Kaimusailing

I am on watch now, the early morning 2 AM watch. We are motoring into an 8 knot SE wind with lumpy seas. Our ETA to the mark off Cape Canaveral is 7:30 AM. I have coffee and cookies, the last 6 soggy Keeblers. Dinner earlier had been a prepackaged salad to which I added 6 slices (slabs) of bacon, a large tomato, an onion, and 3 shredded carrots.
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The other boat that bore off to our port didn't tack back to embarrass us as to our boat speed. They must have gone into port for the night. There is a simple rule of thumb for calculating VMG to windward, the ratio of VMG/boatspeed is 1:1.4. The other boat would have to sail about 7 knots on her tacks to equal our 5 knots directly to the mark. Not impossible. If they were a longer boat their hull speed might be higher than ours and she would pass us. Our hull speed is roughly 7.5 knots, though someone posted an 8 knot hull speed for the Lagoon 380, we have gone up that high off the wind, but into the wind she seems to get into a 5 to 6 knot limit.
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The wind hasn't backed at all. My watch is over and we still have a ways to go to our waypoint. It is very rough. In my bunk I am being tossed up in the air and thrown from side to side. I needed a massage anyway for my sore aching muscles.
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I awoke a short time later and went up on deck, knowing that the skipper would be needing help raising sail. This time I was on deck when we passed the waypoint and continued on. I said I would start breakfast, expecting the sail handling to happen later. The wind was a little too close to sail on our rumb line to Palm Beach Shores.
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I chopped up an onion and began sautéing it, then opened a can of Spam, diced it and threw it in the pan. A little garlic salt and pepper, a bowl of 3 beaten eggs, then I hear the headsail unfurling. Skipper is letting out the jib.
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No, you can't do that, I said, you need sail area aft or you'll be pushing the boat to leeward with the sail and the rudder both. Well, do I want to put the main sail up now? I dread this chore. This time I'm not going up by the mast to heave it up hand over hand, I'll use the cockpit winch, slower and maybe less strenuous. I have to wait for each batten to clear each lazy jack, plus the reefing blocks have to clear, and the reefing lines have to be tended, it takes forever. Finally it's up and taught, sails are trimmed. I say, if we can make 170 True we can make Palm Beach Shores on one tack. Skipper looks at me and says, I have 170 True on the autopilot.
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I have to run down to the galley, the omelet is still on the stove. It is so rough that the skillet is sliding all around the stove. I flip the omelet a second time and we have a Hawaiian Trucker's Omelet. Cut it up and make sandwiches. What a mess I made in the galley.
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We settle down and eat and have more coffee. The wind is SE and we are close hauled with the port engine still helping to push us along. Somehow we have run the starboard engine 10 hours more than the port, so we will equalize the hours on this tack.
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It's 115 miles to the waypoint at Palm Beach Shores, then another 45 miles to Ft. Lauderdale. We could have this boat at the dock by noon tomorrow.
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The missile silos of NASA on Cape Canaveral dropped below the horizon. There are no other boats within view and no sight of land. The sea is rough and the wind is cooperative, picking up into the low teens and backing a little. The catamaran starts to get into the 6 1/2 to 7 1/2 knot range in about 12 knots of wind, close reach. The Garmin GPS computes our ETA at the waypoint at Palm Beach Shores. The ETA changes constantly as the boat gains and loses speed. We're looking at 2:30 AM.
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I may sound critical of this catamaran, and it has flaws, but it also has a livability factor while in port. It's giving us a work out at sea, but we are not picking and choosing the conditions, we are on a time schedule to deliver the boat and do it now.
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Most cruisers would slow the boat down to cook meals, even lie a hull, or heave to. Many would totter down the ICW at 50 miles a day and anchor at night, especially with headwinds.
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This catamaran would accommodate 2 couples comfortably, having private heads and large bunks. The 3rd stateroom is maybe a twin size berth and would be comfortable except the motion is more extreme as you go forward and in a rough sea the 3rd berth, which is forward in the port hull, would be difficult. Both heads have showers, the owner's being nicer with a teak grating for the shower pan. A couple could definitely live aboard and have room for guests, or crew when sailing.
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The handling at the dock with two widely spaced engines enables the helmsman to turn the boat around in its own length. It can run on one engine at 5-6 knots and burn only a half gallon of diesel per hour.
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Skipper wants to take the helm. He stops the engine and we are sailing at 7 knots with nice breeze at 40 degrees off the port bow. I lay on the other side of the cockpit and rest. He says there's rain ahead. I say there is blue sky above me. The sails flap a little bit. Apparently there are thunderstorms ahead disrupting the wind. I move over to the helm. I suggest hand steering to keep the sails from flogging. He says here you take it. I hand steer and get the sails filled, now we are heading 247, toward the beach. Let's tack, I say. We tack and are heading SE. The wind keeps evading us, we are turning around and around, then I turn on the engine. The wind settles down very light, but grows in strength, and eventually we are back sailing on course at 7 knots again.
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We make course adjustments to make sure we don't cross any shoals. We are going to get closer to land, or more accurately, Florida's coast is jutting out to meet us.
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Skipper takes over again and says we don't need the engine, we are going fast enough. He shuts the engine. I tell him if you stop the engine the wind will die. The wind dies. We spend some time calculating true wind and apparent wind and how the single engine running creates enough apparent wind to give us 7 knots of boat speed, but without it we slog along at 4 or 5 knots.
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There another discussion back at the boatyard about a fellow who hooked up an electric motor to his prop shaft and drove the motor directly from solar panels. He claimed to get 5 degrees higher tacking angle to windward when he used that engine.
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We pass over the edge of Bethel Shoal near Vero Beach, it is a shoal for ships, not for a little catamaran. We have about 50 miles to our waypoint, then 45 miles to the Ft. Lauderdale inlet. I make another salad, prepackaged, and add two large tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil to add to its prepackaged poppy seed dressing. Then I take a nap.
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I was expecting to take the mid watch, but again I will take the evening watch and the early morning watch. We are off Ft. Pierce and I remember taking Kaimu from Ft. Pierce one morning, going down the ICW to St. Lucie inlet, and continuing outside in the Atlantic down the coast to Miami. It was a 36 hour passage, singlehanded. If you hit the tides at the right time you can enter at either port on the low tide, ride the flood tide into the ICW, then ride the ebb out of the other port.
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I am surprised how quickly St. Lucie has come along on this leg of our trip, we are hitting 8 knots and I saw 9. It's like maybe we have been dragging something for a few days. The wind is no stronger than before. Maybe it's a local tide current aiding us.
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I took a few sunset shots with the 30D, but the sunset itself fizzled. We have a partly cloudy night time sky, looks like high pressure. Lots of cirrus. The Coast Guard gave a report that South Florida is under a weather hazard warning. Perhaps the weather hazard is giving us that additional boat speed.
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Our course to Ft. Lauderdale has to bend around the coast a bit, plus we have to hug the shoreline to get out of the Gulf Stream, and adverse current. When the skipper is on the helm, from 10 PM to 2 AM, he tries to follow the shore at a distance of 2 miles out. But when I awake and come on duty for the early morning watch he says the Gulf Stream has intruded into our plans. We must try find a counter current yet stay off the beach and out of trouble. He says something about ship moorings and heads off to sleep.
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I am enjoying this last night's sail and I find a boost in speed at about the 100 foot depth contour and follow it. There are two ship moorings, massive floating buoys that would do a lot of damage if we hit them. They are in about 150 feet of water and I can go inshore of them or pass them on the seaward side. I stay out in that same 150 foot depth and pass them, looking for them as I look toward the beach. I never see them. I do see a group of vessels ahead and to seaward of the 100 foot depth contour. Unfortunately it is the end of my watch and the skipper comes on duty to investigate them. I crash out in my bunk right away.
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When I awake the catamaran is no longer under engine power and is on station off the Port Everglades inlet. This is the entrance to Ft. Lauderdale. We do some tidying up of the boat, but I make a cheese and onion omelet and fry up some of the thick bacon for breakfast. We are hailed by the US Navy on our VHF radio.
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We have 3 VHF radios on board, the Raymarine fixed mount in the navigation area which also has a remote handset in the cockpit, a small portable Cobra hand held unit that stays in a charging cradle in the nav area, and a Standard Horizon HX571 that Carpenter Ron gave me for free. It had a dead battery, so I replaced the battery with a AAA battery tray that fits the radio, and filled the tray with AAA Eneloop lithium batteries. These batteries retain 90 percent of their charge after a year on the shelf. Guess which radio worked best? The Standard Horizon. The Raymarine fixed mount was intermittent and the handset in the cockpit died. The Cobra has its squelch control hidden in a menu. We used it anyway and it worked. The Standard Horizon seemed to have better reception, picked up the more distant NOAA weather reports better than the other two, but suffered with batteries going dead after a week of operation. We used it when we needed better reception, otherwise we used the Cobra. I wondered how it sounded to the other party.
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The Navy said they were conducting training exercises and we had better stay out of their way. We did by jibing and heading North through the anchored ships outside the port. When we were ready to go in, we went in with sails furled and both engines at 2500 rpms (sailors say "turns").
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The owner had given us a street address of the house whose dock we were to tie up to. It was possible to locate the house on Google Maps and compare its location with a chart of Ft. Lauderdale.
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The inlet was narrow and we finally found the address, but there was a long and beautiful sport fishing boat tied up there. Skipper said it was a Hatteras. A fellow was on the stern working on some teak. "How long have you been here?", asked the skipper. "A few months, on and off", replied the worker. Skipper was looking for how long the boat had been in the slip. A woman came out and said that this was her boat and her house. Skipper called the owner who said, "Throw them off of there, I have paid for that slip".
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He then called back and said his broker had given the wrong address. A simple dyslexic type of mistake. Skipper spun the catamaran around using both engines, then left the canal. There were only inches of room to spare. "The Captain", I said.
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It turned out our slip was at the house across the street from the house we had landed at, but that meant finding the canal for that side of the street, then threading our way to where the owner was pacing the dock. As we approached he asked if we could turn the boat around so the stern would line up with the power stanchion on the dock. Sure, said the skipper, and spun the boat around even faster than before. It ended up close enough to the dock I could step off and tie the catamaran off.
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What followed was a tense session of us, four people, moving stuff off the boat, moving cleaning stuff onto the boat, calculating the delivery bill, getting payment using the internet, very quick, packing up, reporting any discrepancies or damage, listening to questions of why we had to stop in Jacksonville Beach (some resupply, repair of the bow navigation lights, and refuel, with a 20 knot wind coming dead ahead).
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All was concluded. We had the feeling that the owners were not satisfied, but we were very sure we had done an excellent job in bringing their boat down to them in an expeditious manner. It is a matter of expectations, some more realistic than others.
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A fellow who had a Lagoon 410, a larger catamaran, had asked the skipper if he could deliver the boat to Mississippi, so we visited his boat. I would not be along on that voyage, if it happens, they only need a skipper, not crew. The 410 seems like a much larger boat than just 3 feet longer would suggest. It is a charter boat that had the starboard hull redone, taking out the forward stateroom and adding a larger head and shower there. Palatial.
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The owner dropped us off at the Ft. Lauderdale airport where we picked up a reserved rental car to return to St. Marys. This was a 5 or 6 hour drive, starting in midafternoon and missing the rush hour. We arrived at the boatyard at about 8:30 after shopping at Harbor Freight Tools in Jacksonville. I bought new bandsaw blades and disposable body suits for sanding and painting bottom paint.
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My impressions of the Lagoon 380 are mixed. I started out liking the livability of the boat, but hated its seaworthiness. Later she began to respond with some good sailing speeds. So, I must conclude that 700 owners can't be that wrong, this is a desirable boat.
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The image is a fortuitous photo of a Ft. Lauderdale mansion with a rainbow overhead.