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Our First Passage

Hi this is Sally! I am going to tell you about the last two CRAZY days of our very first passage from Mobile to Clearwater. When I say CRAZY, I mean over 25 knot winds, pounding waves one after another, CRAZY. Normally, I don’t get seasick but when you’re trying to sleep and you keep slamming down with the waves it gets really tricky to fall asleep. So after a beautiful day sailing, our first night on passage I was still up at 5 am! Two hours of sleep and a stomachache…

The second day on passage was wavy. I took an hour long nap, ate dinner and cake, and the waves calmed down. Now the interesting and crazy part is:  I get in bed but since I took a nap I’m just not that tired. Then, here comes a big 65 lb Willie jumping on me since I was in my mom’s and dad’s (and Willie’s) room ‘cause the motor was on in my room. BANG, at 10 pm the big waves start coming again. Now my whole room is slamming into the water again, GREAT!  This makes it 10x harder to fall asleep because EVERY SINGLE TIME the boat moves, Willie sticks his head up and whimpers.  That is impossible to ignore and I find myself comforting the dog. 11 pm still trying to fall asleep. Ok I’m asleep now.

The third day on passage, I wake up at the sound of rain. I find a HUGE wet spot under the window right where I’m sleeping. I close the window right away.  Down the hall ahead of me, I also see there’s a leak in the window so water is pouring down. No not the usual rain, waves coming over the boat. I’m about to puke at this point from all the bumps.  Uh oh, I see a bin in the TOILET which the top had somehow managed to come off and stuff was everywhere.  So, a toenail clipper is floating in the toilet and on top of that I can’t get gloves (theres a possibility that tools can crush me from the cabinet that the gloves are in!). First things first… waves are pouring on me so I get a bucket for the leak “Theres a leak in the boat!” I yell. Luckily, the bucket solves the problem for now.  Back to the toenail clippers… before I grab them I tell Lucy “ get the hand sanitizer ready!” Total GROSSNESS. I already am very seasick so I head outside (that normally makes me feel better).  Next thing I know, I’m fast asleep. I wake up. Go back to sleep. I can’t believe my watch— it’s already 12pm! I read I little then Heidi, Lucy, and I watch Just Add Magic. We’re all still getting used to passages…

Bye for now,

Sally

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Should I have been wearing a helmet?

A post by Mark

The other day – I witnessed a relatively rare astronomical event (I think).

It was the end of our 3 1/2 day passage – around an hour or two after sunset.  We were about 2 or 3 hours from the marina in Clearwater Beach – the end was finally in sight.  I’m at the helm – cruising on auto pilot and just scanning the water for stuff – mainly, other boats – as there were no other obstructions in our path.  I take a quick look at the instruments, look up – and out of the corner of my eye, I see a bright green flare landing in the water.  Quickly, I scan the horizon to see where it came from.  I’m about to turn the boat towards it – thinking I’m going to assist in some sort of rescue.  I can’t find anything, so I call down to Julie to come up and to help me scan the water as well.  I was shocked to see the flare – as I hadn’t seen anything in the water anywhere near where it landed.  After 10 minutes searching with our spotlight, we see nothing and conclude I must have just been seeing things – especially since all marine flares are either red or orange.  I guess the lack of sleep was getting to me.

After another 10 minutes or so, I finally convince myself that I was seeing things.  Just then, the Coast Guard transmits the following over the radio:
‘This is Coast Guard station St. Petersburg – Notice to all mariners along the Florida coast from Key West to Pensacola.  Please be advised that there is meteorite activity in the area, and all mariners are advised to use caution.’

Holy cow – I think I just saw a meteorite hit the Gulf – and not too far from us.  Pretty cool.   Ranks pretty high on the list of things I didn’t expect to on this trip.

As a side note – we had a pretty good chuckle about the Coast Guard advisory…  Exactly how does one use caution to avoid a meteorite?  Do we just duck? Wear helmets?  What exactly are we supposed to do?  Plus – they were about 20 minutes too late.  Chances are we won’t have to worry about this again.

Until next time…

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On the Road Again

A post by Mark
Hi all –
It has been a while since I wrote – I’ll catch you up with the latest.
Last I wrote, we had just gotten to Mobile.  Interesting part of that day… on the way towards the marina, we hear the following on the radio “Catamaran leaving the Mobile River, this is the US Navy – Over”.  Yikes…. Way on the horizon, we see a big grey mass.  Turns out, its a Navy ship on the way into the river.  After a quick conversation, we agree with the US Navy that we’d go to the right side of the channel – staying clear of the ship.  Here’s what we saw going passing by…   It was pretty cool.

So, we ended up in Mobile much longer than we planned…  In Mobile, we needed to get the mast put back-up on our boat.  We thought we were scheduled to have it installed a day or two after we arrived.  Turns out, we weren’t scheduled until 6 days later.  The delay is especially bad because we wanted to be in Naples FL the weekend before Thanksgiving to spend the week with Julie’s parents, my mom, and Julie’s sister and kids (aka – the cousins).  During the delay, we did a bunch of small jobs on the boat – the biggest of which was to try to get the fresh water in our tanks tasting better.  By the end of the trip down the river, our water tasted downright bad!  This job seemed relatively straightforward – but has turned into an ongoing debacle which is still not fully fixed – as it seems that every time I fix one part, another issue pops up.  Two things are making this particularly challenging… 1) its a boat – and everything is just harder to fix on a boat.  It’s as if the designers try to put the things that break most often in the most difficult places to reach. 2)  We only have access to a car for an hour or two every day or so (sometimes less often).  Oh well – its all part of the adventure! (I need to keep reminding myself of this – especially when I’m in the middle of the job.  As I side note, I think I have created a few new swear words while contorted into ungodly positions on the boat – or at least created unique combinations of the oldies but goodies).

Anyway – back to the story….  Our plan was to get the mast up and pull the boat of the water to change the anodes – pieces of zinc under the boat that protect the engine and propellers from corrosion.  The folks at the marina told us that they could pull boats out up to 22 1/2 feet wide – which is good – since we are 22 ft 2” wide.  Turns out, they can only pull boats 22’ wide, which we found out when we got stuck pulling the boat into the lift bay.  Ugh….  Time for plan B (note – after a few tries, we’re now on plan D or E – we are fixed for now).
After we got the mast up and sails on the boat, we tied it up good and rented a car and headed to Naples.  We spent a good week in Naples – it was really nice to see everybody and relax for a few days (or try – sometimes – as it was a sometimes hard to relax knowing that there was still a bunch of work to do on the boat 10 hrs away).  Thanks to everybody for a good visit!
As Heidi mentioned in her post, she and I drove to Tallahassee for a day to see the Jimmy Buffett / Kenny Chesney / Toby Kieth / Jake Owens Hurricane Relief concert.  It was pretty cool – a lot of fun seeing all these together in various combinations.
In Naples, we ordered a satellite hotspot for our boat – a device that will allow us to get weather on passage and turns our phone into a satellite phone.  It was supposed to ship overnight – so it should have gotten to our boat by Monday – or Tuesday the latest.  It showed up Friday – further extending our stay in Mobile.   On Saturday, we finally left Mobile.
We headed out towards Naples – which is a 4-day passage.  We knew this was an ambitious goal – but we planned our path so that we’d be pretty close to shore and could head in to one of several ports along the way if we wanted to shorten our journey.
The girls are writing about the passage in depth – but here’s the synopsis… it was a bit rough.
The first day was nice and calm – as forecasted – until about midnight – when the wind and waves decided to kick-up.  It calmed down again in the morning – and again,  got really windy and wavy around 11 PM.  It also shifted – bringing us parallel to the Florida peninsula (instead of towards it like we wanted to). In the morning, we decided to head upwind towards shore – which added extra time to the journey.  We also lost one of our engines.  About this time, we decide to head to Clearwater FL instead of all the way to Naples.  We arrived in Clearwater around 10 PM – tired, but in one piece.  The next morning, we learned that our engine issue was just a line wrapped around our prop – so it was an easy fix.  The past few days, I fixed a few minor things that broke on the passage and spent way too much time trying to get our fresh water system fixed (still no luck – I’m going to have to replace the entire system when we get to Naples – ugh).  We’re in Clearwater for another few days while we wait for some storms to roll through.   Then – off to Naples.
I’ll try to be better about writing more regularly…
Until then –
Mark
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Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Turkey Day! Tehehehe. I have so much to be thankful for. This year has been quite a highlight of my 14 years of existence. Spending prime time with the people I love, meeting many new people that I have the privilege to call friends, and explored many new places, some of which have the coolest names I have ever heard. I am so lucky and thankful for all of my friends that have helped me through this transition and all of the family that is encouraging me daily. I am thankful for family, cousins, friends, grandparents, sisters, parents, and all of the amazing people who have made this trip so incredible. And of course, good health, water, food, shelter, and Mother Nature and all of her wonders. Oh oh oh! I am also extremely lucky and thankful to have made it to the hurricane benefit concert starring Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith, Jake Owens, and Caroline Jones. It was an incredibly awesome concert and I loved getting to spend that fun filled night with my dad. Parrot heads for evaaaaa. Hahaha. Fins up! “I wish you lovely weather, more luck than you’ll need.” Jimmy Buffett, I Wave Bye Bye

Gobble gobble,

Heidi 🍂🦃🍁

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Were they messing with us, or just very wrong?

A post by Mark

The adventure continues. As I mentioned in my last post, we followed the lockmaster’s advice and anchored in a small inlet about 15 miles downstream of his lock. If you will recall, he told us there would be plenty of water. He also told us the water would be increasing 1 to 2 feet overnight (a detail I left out last night – figuring it would be irrelevant). Anyway, he was wrong…

We started at 4 1/2′ of water – a little uncomfortable for us – but enough. The next morning, I get up for my regular dinghy ride to the shore with Wille and notice that there is now a significant riverbank on both sides of the inlet, where previously, there was none. When I get to the boat ramp where Willie and I get to shore, the bottom of the ramp is no-longer in the water. The water level didn’t go up 1 to 2 feet – it dropped 1 to 2 feet.

This isn’t good – was the lockmaster messing with us?

We had some hope – as our guidebook told us that we should expect a tidal change of 1 to 2 feet.  It must be low tide now – right???

We start to slowly make our way out of the inlet. We get turned around and make it about 30 feet before our first grounding. We’re going really slowly, so, I’m able to back-up before we get stuck and try to reposition the boat to find some deeper water. Another few wiggles with the boat and we make it another 10′ or so. And then, we stop. We are in 3 1/2 feet of water and stuck in the mud. Note: at this time, we’ve abandoned our depth sounder and are now sticking our boat hook in the water to measure the depth.
So – on to the anchor trick. After a lot of work getting the anchor set, we’re able to pull ourselves out another 20 or so feet. We’re getting close to deep water!!! We now need to unstick our anchor and re-set it another 40 or 50 feet in front of the boat. After even more work, we get it re-set and start pulling. Based on the first few pulls, this last 40 feet are going to be the toughest. In the meantime, Julie calls the NOAA station in Mobile (the weather guys) to try to understand the tides, how much lift we can expect, etc.  The NOAA guy has no idea what Julie is talking about – as the tides have absolutely no impact where we are (Is the guidebook writer messing with us?). He also tells us that the water-levels are forecasted to drop another 6″ today and even more the next day.  This is looking less good by the minute.  Julie then calls the lock, tells the lockmaster what’s up – and he says that there is a boat in the lock that he’ll ask to come help us.  He also says that he’ll see if he can release some water from the dam to help – but we’re 15 miles downstream – so it will take quite some time for us to see the impact.

About an hour later – as we both exhausted from pulling (and making less and less headway), we see our saviors – not the boat from the lock, but a boat from the US Geological Survey that was coming out of the inlet to collect samples (water or mud – I never figured out which one).  Anyway, they weren’t really excited to help – as they were worried about getting stuck, but I was able to explain how they could put their boat in the deep channel and I could bring them a 75′ line from our boat – so they wouldn’t have to get near the shallow water.  Thankfully, they agreed – and in less than 5 minutes, we were free.  Thank you USGS!!!  It took a bit more work to get our anchor free (as we dug it in really deep), but eventually, we got it up and were on our way.  Our 7 AM start turned into a 9 AM start.

I’m really looking forward to getting off of the river!  We have one night left on the river.  We pick an anchorage with 20′ of water!  We should get there about 1 1/2 hours before sunset.  Unless the guidebook is really, really wrong, we should be good!

Bye for now…

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The River giveth, the River taketh away

A post by Mark

The River Giveth

Today, I got a free anchor! For real… Here’s the story.

As has become the new normal, we were trying to get a real early start today – as we were hoping to cover a long stretch of river to get to the next ‘really good’ anchorage. So, the day started at 5:00 – bringing Willie for a walk pre-dawn and pulling up anchor at first light (around 5:45). We were in a really narrow anchorage last night, so we had to carefully spin our boat around to get out. We went really slowly, got pointed in the right direction, and started on our way out. Until we stopped dead in our tracks. What??? We’re in 9 feet of water – we can’t be stuck. But we were. Ugh… Then, to make matters worse, the starboard engine just stops. I idle the other engine to think for a second.. We must be caught on something. While the engine is off, we spin around – and now the port hull is really close to the riverbank (meaning, the bow (front) is in the mud and a few tree branches are brushing up against the side of the boat.) We get our extra anchor out again and start pulling ourselves off the bank. As I set the anchor – the lightbulb goes off and I figure out what’s going on… We’ve wrapped our starboard propeller around something – probably an old rope in the water. Time to get the wetsuit out again. Into the water (now, at least, it’s a bit light out), and under the boat. Well – I was right – we had an old anchor line wrapped around our propeller. As I start to cut it all free, I notice that one end has a lot of tension on it. After I cut that piece, I bring it back up to the surface and Julie ties it to the boat. I clear the rest of the line from the prop and climb back onto the boat. I start pulling on that line – which pulls us off the river bank. After a lot of pulling (and using the engines to back-down on the line), I pull up a ~20 lb anchor.

We then pull up our extra anchor and are on our way – the rest of the exit goes smoothly. We’re out of the anchorage by 6:45 – still possible to make the anchorage – but things have got to go our way the rest of the day.

The River Taketh Away

Since the anchor was really muddy, we left it on the back of our boat – on the stairs that go down to the water. As we motor, water splashes up on the bottom stair and it helps get some of the mud off. Julie also spends a fair amount of time getting the muck off. (Note, the picture above was taken after most of the muck was off it). Fast forward an hour or two… I decide to try to go a little faster and make up some time. I speed up – about ½ mph. About 5/10 min later, I look back – no anchor!!! Turns out, the massive acceleration from 8 to 8.5 mph (I’m a real speed demon) was enough for the anchor to slip backwards off the back of the boat. What a bummer! Oh well.

The Rest of the Day

One of the things that had to go ‘perfectly’ for us to make the anchorage by dark was that we had to make it through one lock – and do it quickly. About 5 miles away from the lock, we see a barge (not an unusual sight). Unfortunately for us, we were going in the same direction – meaning that we were going to have to wait for it to go through the lock before we could (for, even if we passed them, they would go get to go first – as they have priority on the river). No way we’re making the far anchorage now. No big deal though – we talk to the lock operator, he tells us about another spot we can stop, and we head there for the night. We’re there now – and its pretty shallow (the lock operator told us it was 6-8 ft, our depth sounder says 4.5 ft.  Luckily, we draw 3′ 9″)– so we’re waiting until its light out before we leave. I don’t want another pre-dawn bout of excitement. Hopefully, we won’t have any post-dawn excitement either..

Until next time…

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Good Luck in AL

A post by Mark

Good thing we’re having good luck in Alabama. Otherwise, this morning, we would have lost our dinghy, Willie would have run away, I would have lost my shoe in the mud, my phone would have died, and we would have lost our steering in the middle of the channel near a barge. Luckily, none of those happened.

However, the 45 mins from 5:30 to 6:15 this morning were quite exciting.

It started slowly enough – I took Willie for a dinghy ride to the shore to go for a quick walk. I pulled the dinghy up the boat ramp near our anchorage – and explicitly thought – wow, I pulled it up a little too much, may be a pain in the neck to get back in the water.

After a 10 or so min walk, I head down the ramp only to find the dinghy drifting away. We’re anchored just a bit downstream of a lock and dam. Turns out, when they lowered the water in the lock, the run-off raised the water near us about a foot – enough to float the dinghy off the ramp and into the river. I quickly make my way down the ramp – Willie has no idea what’s going on now. I start wading trough the water, banging into big rocks under the water with my shins (fun times). Willie decides that he has gone far enough in the water and hits the brakes. So, I drop his leash and keep going in. Then, I take a step, and come up without my shoe. My other one flips off the next step, and I am quickly waist deep. Time to swim. The dinghy is only 5 or 10 feet away – so it’s pretty easy to get and pull back to shore. Luckily, through this episode, Willie decided to just wade in chest-deep and enjoy the show.

Once we’re back on shore, I start looking for my shoes. Did I mention its still pretty dark out – so, no easy task. I find the second shoe floating a few feet off shore – so I figure the first one must be close. So, now, I’m reaching around in knee-deep muck – and, in less than 30 seconds, I find it. Took a bit of effort to actually pull it out – but as I mentioned in the beginning – we’re having good luck in Alabama and I get it out. Sometime around now, I remember that my phone is in my lifejacket pocket – ugh. I open it up – its damp, but not dripping – and is still working. I shut it down and when I get back to the boat, stick it in a bag of rice (note – not sure if the phone is going to make it – I’m going to keep it on rice for the night).

The ride back to the boat is uneventful. We dry off Willie (and me), and get ready to leave. By now, it’s around 6:15. Up goes the anchor, I use the engines to turn us around and head us out of the anchorage, and start to use the steering wheel to maneuver us out. Funny thing – the wheel doesn’t seem to do much. I turn it to the left – we don’t go left. I turn it to the right – we don’t go right. At one point, I spin it around like a cartoon – just to confirm my fear. Yep – no steering. Good thing we have only moved about 6’ from lifting the anchor. So – down goes the anchor again. The steering fix turns out to be pretty simple – a set screw had worked its way out and the gear that connects the wheel to the rudders fell off its axel. We quickly found all the parts, put it back together (now, with Loctite on the screw), and were lifting the anchor and on our way in 15 / 20 minutes. The rest of the day was uneventful – 51 miles downriver – we were at the marina by 12:45. Later tonight, we’re taking the marina’s courtesy car to the local Walmart Supercenter to re-stock on food / drink / etc. After being on the boat 12-days straight, this is a real highlight!

As I write this, I’m looking at this plaque on our boat…

Truer words have never been spoken – for this has been a great adventure so-far.

Note: The phone is dead… It may be doing something, but the screen is fried (I dropped it a few months ago and it cracked – so I’m guessing the combination of cracked screen and water wasn’t a good one). Oh well… we were planning to only have one phone anyway.

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We made it to the ocean!

A post by Mark

Hi all,

As Lucy mentioned in her post, we’re safe and sound in Mobile AL.  We were very happy to get to Mobile Bay – as the last few days of the river were getting a bit old.  I have 2 or 3 posts that I wrote on the river but had no way to upload (we were in the proverbial ‘middle of nowhwere’).  I’ll post those shortly – the wifi here is pretty slow.

Bye for now…

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Tree Get Out Of My Window

NOTE: This was a few days ago, now we are unstuck and happy in the ocean in Mobile AL

Hi everyone! WELL, in the last two days lots have happened! I will tell the main things, and like always, please note that this might be a little exaggerated. All is good now, don’t you worry. Wait, we just got stuck again, in what we thought were tides, we are still stuck while I am writing this. We are better now, don’t you fear!

Wednesday, November eight,
“BRREEEMMMP BREEEM” I woke up with a start as the engine turned on. I stayed up for a minute then went back to sleep as I usually did when we first started. I was half sleeping half awake when the engine suddenly stopped. Now you might be thinking for me, finally some peace and quiet. But no, that is not good, I thought.
“Lucy,” Sally said awoke by the stop of the motor, “what happened?”
“I am not sure,” I replied a little scared. But sure enough I was talking to someone who was asleep. I stayed up expecting the engine to turn back on, but it didn’t. I looked at the window to get some assurance that we were fine, but what I got was exactly the opposite!
“Sally!” I said flicking her arm.
“Wha, evil gummy bear go away, OH MY GOSH, THAT TREE IS ON OUR WINDOW!” Sally finally came out of her dream land!
I quickly grabbed my shoes, as I wondered, what happened this time?
“Got your life jacket,” Sally exclaimed as we headed out to see what happened.
“What is happening?” Sally asked before I could.
Then the words came, the oh to familiar words came, three words my new least favorite. We are stuck, again.
“What should I do?” I asked eager, like the rest of us to get us out of the trees.
“Nothing yet, I just don’t know why we are stuck.” Said Dad as we started to pull our selves with the anchor, but it didn’t improve.
Finally, Dad thought he might have to go swimming, again, because the propeller wasn’t right, gosh, I might have to skip yesterday and go to today, there are some awful noises right now.
OK, so, this is Thursday, November 9th.
We just got stuck, again! So we are in what are supposedly tides, but don’t change for a day or something. I don’t really get it. Confused face.
So, you probably know what I am going to do now right? Well, this time I wasn’t that scared, surprisingly, not sure if that is a good or bad thing. Sally went up and asked what happened. I will let you figure the next part out. Just kidding, we are stuck. So now Mom and Dad are running our faucets and water out, (not the one we drink) into the river. Over about 50 gallons we only got an inch higher. We called the lock and tried to get more water on our side, but that would take awhile. Then this sample getting crew came by us. They asked us if we were ok. We said, yes, but we are stuck. They didn’t want to get stuck too, so when we asked them if they could maybe give us tow, they were hesitant at first. But, after we got our bridal with a long line attached they did it. Thank you so much to the USGS!!!!! Well, the rest of the day was a lot less eventful. It was nice to be at a nice anchorage after. Oh wait, I have to finish the first part.

Continued for Wednesday

“Huh,” Dad huhed as he realized someone else anchor was attached around our propeller. After a lot of work of uniting and cutting the line it finally came undone with an anchor!!!
So yay, we got a free anchor and we are unstuck now!
————————————Three hours Later——————————————
No one was outside except for dad. We were trying to get to a certain anchorage so we sped up and flush. There goes the new anchor! = (

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Going down the Jamie Whitten Lock

Time lapse of us dropping 82 feet in about 8 minutes. 

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​​note – this was a few days ago. We’re now in warm and sunny Alabama. Only a few more locks to go before we are at sea level – and about a week until we are a true sailboat again.