December 21, 2015 Ft Pierce, FL

The weather is getting warmer!  In the 70’s today.
We put in a 10 hour day on the ICW.  Dave started using the autopilot on the ICW this year.  He made some corrections this summer that made it work better with small changes.  You don’t get as tired at the helm.  And he gets bored if he isn’t at the helm, so I busied myself inside.  I made breakfast while we were underway and brought it outside to share.  That helps us leave earlier. 

Then during the day, I made meatloaf in muffin tins.  We will freeze them and eat them when we make our crossing.  It will be easier to just take out a couple at a time while under way.  I was thinking we would leave soon.  And since the meat was thawed, I went ahead and made it now.  But it looks like we won’t be able to cross until after Christmas, because of the weather, so I’ll wait to prepare some other things.

We ended up anchoring just after sunset about 6:00 pm just north of the Ft Pierce inlet.  It was a little windy, and we seemed to swing on our anchor, but it held just fine.

I watched for the rocket launching, even though we were now about 70 miles south of Cape Canaveral.  It was cloudy, so I only saw an orange ball of fire for about 10 seconds.

December 20, 2015 Fuel lesson!

I made it up in time to catch my 6:45 am taxi to church.  During mass, the priest asked if there were any visitors.  I was the only one (and among the youngest there at this hour).  So he asked my name, where I was from (SD but live on a sailboat), and what our destination was.  So after mass, the lady behind me asked if we needed a chaperon on our trip to the Bahamas.  I said “sure, how soon can you have your bags packed?”  She said “give me 5 minutes.”  That started our conversation and they ended up giving me a ride back to the marina.   You always feel like you are with family when you are at church :)

We decided to take advantage of the marina facilities this morning.  We did 2 loads of laundry and took showers.  This marina didn’t have fuel, so Dave put 20 gallons of fuel into our tank from our yellow jerry cans and took our 4 yellow diesel cans in a dock cart to the marina next door for fuel.  He called ahead to see if they had diesel fuel.  At their fuel dock, a young guy, early 20’s was pumping the fuel.  Dave watched him use the green hose (usually used for diesel) and they visited about how he’s worked there a long time and was the son of the owner. Dave had to take the fuel cans to the back of their store on the outside to fill them.  When he brought them back to the front, the young man came out of the building and said he should bring them inside.  Dave said he didn’t think the cart would fit, and why bring them in?  The guy then explained to Dave that he had filled them with gas and would have to now empty them.  WOAH!!  We thought it was universal that yellow cans were for diesel and red were for gas!!!  Dave had called ahead to see if they had diesel, the handle was green like most diesel tanks, and he had YELLOW cans.  He didn’t think he had to ask it he was pouring diesel.  So they had to empty the gas out of the cans and then fill them with diesel from a truck.  The flow out of the hose was really strong, meant for filling trucks, not little cans.  So it was a struggle for the guy to do without spilling.  In the end, Dave had to clean the cans off with a “fuel diaper”, a cloth made especially for fuel or oil, before bringing them back to the boat. 

That was a lesson learned.  You can’t assume that everyone knows the universal yellow can is for diesel.  In the future, we will always ask.  I’m sure we will get a few people saying “of course, it’s yellow”.  And Dave can’t wait to say “well, let me tell you a story”.

Back at the boat, he checked online to see what could have happened if we had put gas in our tank.  The first thing he read was “it will either be expensive or very expensive to repair the damage”.  1-2 gallons wouldn’t have hurt, but 20 gallons in our 53 gallon tank would have caused some major damage.  At some point, the engine would have stopped running. Diesel fuel lubricates the engine and all the pressures are set to work with the diesel.  The thing is, if we hadn’t known and had used that fuel down the “road”, we many never have put the two together and figured out what the cause of our problems were.  I hope we can help others avoid this problem.  Always double check what fuel you are getting. 

It was a breezy day on the water.  Even though we had a late start, we motored 8 hours on the ICW and anchored near the Merritt Island Bridge in Cocoa, FL.  We passed the Kennedy Space Center and NASA today.  We had been hearing the coast guard making announcements about the Port of Canaveral being closed before and 30 minutes after the scheduled rocket launch.  So I googled the launch and saw it was at 8:30 tonight.  We were anchored about 10 miles south of the launch and I couldn’t wait.  WELL, 8:30 came and went with no launch  I thought maybe it was delayed, so I checked my sources again, and it was for tomorrow.  OOPS!

Kennedy space center and rocket launch

Little hairy going through when one side won't open

December 19, 2015 New Smyrna Beach City Marina, FL

It was cold this morning!  The weather app said 43, but feels like 37.  We pulled out our foul weather gear, hats and gloves.   It did warm up to 63.  Our great niece and nephew, Claire and Garrett, had given us some green gloves they picked up at the Turkey Trot in Mpls.  With Dave’s red coat and green gloves, he looked like the Grinch.  We had to send them a picture.  They replied that they were in the airport waiting to go to Disney World for the week before Christmas.  We had forgotten it was today.  Seemed strange to be so close to them in Florida.

The Grinch-Thank you Garrett and Claire for the gloves

Today we moved along the ICW to New Smyrna Beach City Marina.  We spent about 8 hours on the water.  There were about 5 or 6 draw bridges to pass under.  These all opened on request.  Further south, they open on a set schedule. 

I spent time below organizing, cooking, cleaning-you know, that stuff I didn’t do when I was working full time. 

We decided to get a slip for the night at the city marina, where we stayed last year on our way north.  We arrived just a little after 3:00.  I was trying to make it to church by 4:00.  But the time we had the boat settled and made it to the office, it was closer to 3:30.  I checked into the free shuttle bus, but you had to schedule a pick up 2 hours in advance.  I was the 6th caller on hold, so decided to go for a taxi.  The 2nd one I called could pick me up shortly after 4:00, so I decided late was better than never.  Well, it was about 4:20 when they arrived, so I made a change of plans.  I had them take me to the Publix grocery store instead.  Then I set a time for them to pick me up to go to the 7:00 am mass in the morning. 

After restocking our boat with perishables and goodies for Christmas, Dave and I walked downtown for dinner.  The marina and taxi drivers recommended about 5 places all within about 6 blocks.  We walked past all of them and then returned to the one putting out the great BBQ smoke.  Dave could go out for BBQ every day of the week.  Yellow Dog Eats was great.  They had ribs tonight as their special.  So we ordered a rack of them along with a pulled pork sandwich and a turkey sandwich.  They were both unique and awesome.  We shared the sandwiches, had a couple ribs, and took the rest back to the boat.  Looking forward to that leftovers dinner. 

crazy boat decorations

these Christmas decorations look our of place with live plants

 

 

downtown New Smyrna Beach

December 18, 2015 Day at anchor in Matanzas Inlet, FL

We thought there were supposed to be some strong winds and rain today, so we decided to stay another night at this anchorage.  It probably would have been fine on the ICW, but we took the day to get some other things done. 

Since we had a wifi connection, I tried updating my blog.  But it was REALLY slow.  I hope to have everything up to date before we leave for the Bahamas.

We needed to store a few things in our bilge, so we took up the floor boards today.  And what should we find but water in our bilge.  It wasn’t much, and it was salty.  So either it is a slow leak into the boat, or it came from running the water maker.  We’ll clean it up, then check it again after the next time we make water.

We enjoyed our steak dinner tonight.  And I convinced Dave to try a game of Triominos.  He actually liked the game :)

December 17, 2015 38th wedding anniversary in FL

sunrise

Happy 38th Anniversary for us!  I made us a nice “anniversary breakfast” while Dave made the boat ready to leave the anchorage.  We hadn’t decided where to spend the night, at anchor or in St Augustine.  We decided that we would rather keep moving south since Friday looked like we would have bad weather. 

So we moved right on past St Augustine.  Passing the inlet and waiting for the Bridge of Lions to open on the half hour can be tricky because of the strong current.  Luckily, there weren’t any other boats waiting for the opening with us.  It can feel like a bunch of cars in a Shrine Circus parade trying to wait in a channel. 

We decided to go to the Active Captain app and leave a review of the anchorage last night so others would avoid the confusion that we experienced.  Active Captain is a wonderful app that every boater should use.  It gives you up to date information about anchorages, hazards, marinas, ect, with peoples opinions.  We were using the Active Captain data on our Garmin Bluechart Mobile App.  So I went to the original Active Captain app to leave a review.  Well on their site, we saw lots of other comments that would have saved us all the trouble last night.  Sooooo, I sent a message to the Active Captain Facebook page asking about the differences in Garmin vs their app.  It was nice to get a response from them so quickly.  We had recently upgraded both of these apps, but they thought something must not have been completed, because their Garmin matched their site. 

So we decided to use our data plan (since we didn’t have a wifi to use) and re download the Active Captain on our Garmin Bluechart Mobile app.  We use this all the time and wanted it to be accurate.   Once this was complete on both of our phones, everything showed up as it should.  Hurray!!  Funny how maybe you should check out those things before you leave the marina.

We continued down the ICW about 15 more miles (about 3 hours) passed St Augustine to Matanzas Inlet.  We had anchored here before and were anchored by 3:30.  We planned to have a nice dinner on the boat for our anniversary. 

Dave went to work right away getting our water maker running.  It had been “pickled” for 6 months while we were at the marina.  You never know what parts will or won’t work.  And we had a new pump since we last used it.  We didn’t want to run it back at the marina because the water wouldn’t have been very clean, and it would have made the filters filthy.  Everything ran great.  And the water here tested as some of the cleanest we have seen.

We decided to start our steak dinner, but found out one of the steaks was still frozen.  So we went to plan B.  We’ll grill the steaks tomorrow and make our second favorite meal, Mexican, tonight.  We ran the generator for about an hour, filling our water tanks.  We found a local wifi we could pick up, so did some catching up on e-mails and Facebook. 

After eating and cleaning up after dinner, we each took showers.  That was the high light of the day for us.  Boy have our priorities changed.  We played a game of cards and called it a night.  We were both tired from our events of the night before. 

December 16, 2015 Ran aground off of ICW

We had an early start and ate breakfast underway.  The ICW was pretty calm, so I could cook easily.  If you are out on the ocean, it’s best to have meals prepared that only need heating or can be eaten cold.  I will prepare some of those things before we cross to the Bahamas.

removing the snubber-it stops the jerking motion of the anchor chain

successful anchorage

 There was some light fog this morning as we left, but it cleared up and we could feel the temperature rising as we headed south.  We crossed the St John’s River that goes into Jacksonville with no problems.  There is a strong current there and lots of shipping traffic, so it can be hairy. 

We came to a previous anchorage about 3:30 and didn’t want to stop.  So looking ahead, we found an anchorage that we would reach close to sunset, and possibly we would be anchoring in the dark.  Dave was OK with that, so I was too, and we contiuned.

About 5:00 a heavy fog rolled in.  After going through all the air in one can in the fog last December, we hooked up a mechanical fog horn.  It worked great.  If you are  moving, you have to sound a 5 second horn every 2 minutes.  We didn’t see any other boats on the ICW.  Gee, I wonder why?  Now it is approaching sunset and it is foggy.

fog rolling in

do you see the red channel marker?

oh there it is!

opposite side of the channel

We came to the anchorage about 5:30, but misinterpreted the directions.  The place we left the ICW looked fine on the chart plotter, but we quickly hit ground.  And we were near a crab pot.  You don’t want to pick up the line to the crab pot in your prop-can be major damage. 

crab pot too close for comfort

We wiggled around in the muck for a while.  As long as you can move, there is hope that you will work your way free.  A fishing boat with a couple guys came by and asked if we needed help.  There was no way they could pull us free.  And we didn’t really want their help because he was drunk and waving a beer bottle as he was talking to us.  But we did find our that this area was very shallow and there were oyster beds in the area, which explained the “crunch crunch” probably scraping the paint off of our keel.  And that the anchorage we were looking for was just a bit further south, around the next bend. 

Our next thought was to move weight forward on the boat.  We moved 5 10 gallon jerry cans of fuel to the bow which are about 35 lbs each.  And we took the dinghy off of the davits and let it float behind us.  I also stayed out on the bow.  It didn’t seem to make a difference because now it was 6:30 and the tide was going down.  So we resigned ourselves to waiting for low tide at 8:00 and then wait about 3 hours after that to rise and float us off of the bottom.  Dave set an anchor so we wouldn’t go any further into the muck or float into more trouble once we were afloat.  We couldn’t really set an anchor like we usually would.  We would usually motor backwards and make sure it’s holding.  All we could do was drop a pile of chain on top of the anchor and hope we stayed put. 

We went below and made dinner.  I cleaned up the dishes and read or played on my phone, while I had power.  Dave tried to sleep.  About 11:00, I looked out and we had swung 180 degrees and were floating!!!!  I woke Dave and we decided to move to a better anchorage.  We could see a big light heading north on the ICW which would be near us soon.  So we decided to wait for it to pass rather than trying to share the canal in the dark.  It was two large tug boats connected.  They had a huge spot light and were scanning the horizon.  They didn’t call us on the radio when they saw us, just passed by.  They probably thought we were anchored for the night. 

We were able to bring up the anchor and motor back to the channel with no problem.  Just a ways down the ICW, we found 3 other sailboats anchored in the area we should have been.  We motored up between them and found a good spot to anchor.  I usually watch Dave’s hand signals, but couldn’t in the dark.  We made it with a few verbal directions and using a flashlight.  We shut the engine off at 11:50 pm.  10 minutes short of our 38th wedding anniversary.  At no time did we feel we were in any danger.  And neither of us lost our temper.  Both of us were at fault in some way for what happened.  And we learned from the experience.  Life with Dave has always been an adventure and the adventures continue. 

December 15, 2015 Leaving Brunswick Landing Marina

Thank you, thank you, thank you Gary for letting us use your car one more time.  We both forgot that we wanted to get some cash before leaving the area.  So we drove somewhere to do that.  We didn’t want to temp fate by riding away from a cash machine on our bicycles.  Then we made one more trip to the storage unit.  We wanted to store the comforters we had been using as a mattress cushion.  We won’t need them where we’re going:) On the way back, we stopped at Burger King and picked up breakfast for us and Gary.  After having breakfast on his dock, Gary followed us to our boat to help us “shove off”.  Ricardo joined us, too.

lining up help to cast us off-Ricardo and Gary with Dave

It only took us a few minutes to unhook our water hoses and power cords and store them away.  Everything else was ready to go.  We gave our last hugs and said our last thank you’s.  Gary took our shower house keys and the last of our mail to the marina office for us so we didn’t have to stop the boat at their dock on the way out.  And Gary took pictures of us leaving.  I often do that for others.  It’s fun to see what your own boat looks like on the water.  It was about 11:00 by the time we left.

wrapping up the hoses

leaving our slip

motoring out of the marina

beautiful calm day

boy voyage

 We planned our departure to pass Jekyll Island at high tide, which was perfect.  When we first passed Jekyll, our keel touched the bottom as we slid along in the muck.  I enjoyed seeing the Rah Bar from the water, since we had been there a couple times this summer.  And we saw dolphins within the first hour of being on the water. 

We motored our way down the ICW to an anchorage at Delaroche Bay about 3:30.  It was halfway down Cumberland Island.  We just wanted a short day to get our heads on right. 

Can’t believe we had the boat at Brunswick Landing Marina for 6 months.  It really is a great marina.  It’s reasonably priced, free laundry, close to downtown with restaurants and local theater, free bicycles which we can use for groceries or parts, close to a Catholic church, and a nice club house for gathering, which includes TV’s for movie night or ball games or yoga DVD’s, free wine at happy hour 3 days a week, 2 potlucks a month, and a free keg of beer tapped all the time.  I think there will be an AA meeting hall next year.  They also provide a big dinner celebration on every major holiday.  We plan to return there in the summer when we leave the Bahamas.  We don’t plan to stay there all summer, but we didn’t plan to do that this summer either.  You just never know when it comes to sailing and free booze :)

It was such a nice day that we were tempted to go out on the ocean instead of the ICW.  But we thought we better get our “sea legs” back before we do that.  Plus we hadn’t planned where we would come back off the ocean.  It’s best to plan ahead for those things.  But we did that once with Cheryl in the Bahamas and it worked out.  Hence the name Luck of a Fool.