Long Periods of Boredom Sprinkled with Moments of High Stress

I would like to restate the sentiments expressed in the last line of the previous blog; life sucks, my husband is driving me crazy and my boat is a mess…ahh, just kidding, life is still great :)

The title of this blog pretty much defines the open ocean cruising experience. We left the ICW just north of Cape Fear, North Carolina, and it took 24 hours to travel to Charleston where we jumped back in to pick up David and Gini. We spent about an hour refueling and loading our new crew and their provisions. We were back out in the ocean about four hours later and had fallen only three hours behind the others. We then travelled south, about 20 miles off shore, for another 48 hours when we re-entered the ICW at Cape Canaveral. With the exception of the last 4 hours, the conditions were ideal. The wind was only about 10-15 knots and the waves were usually less than about 2 feet, very comfortable. The time is spent at the helm, eating occasionally, dozing now and then and tracking our course. There is not much out there, just a few big ships passing us now and then in the night. The stress part occurred only a few times, including a phantom boat passing much too close for comfort in the early morning fog. We never saw the vessel, but their radar blob passed right over ours and we saw their wake…pretty scary. Our autopilot also went screwy a few times and it took some delicate maneuvering to coax it back on course…we decided we probably got too close to the Bermuda Triangle. I’m glad to say that our night travel is behind us now until the journey home.

Travelling in the dark is not too bad once you get used to it. One of the more aggravating things was that our enclosure kept fogging up, so every once in a while we would attach the harness and venture out with the squeegee. But that only lasted about 15 minutes. The toughest times were the hours between midnight and 7 am when the sun came up. It was really challenging to stay awake and I found myself nodding off. Good thing the autopilot kept us on course! We spelled each other off more in the daylight hours when we each took a few hours off to sleep. For me these were fitful naps as I kept dreaming we were running aground or hitting a boat.

Because the conditions were so good and due to our timing, the group decided to push on about 100 mile further south than our original planned entry point. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t as good as we reached Cape Canaveral and the waves increased to about 7 feet and were hitting us broad side. This makes for pretty uncomfortable cruising as the boat rocks back and forth about 45 degrees on each side. We then discovered that we had not stowed our stuff as well as we thought and articles were crashing about below. Nothing breakable of course but there were bags of pretzels and clothing strewn about. There’s not much you can do while underway, you just hang on and pick up when you get out of the weather. We were all pretty happy when we pulled into that harbor (harbour for the Canadians reading this blog). Again, we were never in any danger, just uncomfortable. It’s strange that the relief and exhilaration of leaving the ICW for open ocean was later replaced by the relief and calm felt at once again returning to the security of the ICW.

Unfortunately, as we entered Cape Canaveral, Bill radioed us from Meant-To-Be to inform us that they had smoke coming from the engine. They had to quickly pull over to assess the situation. The problem was that they were in a restricted zone and were boarded by security within a few minutes. Despite being almost arrested, it turned out to be a relatively minor problem that should be easily fixed. We have continued on to our final Florida destination at Vero Beach, where they will join us with only a one day delay. A few words about our fellow travelers. Mary is the self-named double P, which refers to poop’n and puke’n! This first happened as we came down the Chesapeake Bay in nasty conditions and her body had this unfortunate reaction to the fear she experienced. I think she was incredibly brave to venture again into the ocean after that. The last few hours before arriving in Cape Canaveral apparently had the same effect, topped off by their smoking engine. It is very fortunate that this happened when we had returned to land because it would have been a much more serious situation in the ocean. I’m afraid Mary might have thrown herself overboard. We all plan to toast their arrival at Vero Beach. I did get permission from Mary to write this in my blog; she wants Nicole Kidman to play her if there is ever a feature film about this memoir.

We are now motoring our last 10 miles to Vero after a lovely relaxing night with dinner and wine and a perfect sleep. This is where many of the south bound cruisers gather to rest up, re-provision and do any needed maintenance after beating up their boats. We have a battery charging problem and ice maker to fix (you may remember Lynn’s extreme addiction to ice). Other than that our boat had faired very well. So, the end of this leg of the adventure is now in sight and we await the next, which will be crossing the Gulf Stream.