With the arrival of John's brother, Ken, we decided 'enough with the varnishing' and on Sunday, February 1st, we left our winter slip in Brunswick, Georgia, heading south to Fernandina Beach, Florida. Where we promptly ran aground. As luck (our luck) would have it, as soon as we ran aground, the sun set. With lots of back and forth, however, after an hour or so, we freed ourselves and picked up the nearest mooring and spent the night. While going towards said mooring, however, I noticed that there was something wrong with the steering. I couldn't make the boat go to port (that's left for you 'dirt dwellers').
The next morning, John 'fixed' the steering problem, and we're off down the Intracoastal Waterway towards our ultimate destination of Ft. Lauderdale, where we plan to head over to the Bahamas. We decided to anchor for the evening at a spot that, according to the charts, looked pretty easy. Not so! We got stuck, then unstuck, then as we are trying to decide what to do, we ended up outside the channel, and ran, as they say hard aground. Of course, now it's dark. And, the tide is going out~~fast.
So, what happens when you are stuck and the tide is going out? You slowly roll to one side. Imagine your home on a 45 degree angle and trying to walk from one end to the other. Quite the challenge.
So, you ask, what then? Well, then you wait for high tide, float yourself off, and resume your trip. Being freed (again) and no worse for wear, we head down the Intracoastal Waterway until we found a marina and pulled into a dock at 3:30 a.m.
The next few days probably had Ken wishing he had stayed at home in Ohio in front of his fireplace. It was cold. The deck iced up with the runoff of the water from the on-deck coolers. This little reprieve, however (it was just too cold and miserable to continue) gave us a chance to recheck all the systems again and found that John's repair to the steering had given way. So, we found someone in the marina who machined a part for us out of aluminum, which we had been trying to fix with plywood. I am happy to say, so far so good. That evening, after fixing the steering, we headed to the restaurant at the marina, where they were having a local talent night. We were treated to several really good performers on guitar, harmonica, and vocals. The winner of the contest, however, played the digery-doo. What fun!
With these early items taken care of (we pretended this was just a 'shake-down' cruise) we headed out into the ocean for two days and two nights of sailing. The winds were out of the east, so it was perfect. We set the sails as we left St. Augustine and sailed or motor sailed with only occasional adjustments.
We arrived in Lake Worth, Florida, on Sunday afternoon~~one week gone from our marina in Georgia, and 334 miles covered.
Upon arriving in Lake Worth, we called old friends and relatives in the area. We were treated to chauffeur services by an old friend of Ken's, Linda, who was gracious enough not only to run us around for a few hours to the grocery, the boat store, etc, but invited us to dinner. Ken ended up going to dinner with Linda and her husband, Ed, while John and I were visited by old friends from Ohio, June and Terry Rainwater, who must have been very bored, because they drove 6 or 7 hours in total to come and spend time with us.
After our short visit at Lake Worth, we needed to get going if we were going to get to Ft. Lauderdale (our jumping off point) in time to take advantage of the coming weather window to make our crossing to the Bahamas.
It was pretty rough out in the ocean that day, so we decided to continue down the Intracoastal Waterway. We found a beautiful anchorage at Lake Boca Raton, and, of course, as we are entering the anchorage (at low time) we ran aground again. This time, however, the tide was on its way in, so we were soon in deep enough water to work ourselves out. It turned out to be a beautiful anchorage.
This morning, Wednesday, February 11th, we uneventfully left the anchorage at Lake Boca Raton and continued down the Intracoastal to Ft. Lauderdale. We were able to rent the last moorning at the municipal marina, and were excited that we had gone the whole day without something breaking. Then...the dingy engine gods decided we had not been sufficiently punished and the little engine refused to start. John studied the manual, however, and found a way to bypass the regular starter.
So, here we are in Ft. Lauderdale, ready to take advantage of the 2 or 3 day weather window to make our crossing to the Bahamas. I wonder what will happen tomorrow????
Wish us luck!
