briefly light up alongside the boat with every wave and swell that breaks against our hull.  

    Exit’s bow appears to cut through a wave of light, as the surge of water displaced to either side by our bow wake glows eerily, the result of bioluminescent organisms in the water.

     It is truly surreal… hypnotic.

     Plus we have apparently found a sweet spot in the Gulf Stream current.  Our GPS indicates that we are currently picking up an amazing four extra knots of speed riding the current.

      As the wind began to pick up, hovering between thirteen and fourteen knots, and the seas continued to build up, Poseidon smiled briefly down upon us in the dark.  Our boat speed steadily rose, the display in the cockpit now drifting between six and eight knots.  

      But a quick glimpse at our GPS revealed, with the favorable four knot Gulf Stream current accounted for, that on this night we were actually learning to fly.  We spent three hours streaking along consistently at between an amazing ten to eleven knots of speed.

     At one point, I clocked us making 11.8 knots of speed in 14.5 knots of wind… Yikes!

     Certainly not being a racer, at times barely being a sailor… it’s times like this that the inexperienced are wisely prompted by that nagging feeling of uncertainty to perform an introspective reality check on their comfort level.

     In this instance, it was the absolute darkness in every direction that was so disorienting.  Dramatic bursts of lightning across the horizon and hypnotic bioluminescence glowing alongside the hull all added to the surreal environment.  The faster we went, the brighter the glow appeared to become.

     There is a sense of being on the edge of control.  We thought our sail decision was sound – a single reef in the main (a reefed main was quickly becoming our overnight standard procedure) and our 130% genoa partially furled.  

     Yet, even with reduced sails, we found ourselves still flying along at 10.5 knots of speed in thirteen knots of wind.  Any feelings of anxiousness came, not from our present  situation.  Rather, it was the uncertainty of Poseidon’s full intent tonight… had we seen the brunt of the storm or was it still building?  

     If the winds reached a sustained fifteen to twenty knots, I wasn’t sure if I’d maintain my smile…

Continuation of ship’s log entries:

June 15: 3:00am – Eeek!  Crazy times!  Still amazing bioluminescence all around us while we learn to fly at 11.8 knots of speed in 14.5 knots of wind with 4 knots of current.

8:00 – Wind clocking north, NW at 8-10 knots; confused seas with 2-3ft chop; losing benefit of GS current quickly

9:01 – 273.2 nautical miles this passage makes a total of 3000 nautical miles traveled aboard Exit!!! Woohoo!

12:00 – Wind dying. NW at <5 knots; engine on

13:00 – Wind shifting. W at <5 knots

14:00 – Wind still shifting; now SW at <5 knots but seas calming.  Still 40nm from St. Marys inlet… not gonna make it by dark… shit.

16:00 – Have decided against night entry into St. Marys inlet; will have to circle until morning once we get close

17:00 – Winds W at 5-10 knots; seas calm but there are BIG storm clouds building to the south

17:30 – Weather warnings issuing on VHF to south; nasty clouds continue to stack; steering east – can’t outrun storm but can try to head for its’ edge

17:35 – Engine on and all sails in; gonna make a run in the opposite direction under engine power.

17:45 – All Hell breaking loose!  Wind W at 20-30 knots, seas 3-4ft

18:00 – Wind dropping to 15-20 knots but seas building 4-6ft

21:00 – Wind holding at 16 knots with sloppy and confused seas, raising double reefed main to try to avoid running engine all night

22:00 – Trying to sail through the night, awaiting first light to navigate inlet

     Throughout the night, the messy seas that had been kicked up by the evening storm slowly began to settle back down.  The only casualty we found was a flying fish that had become trapped on deck during the rough seas… technically my first catch from the deck of Exit.

     Fortunately, the worst looking clouds had passed just south of us, and we had been relatively near the outside edge of the whole thing.  It could have been far, far worse.

     As can often be the case, the visual intimidation of really scary looking storm clouds approaching, as well as the ongoing uncertainty of whether you’re currently experiencing the worst of what’s in store or just a preview, makes for higher drama at the beginning of a storm than at the end.

     In this case, the storm was undoubtably a whopper that just tagged us with its’ edge.  

     The wind and minimal rainfall just over us had lost most of its ferocity in less than half an hour.  Still, the big ocean swells and confused waves that had been generated further to the south tossed us around for the rest of the night as they passed by.

    Now, as the sun began to rise the morning of June 16, the seas had finally settled back down, and we were on our final approach towards the St. Marys inlet in our own sailboat… arriving back in the States… surreal.

     By 9:00am, we were at the mouth of the St. Marys River.

     At 10:00am, seventy four hours and three hundred eighty five nautical miles after raising our anchor in the Abacos, Bahamas, we dropped anchor just off Cumberland Island in Georgia, USA.

     Oddly enough, we were within a few hundred feet of the exact same spot we had anchored at in February, just prior to leaving for the Bahamas.

     The same spot… full circle.  

     Only five months… and one thousand six hundred twenty seven nautical miles… plus at least that number of stories later.

     Sailing through another country…

     Completing our longest offshore passage to date…

     Not living the dream… not retired… just rewired.  

     Shallow draft and deep commitment.

     A lot to celebrate… after a long nap.

June 12, 2018 

    Nearly four months after arriving in Bimini, we are finally departing the Bahamas.  

    Our insurance policy requires that we be north of Jacksonville, FL before July 15, to avoid hurricane season within the Bahamas, Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico area.  We have learned that hard deadlines need to be approached with a great deal of buffer factored in, just in case of weather issues, potential mechanical difficulties and other unforeseen concerns that could cause serious delays.

     While the Bahamas hasn’t achieved that most highly regarded and coveted status of “magical” (reserved for places like Borneo, French Polynesia, Micronesia for example), we have had some amazing experiences.  

     Some of the standout highlights would have to include:

• • • Reaching the milestone of two thousand nautical miles traveled aboard Exit (and we will reach three thousand nautical miles during the passage back to the States).
    • Taking in the unbelievable colors of Bahamian waters (certainly the widest spectrum of color we have seen in one area) as well as the magical Bahamian sunsets
    • Learning to safely and successfully navigate through all those different colors of water.
    • Anchoring overnight in the open ocean in fifteen feet of water, all alone, thirty miles from the nearest land on the Great Bahama Banks.
    • Experiencing our first local regatta in George Town (the Family Islands Regatta with its traditional sailboats had to have been much cooler than the Cruisers Regatta the month before).
    • Having our lifelong friends Shannan and Vicki come to visit us aboard Exit.
    • Dinghy excursions from the mothership which included seeing juvenile turtles and sharks in the mangroves, scuba diving with dolphins, and snorkeling with turtles and nurse sharks, as well as our first encounters with bonnethead and Caribbean reef sharks.
    • Celebrating my 52nd birthday aboard Exit with Kris.
    • Tasting lionfish ceviche as well as snapper caught by my own hand spearfishing for the first time.
    • Adding sailing onto and off anchor, without assistance from the engine, to our repertoire of sailing skills.
    • Befriending people like Ray Cunningham (proving once again that every place we visit has a local saint) as well as Jay and Tami (proving once again that there are likeminded cruisers to be found among the sea of assholes and idiots).
    • Watching pods of dolphins bow-ride Exit while under sail as well as scuba diving with them.
    • Not to mention, of course… sailing, sailing, sailing… and all the adventure that incurs.

     Ultimately, the fact that this has been our first real shakedown cruise aboard our own sailboat was truly the most magical aspect of this journey.   

     Do we see ourselves returning to the Bahamas?  I could certainly see that happening.  But it would more likely be in transit to somewhere else.  The opportunity to return as even more experienced and confident sailors, plus the ability to circumvent Florida entirely, definitely has an appealing sound to it… but that would be an entirely different chapter. 

     Our departure from Marsh Harbour signaled a ready to launch status.  We were re-provisioned, full of fuel and water, and prepped to go off-shore as soon as the call was made. 

     From Marsh Harbour, the plan was to press northwest.     

     The bigger decision was yet to be made…. 

     Do we:  1) push all the way to the northwestern edge of the inner banks at depths of ten to twenty five feet until we reached the tip of Middle Shoal nearly one hundred thirty miles away and jump over to the Florida coast? 

     Or do we:  2) find a spot somewhere in the next fifty miles, before Little Abaco Island disintegrates into an endless stretch of reefs, that we can jump outside to instant depths of one hundred to five thousand feet, and set a trajectory directly for St. Marys, on the Georgia-Florida border?

*****

     On the day of my birthday, while having cocktails in the cockpit, we had felt a great deal of sympathy towards our neighbor, a young man single-handing a thirty-some foot traditional sloop I couldn’t identify, who was hoisting himself up the mast in a Bosun’s chair.

     Every time a power boat came by at a speed excessive enough to create a substantial wake (which seemed to be every thirty seconds), this poor bastard would pitch back and forth at the top of his mast like a fly sitting atop an old-school tick-tock style metronome, all the while yelling out to the passing boat, Slow the fuck down, asshole!  This is a no wake zone!

     The following day, I couldn’t help but to think of him as we sailed clear of the Marsh Harbour Channel markers and the VHF crackled to life one last time.

     The final words we heard coming from the speaker were anonymous.  Proper radio etiquette had been abandoned… no specific vessel being hailed… the person doing the hailing not identifying their own vessel…

     Just a frustrated captain issuing the angry statement across the airwaves:  Rules of the road mean nothing if you’re an idiot!

     It was the last thing we heard leaving Marsh Harbor and it seemed rather poetic, in a salty way.

     From Marsh Harbour, our intended destination, not quite thirty miles to the northwest, was Crab Cay, just south of Manjack Cay.  

     This meant we had to pass through Whale Cay Cut, a short stretch that exposed us to the open ocean conditions.  The cut carried a brutal reputation for its’ ability to throw an unrelenting stink at unsuspecting boaters.  We saw nothing that concerned us.

     Then, as we tacked around, positioning ourselves through the cut relative to two catamarans that were approaching the cut from the opposite direction, a fast moving squall passed through.  

     Winds jumped up to an excess of twenty five knots. We furled in the genoa and fired up the engine to make certain we had adequate control through the narrow cut.  

     As lightning detonated all around us and we passed through Whale Cay Cut, things suddenly seemed to take a Twilight Zone twist.

     There was a moment of panic as we watched the wind speed indicator, which had risen steadily from ten knots to twenty five over the past fifteen minutes, now begin to climb higher and higher… It rose from twenty five to thirty…

     Then from thirty to thirty five….

     Then from thirty five to forty…

     Then to forty five…

     This didn’t seem possible.  Yes, it was blowing like a son of a bitch out there.  But, the wind hadn’t jumped twenty knots in the past sixty seconds.

     And then the number on the wind indicator kept climbing…

     Fifty… seventy five… one hundred plus… we took a photo with the display showing in the 130’s… then almost 210… it topped out around 220 knots.   What the fuck?!

     We were later told that this was probably the result of electrical interference from the nearby lightning storm.  

     At the time, passing through the cut as the storm unleashed itself and the wind indicator went mental, it all seemed like another Bermuda Triangle moment.

     Fortunately, as the storm passed, so too did the drama.  We were able to let the genoa back out and kill the engine. 

     But, before long we were rolling our eyes as winds that had died down to less than five knots challenged whether we could continue much further without firing the engine back up.

     We were thankful when Crab Cay appeared.  Shortly after we were safely at anchor.

Prepping for an offshore passage is quite a process.  Properly getting everything physically ready also seems to help get us mentally ready.  Stowing and/or securing everything above and below deck; getting meals ready; monitoring weather; engine checks; course plotting; preparing for potential sail changes; it goes on and on… and different weather expectations initiate different Def-con status levels.

In addition, different decisions equate to different risk levels, expectations of conditions, and costs/benefit analysis.  For example, we have a number of options with our dinghy… Option#1 – Tow the dinghy behind us; easy but high risk of loss or capsize.  Option#2 – Hang the dinghy from the davit; ok for good weather but a breaking wave could take out our entire arch.  Option#3 – Deflate dinghy and secure on deck; probably the safest option but a huge pain in the butt and really clutters the deck.  Option#4 – Cinch the dinghy up against the arch to prevent breaking waves from swamping the dinghy and help protect the cockpit.

     After an extra day of getting things ready aboard Exit while still anchored at Crab Cay, we made one final push of another eleven miles to Powell Cay, setting us up to depart through the nearby inlet the following morning.

     We had finally decided on Option Two – jump north through the reefs from the last of the Abaco cays and make a run for the Georgia border.

     This would give us nearly a straight shot to the St. Marys entrance.  Cumberland Island was about three hundred fifty miles northwest of our current position at Powell Cay.  Over a hundred miles further than our longest passage so far, which had ironically been after our last our last departure from Cumberland Island in February, when we ended up stuck in Cape Canaveral with fuel tank issues.

     The distance was not really a concern.  Our biggest trepidation came from the uncertainty of possible sudden thunderstorms and squalls, something we had gained a healthy respect for over the past few months.

     We’d be in much more exposed open seas, well farther from any land mass.  Any thunderstorms or squalls that materialized right on top of us would just have to be dealt with.  There would be no bay or harbor to duck into, providing us a safe haven to await the passing of any nasty weather.

     With a conservative approach, keeping a vigilant watch in the cockpit, checking our radar often, and reefing our sail immediately if something looked like it could be developing, we felt confident our decision was sound. 

June 10, 2018

    One of the things you don’t like hearing aboard a sailboat while you are relaxing in the cockpit, or any time for that matter, are the words I smell propane…

     Kris has a superhuman sense of smell.  Oftentimes, this is a source of great annoyance for me.  Occasionally, it saves my life.

    Four days ago we dropped anchor at this spot, having found a suitable space amongst all the boats in Marsh Harbour, Great Abacos Island.  It was just eighteen miles north of Sandy Cay, where we had finally gone for our first boat-based fun diving excursion, on a boat that was actually our own.

     Our time in Marsh Harbour had been largely uneventful.  A good opportunity for re-provisioning, laundry, even a drama-free fuel and water top up at the dock of the Marsh Harbour Marina.

My 52nd birthday, on June 9, was quiet by choice.  Kris was kind enough to disregard her general vegetarian disgust for raw pig flesh and cooked up bacon… yes BACON… for my breakfast… an odoriferous treat that must have had the occupants of every boat in the area salivating.

     For lunch was lionfish.  Yes, I finally got to taste lionfish.  Tami had gone spearfishing, a couple of days after taking me out, and speared a number of lionfish, which she then gave to me as a birthday gift to try.   I would have to admit that, for a fish sandwich, something a bit more solid and flakey would be preferable.   However, prepared raw in a ceviche, the lionfish was delicious.

     The rest of the day was quietly spent drinking with Kris in the cockpit… a not-at-all unpleasant afternoon by even the highest standards.

     The day before we planned on picking up anchor, while we were in the cockpit, Kris asked me if I smelled propane.  I sniffed and, as I often do when asked by Kris if I smell something, shook my head, shrugged my shoulders, and replied Nope… I don’t smell anything.

     The second time, she was adamant that there was no doubt she smelled propane, but concluded that it must be from one of the other boats anchored nearby.

     The third time, Kris was done fucking around.  She stood up and, obviously having decided this was a mystery she was going to get to the bottom of immediately, walked straight up to the bow.

     She opened one of the two bow lockers on deck, where our two propane tanks (used for the propane stove) are securely stored, looked back with wide eyes and firmly announced… It’s definitely coming from here… and it’s hissing!

     Shit… Visions of a mushroom cloud forming above the just detonated forty six foot long aluminum cased propane bomb…

     Step one… turn off the damn propane.   

     Step two… apparently never test for propane leaks with a lit flame.  Hmmm… not sure about the necessity of that warning.  Kind of seems to me right up there with “don’t test to see if a lake is frozen by walking on it” or “don’t hold a gun to your head and pull the trigger to verify it’s not loaded”.  

     I guess it’s extra protection offered for the benefit of people you’d find on a long list entitled Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest – Top Evolutionary Longshots.

     Step three… after heeding step two and not blowing yourself up, get a squirt bottle filled with a liberal amount of dish soap and water.   Squirt the soapy water on every fitting, hose and connection and watch closely.  Any leak in the propane line will begin to bubble up, immediately revealing it’s location.

     Surprisingly, there were two separate leaks.  One was a hose…leaking at the factory seam where the metal fitting joins the rubber hose.  The other was a threaded brass fitting that was leaking at the connection.

     The hose was toast.  No spares aboard.  But the fitting could be readily repaired. 

     Unfortunately, I lacked both a supply of propane fitting tape as well as the self-confidence needed to assess, undertake, and safely resolve propane repair issues, a potentially lethal outcome of which I was fully aware.

    Fortunately, S/V Avigna was anchored only two boats away.  Of course,  Jay had both the proper materials and self-confidence to show me what needed to be done. 

     In the end, after the fitting had been repaired, everything tested, and the belowdecks rooms fully aired out, our propane system was back in action.  Without a spare, the leaking hose could only be disconnected, leaving one hookup that could be switched between the two tanks as necessary… sweet.

     Jay also expressed confidence that:  Exit was probably not in any real danger of becoming a bomb… 

     Whew…

     Sure… any instance during which movement of a hose or fitting causes propane to hiss out needs instant attention.  

     However, Exit’s aluminum bulkhead behind the propane tanks provides substantial protection, and the bow locker in which the tanks are stored is integrated as part of the aluminum hull, isolated, and well vented.

     In Jay’s humble opinion, the worst that could happen is you blow the aluminum locker hatches clean off the deck.

     …Reassuring… I think.

At that very moment, it was not lost upon me that I am occasionally reminded of the misunderstanding which occurred when I was in the fourth grade resulting in my parents being summoned to the principal’s office amid reports of their son being involved in the attempted building of a bomb on school grounds… exaggerations and misrepresentations… Fake News, if you will… certainly outside the scope of this blog…