Perfect Sailing Day

Another early run for us, starting at 6am, we hauled anchor and headed over to the lock.  Even though I know better, I always expect such a rush of water and a real noticeable height difference.  No such luck.  But we're getting experience with locks, so maybe one day we can do my dream European canal trip.  Crossing fingers.

My kind of ocean sailing!

Port Canaveral is a busy port; we saw four cruise ships leave the night before, so we knew we shouldn't run into a lot of traffic, but we did meet one on the way out to sea.  Still weird seeing those ships go by, looking like huge floating apartment buildings.

The day of sailing could not have been more perfect; I know Gary would have preferred more wind, but it was a superbly relaxing sail.  He said it was the best so far.  I could go down below, prepare food without getting woozy, take cat naps, read.  It really was great.  We saw only one dolphin that day, which was strange, but there were lots of pelicans and seabirds to provide other entertainment.

The Fort Pierce inlet was easy to get into and our spirits were high for sailing right under that first bridge and anchoring for the night.  But dang it!  It was just over 64 feet!  We were disappointed, but anchored on this side of it and made preparations for a 4am, yes, you saw that right, 4am, leaving time.  This was the time that Gary had figured would be the lowest tide that we could expect.  Argh.  Do you know how much I hate getting up early in the morning?  And then I feel all stressed thinking about the mast getting stuck up in the bridge and us hanging there until we can get a rescue boat to come get us (or a freaking crane, who knows what would have to be done?). 

So, as soon as night fell and dinner was over, I went to bed.  Of course, my head was spinning with all the dreaded things that might happen the next day. 

The alarm came way too early, literally.  But I popped up, dressed in layers cause it was darn cold.  This cold seems to be following us down coast.  Sorry Floridians!  It's our fault.

Anyway, up in the cockpit, I couldn't see a thing.  It was very dark and very foggy.  Oh god, my stomach was doing somersaults--the only part of my body still able to do those things.  But I slipped into the bosun's chair, got tied onto the end of the boom and was swung out over the water.  We'd also tied the dinghy up again, filled it with water, brought the anchor chain out, etc.  You remember from a previous post, eh?

Every time we do this, I pray.  I am not a praying person, typically.  But King Neptune and the Black Madonna once again were in my utterances as we neared the bridge.  And you know, I don't have the hard part of the job.  The Captain is the one who has to navigate in the dark, looking for almost invisible marks, make sure we don't run aground, AND get us under a bridge that refuses to be all it can be.

And he did it!   Again.  We ended up anchoring somewhere in the darkness.  It felt like a tight little canal with darkness and fog on both sides with minimal visibility.  I thought the adrenalin would keep me away for hours, but as soon as we were settled, I slept the sleep of relief.

When I awoke, I saw that we were in a huge expanse of water, near land on one side, but miles of water between us and the next bridge we had to navigate.

One of the four (or five) manatees we visited with in Ft .Pierce

We spent a little time in Fort Pierce.  Our first foray onto land in a week brought us face to face to a group of manatees feeding in the warm waters of a canal near the manatee center, which we never made it to because we were so entranced.  We walked down finger piers in the marina (where there is a huge expansion project going on) to sit with them as they blew out air as they surfaced, so slowly, and then just as slowly, sunk back down to continue their foraging.  Gary got blown ON a few times by a bigger manatee near him; he chuffed out with big bellows.  It was a great visit and we didn't want to leave, but our own stomachs needed foraging, so we went exploring for a place to eat.

Oh, but wait, is that a hardware store?  Oh yes.  Well, the boys were in ecstasy!  A few screwy choices later, we were on the sidewalk again.

While we looked for food, I learned that one of my favorite authors, Zora Neale Hurston, had spent her last years there.  We walked into a very healthy cafe, vegan and all, and my guys gave me that "Are you serious?" look, so I just grabbed a menu and thanked the owner.

We ended up having some really awesome sandwiches at a little deli cafe.  We also bought a nice loaf of sesame bread.  We took a long walk into town and found a grocery store and stocked up on milk, bread, avocados, bananas, and a few other things to make me less nervous that we would starve on a day-long passage.  Along the way, I'd been picking flowers for one of Elliott's science experiments and was able to get about eight different types of flowers for him to catalogue and name.    

The next day, we made plans for leaving to head to Jensen Beach, where we'd made arrangements to see several friends during the week we'd hoped to spend there. 

Gary's calculations of wind, tides, potential bridge issues, too many things to mention, meant that we didn't have to leave until 3pm, so Elliott did school work.  I read, washed dishes, and then went to sit in the cockpit while we had a little bit of sun.  It felt so good. 

I heard a commotion and noticed the trawler anchored not far from us was having trouble with their anchor.  It was not coming up.  That's weird, because the mush around here is really mushy, but I couldn't imagine it sucking an anchor in too deep.  In a few minutes, they had apparently called for help as a TowBoat U.S. boat showed up and starting working with them to release the anchor.  It took about an hour of the smaller boat attaching a line to the stuck anchor line before it finally let loose.  We heard him explain that it seemed their anchor had somehow coiled around itself.  It was cool to watch this TowBoat captain trying different angles and different speeds.  He had a New York accent and treated this older couple so well.

And then, our time had come and we were off.  We briefly forgot that we had gotten back in to the ICW and the marks are backward (green is to port and red is to starboard for regular travel, not the red-right-returning of typical navigation), so we got into some very skinny water before correcting.  Ooops!

I was at the helm for about 30 minutes; anytime we got under 10 feet, I would break out in a sweat.  But Gary said I was doing fine.  It was a little harder than usual, because this time, surprisingly, we were SAILING!  And we weren't on the OCEAN!