Kaimusailing

I made a concoction out of the last remains of mahi mahi. The mahi was trimmed of any bones and cut into large cubes. It was then browned on all sides in a pan of olive oil and black pepper. Then diced onions, red sweet peppers, and mushrooms were wilted in the pan. The whole mess was added to a pot of garden rotini, just a handfull of pasta. Yumm. The photo is of the mahi pieces in the pan.
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As we crossed the bank we approached a wreck, not visible but clearly marked on the chart, so we were paying close attention to our course. Skipper was on the sat phone again with the owner asking for a new arrival location. The latest was accessed by an inlet impassable to a large sailboat with 7 feet of draft.
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Just then the autopilot gave an alarm and the boat swung way off course. Ron and I were jumping around trying to get the boat back on course. At times our chartplotter display showed us heading right for the wreck. We had to work as a team and get the boat settled down. We could not lay our intended course, that’s what triggered the autopilot alarm. We were heading a bit closer to the wreck but should clear it if the wind didn’t shift further.
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Our chart display of the Bahama Bank was coming to an end, the chartplotter’s charts are kept on a memory chip and our group of charts only included the Caribbean, not all of the Bahamas and nothing of Florida. We needed to change memory chips, the one for Florida had been purchased by Ron and we needed to install it. It turned out to be a CF memory chip, the specific chip type used by the W90 chartplotter, which was what we thought we were using, as there was only a pair of W90 manuals on board, one manual for operation and the other for installation. There was no model number anywhere on the chartplotter itself. It turns out that it is a different model using a different type of memory chip.
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We had this computer, however, plus two smart phones with stand alone navigation programs and Florida/Bahamas charts on them, plus paper charts, so we were well covered for navigation on this final approach to Florida.
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I ran our new course ahead on the computer and saw there was nothing in our way. We would run right off the bank and head across the Gulf Stream to Key Largo if we stayed on this course. Our new destination was far to the north at Port Everglades. We could try to sail upwind in the Gulf Stream into a North wind, but that is a no-no, the Gulf Stream is to be avoided if there is wind from the North. Other options included motoring upwind but staying on the Bahama Bank, then crossing the Gulf Stream at right angles, making the crossing as short as possible. Also we could continue to Key Largo and get more fuel and motor North into the Stream all the way to Port Everglades. It turned out we would keep on going on our course as close to the wind as we could go and if it got to rough in the Gulf Stream head straight across, then up to Port Everglades by motor.
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It was a beautiful day with a lot of shipping we were skirting the Bahamas Bank. I had taken pictures of the sunrise and moonset, both happening at the same time. We let out the reefs in the main and rolled out the jib completely. The wind was going further East and going light, perfect for a Gulf Stream crossing.
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I made blueberry pancakes for breakfast. We had brought the jerry cans of diesel back to the cockpit and added them to the port fuel tank. 26 gallons of diesel didn’t fill the tank. We would keep sailing as long as we could, then motor if we had to.
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I put a waypoint on the chartplotter at Port Everglades sea buoy and was surprised that we were almost on a direct line for it on our present course. We were a little below it, but the Gulf Stream should lift us up to it and then some. I made some meat sauce with an onion, a few mushrooms, two 1/2 lb hamburgers, 1/2 small jar of mild salsa, and a jar of Prego Mushroom spaghetti sauce. If it got rough in the Stream later I would have the sauce all ready to go, no scalding in the galley for the cook.
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For lunch I had leftover mahi pasta, pasta a bit soggy the second day but very tasty.
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We were now 110 miles to go to Port Everglades and the wind wasn’t cooperating, dropping below 10 knots. With all the great sailing we have had, we can’t complain now in the final stretch. I keep adjusting sails, trying to get something out of nothing. This isn’t a light air boat, it needs a good amount of wind to get going. I bear off to the West, just about 10 degrees left, OK, I pushed the -10 button on the autopilot, the boat bears off a bit and picks up some speed. The wind sends along a gust on top of our increase and now we are moving faster. My guess is that the Gulf Stream will carry us North and no matter how far West I take the boat, the increase in the North direction will bring us to Port Everglades that much sooner.
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The water is cobalt blue here with lots of gold colored sargasso weed. A large tree trunk goes by. We have discussions about what we have to do when we get in. Clear customs, get a rental car, secure the boat, pack up our things, and it what order to do them.
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The wind drops to 8 knots and boat speed to less than 4. Skipper comes up on deck and we discuss running the engine. He says we need to be within 100 miles of the sea buoy before he feels confident enough to run the engine. We are dawdling along. Skipper goes down to nap, he relieves me in just over an hour. We are watching a dark cloudy patch forward on the horizon to starboard. It looks like rain.
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As the rain gets closer Ron says my two pair of shorts hanging in the cockpit to dry will be wet, again, as they had been rained on just a day ago. I say at least I have some warning this time. I can see white caps in the sea in front of the rain patch. The wind increases. This is what we wanted, isn’t it? We flatten the jib and release the mainsheet. The wind increases to 25 knots, then hits 30. I use the helm to bring the jib up to the point where it is just pulling the boat along. If I let the boat bear off the jib will grab the wind, if I head up the jib will lose the wind and the boat will lose way, lose steering. Skipper comes back on deck and says to go head to wind, go directly into the wind. When I do so, the jib backs, overpowers the boat, and we bear off to starboard with the jib aback. I announce we are going to gybe and swing the boat around back to its original heading.
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Now skipper decides to drop the main, we start the engine, roll up the jib, head directly upwind, and let loose the main halyard. The main comes down partly and skipper goes forward in a harness, clipped into the jack lines that are tied off at the cockpit and go all the way forward. If he loses his footing and falls overboard the harness will keep him attached to the boat and we can pull him back aboard. Just a precaution.
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Skipper pulls down the main. Ron says the reefing lines will pull the main down and can be hauled in in the cockpit. We discuss the order on deck during such operations when you have to reef quickly or act quickly when a situation develops suddenly. We eventually raise the main with one reef in it and roll out the jib. I put the boat on autopilot when it is pointed in the right direction, but it bears off to starboard. It does this several times and I say there is something wrong with the autopilot. Skipper says he will go below and turn off all the navigation instruments and then turn them back on. I hand steer for a while while the instruments reboot and come to life. The autopilot now works properly.
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I start the chartplotter and find my waypoint for Port Everglades from a list of waypoints, select it, and click on NAVIGATE TO. Now we have a vector from out boat to the waypoint and we adjust our steering to match the vector, we are underway again for our destination.
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The wind dies. We motor. Sail when you can, motor when you must. Skipper says the rain squall must be blocking the wind. I say it’s 99.5 miles to port and skipper had said he wouldn’t motor until we were less than 100 miles to port.
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My watch is over, skipper relieves me, and I go below. Eventually the wind comes back again and we shut the engine and continue sailing toward the port.
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We go through the Chinese Fire Drill once again, after the wind come back to about 14 and the rain squall hit again. I can’t remember now if I was still on deck or down below cooking or in my bunk. I am in St. Marys now writing this, just about 24 hours later. So much happens when you come into port.
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We ended up sailing along with a reef in the main and the jib rolled almost all the way up. I had slept until I was getting tossed around in the bunk. The miles were counting down to Port Everglades. We are now all up on deck again. The sails get furled and we motor amongst large vessels. The approach to the port parallels the coast north from Miami. The row of high rise buildings on the beach are lit by the rising sun from the east and stand out against the dark clouds behind them, the horizon of the old night. The moon once again is setting into that darkness as the sun rises.
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We have a couple of hand held radios, my free radio whose batteries are depleted by someone leaving it powered on overnight, and Ron’s old handheld which we verify works by keying it and hearing it on the ship’s radio. There is no remote mic for the ship’s radio in the cockpit, so we need the hand helds.
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There is an announcement on the VHF by the Navy that they are conducting training exercises in the area just south of Port Everglades, just like last time we came in here, and other vessels have to stay out. We head in.
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We come right in the channel and make the right turn toward the big drawbridge and find out they will not open for a while, so we dawdle around doing circles and figure eights. Skipper says his famous Sherlock Holmes style sailing hat has vanished over the side, gone forever. When I look aft to see it I realize he means he lost it a while ago, when I was asleep. I do see something in the water and point to it. It is a black line, thinner than our black dock lines, but it is being dragged along. I think of what might happen in port here if that line wraps around the prop. There is a police boat just upwind of us and another coming down from the big drawbridge. We better get this right. Assistance can be costly.
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Skipper climbs down the sugar scoop with the boat hook and pulls the line up. I expect it all to come up, but it is snagged down below somewhere, on the rudder? on the saildrive? we secure it loosely, skipper says if it does get snagged it may rip off a fitting if it is tied permanently. We resume dawdling.
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The bridge announces it will be opening, and it slowly opens. We slowly approach and then rev up the engine to get through in a timely manner. There is more boat traffic now than when we were here last month. There are many large motor yachts stuck everywhere in every available canal and dock. It is the Ft. Lauderdale boat show, the biggest motor yacht boat show. Look at that one, how could they choose that dark brown color, not very nautical. Look at that one, kind of gaudy, don’t you think. Many many many very expensive yachts here and there and everywhere.
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We have this laptop as our chartplotter now, the ship’s chartplotter does not have as good detail or choice of maps. We all have cellphones running now with our favorite nav apps and we compare names of bridges, distances to them, and all are reluctant to be the one to call on the VHF for a bridge opening. I can never remember the boat’s name for some reason, but I do not get the chance to call anyone on the radio.
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I don’t know how many bridges we had to call or how many times we had to sit there and hold our position in the channel along with all the other boats going up or down the ICW. Maybe 7 bridges. No way the owner is going to come down and do this. He might get a captain to bring him down or maybe he will have the boat upgraded a bit before he uses it. It is fresh out of charter service and needs some attention.
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When we finish mocking the large power yachts and homes, yes we do not discriminate, if you have a home in Ft. Lauderdale along the shipping channel, we have dissected your property, much the same as our sick humor heaped on the motor yachts, even if you are not yet aboard your property, because we also disparaged the newly built but not yet finished developments, and then we had to get to work and drive the boat into a canal, then a canal off the canal, and find the dock to tie up at.
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We make our entrance into the canal. We can google the private residence that owns the dock and from the google map figure out which canal on our marine charts to turn into. It is narrow. We are going in and can’t turn around to get out. Skipper can do it, I have faith in him. Where the heck is this dock. “It has a single palm tree” is our description of it, but there are many docks, many palm trees and other trees, and which dock with a single palm tree is it. Now we can use cell phones, which is a lot easier than the satellite phone and its time delay every time you talk. The owner of the dock is put on conference call by the owner of the boat and we get the boat to the dock, tie up, and now have the unwelcome task of securing the boat, packing our things, jettisoning the garbage, and getting cleared into customs, getting transportation where we gotta go.
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It is strange on a boat. You can be totally exhausted, and then the alarm rings and you go out like a fighter when the bell goes off and do what you have to do. We can’t always sleep due to the motion or the noise and we get tired, running on energy that is hidden except from troops on a battlefield. We three on the boat are experienced and know what to do, hope someone else does this or that, and find tasks that suit us, then have to take on the other tasks that collectively we have left for last. Garbage, cleaning the heads, counters clean?, what about perishables, how does it look, can we leave now?
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We put the garbage on the dock. We have to go to the executive airport to clear customs now or within 24 hours. Ron says he has to go quickly because his wife is very sick. We have our passports, wallets, but leave everything else locked up on the boat, go around the residence looking for a garbage pail or dumpster, we find the garage open and the owner there happy, it seems, to see us, and skipper is calling an uber cab, and he and Ron wait at the side of the street for the cab, and I go with the owner into the unfinished house while he proudly describes what he is doing there. It reminds me of my younger brother in Hawaii showing me one of the constructions he is working at. I realize this guy is doing the same kind of thing my brother is doing and I feel a connection between Hawaii and Florida that maybe some other people might not catch. There are other cues, visual, the humidity and heat, palm trees, an energy, yet I realize that Hawaii won’t be flooded over like this place will.
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I have to hurry through the house tour, but I get it all in. The kitchen with it’s restaurant style cooktop, the young daughter’s purple and pink color scheme in her room, the barbecue outdoors that is massive with some kind of marble countertops, the unfinished pool, probably infinity toward the canal, the pallets of pavers to cover all of the torn up construction. It will be nice. I hurry over to rejoin my comrades who have been waiting at the side of the road for the uber driver.
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I have been trying to be polite while the owner proudly shows off his masterpiece house, what were my comrades doing at the side of the road? Well, they are both retirees and both have been racing drivers with lots of stories to tell. Mostly about who got killed and where and when. The uber driver is not going to get killed, by driving, but he is late, and these racing gentlemen are watching on their phones the driver’s progress, commenting on where he missed a turn. They call him and direct him how to get where we are.
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He arrives and we load up Ron’s duffel bag and we head for the “Executive Airport”. Apparently there is some discrepancy between the address given us by the customs officials who we contacted by phone and what the driver thinks is the executive airport. The conversation is hard to describe since it is in English and Spanish and two of us speak Spanish and three of us speak English. We could not agree on where to go. We call the customs people again and they say they have their own building at the executive airport. We fly off toward them and as we drive in, on a Sunday, we see many things closed up, the road ends at a building that says , Customs and Immigration, but it is closed and the gate that blocks the road to go further is also gated closed. A man comes out, a customs agent, and motions toward us, we go to him and follow him in. Wait here, Ron and the skipper sit on a short sofa-like seat while I stand or walk around while the wheels turn.
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I begin to get nervous. We are hired hands to bring a moderately big sailing yacht into Florida from the Caribbean and what about that yacht, what about what might have been put there before we got on board. I can see the experienced hands that refused this delivery say to themselves, that is a smuggle run, don’t get involved with it. Here we are, Skipper, no way, not a drug runner, Ron the crewman, who reminds me of Rodney Dangerfield in a strange way, no way, me, hey, I may have taken my love of sailing too far. We finally get taken in and passports stamped. Good to go.
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Now I wonder, what if this yacht had 1 1/2 tons of smack on board. No inspection. Cursory passing of the captain and crew into the USA. What about Trump’s wall at Mexico. So dumb.
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We let Ron take his stuff along with the uber driver to Coconut Grove while we are dropped into a Dunkin Donuts. Coffee. Chocolate Donuts. Call another uber. Back to the boat.
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I’m beginning to feel tired. Skipper is sitting at the nav station working on his invoice from the trip. I got to close my eyes I say to him and I fall back on the cushion and don’t wake until almost 1 AM.
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I awake hearing something running on deck, I call out, “Ford,” he replies it must be an animal or something. I go to the companionway and open the hatch and stick my head up. There is nothing.
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I go back to the bunk and try to sleep. Younger sailors may have more leeway in getting to sleep and waking up, but I can report that older sailors have a lot of trouble sleeping and once awake, well, they are awake.
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The end result is me making blueberry pancakes as the sun rises. The coffee has already been on and is ready. We are both rested and eating pancakes and coffee and now we will finish up the boat.
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The flat jackstays that are the lines we clip onto are still on the bow and back to the cockpit. Skipper retrieves them and coils them up. We climb and stow the main, zip up the sail cover zipper.
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Our gear gets stowed in the boot of the rental car. Bags and bags of trash go into the home owner’s garbage can, filling it to overflowing. Off we go to I-95 North to St. Marys.