South of the Whale - Good Friends and Fresh Fish!

The singing of the drag on my fish killer rod an reel was pure music to our ears. The combination of an ocean rated reel, a 12 in lure with massive four razor sharp hooks on it and 100 lb test made it no contest for whatever took a hit. We weren’t sure what was on the end of the line, but Pat and I had whatever it was, filleted and grilled before we even saw our catch. We developed a real appreciation for fresh fish during our crossing from Florida when I nicked my first Tuna, so naturally when the opportunity presented itself we went looking for more.

The Sea of Abaco is divided into two portions, with Whale Cay acting as the dividing line. The Whale as it is known locally is a source of wonder awe and fear for boaters in these parts because it forces any boat drawing more than 3 feet ot head out into the open Atlantic in order to transit from the Northern Half of the Sea of Abaco to the South. For this reason many boaters, even the locals tend to stay in their half of the “Sea” and not cross into the other side of town.

Because of the separation, the two halves are similar in geography but very different in character. When we left Green Turtle Cay, we crossed the Whale and wondered what the fuss was all about? Apparently during the winter months, NE winds can whip the shallows along the ocean side of the reefs into a boiling surf known as a rage. While I have seen some pretty impressive photos of rages, this time of year the only activity is caused by left over surge from storms at sea. The 4- 5 foot swells with the occasional 6 footer was no worse than the passage out of the bay of Quinte back home on a typical day.

Most of the development in the Abaco is concentrated in the Southern part. Marsh Harbour is the largest size town in the Abacos, and it provides cruisers with a convenient place to reprovision before heading back out. The town itself is rather non-descript, but it is large enough to support a well stocked supermarket and a hardware store that would rival any in the Florida Keys. The myth that the Bahamas are undeveloped and scarcity is common has its orgins in days gone by, but is no longer the caset.

It’s true that some items such as ice cream and beef are more expensive, (try $12 for a quart of ice cream) but not prohibitively so as they are also plentiful and seem to be consumed in large quantities by the locals. There are pleasant surprises like fresh snow peas at lower prices than in Florida. For anybody coming over here, it is always prudent to stock up, but the provisioning should not be viewed as a mission to Mars! The only thing I would suggest stocking up on in larger than normal quantities is Beer.

Boating supplies are readily available and for those who need parts shipped in, the Bahamian Govt. has reversed a ruling requiring duty to be charged on all boat parts. As of June 1, vessels traveling under a Bahamian cruising permit can have power train and safety items shipped in duty free, providing the shipper indicates the cruising permit number on the manifest. Of course as luck with have it, Threepenny Opera required a set of windlass parts and we received them two days before the new rulings came into play. When we tried to “negotiate” a rebate, the very pleasant Bahamian customs officer smiled and said, you win some you lose some. Thanks!

As one moves away from the center of the universe in Marsh Harbour, the level of development starts to decrease but it is very obvious that the wilderness of old is gone forever. The cruising sites have developed to suit the market which at this time of year is largely bare boat charters from the Moorings/Sunsail base out of Marsh Harbour. For a boater that comes down for a week, the anchorages are nicely spaced so that one can stay up late, sleep in, and still make it to a new destination for some water based activities, before heading ashore for the sundowner. On the subject of the sundowner, beware of the concoctions known as the Frozen Nipper or the Frozen Grabbers served from their respective establishments on Guana Cay. One of these drinks will leave you numb and two can bring on incipient Amnesia….now what was I talking about???

A visit to the Bahamas is not complete without spending some time snorkeling or diving on the multitudes of reefs. We were extremely fortunate on this trip to befriend Bob and MaryAnn from the sail boat Queen Angel. They are both fish people and are as comfortable in the water as out. Bob is a natural diver and he can hold his breath for an incredibly long period of time. He scared the heck out of me, because I was spotting him from the dinghy as he hunted a reef off of Lynard Cay, and disappeared for what seemed to be several minutes. I had visions of him bonking his head on a rock and laying unconscious underwater. I was about to muster enough nerve to go in after him, when he triumphantly surfaced with a very strange shovel nosed crustacean on the end of his Hawaiian spear. Dinner that night was freshly grilled shovel nosed crustacean. We hesitate to call it a lobster, because those crustaceans are not in season at the moment.

Time has passed incredibly quickly and our time in the Abacos is almost up. Despite a little grousing about the number of boats around and the level of development, the anchorages are still pretty nice and the gentle rocking on the hook with a cool evening breeze is still spectacular. As is often the case when we are getting ready to leave a place we like, the weather is improving and we have forgotten the two weeks of incessant rain. As we turned around and headed north from Little Harbour, we decided it was a great opportunity to score some fresh fish, so we headed outside of the reef and try our hand again at fishing. Certainly there were tons of fish in the marine parks so how difficult can it be to hook something in the open ocean?? It took most of the day to get a hit, but what a hit it was.

Pat and I worked like a well oiled machine and while I reeled, she brought the boat into a gentle turn to make it easier to bring the fish in. When I got the beast alongside, Pat fired a stream of cheap vodka into his gills and he was still alive, but at least he stopped trying to tail walk away from the boat. The fight took about 20 minutes, and within 30 minutes a 38” Cero Mackerel was posing of pictures, just before being filleted. We were to meet up with our friends Bob and MaryAnn who had elected to stay on the inside for the trip back north, so finally we were able to make a contribution for dinner.

Today we head north of the Whale. We expect to be back into Florida within the next 4-5 days and we will head up towards Punta Gorda to tie up the boat while we get ready for our trip to China. Who said retirement was slow and boring?? Stay tuned. Although we are back in travel mode, we still expect to see some interesting sites between here and the West Coast of Florida so we try and post again before we head for Toronto and the Orient.

Have a great week. I know I will.
Addison
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Marathon - The Abacos. A whole year of cruising experience in one week.

We are on the hook at the entrance to New Plymouth Harbour on the south end of Green Turtle Cay – (pronounced Key) I think I just saw a large rounded ferry boat go by loaded with pairs of animals and being steered by a white haired bearded old guy carring a shepherds crook …. Just kidding, it wasn’t Noah but given the intensity of the rain in these parts, it’s no wonder that the residents of Green Turtle Cay here in the Abacos gather rainwater in cisterns beside or under their homes as their drinking water supply. In the past 12 hours we have received almost 4 inches of rain. Oh well, the locals love the rain, because up until this week, the area has been very dry and the cisterns were running empty, forcing the residents to line up at the marinas with jerry cans to lug R/O water at $.30 per gallon.

To get into the spirit of the locals I had rigged up a funnel over the fill spout of one of our water tanks to supplement the output of our trusty water maker. When I got up this morning, the funnel had fallen over so all of the precious rainwater that could have been filling our tanks was sluicing down the deck instead of being directed into the tank as intended. Now it’s only about 3 feet from the cockpit to my starboard deck fill, and it was already pouring buckets, so I figured that I could go out there, make a quick adjustment and be back below deck in a flash. It seems that flashing was the order of the morning because just as I crawled out from under the side panel of the enclosure, a dinghy with two very wet but wide eyed tourists from a nearby charter boat came barreling out of the rain. I not sure who was more shocked, me who hadn’t expected any intelligent life form to be out in a torrential rain, or the two fools in the dinghy being mooned by a gangly chinaman.

Every person with a boat should make the pilgrimage to the Bahamas at least once in their life time. It is sort of a final exam and senior grad trip for developing all of the pilotage skills one needs to be truly comfortable on the water. In the past week, Pat and I have experienced some of the most incredible natural beauty on the planet, and we are just getting started.

What has become obvious to us is that there are many self appointed experts about sailing these waters, but in reality there are very few who have spent enough time here to provide more than just an opinion. As a devotee to the Ports Guide to Lake Ontario, I had expected other guide books to at least be equally precise if not as eloquent and entertaining as the “Ports Book” We have several Bahamas cruising guides on board and while they are in general agreement about issues like avoiding hurricanes and not running aground, none provide more than a potentially dangerous illusion of precision on how to successfully cruise the Bahamas. I guess it is sort of like raising kids, there are lots of books, even more free advice, but only you and your significant other can pick a path that works.

Navigation in the Bahamas is by sight. Your eyes are the only things that can really keep you out of trouble, or get you out of trouble if you stray into tricky waters. It takes a leap of faith to trust your instincts but after a few hours of picking through shallow water the difference between sand, grass and rock becomes pretty easy to discern. It took me a little longer to tell how deep the water is, but if in doubt I head for the softest option available! Please take that with a huge grain of salt, but it has worked for me. I have only been aground a couple of times so far, and I don’t think anything is broken!

If one develops the confidence to read the waters, the reward is something that many people will only ever fantasize about. There is something completely satisfying about picking your way through a rocky shoal and finding a secluded, protected lagoon of 100 foot horizontal visibility water, surrounded by miles of white untouched sand. Such was the scene that greeted Pat and me as we dropped the hook on Sandy Cay which is located in the middle of an area known as Double Breasted Cays in the Northern extremes of the Abacos. The guide books describe the anchorage almost as a footnote but perhaps their authors are trying to keep the best for themselves.

Our feat of the week was doing the anchor dance in +25 knot winds with a broken windlass. We had arrived at Green Turtle Cay during a pretty decent squall, so by the time we had negotiated the very narrow and shallow channel to get into the harbour, we were pretty anxious to get to hook down and take a warming shower. As it happened there was no room at the inn, because lots of other people apparently had heard the same weather forecast and had filled every open spot.

We tried valiantly to find a place where we could both set the anchor and also have enough scope to handle the even worse weather that was to come. I drove through two of the sets and Pat drove to 2 further attempts….The driver had the easiest job, because squinting and steering was much less difficult than sitting on the foredeck hauling up our 55lb Rocna and 40-60 feet of chain by hand. I wouldn’t describe hauling anchor by hand, in very tight quarters, while being lashed by high winds and rain as fun, but it is certainly unforgettable.

By the fourth attempt we had had enough so instead of expending what was left of our energy to try a fifth time, we headed back out into the open water outside of the harbour. Since we really couldn’t see where we were going, we headed for a space that didn’t have any boats in it and threw the hook in with 120 feet of rode out. It must have worked because we’ve been here for 3 days now and we’ve not moved in the constant stream of 30-40 knot squalls. Hopefully the skin will grow back on my knuckles before too long!

The operative word to truly enjoy the Bahamas is patience. I would hate to be the guy that spends thousands of hard earned $$ to come down for a week of bare boating, only to find that the weather isn’t good, or that a chosen anchorage turns out to be too crowded because every other bare boater read the same book. Doing things in a hurry, or expecting to do things in a hurry will only lead to misery down here, so we are learning to turn down the volume from even the relaxed pace of the Keys. Right now I am trying to eke out a WiFi signal so I can post this installment of the blog, but it seems, at best, to be like trying to milk a bull. You get all the right noises but when the moment of truth comes, you aren’t getting what you thought you would get. I could get in the dinghy and go into town for a free hook-up but that would mean more physical exertion than I really want to make….Well maybe if I can time it with Happy Hour over at Pineapples beach bar?? My multi-tasking habits die hard!

At the end of the day however it’s all about the sailing and discovering. Gentle day long beam reaches on emerald green water, mixed in with howling 40 knot squalls, flat seas and ocean swells all lead to a destination that suits the sailor. In the Southern Abacos, you can marina hop, or you can go from one isolated anchorage to another with about the same degree of effort. Whether you are looking for the latest in local rock bands or a deserted island with naked women on the beach…(and no I am not kidding, just check out the pictures), The Bahamas seems to have an abundance of all sorts of experiences to suit every taste.

It’s Better in the Bahamas is only a corny TV tag line until you actually get down here and see it for yourself. Now if it would only stop raining, I would go sailing! Have a great week, I know I will!

Addison

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Growing Roots!!

It was about 12:30AM on Saturday morning and I was sitting at the nav station huddled over my laptop putting the finishing touches on my pictures for the latest installment of the blog. The atmosphere was reminiscent of the all nighters that I did many many moons ago, trying to complete term papers before the already extended deadline was to expire. The circumstances surrounding the all nighters were then, as they are now, just a matter of getting the priorities straight.

Back in the day, there was always something getting in the way of sitting down and completing assignments. Listening to a friend commiserate over opposite sex woes, or gathering at the pub under the guise of a study group or maybe straying into amateur theater, all those activities seemed to be higher on the priority list than sitting down and grinding out 1500 words for Dr. Ross. These days it seems that issues like helping a friend move his boat, or going to a cool tiki bar to hear the latest in music, or serving as the harbour computer geek seems to get in the way of sitting down and telling the folks back home about what I am doing. Instead I am just doing it!

I get asked by some, who haven’t yet embraced the cruising lifestyle, about what I’m going to do when the vacation is over. The first couple of times I was asked, I would mumble some non sequiturs about letting nature run its course. The reality is that cruising is not a vacation, it is a lifestyle choice. And by making the choice we embrace the blessings of new and interesting people. New and interesting places and new and interesting sights to see. We also accept that normal everyday tasks that would take 10 minutes to accomplish in a land life, can take all day in the cruising life.

Laundry for example, often becomes an all day affair. I have to admit that the closest thing I got to doing laundry in my past life was to not miss the hamper with my underwear but these days a team effort is required to get the job done. Food shopping is yet another chore that in the cruising life has actually become a past time. When your family car is a dinghy and a pair of folding bicycles, it is really important to make a list, check it twice and make sure that what you buy us really needed.

The pay off for the seeming inconveniences is that we have had the opportunity to meet, and really get to know people from all over the world. Whether it be the result of a conversation struck up in the laundry line, or a chance meeting waiting for the propane truck to show up, friendships start much more easily than they do in the more guarded land lifestyle.

The past few months have flown by. It seems just yesterday for example that folks for PCYC (Trevor and Eva, Jane and Paul) and my friend Randy from New Brunswick came down for a visit. Yet it has been over a month since the last one went home! By the pictures in this installment of the blog, you will see that there a many more pics of the social side of cruising. From cockpit gatherings to full fledged dinner parties, the ability to create a party never ceases to amaze me. In the Daytimer, Outlook Meeting Maker world I used to live in, it was a major endeavour to get 2 people in a room, never mind 10 or 12. These days a chance meeting or a quick call on the VHF can get crowd gathered in no time at all.

We have not been to as many places as we originally planned, but we are certainly getting to know more about the places we have been. Time is governed by the events as opposed to events being governed by the amount of time available. When I sat down to write this installment of the blog, I was at a but of a loss as to what to say because we haven’t moved off of our mooring ball since Feb 1.As I reviewed the pictures however, I realized just how full the past few months have been. Tomorrow we are off to the Bahamas and the voyaging part of cruising will begin again.

Look for another installment before the next quarter is out. In the meantime enjoy the pictures and have a great week, I know I will.

Addison

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Marathon East to Marathon West

Greetings to all from Marathon! I have to apologize to our followers for not updating the blog for such a long period of time, but in our defense we have only just realized that we have been here for 2 months. We thank all who wrote, and for the stream of concerned e-mails wondering if we were still on the surface. Rest assured we are still here, and are living in a world where the saying “My how time flies when you are having fun!” is a mantra for life.

Once a cruiser reaches a particular destination, there is a tendency to stay put for a while. Everybody begins with the intention of cleaning up the boat, re-provisioning and setting off again, but there is something hypnotic about Marathon that causes people to stay much longer. It is perhaps one of the paradoxes of cruising that I have heard repeated over and over from many hardcore long term cruisers, a group in which Pat and I are still novices. So despite the fact that cruisers are adherents of a nomadic lifestyle, there is a tendency to plant roots very quickly. Certainly that was the case for Pat and me, because after arriving in Marathon Harbor on December 21 we have moved maybe a total of 12 miles. And most of those 10 miles were used to exit the harbor and take care of little household chores like flushing the holding tanks 3 miles off shore!

The mark of how long a boat has been here is by looking at the amount of sea scum that has built up on the water line of a moored or anchored boat. The fresh arrivals show up with waxed hulls, clean dinghies and clear boot stripes. The long term residents however keep their dinghies looking appropriately scruffy, so they are less theft prone and their water lines resemble a reef. Most make an effort to keep their vessels looking tidy, but there are always a few that are like the suburban neighbor who never mows his lawn, and let their vessels decay to a floating Dog Patch. The intermediate residents like Pat and me only have a thin layer of slime on the water line and the slightest hint of barnacles at the edge of the bottom paint. The bottom of our unprotected dinghy however is an entirely different story, and will require a trip to the beach with paint scrapers to get clean again.

In some respects our cruising life really only began on Feb 1 of this year. On that date, we moved onto a mooring ball in the Marathon mooring field from our fully serviced slip located behind a million dollar home on the very toni Sombrero Boulevard. We have now been on the ball for nearly 3 weeks, and during that time, we have been making our own water and electricity on our own self contained off grid island. Since our plans are to go farther a field, getting some practice in how to balance the systems to make the best use of our resources is very helpful. Between our solar panels, and a small gas generator, we are able to make water, have hot showers, watch TV, surf the internet, toast bread etc. in other words all the comforts of home provided we don’t overdo it.

The mooring field here is one of the largest in the US and holds hundreds of boats. In addition to the “official” moorings, there is also space for those who prefer to sit on their own ground tackle for free. Speaking of free, it is entirely possible to live down here for next to nothing. While every cruiser has their own sense of what “next to nothing” really means, I am convinced that there are people in the harbor who survive on only a few hundred dollars per month. For $140 per month, one can anchor in the harbor, have a place to dock their dinghy, a place to park your bicycle, free showers, and a weekly pump out of the holding tank. Food in the Keys tends to be a little pricier than it is elsewhere, Pat paid $1.20 for a single potato the other day, but with some judicious shopping a couple of hundred dollars spent on basics, supplemented by a few hours a week with a fishing rod can provide a pretty decent diet.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are many million dollar homes, with million dollar boats parked in front of them. For the uber rich crowd, Marathon offers amenities like a private 103 member golf course, an airport with plenty of parking space for your Gulfstream or Challenger, and perhaps most importantly for some, the ability to disappear into the crowd, like the Chinese emperor who dressed as a peasant to get closer to his subjects. Unless you are extremely observant it is not possible to tell the princes and paupers apart. Last night for example, a former member of the Clinton cabinet, was plucking his banjo as back-up to one of the local bar singers.

At the end of this month, we will leave Marathon for either the Everglades or we will continue down the Keys towards Key West. We are fortunate enough to have the choice and the time in which to exercise it. Several of our friends have contacted us to let us know they are heading this way, so we are looking forward to meeting as many of them as possible. I can’t promise that I will post every week like we did coming down here, but I will make an effort to be a little more diligent in providing news and pics than I have in the last month…or is it two???

Have a great week, and stay warm!

Addison

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Vero Beach to Marathon - Could this be Margaritaville???

There were 4 guys standing at the bar who were well into a couple of jugs of draft beer. They were engaged in a very animated conversation about the day of fishing they had just returned from. There were loud descriptions about the number of tuna that had surrounded their boat out on the reef, but for some reason refused to take the live baits that were offered. They stopped their rising crescendo of colorful expletives just long enough to greet a large man, wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and covered in tattoos, who had walked in carrying a small terrier like a baby in his arms. The terrier was appropriately dressed for the season in a Santa suit complete with fur trim and a tasseled hat. Accompanying Mr. Tattoo was his woman friend who was carrying a drink that she brought in with her from outside and smoking a cigarette.

On the stage a solo singer piano player with a pony tail was belting out a country rendition of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer as a man in a full Jack Sparrow pirate outfit, complete with tri-cornered hat, 2 stepped with his Pirate Jenny girlfriend. I’m pretty sure he was also wearing eye liner, but maybe it was the lighting, or maybe he just had very striking features? A couple of clean cut prep school types wearing designer board shorts and flip flops and sporting Oakley sunglasses on top of their heads were huddled together completely oblivious to their surroundings.

Pat and I had just returned from a day trip by car to Miami to pick up some solar panels and we were sitting in the aptly named Dockside bar on Tuesday evening waiting for our food to arrive. Both of us were pretty tired because we had arrived in Marathon late on Sunday evening after a 5 day nearly non-stop journey from Melbourne and then almost immediately turned around and driven back to Miami. Perhaps it was fatigue, and perhaps it was the tortoise shell cat sitting on the bar but there was something decidedly surreal about our surroundings. Could this be the fabled Margaritaville?

As his friends fussed over the dog in the Santa suit, one of the fishermen made eye contact, and he walked/staggered over to introduce himself as Tony. He shook our hand warmly and welcomed us to Marathon. He was just passing through, but he had already been there for 6 months, and he had no specific plans for leaving. It seems that he had left behind a stressful life in Chicago and was on his way to Panama aboard his 50 foot catamaran. As he started to describe his journey, our server arrived with our meals, and he politely excused himself and invited us to visit him aboard his boat when we got settled. His beer hazed speech and the Ralph Lauren shirt stained with fish guts were a stark contrast to the elegant way in which he excused himself from disturbing our meal, leaving us wondering just what he did before he became a sailor on a 50 foot cat in the Keys.

Perhaps Tony’s story is an anomaly, but judging by the number of graying pony tails sported by both men and women who are as old or older than Pat and me, I have to believe that the Keys is one of those places that can draw you in and lull you into a satisfied stupor. Perhaps it is the retirement community for aging hippies or perhaps it is the true fountain of youth, but there is something about the air in these parts that just seems to re-adjust one’s notions about time.

The pace of Marathon is a welcome change and a relief from the pace of the past week. Last week, when Pat and I left the anchorage in Vero Beach we knew we were in for a week of dawn to dusk traveling if we were to make the Keys in time for Christmas. As we were caught up in the moment, once again I neglected my rule about being in a specific place on a specific date. Now when you are underway and operating under a self imposed deadline there are two things that a sailor does not want to hear. The first thing is a very loud bang coming from the engine and nether regions of the boat, and the second is the total silence that ensues.

We were approaching St. Lucie Inlet following a channel no more than 150 feet wide that was surrounded by very shallow water. According to the charts the area we were in was very prone to shoaling due to the currents from the inlet and the main channel depths were well below the ICW controlling depth of 12 feet. Furthermore the water outside of the dredged channel was left to go native and was reported to be less than 5 feet deep. Understanding that we were in precarious waters I paid extra close attention to the channel by carefully back sighting each mark to ensure that I was not drifting out of safe water. Suddenly there was a loud bang and a shudder from below and then total silence.

I was like a deer in the headlights because the information from my instruments could not explain what had just happened. The chart plotter showed we were in the middle of the channel, the depth sounder showed close to 10 feet of water, and the speed log showed we were still moving forward at a decent clip. Pat nailed the problem right away when she yelled over that we had hit something floating in the water and that our prop was fouled. As I cursed all crab fishermen, I managed to restart the engine, but as soon as I put it into gear, it would stall so I shifted the focus of my cursing to the company that manufactured my prop line cutters. I managed, after several attempts of putting the engine into forward and reverse, to create a substantial cloud of debris that looked like a mix of tree branches and bits of canvas. The engine would run while in gear, but the vibrations that ran through the hull felt as if the engine was going to come out of its mounts.

I had visions of bent prop shafts, fried engines and broken transmissions, so I shut everything down. There was not enough wind to sail and the engine was of no help, so we allowed the boat to drift and as we moved into the shallow water off the channel Pat went forward to set the anchor. A call to Tow Boat US on the VHF and help was on the way. Within 20 minutes we had a Towboat alongside and were on our way to the Marriot Resort at Hutchinson Island where a diver would meet us and check out our problem. It turned out that I had hit a submerged construction tarpaulin like the type that is used to cover the load in a dump truck. It seemed endlessly long as I took the edge from the diver and pulled it from the water.

In the end the engine was fine and we were none the worse for wear. It cost us about 2 hours out of our schedule and $50 to cover the cost of the diver. It could have been much worse, but in retrospect what was impressive to Pat and me was that the experience we had gained over the last few months came into play, and apart from my initial surprise, we handled everything calmly and correctly like we had been doing this all of our lives. Kudos to Tow Boat US for being so responsive and many thanks go out to the staff of the Marriott for providing safe haven for sailors in distress, but in the end it was Pat and me that kept a bad situation from getting much worse.

It was a shame that we had imposed a deadline on our traveling because the next 4 days took us from anchorages in Jupiter Inlet to Fort Lauderdale and to the strangely named but beautiful Long Aresenicker before arriving in Marathon. Each of the stops could have easily been expanded into much, longer stays, but there is always next time.

We have arrived in Marathon, where we were met by Bruce and Esther of Con el Viento fame who produced last years cruising blog. Bruce has appointed himself as the unofficial dockmaster for Canadian boats, and he has gone above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that Pat and I feel comfortable and welcomed. The holidays were welcome quiet time, but a little lonely because the usual hustle and bustle of family dinners were missing this year. Still Pat managed to put together a great Turkey dinner for the two of us

This week will be dedicated to scrubbing several months of grime off of Threepenny Opera and catching up on boat chores that have been neglected for awhile. One of the best chores will be to pack away all of the cold weather clothing that we had been living in up until about three weeks ago. These days dressing up means putting on a shirt with a collar and somewhat cleaner shorts.

Marathon is extremely cruiser friendly and both Pat and I are looking forward to integrating ourselves into the community. We are prepping for the next stage of our travels, but the current plans call for a stay in Marathon until the end of January…. Who knows, maybe we will be like Tony the fisherman and we’ll find ourselves propping up the bar and introducing ourselves to next seasons fresh faced arrivals.

Have a great week. I know we will here in Margaritaville!

Addison

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St Augustine to Vero Beach via Montreal

I am warm again! After our overnight crossing from Beaufort SC, Pat and I were greeted by glorious sunshine and more importantly the real heat that comes with it. It was such a huge treat to be able to wander around the historic town of St. Augustine in shorts and a t-shirt. In fact it was the first time since we left Canada that Pat and I have been able to do so. I guess Florida is living up to its tag line of being the sunshine state. Many of the locals are still complaining about the cold, but for Pat and me anything above 55 degrees is warm and once we cross the line into the 60’s we are positively into tropical territory.

Maybe it was the heat and maybe it was because we have been town hopping on the boat but St. Augustine was one of those towns that we hated to leave. Our overnight stop turned into two, and then we added a third day just for good measure. The time that we gained by going offshore from Beaufort, was reinvested into a more quality experience in St. Augustine. It is very charming and obviously set up for a booming tourist trade, but unlike other communities that derive a good part of their livelihood from tourists, the town was not the least bit tacky. It may sound a little odd, but we were actually motivated to visit tourist attractions because they were not very touristy. And so it came to pass that we found ourselves in the Alligator Farm, the farmers market and the St. George Street pedestrian mall.

One of the other benefits of warmer weather is that we have been able to stay on the hook for several days at a time. In the real cold weather, the Espar heater draws down the batteries more than my little 80 amp alternator can replenish without running the engine an inordinately long time. When we were preparing Threepenny Opera for our cruise, I made the conscious decision to wait until we got to Florida to install solar panels but in hindsight I should have done it sooner. If I were preparing another boat for this voyage, I would definitely have my solar installed prior to departure because the lack of supplemental charging has forced us to spend more nights in marinas than I had originally planned. The savings that I would have gained by buying my solar in Florida has been more that used up on extra nights in marinas. Again hindsight is proved to be 20/20.

Threepenny Opera is actually a very good cruising boat and we proved it by leaving St. Augustine, and then staying off the grid until we reached Melbourne on our third day out. We had good anchorages in Daytona Beach and another great anchorage at my namesake Addison Point. The beauty of the last anchorage was that we were within 5 miles of the Vehicular Assembly Building, where the space shuttle is prepared for flight. It was also line of sight to the two gargantuan launch pads, so if we can figure out a way to do it, maybe we might come back up this way for the February shuttle launch. I can’t think of anything cooler than to sit on my own deck sipping on a good cabernet and watching history unfold.

It was somewhat ironic that once we reached Melbourne in, we left the boat to fly back to Canada for the annual cookie baking session with the family. While it might sound a little strange to fly several thousand miles to bake cookies nothing could be farther from the truth. One of the things that Pat and I have come to realize is that changing our lifestyle is not the same thing as changing our life. We are merely living it in a different venue and perhaps at a different pace. The importance of getting together and spending quality time together cannot be underestimated when we are out cruising and since we had not seen any family for several months, Pat and I approached the trip home with the same excitement as we did for the 4 day power weekend get aways that we used to take when we were both wage slaves. The good thing about flying home for a family get together while we are out cruising is that we did not have to fly back and go to the office on Monday morning!

As excited as we were about going home for a few days, it was still a huge shock to the system when we walked out of the airport terminal in Montreal into -13 degree temperatures. I was walking around in shorts and sandals only 5 hours earlier and now I found myself being congratulated by the local Hertz representative for being fortunate enough to get the last car that was not too frozen to rent. What the Hertz guy did not tell us was that the deadline for mandatory snow tire installation was the date I was returning the car, and since the car they had for me was to be retired from service on that date, snow tires were not installed. It did not take us long to discover that all season radials do not work very well after a week of snow, freezing rain and more snow. For once I was thankful for heavy Montreal traffic because at least I wasn’t going very fast.

Originally the ginger snap cookies and Swedish Spritz Shortbread were baked by Pat’s mom. She had passed the recipe on to Pat’s sister Ann but during the transition the hand written recipe that Pat’s mom used was torn and a couple of key ingredients were missing. It has taken us several years of reverse engineering and experimentation, plus dozens of bottles of wine and other spirits to try and discover both the missing ingredients and their correct proportions. Over the years we have produced concoctions that could rival titanium for hardness and concrete for density, but this year we finally got it right. If it weren’t for the persistence of Ann and nieces Stephanie and Karine to figure out the right formula, Pat and I would stll be buying our Swedish cookies at Ikea. Maybe it was part of Nanna Oscarson’s master plan to tear the recipe and force us to get together to figure out the mystery. In the end the cold and slippery roads only seemed to make the weekend that much better.

Pat and I are back in Florida, and it feels great. I actually put on a bathing suit for the first time and got down to the business of washing off 5 months of cruising grime from the deck of Threepenny Opera. It was not a pretty sight, and no I am not referring to me in the bathing suit. She has had a first washing to remove the big stuff, so when we get to Marathon, we will be able to get down to the business of making her shine again. Today we are rafted three abreast on a mooring ball in Vero Beach. As luck would have it our ball mates are Ken and Heidi from Rising Tide and Ron and Dawn from Dawn Treader. By this time next week we should be approaching our first stage destination of Marathon Florida. I can hear the Jimmy Buffet tunes already!!

Have a great week, I know we will.

Addison

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Charleston SC to St-Augustine FL. – Overnights…Second Time is the charm!

Traveling the ICW for Pat and me has been a front row seat to help us understand the values that makes the United States what it is today. From the secessionist manifesto of the Rhett family in the late 19th century to the ever present reminder of America’s military might (not a day goes by without seeing the Navy, Air Force, Army or Marine Corp in action); from the tacky kitsch of Myrtle Beach to the refined modern chic of Charleston; and from the crews of the multi-million dollar mega yachts to the humblest of floating homes, we have had the privilege experiencing first hand modern American history by passing up close and personal most of the original colonies.

The ICW is an amazing piece of engineering and a testament to the notion that a good idea will rise above all. To even exist, it has over the years surmounted and continues to surmount the challenges of economics, politics, geography and weather. It is the Highway 66 of the cruising community and the slice of American Civilization that is served up as one travels the system of natural rivers and man made canals, cannot be rivaled. Perhaps preserving it as a national heritage site would be a way to obtain the funding needed to adequately maintain the system?

As an added bonus, Pat and I were invited to join several other crews from the cruising community to celebrate the American Thanksgiving holiday. While we all agreed that going out for dinner was not exactly the same, the logistics of large crowds on small boats dictated that some concessions needed to be made. We are truly thankful that we have made the acquaintance of Chris and Divya from s/v Maggie M, Ron and Dawn from s/v Dawn Treader, Jim and Ann from s/v Ubiquitous, and especially to Mike and Georgie from s/v Alcyone, who made the effort to seek us out to extend the invitation.

Pat and I enjoyed the experience so much that we had an impromptu repeat of the experience aboard Threepenny Opera the following night with Bob and Debbie from the s/v Valissa with whom we had crossed the Gulf of Maine over the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend in October. If it were not for the confidence we gained from following their lead, Pat and I may not have ventured out onto the Bay of Fundy alone, and we would still be much further to the North and much colder as a result.

We had not seen Bob and Debbie since the crossing but we have often wondered where they were; so it was through pure serendipity that Debbie heard me speaking to another boat and realized we were nearby. I was equally surprised and delighted to be hailed by the long lost Valissa, but that is the way things work on the ICW. It took a stretch run in approaching darkness and rain to make the anchorage, but Pat managed to get the hook down at dusk, and cook a turkey with the trimmings by 6:30. She is a miracle worker on a boat.

Despite the richness of the cultural experience however, the ICW has a tedious side that is found in the numerous uncharted shoals, the bridges that force one to adapt to their rhythm and the tidal currents and flows that can make planning a relatively simple trip into a complex stochastic modeling exercise. Pat and I entered the ICW early in November and after almost 4 weeks of relatively short day hops we were ready to get on with the business of going south. Perhaps we were motivated by the uncharacteristically cold temperatures, or perhaps it was due to the confidence that one builds from spending the last 4 months on our boat, Pat and I decided to leave the ICW in Beaufort SC and head out into the open Atlantic for an overnight passage to Jacksonville FL.

The decision to go “offshore” was accompanied by some trepidation of course, but in discussions with other more experienced sailors the feelings are normal and very common. While only a fool will do anything unsafe, anybody, no matter how experienced who voyages away from the protection of safe harbours, can only do so with the permission of Mother Nature. We have been sent to the principal’s office more than once for not heeding her lessons, so naturally we were a little apprehensive that this time we had learned our lessons well.

No doubt there will be more advanced lessons, but for newbie cruisers like Pat and me the 135nm mile passage from Beaufort SC to the mouth of the St. Johns River, which leads to Jacksonville FL, is a great mid-term test of skills. If one passes, then longer and more complex passages are within reach, but if one needs remedial tutoring, there are many less challenging day sails on the open Atlantic that one can make to gain additional experience. Unlike our first blue water night passage, this time Pat and I were traveling solo. We were in communication while enroute with other boats via VHF and SSB but the trip planning and execution were based solely on our efforts so it was comforting to know that others were also out there with us, even though they were unseen.

In the end we went to the Palm Cove Marina in Jacksonville Beach FL because the Jacksonville Marina was under repairs. The total distance was ~140 Nm and we covered the distance in just under 23 hours. For the first 15 hours of the voyage we enjoyed perfect beam reach sailing on relatively flat seas. Our biggest challenge was to slow Threepenny Opera down so that we would not arrive before sunrise. For the last 8 hours of the trip the wind died so our challenge was to try and speed Threeepenny Opera up so that we would arrive before sunset. We finally gave up at 4:30AM and fired up the iron sails to motor the last 30 odd miles. Most importantly I managed to keep my dinner down, so I am hoping that I have started a trend for future night passages….mommy I’m a big boy now!

Today we are in St. Augustine after a very short 28 SM hop from our marina last night. We are looking forward to visiting the city, but even more importantly we are looking forward to going to Montreal in a week’s time for the annual cooking baking party that Pat’s family puts on. In the meantime we will enjoy a little more of the Florida ICW which looks a little different than the parts of the ICW further north. I think we have earned our intermediate cruising badges because Pat is busy with the charts and guides planning an overnight passage so we can get as far south as possible before we take our break.

Have a great week. I know we will!

Addison

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