I met a fellow today who told me that Tropical Storm Fay is behaving just like a woman - she just won't leave us alone.

Then I got an email from a dear friend today who wrote, "The world assumes you made it home safely....."

I'm not sure I know what that means, "just like a woman," but I'm afraid I've done a quite proper job of leaving "the world" alone. And this is the second time. It's easy to write about my travels when I'm out there, but it seems that every time I return home and find myself back in the familiar rut, I stop posting to ye old blog. Or maybe it is just like a woman with all that teasing build-up, but no big bang of a finish? Anyway, this time I intend to wrap it up, look back on my weeks of sailing solo in the islands, and deliver some sort of a (albeit late) climax.

I must admit, however, that my voyage back from Bimini, across the Gulf Steam was a bit anti-climactic. I wound up staying at the dock of some friends who own a home on South Bimini, and I went aground entering their canal. My friend Owen (who had come to help me find the channel) and I sat there on the bottom for over an hour waiting for the tide to rise. Once I heard that he was coming along, I stopped worrying about the navigation and I learned a valuable lesson - check the tides even if you have a pilot.

Three days later, I left at daybreak, at near high tide and motor-sailed across the stream in 5-10 knots of wind. I was headed for an anchorage off Key Biscayne where I was to meet friends for the Fourth of July weekend. I made good time and found myself six miles off the Miami entrance buoy when the city disappeared in a pitch-black squall. I shifted the radio over to the Coast Guard weather station and they reported current condition in Miami Harbor as 40 knots of wind, gusting to 55. I cupped my chin in my hand and I thought, "Hmm... I guess I'm not going into Miami." The squall was reportedly moving toward the NE, so I headed south down the coast toward the southern channel south of Key Biscayne, figuring I would spend the night tucked into No Name Harbor just inside Cape Florida. I tried to outrun the squall, but when it was obvious it wasn't going to happen, I dropped all sail, put on my oilies, forced the dog below, put in the drop boards and tied my harness to the helm. And I held on.

It got rather exciting for a bit. I wasn't sure which was worse, the howling wind or the howling dog protesting at the indignity of being left below.

When it finally let up, I made my way into No Name and called the Homeland Security/Customs folks only to get yelled at over the fact that my passport had expired while I was gone and the fellow grew apoplectic when I said that I couldn't imagine it really mattered when a couple of weeks before the thing had been perfectly good. That whole mess ended up with a decree that I had to present myself to officials in the Port of Miami within 24 hours or else. He never was quite clear on what that was, but the next day I motored around to the Miami Yacht Club anchorage and made my way to the officials and was dutifully contrite and I was granted access to the land of my birth after all.

Welcome to Miami.



Looking back now on the six-week trip through the Abacos and back, one remarkable point stands out in my mind. There are lots of male solo sailors and hardly any females. As it turns out, I just about had a guy in every port, so to speak. Well, not in the Biblical sense, mind you, but I enjoyed the pleasure of their company over drinks, dinner, just chatting, snorkeling, hiking, or talking over many a glass of wine under the stars. There was Richard in Green Turtle, Todd in Marsh Harbor, Alan #1 in Hopetown, Alan #2 in Little Harbor, and Wright at Lynyard Cay. I think this is the greatest and best-kept secret about sailing solo. I really do love the company of men and having somebody to hang out with - and I met such fascinating people who had wonderful stories to share. Solo sailing isn't all about solitude, although there certainly was lots of that. For me, it was about meeting new people and making new friends - and okay, I admit it, a free meal now and again.

So now my boat is tied up back at the city marina on the River in Fort Lauderdale, and the rain from the remnants of Fay is pounding on the cabin roof. This week I started back teaching my college classes. I haven't yet finished my novel, but I'm working on it. Most days now when I drive to work, I dream about taking off again next May, sailing solo to some more distant anchorages, and just like a woman, I wonder what new fellas I'll meet when I arrive.

Fair winds,
Christine

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I'm sitting in the main salon of my boat tied up at the Blue Water Marina in Bimini listening to the sound of lapping water, distant music and the thrumming of a boat's generator one dock over. At least tonight, I'm still awake past nine. Last night I was dead to the world at this hour.

I made my first overnight passage alone and nothing went wrong and I wasn't scared out of my wits. Partly it was due to my own ability to dream of the worst. I can be pretty negative when I think about all the things that might go wrong. But in a sailor, that can be an asset. I remember one time when I was sailing with a fella and as we were returning to his boat, I saw that it was heeled over and cross-wise to the wind. I said, "Look, I'll bet we're aground. Did we check the tides?" We jumped aboard and I went below to open the tide program on my computer and he checked the depth finder and found we had plenty of water beneath us. It was just the current holding the boat sideways to the wind, which then was heeling us over. He said to me, "You're so negative! You always think of the worst that can happen."

Guilty. It's true. I do. But much of the time, by thinking about the worst and planning for it, I avoid some of it.

Friday morning, I ran the dog ashore in the dark, and then came out and boarded a boat made ready for departure. But I still had to get the outboard off the dinghy and the dinghy into the davits, so it was 7:00 by the time I was motoring out through the narrow cut in the reef, dead into the wind with the full main up and flapping. The swells were running about four to five feet, and in the cut I was headed straight into them and the boat was rearing up and slamming down with horrendous crashes. I just kept hoping that the next slam wasn't going to be onto something solid. The dog was terrified of all the noise, and there was nowhere he could run. It seemed to last forever because we had to get far enough offshore to clear the next reef, lovingly called The Boilers. Finally, I was able to bear off.

It was a lovely close reach for the thirty miles down to Hole in the Wall, but as the wind kept increasing, I finally had to throw a reef into the main. My boat develops way too much weather helm with more than 15 knots forward of the beam. The Autohelm was making some ugly noises too, so I steered for part of every hour to give it a break. When we rounded the corner and turned downwind, the fun part stopped. Without a spinnaker or a drifter, going downwind is the pitts. The boat slowed from six knots to three and the jib became useless. The swell was too much for wing and wing. I shook out the reef and tried sailing on main alone with a preventer to avoid a gybe, but still, I wanted to get to Bimini before the fourth of July. So back on came the engine and I was able to add the lovely odor of exhaust to the hot, rolly, ship dodging motorsail across the Northwest Providence Channel. The joys of sailing.

Just at dusk, around 8:30, we were off Little Stirrup Cay and I nosed my way in to see if we could find protection there for a few hours sleep, but the wind had too much east in it and the swells were wrapping right into the anchorage. I turned off into the night and told the dog, "Sorry buddy, it's gonna be a long night."

And it was a black night. We were out of the main shipping channel, but I still worried about pleasure boats and fishing boats. It was so dark it was difficult to make out the horizon. At one point I was startled by something that seemed to light up the whole sky to the south, and it was just a shooting star or meteor, but the sky was so dark, it looked brilliant. At midnight, I switched on the radar just to check and I saw two targets nearby, within four and six miles, but there was no sign of any lights. Thinking about the possibility of hitting some unlit boat, I decided to leave the radar on the rest of the night. The moon was supposed to rise around 2:00, but there was so much haze on the horizon, I didn't see the little sliver until nearly 3:00 and it did little to lighten the sky until 4:00. By that time I was wondering why I hadn't brought some Red Bull.

Dawn was sweet. There was no lovely sunrise thanks to the haze, but I could see the horizon and I felt I had a chance of seeing something before hitting it. Yeah, that's thinking negatively, but hey, it's darn creepy motoring along at six knots all alone in what looks like a black void. But it's also exhilarating and awe inspiring to be out there under so many stars completely on your own.

Well, there was the dog. And come dawn, oh what he problem he was. He had finally agreed to go to sleep in the forepeak around 2:00 after driving me crazy in the night, but at dawn, he woke up and decided he wanted to go up to the foredeck to do his business. I had him on a 15-foot tether that allowed him access to the cockpit and the forepeak, but he couldn't get out of the cockpit. I walked him up to the foredeck on his leash, but he looked at me with that dopey dog grin that said, "This is fun." I said, "No play, go pee-pee." He looked at me. See, like a person, he demands his privacy. So, I took him back to the cockpit. He tried to get out and go forward again. I couldn't let him go up there without a tether and I didn't have a tether long enough to send him up there alone. Finally, I crawled into the forepeak berth, opened the hatch, stuffed him out there on his leash, closed the hatch and waited. He looked down through the plexiglass and knew I was there. He wouldn't do anything. I was ready to hand him out a magazine! The things I do for that dog. Finally, he peed and managed to do it all over his leash.

I arrived in Bimini at 11:00 a.m. and tried to anchor on a coral pan bottom and even dove on the anchor to try to set it, but it just couldn't dig in and with 15-knot winds, I finally came into the marina, exhausted, but happy that through imagining all the terrible things that could go wrong, very little had. And boy, after only one beer, did I ever sleep well last night.

Fair winds!

Christine

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The time has come to say good-bye to my summer sail through the Abacos. I have been down here at the southern end of the sea of Abaco going into Little Harbor and enjoying beers and the company at Pete's Pub - and going out and anchoring off of Lynyard Cay and snorkeling and playing fetch with my dog Chip on the long empty sandy beaches. It has been a glorious five days.

I caught up with my friend on CIRCE and we got together with the folks on HOT LATTE-TUDES and snorkeled on the reef off the southern end of Lynyard. They found three conchs and that evening, we enjoyed a lovely dinner aboard with cracked conch, conch salad, rice and peas, fried plantains and fresh mango. I caught up with the ARTFUL DODGER in Little Harbor and together with Marlene, another solo woman sailor, we explored the caves at dusk with a flashlight spooking each other out. At Pete's Pub, I met Stanley from Cherokee who told me stories about lobster fishing and what it is like to stick your hand into a hole and have a moray eel clamp his teeth on one of your fingers. And snorkeling off a little protected reef, I saw a baby turtle with a shell about a foot and half across asleep on the reef, and when he took off on his slow and gentle flight it was magic. In the span of an hour, I saw him and a sleeping ray on the bottom and a pair of amorous lobsters enjoying their dark hole. And last night as I put my steak on the grill off the stern, a pair of dolphins surfaced and blew not two feet off my stern and they proceeded to swim circles around my boat as Chip barked at them. In the past few days I haven't written as much as I would like on the book, but I have lived well and gathered memories that will work their way into my fiction one of these days. A day spent on the reef is never a day lost.

So now my alarm is set for 5:00 a.m. when I will run the Intrepid Seadog to shore for his last leg lift and then I will hoist the outboard, hoist the dinghy in the davits and hoist the anchor. The cut through the reef here is only about a tenth of a mile wide and I'll have my laptop out in the cockpit on the seat with the GPS NavX running and I'll make my way out to the open Atlantic. The weather forecast is for only 8-10 knots of wind, so it may be a motor sail. I have a little more than 150 miles to cover. I've prepared everything I can think of and now I am enjoying an evening glass of wine and then to bed. It will be a 30-hour sail, at least and I'll see if I can stay awake and if I can coax the aging pup to pee on the boat tomorrow night.

I'm excited. My greatest fears? Ships and falling overboard. I have fashioned a line to trail that will be tied to the power cord to my autopilot. I always wear my safety harness, too. But I know myself. I got myself one of those fancy PFD harnesses for this trip. It's got this high collar in back. I hate it. I always start out with the harness and then as it gets hot and itchy, I often abandon it. I get cocky. I've sailed tens of thousands of miles and I've never fallen overboard. The thing is, nobody who ever fell overboard though that it would happen to them. It's always a surprise. I've considered gluing a piece of salami to the stand-by button on the autopilot in the hopes of teaching the Intrepid Seadog to go for the salami should I go overboard, but it hasn't worked out yet. In the meantime, I'm going to force myself to sweat it out with the harness. Someday, I think I would like to sail across an ocean by myself. Tomorrow's 150-mile sail is just the beginning.

Fair winds!

Christine

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