I have enjoyed sailing since being introduced to it in 1969 in Vietnam. There, we had an 15 foot, Alcort Sunfish and sailed when off duty from our River Patrol Boat Mobile Base on Đầm Thanh Lam Bay near Tan My, in Hue province.
Sunfish at Mobile Base One
Alcort Sunfish
When I retired from Cummins Engine Company in December 2008 I had been looking for a boat to replace my 23 foot O'day which I had sailed on the Ohio River and on Bloomington, Indiana's Monroe Reservoir. I had traveled to New York state, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida to look at several boats of about 30 foot.
I finally found one that fit all my requirements (swing keel less than 4 foot draft, mast less than 45 feet above the water, auxiliary diesel, autopilot, roller furling jib and fiberglass hull). Having reviewed the boat in person and finding it to be everything the owner claimed, I bought the boat, over the phone, and made arrangements to take ownership on March 15, 2009 in Green Cove Springs, Florida and planned to bring it back to Indiana, by water.
In addition to features I had sought in a sailboat, it also featured a mast stepped on the keel with mast steps, an entertainment center with video player and television, a dual battery charging system, a Garmin chart plotter with depth sounder, a VHS marine radio and wheel steering.
It didn't have a Bimini. My last sailboat, For Sail, also lacked one and I had rarely felt the need. I was to learn that Florida sunshine and rain, both, are somewhat more demanding of attention, in the month of March, and didn't relent while I remained in the region.
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March 15,2009
My good friend of many years and adventures, John Asel and I drove to Brunswick, Georgia from Columbus, Indiana, yesterday and, this morning, to Green Cove Springs Marina on the Saint Johns River, about 40 miles upstream (and south) of Jacksonville, Fl.
We unloaded about 800 pounds of every kind of nautical stuff and a lot of non-nautical stuff walking the length of a very long pier with each load. The pier had been condemned by the local state inspectors and they would not allow any vehicles to drive on it. (By coincidence, this pier had been, at one time, a US Naval facility and was where the LST 509, USS Bulloch County, on which I served, in Vietnam, had been decommissioned after WWII.)
Green Cove Springs Marina
We then went to the local grocery and bought food and drinks and stored them below. We attached the pulpit to the bow of the boat. For Some reason it was stored in the head which would make for very awkward accommodations.
Topmasted Sloop Dawg House
We changed the diesel engine’s oil and filter. We draped the main sail cover over the boom to air out from where a marina cat had sprayed it.
We met with the former owner, William Webb, to learn the boat’s ropes (gps, depth sounder, bilge pumps, auto-helm, engine operation, etc.)
In the early afternoon we drove to Gainesville to drop off my Jeep at my daughter, Anna’s apartment. This will be John's transportation back to Indiana when he finishes the first leg of the trip.
I rented a car in Gainesville to drive back to Green Cove Springs.
We had supper with Anna. It was a pleasure to share her company and hear about her upcoming art show at the University Gallery and all the work she is doing to prepare for it and another show in Georgia.
We drove to the Jacksonville airport to return the rental and took a taxi back to the marina, 40 miles. This was the second most expensive taxi ride of my life at $110.00. The most costly one was a two day ride from Santa Marta, Colombia to Bogota at 600,000.00 pesos (about $300.00).
We now are water-born (though still tied to a pier in Green Cove Springs) for better or worst.
The PLAN is to take the boat north down the St. Johns to Jacksonville and out to the Intercoastal Waterway, then south down the Waterway to Port St. Lucie, west across the Okeechobee Canal system to the Lake and through the Caloosahatchee to Ft. Myers, where we will be joined by my brother-in-law Nando Ortegon who will crew with me to Mobile, Alabama.
From Ft. Myers we will proceed north to Cedar Key where John will depart (with the help of Anna) and take the Jeep back to Indiana.
Nando and I will cross the Gulf, eventually to Mobile, Alabama where he will somehow travel back to Naples. During all this travel I will somehow attend my daughter's show at Gainesville and graduation, from Florida State University, on the 10th of April.
Dawg Houses route to Suwanee, Florida
Dawg House will proceed north on the Mobile River to the Tombigbee River and to the Tennessee/Tombigbee Waterway starting at Demopolis, Alabama. Then we will pass up the waterway, against the current, through Mississippi to the Tennessee River, through Tennessee to Kentucky Lake and back onto the Tennessee to Paducah, Kentucky on the Ohio River. There are plans for John to again join the cruise on Kentucky Lake and to bring the boat into Florence, Indiana with me.
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We got underway at 11:45 AM the 16th (Monday) and motored north toward Jacksonville and into the unknown.
The engine quit, the first time at 11:51 (still within sight of the dock) requiring some troubleshooting and repair of a poor electric fuel pump ground. This problem was to recur several more times over the next several weeks, finally to be found to be a poorly crimped connection on a ring-connector.
For the first several miles we trailed that cat-sprayed main sail cover from an aft mooring cleat, since it smelled better behind us, in the river than before us, on the boom.
During our trip down the St. John’s river, north towards Jacksonville we watched several Coast Guard helicopter training flights involving bringing a Sea Stallion helicopter to a high altitude, medium and low altitude hovers.
We decided to refuel the Dawg House as we were not experienced with the instruments and didn’t know if we could trust the “full” reading on the fuel gauge. (We later found that "full" is from 14 to 18 gallons and that "empty" is from 0 to 4 gallons)
While approaching a marina on the right (east) bank of the river at Godby’s Creek, where we intended to refuel, we ran aground in a area shown on the chart to have almost 5 feet of water (the Dawg House draws less than 3.5 feet). With luck and tentative boat handling we were able to extricate ourselves and decided we would choose to believe the fuel gauge, for now, since we couldn’t believe the GPS.
We reached the lifting bridge in Jacksonville just a half hour before one of its twice daily openings, at 06:00 and 18:00. This is the only bridge in the Jacksonville area with insufficient vertical clearance, when closed, for the 42 foot mast height of the Dawg House.
After passing the bridge we sailed until well after dark, only stopping when overtaken by darkness and hunger.
We anchored off the north bank of the St. Johns where Drummond Creek joins its flow with the river. We approached our anchorage from down stream in order that the current might help extricate us from any accidental grounding. John steered us upstream and towards the bank until we saw 6 feet on the depth finder and I dropped anchor.
This put us well out of the channel, though we still were rocked by the wake of an occasional passing vessel.
We fixed a dinner of hot dogs cooked on the Coleman and we ate while river currents and wakes tried to pull our Danforth out of the mucky river bottom.
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Tuesday, March 17, 2009 10:13 PM
We got up and were underway by 6:oo AM and ran down the channel side of Bartram Island picking out markers with the help of the spotlight in the still very dark morning. In the early morning dark we shared the channel with behemoths hundreds of feet long, catching the tide which carried us, all, towards the ocean with a free extra 1.5 knots.
We transited the rest of the St. Johns and entered the Intercoastal Waterway to proceeded south past St. Augustine and finally to south of Metanzas Inlet.
Recognizing the entrance to the Intercoastal was difficult because this geographic feature didn’t look (as with so many others) anything like what my mind’s eye had conjured up from reviewing the charts available.
We stopped at the marina at the McCormick Bascule Bridge and fueled the boat with about seven gallons of diesel. I was very pleased to see how thrifty the Dawg House is with fuel, consuming little less than two quarts each hour at 2,300 rpm.
When the fast fall of darkness stranded us on the Intercoastal below mile 805, south of the Fox Cut, after 10 hours of travel, we found no ready haven out of the channel.
We have lit the running lights and spreader lights in hope that anyone no smarter than us, that would operate on the Waterway at night, will think we are a vessel underway and try to avoid a collision. As I type this the night wind is howling outside and I truly think no boat will pass this night.
We will be out of here at first light.
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> Date: Wednesday, March 18, 2009, 9:13 PM
I never really went to sleep last night as the boat was anchored in the middle of the Intercoastal Waterway. Luckily, there was zero traffic though watching for it was a cold, windy, sleepless task.
Today we got underway at 6:00 and saw a fantastic sunrise.
We made good time, all day, till about 15:00 when we stopped, just off the Intercoastal Waterway, at Oak Hill.
We had insufficient daylight remaining to transit Mosquito Lagoon and the Indian River behind Cape Canaveral to Titusville and, so, determined to stay at this last point of civilization.
After anchoring we were visited by several dolphins that entertained us with their fluid beauty and even jumped to slap the water with their fins.
John pointed out a manatee which surfaced about 100 feet from us with a walrus/cow kind of girth and passivity.
We took foredeck showers with buckets of hot, fresh water, shaved and are going to catch up on missed sleep tonight. We expect to get an early start tomorrow; but not too early.
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Thursday, March 19, 2009
When we awoke this morning the tide had gone out making our 7 foot deep anchorage of last night about 3.5 feet and leaving us aground. As the boat draws 3.5 and she seemed to swivel on her keel when we tried to raise anchor, we decided to try to power her into deeper water and refloat her.
To lighten ship we pumped the bilges and relieved ourselves over the side. That and the tide coming in must have done the trick as we were able to use forward thrust to turn the transom toward deeper water and then reverse thrust to pull us off the shallow bottom.
We were underway at 6:00 in the dark and traveled down Mosquito Lagoon to the Indian River. While still in the Lagoon, which is about 4 miles wide, we were hit by a driving rain storm followed by a brilliant double rainbow.
We stopped at a marina in Titusville for fuel and went to the local Burger King for breakfast. We also got a bucket of the Colonel’s fried chicken and bought a few bags of ice for the icebox before continuing south on the Indian River.
We stopped this afternoon to spend the night at Eau Galli Marina north of Melbourne, where we did our laundry, showered and went to a local crab shack for a great meal.
Tomorrow we hope to reach Port St. Lucie and the Okeechobee canal system which will take us to the Caloosahatchee River and Fort Myers.
Jorge (Nando) Ortegon will join John and me there. Jorge and I have enjoyed fishing off Naples in the Gulf in his open power boat, the 4038 EK.
My sister, Genie, will only give me the lend of Jorge to Mobile.
My friend and ex-Navy shipmate, Cary Camp, is trying to work it out to join the expedition starting in Mobile, Alabama and up the Tombigbee River to the Tenn-Tom Waterway, Tennessee River and Kentucky Lake.
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Friday, March 20, 2009
At 7:30, this morning, John piloted us out of the canal from the Eau Gallie Marina near Melbourne, where we stayed last night, into a gorgeous day with the sun just coming up.
We had a breakfast of cold milk Sugar Pops and honey and biscuits. That is what I call health-food!
We made slow (3.3 knots) progress against tide flowing up the Indian River until we hit some point where the tide started ebbing and then our speed jumped in a few minutes to 5.4 knots. We added to this speed by unfurling the stay sail and achieved a maximum speed of 7.1 knots.
We made it to within 8 miles of entering the Okeechobee Canal system by nightfall. The last several miles were hard skating as we had a following sea hitting us from the port quarter which would alternately steer the boat to starboard and then to port 20 degrees which took a lot of effort to control..
We back-tracked two miles up the Indian River to feel our way into the marina at Nettles Island after the first choice we made turned out being a restaurant. They didn’t tell us, when we called to ask, that although they are listed as a full service marina in the GPS database, they really don’t have a place to tie up for the night.
John got a picture of a pair of osprey on their nest that must have contained 200 lbs of sticks. They took flight as we passed close by, taking their lunch, that they had not yet finished, with them.
He also got a picture as I climbed the mast to see the next bridge over the horizon. That was a fun demonstration of the curvature of the Earth.
John took a super picture of the sunset as we reached our resting spot this evening.
We are shaking down into a small but effective crew, but learning about the boat, the Intercoastal Waterway, how to request opening of the many bascule bridges, gps navigation, etc. is like drinking from a fire hose.
I’m glad I didn’t know how much I didn’t know and I’m certain I still don’t. Ignorance is, truly, bliss.
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Saturday, March 21, 2009
Left Nettles Island Marina 07:15 headed for the St. Lucie River and canal to Lake Okeechobee.
To the south of us it is looking pretty dark and a check of the local weather finds small craft warnings 7 miles south of Stuart (Near Port St. Lucie). We should be OK since Stuart is where we enter the canal.
The usual Sugar Pops and coffee for breakfast.
First order of business… refuel at Palm City Marina and Yacht Club.
The wind really picked up while we were at the fuel dock, making it rather difficult to pull away from the pump. So instead of fighting circumstances we decided to wait out the wind and catch up on some rest (this getting to sleep at midnight is tough on the crew. Of course Mike is always thinking and educating the crew).
After our nap and a minor rain shower, we found the wind was still blowing hard onto the dock. We began the execution of Plan A….. Snub the bow to a piling on the dock, go ahead on the engine while steering full rudder towards the dock which kicks the stern out into the wind. When the stern is right into the wind, back down, smartly, pulling the bow away from the dock about 30 feet and then go ahead with the engine and full rudder to pivot the boat into the wind and continue the journey. Pulled it off to the letter.
Under way again.
Locking onto the Okeechobee Canal. John has the painter at the bow.
1400 arrive at the St. Lucie Lock, pretty neat. This one raised us about 10 ft. Heading down the long canal towards Okeechobee. According to our calculations we have in the neighborhood of 20 miles to the Lake.
The helmsman is holding a steady 5.4 knots should have us there in about 3 hours.
The orange blossoms are smelling so sweet along the canal and we are seeing many interesting birds and other wild life.
Evening saw us anchored a mile short of the Lake. Weather willing, we will transit the lake tomorrow and reach Fort Myers Monday.
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Sunday, March 22, 2009
Got underway at 7:30 after spending a very restful night in the canal.
Quite close to us was a cedar tree that became the roost for about 50 black ducks. It was strange to see web-footed ducks landing in a tree. We could not determine how they were able to hold on.
Locked through (kind of – the lock was open at both ends since the canal was at lake level) into Lake Okeechobee at about 8:00.
We motored across the lake at 5.4 knots with a following wind that became stronger as the day went on. Finally built up a pretty troublesome following sea that made steering a real pain.
John spotted our first alligator and after that we saw several (some quite large) and think we hit one of those as it dived under the boat. I was trying to get a video of him at the time and will attach it if I can. Strangely, after hitting the alligator in about 8 feet of water we picked up a couple of tenths of a nautical mile per hour in vessel speed. Maybe you can help us determine why.
Alligator on Okeechobee
Another bridge was being repaired and finally opened only one side of a double draw bridge and we had to be careful to fit the mast through the open part. This is not a difficult maneuver for a salty experience mariner. Even I didn’t have too much trouble.
The locks we had to pass had all just started loads through in the same direction we were going requiring us to wait 20 or so minutes extra.
We didn’t mind much. The scenery and wild life is always interesting.
During the last part of our trip down the Caloosahatchee a pod of dolphins accompanied us for a mile or two. They have such power and grace and swam only a few feet off both sides of our boat as if trying to get a look at these strange humans with orange zink-oxide on their lips and noses.
John got a pretty good picture of two of the dolphins.
Freedom Boat Yard, Fort Myers, where John went for a swim in alligator infested waters
Genie and Nando met us at the Marina in Ft Myers and took us to lunch and shopping to replenish our supplies. We shanghaied Nando for the next leg of the trip and now have someone aboard who actually is a mariner with the added attraction of being an excellent cook.
Every body is snoring. I’d better too.
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Monday, March 23, 2009
Today we got started a little late as the marina folks didn’t show up to sell us fuel till after 9:00
We left the Caloosahatchee, rounded Pine Island and started north between Pine and Sanibel Islands.
Dolphins again escorted us for miles.
We raised the stay sail to steady the boat (as a 2 foot sea was hitting us broad on the beam) and picked up more than a knot. We then raised the main and added a bit more speed.
After an hour we shut down the engine and just sailed for several miles. When the wind shifted we added the diesel power back in to maintain our torrid pace.
When we docked for the night at Little Gasperilla and after doing laundry and showering at the marina, Nando fired up the grill and made the best lamb chops and eggplant you can imagine. We opened a bottle of red wine and relaxed after a pounding on rough water.
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Tuesday, March 24, 2009
We had a long day of sailing from Little Gasperilla to Bradenton Beach.
The boat worked well and we enjoyed a breakfast that Nando cooked underway of avocado, sausage and egg burritos.
Nando installing gas grill as we pass Captiva at the north end of Sanibel Island
Tomorrow we will traverse Tampa bay and maybe stop to see the boat nearly bought at the municipal marina.
The traffic on the waterway was heavy and dominated by folks with lots of horsepower, speed and little regard for others.
John skippered the boat across Sarasota Bay which is a very long, open-water run miles across while I did some planning in the cabin.
Listening to the boat work was a pleasure and the rushing of water past the hull gives an impression of speed far beyond the several knots actually being made. I half expected to find us miles farther along when I returned topside.
Though the boat works well the computer will not allow me to send pictures so we are working out an alternate method.
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Wednesday, March 25, 2009
We didn’t get started today till late due to high winds in the morning.
The winds were so high this morning and the sailboat adjacent to ours in the marina nearly crushed his dinghy trying to get underway. This encouraged us to try to get underway since we don’t have a dinghy. We got away with some expert line handling by John and Nando.
Today we made it to St Petersburg after a frustrating day of late start, wrong turns (twice) and slow bridge openings.
The wrong turns were mine and lack of experience deciphering nautical charts didn’t help.
My resilient personality allowed me to rebound after only hours of grumbling and cursing.
Chef Nando prepared bacon of the sea this morning and for supper we had tuna, grilled eggplant and rice risotto with green onions and sausage.
Our navigation may not be great and though lost we might be, we eat well.
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Thursday, March 26, 2009
We all slept well at the marina.
We were able to refuel at about 7:30 and again head north for Indiana.
After we were underway, Nando cooked breakfast burritos using some of the baked potato we had left over from last evening and bacon of the sea (fried crisp salmon) avocado and our last real egg with some Egg Beaters. They were tasty and hot on a chilly morning.
Weather bulletins have been warning of high winds out of the south and west but the weather we could see looked fine and we had the protection of operating in the Inter-coastal Waterway clear to Tarpon Springs to look foreward to.
We made steady progress hampered somewhat by bad timing of the bascule or opening bridges that we had to transit.
Each time we had to stop to await a bridge opening we noticed higher wind speeds out of the south until while waiting on the bascule bridge south of Dunedin we were being pummeled with winds of 20 plus mph and gusts to 50 mph..
I was familiar with the marina at Dunedin (having stopped there to look a boat when I was shopping for one) and so when the water kicked up to whitecaps in St Joseph’s Sound and wind with 60 mph gusts, we put the helm over and made for the Dunedin Municipal Marina where they said we could sit out the lousy week-end weather, predicted for the next three days.
John Asel left us here in Dunedin and is driving my Jeep back to the land of milk and honey (Columbus, Indiana) to be back at work in the Tech Center at Cummins on Monday.
His ready willingness to successfully tackle any task on the boat will be missed as will his good council in planning and navigating. Also he doesn’t snore loudly, which cannot be said for the rest of the crew.
Good friends like John are rare and to be treasured.
My daughter Anna brought the Jeep, from Gainesville, to John with the help of her beau, Jon Frey. It was great to see them both.
Nando and I intend doing a little fishing for the next few days and I will dive to see why the swing keel is jammed in the centerboard trunk.
As I close this note the boat is rocking and wind is howling in the rigging and Nando is sound asleep, sounding like we forgot to shut off the engine, but we are snugly tied to a solid pier.
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Date: Saturday, March 27, 2009, 10:46 PM
We walked around town investigating and looking for
breakfast. We found a place serving a range of items from
salmon to grits and had a great meal.
While searching for a laundromat I ran across an estate
sale where I bought a bicycle for a few bucks. It has good
tires that hold air and is a big improvement on walking.
With the aid of the bicycle, I got the laundry done while Nando held a field day (cleaning frenzy) on the boat.
We both then pulled everything out of the lazerette (a compartment near the back of the boat under the cockpit seats) to see what we had and what we could lose.
It was like Christmas. We found the auto-helm and
installed and tested it, finding it works fine. We found
the boat hook we have several times wished for. We found an
oil pump for drawing the oil from the engine during oil
changes.
We also found many things no longer or never needed and
discarded those to simplify our life.
I dived under the boat and tried unsuccessfully to dislodge
the keel from the centerboard trunk. I think if I had a
crowbar I could do it but I’d also, likely, sink to the
bottom. If weather is good enough tomorrow I’ll try
again and maybe be able to work something along beside the
swing keel like a hacksaw blade.
The wind is again howling and the boat is bucking against
the mooring lines.
I miss my new grandson Finn and everybody else and think
I’d like to take a break from having all this fun.
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Friday, March 28, 2009
Nando and I replenished the boats stores today. We took a taxi to the local Publix grocery and also got 12 volt wiring to provide power for the auto-helm and GPS, at the local autoparts store.
I rode the bicycle to get 50 lbs of ice (took two trips).
Tomorrow we continue the journey.
We got alarming news this evening about Nandos mother, Izabelle, in Fusa, Colombia, having trouble breathing. Nando called his nephew, Gilberto, there and then his sister Flora (a doctor in Fusa) who was with his mother at the hospital and was relieved to discover that his mother was much improved and being treated for pneumonia.
He spoke with his mother and she sounded good. We are keeping the cell phone on to get any later news.
The temperature today was chillier than yesterday, so I didn’t dive today.
It has turned cold here this evening, in the fifties, and we have closed the boat up to try to keep warm.
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March 29th and 30th
Sorry about being off the air for a couple of days.
Nando and I are glad to be alive and here at Cedar Key, the land of marinas without docks or anchorages.
Two days ago we started out for Cedar Key from our Duniden Municipal Marina.. Nando and I had really enjoyed the town and laying around the marina waiting for the weather to moderate, but getting back underway had its appeal also.
We weren’t two hours gone for cedar key when the ammeter continued to show a high charge rate commiserate with initial recharge after starting but much too high for continuous operation.
We anchored off the channel for a while and tried to find what was wrong. Failing to find the problem cause we headed for another marina, several miles north of the one we had just vacated.
Cedar Key is 70 nautical miles north so predawn start and arrival at nightfall leaves little room for underway problems like exploding batteries, etc.
What we found was that the float charger which the boat seller had told me was wired into the shore power circuit, allowing unlimited use of 12 volt systems when in port was actually hanging in the bilges and that after being off the water for three days with no engine operation, the two very big batteries were nearly dead which kept the alternator charging at a high rate for a long time.
That probably wouldn’t have been a big issue as the batteries would have eventually charged underway as they had been doing up till then.
So we got underway again yesterday at 05:00 in pitch black. About 40 minutes later (still pitch dark), while using the gps and spotlights to navigate the last of the intercoastal waterway, I ran into a channel marker. The markers are often, as was this one, on a tall piling (telephone pole).
I can tell you that is an experience that brings you wide awake all at once..
Except for a big scratch on the rub rail on the port side and our nerves, there was no damage. About ten minutes later the sky lightened enough to navigate normally.
We initially had a little following wind and set sail to help the engine. Then we had hours of no wind and lots of sun and heat.
About 40 miles into our voyage, when we were about as far from anyplace as we would be, the engine started lugging down. We immediately took it out of gear which let it run normally causing us to suspect the propeller or transmission, so we again anchored. This time there was no channel as we were in the open gulf.
Doing first things first I checked the oil level in the transmission and it was low. I added about 4 ounces which brought it up to it’s 1.1 pint full level. The next check was to see if that had relieved the problem. While preparing to get underway Nando brought in the anchor we had put down and it had a crab trap, line and buoy attached that appeared to have recently been caught on somebody's propeller shaft.
Anyway, we tested the boat and found it was fine.
Near the end of our day the wind came up and we again shook out the jib to help the engine by a knot or so.
We motored and sailed all day till 18:30 when we arrived at the head of the Cedar Key main ship channel which enters the archipelago from the south. It took us till sunset, at 19:30, to traverse the channel to Cedar Key. That channel must have been laid out by Zorro. There are several turns greater than 90 degrees in it.
We called the marina manager when we arrived, as had been prearranged, and he came out to the end of the jetty and directed us into a hard grounding right after high tide in a place where a 5 foot tide is not uncommon. Turns out that a storm a few weeks before had silted in the passage into the marina but that he hoped we would be able to get through and help reopen it.
Thirty panic-stricken and frenetic work-filled minutes later with some very kind and very timely advice from a gentleman with a Australian accent, we were again afloat, though some worse for the wear.
After directing the grounding the marina manager pitched in along with a couple of other employees and tried to make matters worse by pulling the boat harder aground in an attempt to pull it into the marina.
We took the bicycle off the transom and put it in the main cabin so we could use the rear boarding ladder. I got in the water and walked the “channel” they imagined was there. One 20 foot long portion had water that didn't reach the top of my kneecap. I told them we were leaving.
While trying to back the boat using the engine, the reverse gear quit functioning making it impossible to retract on engine power. The harbormaster then offered the advice that we close the cabin windows to reduce the amount of water that would enter while the tide was out and the boat would be laying on her side.
The advice yelled at us from ashore, by the gentleman with an Aussie accent, was to swing the main boom out and have a person hang on it to heel the boat and reduce the boat’s effective draft, while kedging with the anchor and sheeting winch.
Kedging is the process of taking the anchor away from the boat in the direction you wish to go and then pulling the boat to the anchor. Nando worked the boat from aboard while I did the work required in the water.
I walked the anchor to its scope and Nando winched like there was no tomorrow and the boat began to respond. Two more drops of the anchor had us nearly off the shoal.
I climbed aboard over the boarding ladder that for some reason now was missing one of its two pivot pins. This required me to secure it to withstand my curvaceous bulk by rigging support from one of the aft mooring lines that was handy.
I scrambled aboard and put the marine drive in forward which immediately killed the engine. Suspecting that the harbor master's line with which he had tried to pull the boat into the marina might be involved I again went over the side and dove under the boat finding several loops of the line around the shaft and fouled in the propeller. I was able to pull a few loops off but couldn’t hold my breath longer so came up and yelled for Nando to hand me the "knoif". (Crocodile Dundee II (1988) - Better Than Average Scene (4/10) | Movieclips - YouTube)
The "knoif" is a large survival knife (looks like the huge Bowie knife that Crocodile Dundee used in parting the hair of a tough in the movie by the same name), a little less weighty than a small anchor. Nando had taken some time to hone it to a seriously sharp edge. He says that a dull knife is dangerous.
I dived with it and cut, with a touch, the line at the middle twist around the propeller shaft, forward of the shaft support strut, and the line came free. During that last dive my glasses came off, but I was just able to catch them before they became incorporated in the muck on the bottom of the sound.
While this was occurring, Nando was kedging from the cockpit, reattaching the main sheet and securing the boom.
When I got back aboard, I restarted the engine and was relieved, when the marine gear was shifted to ahead, that the engine continued running and produced the thrust we needed to push us the rest of the way off the shoal.
By now it was pitch dark with a cold, driving rain.
We drove the boat straight ahead into the night. Nando got the spot light out and lighted the area ahead. There was a boat almost identical to ours anchored ahead and we decided that area should be our destination.
The depth sounder indicated we had 15 feet under us when we dropped two anchors and shut everything down. We are here.
I felt like laying right where I found myself, in the pulpit, up forward, and did so until Nando sounded worried that I might have had a heart attack. I was soaked, smeared with muck and sand, exhausted and chilled by rain and cold wind blowing hard but so happy to be afloat that I didn’t care about any of those minor discomforts.
I took a bucket shower on the foredeck and rinsed off my belt and watch.
Nando and I agreed that things were bad but bound to improve.
We were wrong. A storm came up in the middle of the night. Nando describes it as raining cow shit and hammer handles. The wind screamed in the rigging and the boat groaned in every joint. Since we are on a windward shore we didn’t get much sleep.
This morning we worked to straightened up the mess from last night. I went into the engine room to see what I could see and discovered the shift actuator cable, for the marine gear, had slipped in the bracket and wasn’t allowing the shift linkage, on the marine gear, to reach the reverse position.
What a relief when, after repositioning the linkage, we tested it to find it works perfectly.
I also found a loose fuel suction fitting on the top of the fuel tank. I disassembled it, sealed it and put it back together being careful not to break anything since we are anchored out and have no way to get spares.
I also repaired 3 fresh water system leaks that were causing the demand pressure pump to run occasionally when no one was using water.
We checked the oil level for the engine and added a little.
Getting the dipstick back into its hole is a real circus trick, since you have to hold a flashlight in your mouth while looking through one opening in the engine room, hold a mirror with one hand and position the dipstick backwards from what you are seeing in the mirror through another engine compartment opening. It makes you not want to pull the dipstick and took me a half hour the first time. I can do it in a few minutes now.
The boarding ladder was repaired with a new pin that we had available from our sundry stores
We found my billfold that I had thrown below before first going into the water, last night.
Without a way to replenish our fuel here, we are now ready to sail to a nearby port (within 10 gallons of diesel fuel) when the weather breaks again.
Nando is fishing for supper and reports sunny weather but the forecast is dismal for today and tomorrow.
We checked our ground tackle and reset an anchor and are as secure as we can make ourselves.
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March 31st
We are still here in Cedar Key with the wind blowing and waves rolling through our unprotected, but only available, anchorage.
Our destination, as soon as the weather breaks and timing allows us a high tide arrival, will be the Suwannee River where they have diesel fuel, groceries, showers and dry land to walk on.
Nando fixed bacon of the sea (crisp cooked salmon), the last of our eggs in a carton and tortillas mid-morning when the seas settled enough that we felt it safe to light the gasoline stove. It was hot and delicious.
We are tired of Cedar Key!
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April 1st
What a night! We took turns standing anchor watch while the winds screamed and the boat pitched on beam ends.
The anchor drag alarm was going off all night long causing us each time to determine if we had lost our ground tackle.
One of the three sailboats in this bay sank and was demolished last night about 600 yards to the east. No one was aboard. The other sailboat (also an O’day 28) and we came through OK
We have made ready to leave and the weather is improving.
Radio Weather said “SYNOPSIS…A COOL FRONT WILL MOVE THROUGH THE WATERS TODAY. HIGH PRESSURE WILL SETTLE OVER THE WATERS FOR THE WEEKEND BUT ANOTHER COLD FRONT WILL MOVE THROUGH ON MONDAY. HIGH PRESSURE WILL BUILD INTO THE AREA FROM THE WEST ON TUESDAY.”
We will be glad to see the last of this inhospitable place.
Nando’s mother’s condition is worsening and he is anxious to get to Colombia.
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April 2nd and 3rd
We transferred the fuel from the 5 gallon can to the main tank.
which brought us up to “3/4″ of a tank. This is a level that
experience has shown is probably 11 gallons.
We secured everything aboard that looked like it could get loose and fly around the cabin, since the weather reports are for up to 6 foot seas out of the west (the direction we are heading). The few miles of ship channel that we were required to run, out of Cedar Key to the open gulf, would provide a good test of how well the transmission linkage and fuel system repairs perform.
We weighed anchor and were glad to see Cedar Key start to become a memory, rather than a place where we dreaded finding what staying another day might bring.
The weather service was still issuing small craft warnings north of us and reporting winds higher than I would normally head into, but staying another night in such an unprotected anchorage, on a windward shore, with dwindling provisions and the need for Nando to reach a location from which he could travel, overruled reservations based on obtaining a pleasurable voyage.
I had found and entered way points, in the GPS, for the trip to Suwannee through Griffith inlet. To get there we left Cedar Key to the west through a very narrow channel surrounded by vast shallow water between the channel and the few islands bounding it.
We ran into 4 and 5 foot seas and winds head-on which made the boat pitch fore and aft uncomfortably every several seconds but this was slowly enough for the compass and GPS to give us an accurate idea of our direction and position every 30 seconds or so.
Making just slightly greater than 3 knots we bucked the seas for a couple of hours until clear of the channel.
As we approached the final marker for the channel, from the east, we had breakers plunging on both sides of us and marveled at how seaman only a few decades ago faced such fearful forces without the current navigation tools.
We then set a coarse north to follow our waypoints to Griffith Inlet. This was generally sailing with the seas on our port beam which produced a healthy wallow but was not as bad as it could have been
and was much better after Nando suggested that dropping the centerboard might help. The centerboard steadied the boat considerably.
(note; the centerboard had been stuck in the upper position
with repeated attempts to free it by prying from below during free dives
proving fruitless. During our last marina stop before Cedar Key we
met an industrious diver, Mike, busy cleaning boats there and he
offered to pry it free. He worked hard and after about 15 minutes of shaking and prying managed to accomplish the task.)
We reached Griffith Inlet and turned east to follow the markers into the
Suwannee River but upon approaching the 5th marker and with a powerful incoming tide behind us, we began getting depth readings that diminished below 3.5 feet (the Dawg House draws 3.25 feet). Having too recently enjoyed the rewards of grounding, we turned about, sharply, and anchored in deeper water to get more information.
We again consulted the tide charts and determined that we had 2 feet of a rising tide that would not peak for a couple of hours. We tried to contact Millers Marina by phone and found that we had no Verizon service. We called the Marina by radio with no response the first time but finally, by going to the higher broadcast power setting, were able to raise them.
They explained that, if we kept to the very middle of the marked channel, we should have no trouble. We upped anchor and headed in again, being extra vigilant about our location in the channel.
Again, the depth decreased to 3.5 feet, held there for several seconds and then increased quickly to 6 feet and finally to 14 before reaching the marina, a few miles later.
The water of the Suwannee River, at the mouth, is like liquid black onyx with so much tannin dying the water that it truly appears to be the color of used motor oil. I wouldn’t have thought this would be beautiful, but it is.
We arrived at the Miller Marina and were directed to a floating dock near the office, where we were told that, though they have no showers ashore, we could use the facilities on one of their houseboats.
Nando grabbed his dop bag and was gone only to return a few minutes later with the news that he had no sooner gotten nude as a noodle in preparation for his shower when he was interuped by Bill, of the marina and told that the houseboat he was on was ready for the renting party to come aboard and that his shower would have to be on another boat.
We were also told that we had to move the Dawg House to a different slip. We got the moving done and Nando got his shower and, when he returned, he told me I would like the shower. I knew there would be something notable in relation to the facilities.
It turned out to be a shower stall that only exceeded my dimensions by the excess depth we had in the channel that afternoon.
There is no Verizon service in Suwannee (the carrier for both mine and Nandos cell phones and this computer) so we found a pay phone, called my wife, Susan, in Columbus to let her know we were safe in port and to relay our payphone location to Genie (my sister and Nando’s wife) in Naples so arrangements could be made to get Nando to Naples where any other required movements could be initiated.
Genie called and said she would start from Naples at zero dark thirty and meet us midafternoon the next day.
I have decided that pressing on without a crew to temper my often imperfect, occasionally impetuous and rarely, well-reasoned judgement, during what is proving to be a bad weather season in northern Florida, might be imprudent.
Bill at Miller’s Marina has agreed to keep the Dawg house for up to a month while I accompany Genie and Nando to Naples and take advantage of their hospitality.
On Day 20 Nando and I cleaned the Dawg House, including the ice box, refueled the main tank and 5 gallon Jerry can, took down and stored the main sail, topped off the oil, checked coolant, packed up clothes and unloaded food stores that will not keep and locked up the boat (giving the combination to Bill at the marina who has committed to look in occasionally to check the boat).
Genie arrived on schedule and rescued us from the seclusion of lazy Suwannee.
We had a dinner of oysters and catfish near Fanning Springs and then Ramboed (a Dave Kochanczyk-coined verb) all the way to Naples.
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Nando has flown to Fusagasuga, Colombia to be with his family.
He had gotten word, before he could finalize travel arrangements, that his mother, Isabelle, was comatose and before I could get him to the airport at 2:00 this morning, in Miami, that she was deceased.
Isabelle was a wondrous person and dear to many including my parents (deceased), my sister and me. What a pleasure to have known her.
Everyone she touched felt her goodness and enjoyed her friendship.
Her effect on the tempests of life was as oil on water.
She shaped her life and others’ in positive directions, and took what living brings, in stride.
We have done some crying and happy remembering and will do a lot more.
Heaven, if there is one, surely exists for the Isabelles of the world.
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May 10,2009 attended the graduation of my daughter, Anna, from Florida State University.
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May 13, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Nando and I are preparing to resume the voyage of the 28 foot, masthead sloop “Dawg House” bound for Indiana. Nando has signed on to crew till Mobile, Alabama where I hope to shanghai some other crew member or two for the river voyage north.
The Dawg House presently lies at Suwannee, Florida, in the Marina owned by Bill Miller. I have stopped by a few times in the last several weeks to assure myself it is not taking on water and to attend to some chores.
I have replaced the marine transmission oil, and engine oil and moved the bicycle from the pushpit rail, aft of the cockpit, to between the lifelines and starboard shrouds and secured it to the shrouds. this should get it out of the way yet make it handier than it was previously.
My good friend, Doug Folkerth and his wife Leslie, both serious boaters and bicyclers, invited me to borrow a dinghy that their yacht had outgrown. As they are off cruising the east coast, their friend, Scott, in Gainesville showed me the boat. The upshot is that I bought the inflatable boat and 3.5 horsepower engine. Doug is an ex-Cummins marketing guy and assures me I can have hours of fun skiing behind this rig if I would just buy his skis also.
Such a boat would have afforded us the ability to get ashore at Cedar Key, and several other locations, when we needed such capability, acutely.
I converted the gasoline stove to propane and tested it. This is, altogether, a much handier and safer arrangement.
I caulked the pulpit attachment flanges with marine sealant. This stopped the small amount of leakage into the vee birth area that had been occurring since John Asel and I installed the pulpit at Green Cove Springs.
Nando and I are going aboard May 19th with the hopes of catching the morning tide the twentieth and making an overnight passage, across the Gulf, to Apalachicola, weather permitting. This may also allow us a sliver of moon for part of the night passage.
If the weather doesn’t permit the passage, as planned, we may go skiing.
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My sister Genie and my daughter Anna dropped Nando and me at the Marina last Sunday evening.
Nando and I bent on the main sail and modified my installation of the Bimini in preparation for making the 130 nautical mile crossing from Suwannee to Apalachicola.
Intended voyage Suwanee to Apalachicola
We got underway at 11:00 Monday with a forecast of 1-2 foot seas and scattered thunderstorms.
We cleared the Suwanee River and channel with no problems, having learned the parts of the GPS information that are unreliable or outright wrong upon arrival on the 2nd of April.
We set a course straight out across the Gulf at about 292 degrees. We motor/sailed at speeds to 6.9 knots till about 17:00 when the coast guard called us and informed us that the Coastal Training Area south of Apalachicola was closed to our passage as we were just about to enter it.
We turned 30 degrees north to skirt the eastern edge of the area but, in so doing, our beam reach became a following breeze blowing at about our speed and direction (335 degrees) north.
The extra distance needed to thwart Pythagoris and go around the Training Area made our 130 mile passage about 150 miles.
Actual voyage to Apalachicola
Nando had been wanting to scatter some of his mother's (Isabelle's) ashes on the gulf waters that connect her Colombian home to her American home. A beautiful sunset and seas presented a peaceful opportunity for this.
The sun set at 7:44 followed a couple of hours later by the setting of the thinnest sliver of moon. As we proceeded to the northeastern corner of the Training area it became pitch dark leaving the glorious riot of the Milkyway for us to enjoy during the brief times when we were not being drenched by torrential downpours accompanied by lightning.
The seas, at least were calm except for a 2 foot wave on our beam which, every couple of minutes, got organized enough to throw us around the cockpit and rattle all the metal and glass objects stowed below.
When we turned west toward Apalachicola we were hit by one of several scattered thunderstorms we would experience over our 25 hour passage.
It was a long night with a close brush with a crabber just before dawn. He was out checking his traps and I had him in view, off and on, for a couple of hours, as storms came through, occasionally masking his location, ahead (either side of our general heading of about 270 degrees). As we came out of one downpour, there he was, just crossing our bow, about 200 yards distance.
To a sailor two hundred yards can seem awfully close, in mid Gulf.
We passed the bell-buoy several miles off the east pass of Apalachicola Bay about 06:20 and were just beginning to have enough light to navigate the inlet.
After entering St. George's bay we still had 25 miles of Intercoastal waterway and the affliction of somehow being the focus of the "scattered" thundershowers.
The several miles in St. George's Bay were made extra special by the very narrow (100 foot wide) dredged channel and fierce wind and rain that tried to blow us out it.
At one point while working very hard to stay in the channel, in a driving rain, we got a call from a boat going the other way in the same channel at about our same position. We each agreed to try to hold to our right hand sides of the channel. We never saw the other boat but we must have passed very close to each other.
Our voyage ended, aptly, with us beating the last thunderstorm, bearing down on us, into slip 13 at the Water Street Marina, by only enough to get soaked while tying up the Dawg House.
Lightning struck a steel tank at the neighboring business a few minutes after our arrival as a parting salute.
Nando and I made use of the shower facilities and then went in quest of a seafood dinner. We found wonderful oysters on the half shell with a horse radish that made our heads feel they were being steam cleaned from the inside, cold beer and a passable martini.
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We got underway at 7:00 this morning and passed through some of the most beautiful country, taking the inland waterway to Panama City.
Nando fired up the stove and cooked great salmon omelets and super coffee. We also had arrepas prepared per Isabelle's recipe by her grand children.
Nando insists that everything tastes better when boating and maybe that's the secret though everything he cooks at home tastes better also.
We saw one 10 foot or so alligator today but in turning the boat around to get a picture of him swimming we scared him and he dove. Some time later I was able to get a picture of a fig tree wrapped around a cypress tree. Luckily we didn't scare the fig tree.
Weather was bright and sunny all day though we could see lightning inland.
About 3:00 we were surprised to find a crab, about the size of A golf ball, hitch-hiking on the cockpit floor. He must have come aboard in the night up through the self bailing drain for the cockpit. I'm certain he was happy to be put back into the water.
One reach across the bay west of Panama City was wide enough and had such a fine wind blowing across it that we put on sail and reached a speed of about 7.3 knots before running out of bay and wind.
The last hour and a half of our passage was like an air show, watching the F-22s flying out of the Air Force base next to Mexico Beach doing training flights.
We arrived at the Panama City Marine about 4:15 local time which is 5:15 eastern time.
After showering and shaving we walked into town and found a good restaurants with oysters on the half shell and crab chowder with garlic toast.
We're headed for Pensacola tomorrow.
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Nando and I moved the Dawg House to the fueling dock and added 11 gallons of diesel to replace the fuel burned in crossing the gulf and from Apalachicola to Panama City. This totaled about 210 nautical miles.
After fueling we again got underway for Indiana via Destin, Florida. The inland waterway took us through West Bay and about 20 miles of river.
We had a short day since the Marina at Destin had no slips available and we decided to stop short of there in the mouth of the river and anchor out tonight.
After anchoring we tested out the inflatable boat and engine. Everything worked swimmingly with the boat and engine proving easy to start and maneuver. I even tested out the oars to see what difficulty might be expected if the engine were to fail.
The boat was easy to row at about twice the speed of the 1.5 knot current in our anchorage.
After our boat test we fired up the grill and cooked some lamb chops and corn on the cob grilled in the husks. This combination was outstanding for a couple of sailors that had a banana for lunch.
Nando is fishing with a rubber shrimp for bait and not getting a nibble while I record our progress towards Mobile Bay.
I forgot to attach any photos to yesterday's note so here they are with today's.
I also forgot to mention we left from Apalachicola and almost immediately ran into in a fog you could slice with a knife. Luckily it lasted only a couple of miles and our GPS kept us in the channel at a very leisurely pace.
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Sorry I was off-line for a couple of days. My computer battery ran down yesterday and wouldn't let me compute.
I charged it today and it seems to be working alright again.
When last you heard from us we were anchored off the channel in a river near Fort Walton Beach.
Nando decided to sleep up on deck that night to get what little there was in the way of a breeze.
About 2:30 he called and awakened me and said to come see the boat that was coming. I went topside and saw about 400 feet of 20,000 horsepower tow boat with enough search light power to see a half mile ahead coming towards us on what looked to me to be a collision course.
Nando assured me he had shined his light on us and that we were out of the channel. The boat ran through about 100 feet from us and his passing sucked our boat out of the side channel we were in and pulled our anchor free of the bottom. We were caught in the current running back in the direction from which the tow boat had come from.
I started the engine and put the GPS on line while Nando pulled in our dragging anchor. We then spent about a half hour getting the anchor to catch again in the gassy, off-channel location to ensure that if another towboat came through we would be safe.
As it happened another towboat did come through, going the other way about an hour later and our anchor held fine.
We got the hell out of there about 7:00 the next morning and cruised about 65 miles to Pensacola where we stayed the night in a very nice marina with an oyster bar across the street where we had very good, though somewhat smaller oysters than we had enjoyed at the previous locations.
We refueled with 7 gallons of fuel in the morning and struck out for Mobile.. We made it to the Bay but decided to anchor out (far off the channel) for the night rather than make the 35 mile run into the night sharing the busy channel with the other shipping during a night run to Dog River.
Nando is trying his luck fishing with a plastic shrimp while I document our day.
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We spent last night about 1/4 mile out of the marked shipping channel that crosses the southeastern Bon Secour (Mobile) Bay. During the night the boat started vibrating and buzzing which woke me up. I got up to see if we had a UFO hovering above us and found a towboat pushing a few hundred feet of barges past us in the channel.
I was happy we had anchored well clear or his path.
We got underway at first light and cut across the bay from southeast to northwest and into Dog River south of Mobile several miles.
There we tied up at the Dog River Marina and went into town in the courtesy car to sample the local oysters. We found them outstanding and huge served with a horse radish that Sadam Hussein would not have hesitated to use against the Kurds, had he the chance.
Genie is on her way to retrieve Nando tomorrow. I'll be leaving about 10:00 if things go as planned to make the top of Twelve Mile Island, on the Mobile River, before nightfall. That will end the Intercoastal
Waterway and Gulf portion of the trip and begin the, river, canal and lake portion of the trip.
I'll be single-handing the boat till John Asel, my experienced and trusty crewman can join me enrout or anybody else that wants to sign on for some adventure.
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Genie drove all night, from Naples, to pick up Nando at the Dog River Marina today.
We all went for breakfast at the Mobile Radison to celebrate the beginning of the freshwater phase of the sailboat adventure.
I finished doing my laundry and bought some ice for the ice box and took in the mooring lines at about 11:00 and set out singlehanded for my first river anchorage at the north end of Twelve Mile Island on the Mobile River and got there about 5:00 after encountering a current of about 2 kts.
Had a supper of hot dogs and beer while planning the next leg of my trip.
Saw many interesting sights while passing through Mobile including ocean going cargo ships and an experimental Navy vessel.
Ships grounded at Sand Island, about a mile south of Mobile
I sure miss Nando. He is such fun to travel with and always such a positive influence and a super cook.
Mike
I’m sorry to have been off the air for so long but the Verizon system doesn’t have super connectivity where I am these days.
I last informed you that I had anchored at the north end of Twelve Mile Island about 9 river miles north of Mobile.
I spent a pleasant night there and awoke to watch with interest as the huge towboats passed a safe distance from the Dawg House.
I wanted to get an early start the next day so I checked the engine before going to bed and topped off the 18 gallon tank with 4 gallons of a 10 gallon reserve I have brought along in two plastic diesel fuel containers.
The extra fuel is insurance against not being able to purchase fuel along the way. So far the only Marina claiming on the internet to have fuel along the part of my river route covered was no longer in business.
I spoke with Bob of Bob’s Fish Camp at mile 118 and he has fuel for me and a place to tie up for the night. This is very rare along the Tombigbee River. It looks like I must reach his location on the fuel I have (18 gallons in the tank plus 6 in reserve).
The Dawg House burns about 2 quarts per hour at 2300 rpm. On the river, against the current each two quarts yields about 4.5 miles or 9 miles per gallon. 18 gallons should get me to Bob’s easily unless I run into stronger currents or winds.
I left Twelve Mile and motored to the Alabama River Cutoff. This waterway is no longer navigable but the entrance does provide enough depth to anchor safely out of the channel.
Upon arriving I was pleasantly surprised to find the anchorage a narrow channel lined on both sides with very agreeable plants. Mimosa, willow, poplar, elm, live oak and honeysuckle with fish jumping so frequently and high that I vowed to cook one if he landed in the boat.
There was a pleasant but weak breeze blowing though my river garden so I braced myself for the onslaught of mosquitos and no-see-ems but am happy to report that I was not bothered, at all, by such critters.
I slept really well and since my journey, today, only was for about 27 miles to the Sunflower Cutoff, I had no need to get an early start.
I lazed around enjoying the watery Eden while fixing a breakfast Nando would have been proud of. Real egg mixed with boxed egg, cheese, onion, and hot dog sausage omelet served with hot Colombian coffee and some cranberry juice.
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I have arrived at the Sunflower cutoff where there are supposed to be three bouys separating a part of this wide section of the river from towboat traffic. Unfortunatedly the bouys are not here and there being no place safer I can go within the hours of daylight remaining, I have pulled into an area 7 feet deep and put an anchor fore and aft to hold me in the area so I can get some sleep.
We’ll see.
Tomorrow I have to get up and gone as early as I can see the obstacles in the river to make Bob’s Fish Camp by nightfall.
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Thursday June 4th
I didn't get but a few winks of sleep last night.
Tow boats, anchor drag alarm, shallow water alarm and mosquitos.
I needn't have worried about making it to Bob's though. The same thing that caused the alarms caused me a fast trip to Bob's
The Corp of Engineers stopped adding water to the lower Tombigbee in anticipation of rain that didn't happen so I was going upstream against no stream today. It added 1.2 mph to my already blazing speed of 4.2 so that I literally flew.
I locked through the dam at Coffeeville about two miles before Bob's Fish Camp. This raised the Dawg House about 30 feet.
I got to Bobs at about 14:00 just in advance of a frog strangler, complete with lightning and ragged looking clouds that could have turned into tornadoes.
Had a great catfish dinner, bought ice and fuel and am ready to hit it early tomorrow.
I fell getting off the boat, the last time, and broke a rib. It doesn't cause much pain except when I sneeze, laugh, cough, breathe or lay down. I will continue the trip unless some other complication arises.
Mike
Got started at first light out of Bob's.
Had an apple and some water standing by for later consumption and coffee brewing.
Nearly froze to death today in Alabama. It drizzled, off and on, and the wind blew out of the north and I thought I might see snow. Well; it was in the sixties.
About the time I got to Barrons Landing (which is not a landing at all but a wide place in the river that allows anchoring out of the channel) the sun came out and the temperature warmed a little and I took a refreshing foredeck shower.
I fixed rice and Ramen with queso blanco and cut up hotdogs. It was heavenly!
About 18:00 a power boat dropped anchor in the same area. Dick Bingham and his wife are headed back the way John, Nando and I have come through the Okeechobee Lake/canal system.
Dick needed a chart for the Florida West Coast that I no longer need so he motored over in his dinghy for it.
This location is very pretty and peaceful and I look forward to a peaceful night's rest.
Mike
Some of the very circuitous Tombigbee River
Got some sleep at Barrons Landing and got underway at 6:40 in the morning.
There was sea smoke on the river which cleared by 8:00 and then there was a nice cool breezy day for a trip to Demopolis.
Locked through the dam raising the Dawg House about 40 feet.
I decided to stay at the Yacht Basin in Demopolis for two nights to afford a chance to change the oil and filter for the engine and do some shopping.
They were nice enough to lend me their courtesy car for a trip to Walmart this morning and I couldn't stop myself from going through the drive through lane at Mc'donalds for a bacon egg and cheese biscuit.
Tomorrow morning it back on the river/waterway system.
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After a leisurely two night/one day stay at the Demopolis Yacht Basin, I got underway early and covered about 50 river miles and locked through one dam, anchored overnight in a beautiful safe backwater and then covered about 50 river miles and locked through two dams.
One of several dams on the Tenn Tom Waterway
I spent that night, the ninth, at the Columbus (Mississippi) Marina. They lent me their courtesy vehicle and I went to town and bought a replacement cell phone since my other had quit working a few days ago.
Early today (about 5:30) I fixed a breakfast. Crispy-bottom eggs, queso frito, fried onions and hotdog sausage, with orange juice and coffee.
Since there is just me; I threw the lines off and ate my breakfast underway..
Today I covered 65 river miles and locked through 4 dams. The dams were fairly close together and they co-ordinate the process by informing each other what vessels are coming. They were all ready each time I got to one.
Tomorrow I expect to lock through three more. The last has a lift of 84 feet in only one lock. I'll try to get some pictures of that.
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The 84 foot lift lock onto Bay Springs Lake leads to a canal that takes you to Pickwick Lake, above Pickwick Dam on the Tennessee River which is situated where Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee all share a border.
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I sailed (really sailed, as in shut off the engine and listen to the sails flap and water hiss) from Paris Landing Marina in Tennessee to Ken Lake Marina in Kentucky. It was a short trip in water wide enough to allow proper sailing and, with a decent wind and made for a pleasurable day.
Rain threatened but never materialized and I arrived at Ken Lake Marina (just south of the Kentucky Highway 68 bridge over Kentucky Lake), in the early afternoon.
I hitched a ride to the resort lodge and had a great soup and salad and Barbequed ribs dinner. The lodge provided a courtesy car to take me back to the boat.
I spent the rest of the evening and the next morning, straightening the boat up for the arrival of Susan and John on the 20th.
They arrived in the mid-afternoon as they had had some car trouble when leaving Columbus, Indiana. The garage that had just done Susan's Sebring's (she calls it her mid-life Chrysler) oil change didn't get a stone shield, underneath the car, fasted back on properly the day before, which caused loud, distressing noise as the car reached highway speed.
It was wonderful to see them but sad to, again, have to kiss Susan good-bye after having only seen her for less than two weeks of the previous two and a half months.
John and I spent the night at Ken Lake Marina and again visited the resort lodge restaurant.
The next day we motored to the Kentucky Lake Marina, adjacent to the Kentucky Lake Dam and Lock so we could refuel replenish ice and get an early start on the our trip up the Tennessee and then Ohio River to Turtle Creek at Florence, Indiana (mile 529 of the Ohio).
She is the only LST to revisit her production site at Jeff Boat. My Father served aboard three LSTs During WWII and I was proud to serve aboard one, the 509, in Vietnam.
Our last night on the river we spent upstream several miles from Louisville at a pleasant marina (Heather's on the River), that had a nice restaurant and an open-air night club with a good blues group playing right next to our boat. They knocked off early enough (on a Sunday night) for us to get our beauty sleep in preparation for what we hoped would be our last day's travel home.
Just to give us a proper goodbye, the winds rose to about 25 mph during the day, blowing against the current going the other way and building up a very unpleasant choppy, following sea that made the ride quite uncomfortable.
All was forgiven when we locked through Markland Dam and came in view of our journey's ultimate destination, Tracy Hinman's Castaways Marina in Turtle Creek at Florence, Indiana.
Don't call the Coast Guard. We Made It!!!!!
We had locked through 20 dams, gaining more than 500 feet in elevation (sharing a lock only twice with another vessel), traveled more than 2600 miles on two canal systems, eight lakes, nine rivers, eleven bays, the east and west Florida Intercoastal Waterways and the Gulf of Mexico. We had passed through the waters of seven states.. We were ready to be home.
I must say that the Dawg House came into Turtle Creek high, wide and handsome. I did a "Captain Ron" docking Captain Ron's docking manuevers (youtube.com) and John stepping onto the pier and secured mooring lines as I killed the engine.
As I said "We Made It!!!!!"
My friends, John and Nando, made this trip-of-a-lifetime possible and helped give me the confidence that we could accomplish it. I love them for that and for all their fine personal strengths (some of which I hadn't known before they were exposed by need during our voyage).
Picture from the Dawghouse's mast-top. Old friend Nit Noy, a 34 foot trawler (belonging to friends Paul and Marty McGraw) sits on the other side of the dock.
Susan will never understand how much she gave me when she helped see such a hare-brained idea through to completion. She kept home and hearth alone, for months, while helping facilitate the movement of people and material needed to complete the The Great Sailboat Adventure.
Alcort Sunfish
When I retired from Cummins Engine Company in December 2008 I had been looking for a boat to replace my 23 foot O'day which I had sailed on the Ohio River and on Bloomington, Indiana's Monroe Reservoir. I had traveled to New York state, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida to look at several boats of about 30 foot.
I finally found one that fit all my requirements (swing keel less than 4 foot draft, mast less than 45 feet above the water, auxiliary diesel, autopilot, roller furling jib and fiberglass hull). Having reviewed the boat in person and finding it to be everything the owner claimed, I bought the boat, over the phone, and made arrangements to take ownership on March 15, 2009 in Green Cove Springs, Florida and planned to bring it back to Indiana, by water.
In addition to features I had sought in a sailboat, it also featured a mast stepped on the keel with mast steps, an entertainment center with video player and television, a dual battery charging system, a Garmin chart plotter with depth sounder, a VHS marine radio and wheel steering.
It didn't have a Bimini. My last sailboat, For Sail, also lacked one and I had rarely felt the need. I was to learn that Florida sunshine and rain, both, are somewhat more demanding of attention, in the month of March, and didn't relent while I remained in the region.
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March 15,2009
My good friend of many years and adventures, John Asel and I drove to Brunswick, Georgia from Columbus, Indiana, yesterday and, this morning, to Green Cove Springs Marina on the Saint Johns River, about 40 miles upstream (and south) of Jacksonville, Fl.
We unloaded about 800 pounds of every kind of nautical stuff and a lot of non-nautical stuff walking the length of a very long pier with each load. The pier had been condemned by the local state inspectors and they would not allow any vehicles to drive on it. (By coincidence, this pier had been, at one time, a US Naval facility and was where the LST 509, USS Bulloch County, on which I served, in Vietnam, had been decommissioned after WWII.)
Green Cove Springs Marina
We then went to the local grocery and bought food and drinks and stored them below. We attached the pulpit to the bow of the boat. For Some reason it was stored in the head which would make for very awkward accommodations.
Topmasted Sloop Dawg House
We changed the diesel engine’s oil and filter. We draped the main sail cover over the boom to air out from where a marina cat had sprayed it.
We met with the former owner, William Webb, to learn the boat’s ropes (gps, depth sounder, bilge pumps, auto-helm, engine operation, etc.)
In the early afternoon we drove to Gainesville to drop off my Jeep at my daughter, Anna’s apartment. This will be John's transportation back to Indiana when he finishes the first leg of the trip.
I rented a car in Gainesville to drive back to Green Cove Springs.
We had supper with Anna. It was a pleasure to share her company and hear about her upcoming art show at the University Gallery and all the work she is doing to prepare for it and another show in Georgia.
We drove to the Jacksonville airport to return the rental and took a taxi back to the marina, 40 miles. This was the second most expensive taxi ride of my life at $110.00. The most costly one was a two day ride from Santa Marta, Colombia to Bogota at 600,000.00 pesos (about $300.00).
We now are water-born (though still tied to a pier in Green Cove Springs) for better or worst.
The PLAN is to take the boat north down the St. Johns to Jacksonville and out to the Intercoastal Waterway, then south down the Waterway to Port St. Lucie, west across the Okeechobee Canal system to the Lake and through the Caloosahatchee to Ft. Myers, where we will be joined by my brother-in-law Nando Ortegon who will crew with me to Mobile, Alabama.
From Ft. Myers we will proceed north to Cedar Key where John will depart (with the help of Anna) and take the Jeep back to Indiana.
Nando and I will cross the Gulf, eventually to Mobile, Alabama where he will somehow travel back to Naples. During all this travel I will somehow attend my daughter's show at Gainesville and graduation, from Florida State University, on the 10th of April.
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Getting ready to get underway for the first leg of the trip |
Dawg House will proceed north on the Mobile River to the Tombigbee River and to the Tennessee/Tombigbee Waterway starting at Demopolis, Alabama. Then we will pass up the waterway, against the current, through Mississippi to the Tennessee River, through Tennessee to Kentucky Lake and back onto the Tennessee to Paducah, Kentucky on the Ohio River. There are plans for John to again join the cruise on Kentucky Lake and to bring the boat into Florence, Indiana with me.
Big plans; no movement yet.
It is after midnight John is asleep in the main cabin while I document our day.
Tomorrow we hope to get underway headed north for Jacksonville and many points south.
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We got underway at 11:45 AM the 16th (Monday) and motored north toward Jacksonville and into the unknown.
The engine quit, the first time at 11:51 (still within sight of the dock) requiring some troubleshooting and repair of a poor electric fuel pump ground. This problem was to recur several more times over the next several weeks, finally to be found to be a poorly crimped connection on a ring-connector.
For the first several miles we trailed that cat-sprayed main sail cover from an aft mooring cleat, since it smelled better behind us, in the river than before us, on the boom.
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| John takes us out of the marina at Green Cove Springs |
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| Watching helicopter |
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| Proceeding north on the St. John's River doing some laundry (the main sail cover) behind the boat |
While approaching a marina on the right (east) bank of the river at Godby’s Creek, where we intended to refuel, we ran aground in a area shown on the chart to have almost 5 feet of water (the Dawg House draws less than 3.5 feet). With luck and tentative boat handling we were able to extricate ourselves and decided we would choose to believe the fuel gauge, for now, since we couldn’t believe the GPS.
We reached the lifting bridge in Jacksonville just a half hour before one of its twice daily openings, at 06:00 and 18:00. This is the only bridge in the Jacksonville area with insufficient vertical clearance, when closed, for the 42 foot mast height of the Dawg House.
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| Another sailboat waiting for the bridge opening at Jacksonville |
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| US 90 Bridge beginning to lift at 6:00 PM |
After passing the bridge we sailed until well after dark, only stopping when overtaken by darkness and hunger.
We anchored off the north bank of the St. Johns where Drummond Creek joins its flow with the river. We approached our anchorage from down stream in order that the current might help extricate us from any accidental grounding. John steered us upstream and towards the bank until we saw 6 feet on the depth finder and I dropped anchor.
This put us well out of the channel, though we still were rocked by the wake of an occasional passing vessel.
We fixed a dinner of hot dogs cooked on the Coleman and we ate while river currents and wakes tried to pull our Danforth out of the mucky river bottom.
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Tuesday, March 17, 2009 10:13 PM
We got up and were underway by 6:oo AM and ran down the channel side of Bartram Island picking out markers with the help of the spotlight in the still very dark morning. In the early morning dark we shared the channel with behemoths hundreds of feet long, catching the tide which carried us, all, towards the ocean with a free extra 1.5 knots.
We transited the rest of the St. Johns and entered the Intercoastal Waterway to proceeded south past St. Augustine and finally to south of Metanzas Inlet.
Recognizing the entrance to the Intercoastal was difficult because this geographic feature didn’t look (as with so many others) anything like what my mind’s eye had conjured up from reviewing the charts available.
We stopped at the marina at the McCormick Bascule Bridge and fueled the boat with about seven gallons of diesel. I was very pleased to see how thrifty the Dawg House is with fuel, consuming little less than two quarts each hour at 2,300 rpm.
When the fast fall of darkness stranded us on the Intercoastal below mile 805, south of the Fox Cut, after 10 hours of travel, we found no ready haven out of the channel.
We have lit the running lights and spreader lights in hope that anyone no smarter than us, that would operate on the Waterway at night, will think we are a vessel underway and try to avoid a collision. As I type this the night wind is howling outside and I truly think no boat will pass this night.
We will be out of here at first light.
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> Date: Wednesday, March 18, 2009, 9:13 PM
I never really went to sleep last night as the boat was anchored in the middle of the Intercoastal Waterway. Luckily, there was zero traffic though watching for it was a cold, windy, sleepless task.
Today we got underway at 6:00 and saw a fantastic sunrise.
We made good time, all day, till about 15:00 when we stopped, just off the Intercoastal Waterway, at Oak Hill.
We had insufficient daylight remaining to transit Mosquito Lagoon and the Indian River behind Cape Canaveral to Titusville and, so, determined to stay at this last point of civilization.
After anchoring we were visited by several dolphins that entertained us with their fluid beauty and even jumped to slap the water with their fins.
John pointed out a manatee which surfaced about 100 feet from us with a walrus/cow kind of girth and passivity.
We took foredeck showers with buckets of hot, fresh water, shaved and are going to catch up on missed sleep tonight. We expect to get an early start tomorrow; but not too early.
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Thursday, March 19, 2009
When we awoke this morning the tide had gone out making our 7 foot deep anchorage of last night about 3.5 feet and leaving us aground. As the boat draws 3.5 and she seemed to swivel on her keel when we tried to raise anchor, we decided to try to power her into deeper water and refloat her.
To lighten ship we pumped the bilges and relieved ourselves over the side. That and the tide coming in must have done the trick as we were able to use forward thrust to turn the transom toward deeper water and then reverse thrust to pull us off the shallow bottom.
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| Island behind Cape Canaveral with many flamingos |
We were underway at 6:00 in the dark and traveled down Mosquito Lagoon to the Indian River. While still in the Lagoon, which is about 4 miles wide, we were hit by a driving rain storm followed by a brilliant double rainbow.
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| Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the Cape |
We stopped this afternoon to spend the night at Eau Galli Marina north of Melbourne, where we did our laundry, showered and went to a local crab shack for a great meal.
Tomorrow we hope to reach Port St. Lucie and the Okeechobee canal system which will take us to the Caloosahatchee River and Fort Myers.
Jorge (Nando) Ortegon will join John and me there. Jorge and I have enjoyed fishing off Naples in the Gulf in his open power boat, the 4038 EK.
My sister, Genie, will only give me the lend of Jorge to Mobile.
My friend and ex-Navy shipmate, Cary Camp, is trying to work it out to join the expedition starting in Mobile, Alabama and up the Tombigbee River to the Tenn-Tom Waterway, Tennessee River and Kentucky Lake.
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Friday, March 20, 2009
At 7:30, this morning, John piloted us out of the canal from the Eau Gallie Marina near Melbourne, where we stayed last night, into a gorgeous day with the sun just coming up.
We had a breakfast of cold milk Sugar Pops and honey and biscuits. That is what I call health-food!
We made slow (3.3 knots) progress against tide flowing up the Indian River until we hit some point where the tide started ebbing and then our speed jumped in a few minutes to 5.4 knots. We added to this speed by unfurling the stay sail and achieved a maximum speed of 7.1 knots.
Passing under the bridge at Melbourn
We made it to within 8 miles of entering the Okeechobee Canal system by nightfall. The last several miles were hard skating as we had a following sea hitting us from the port quarter which would alternately steer the boat to starboard and then to port 20 degrees which took a lot of effort to control..
We back-tracked two miles up the Indian River to feel our way into the marina at Nettles Island after the first choice we made turned out being a restaurant. They didn’t tell us, when we called to ask, that although they are listed as a full service marina in the GPS database, they really don’t have a place to tie up for the night.
John got a picture of a pair of osprey on their nest that must have contained 200 lbs of sticks. They took flight as we passed close by, taking their lunch, that they had not yet finished, with them.
He also got a picture as I climbed the mast to see the next bridge over the horizon. That was a fun demonstration of the curvature of the Earth.
John took a super picture of the sunset as we reached our resting spot this evening.
We are shaking down into a small but effective crew, but learning about the boat, the Intercoastal Waterway, how to request opening of the many bascule bridges, gps navigation, etc. is like drinking from a fire hose.
I’m glad I didn’t know how much I didn’t know and I’m certain I still don’t. Ignorance is, truly, bliss.
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Saturday, March 21, 2009
Left Nettles Island Marina 07:15 headed for the St. Lucie River and canal to Lake Okeechobee.
To the south of us it is looking pretty dark and a check of the local weather finds small craft warnings 7 miles south of Stuart (Near Port St. Lucie). We should be OK since Stuart is where we enter the canal.
The usual Sugar Pops and coffee for breakfast.
First order of business… refuel at Palm City Marina and Yacht Club.
The wind really picked up while we were at the fuel dock, making it rather difficult to pull away from the pump. So instead of fighting circumstances we decided to wait out the wind and catch up on some rest (this getting to sleep at midnight is tough on the crew. Of course Mike is always thinking and educating the crew).
After our nap and a minor rain shower, we found the wind was still blowing hard onto the dock. We began the execution of Plan A….. Snub the bow to a piling on the dock, go ahead on the engine while steering full rudder towards the dock which kicks the stern out into the wind. When the stern is right into the wind, back down, smartly, pulling the bow away from the dock about 30 feet and then go ahead with the engine and full rudder to pivot the boat into the wind and continue the journey. Pulled it off to the letter.
Under way again.
1400 arrive at the St. Lucie Lock, pretty neat. This one raised us about 10 ft. Heading down the long canal towards Okeechobee. According to our calculations we have in the neighborhood of 20 miles to the Lake.
The helmsman is holding a steady 5.4 knots should have us there in about 3 hours.
The orange blossoms are smelling so sweet along the canal and we are seeing many interesting birds and other wild life.
Evening saw us anchored a mile short of the Lake. Weather willing, we will transit the lake tomorrow and reach Fort Myers Monday.
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Sunday, March 22, 2009
Got underway at 7:30 after spending a very restful night in the canal.
Quite close to us was a cedar tree that became the roost for about 50 black ducks. It was strange to see web-footed ducks landing in a tree. We could not determine how they were able to hold on.
Locked through (kind of – the lock was open at both ends since the canal was at lake level) into Lake Okeechobee at about 8:00.
We motored across the lake at 5.4 knots with a following wind that became stronger as the day went on. Finally built up a pretty troublesome following sea that made steering a real pain.
John spotted our first alligator and after that we saw several (some quite large) and think we hit one of those as it dived under the boat. I was trying to get a video of him at the time and will attach it if I can. Strangely, after hitting the alligator in about 8 feet of water we picked up a couple of tenths of a nautical mile per hour in vessel speed. Maybe you can help us determine why.
Alligator on Okeechobee
In the center of the lake you can see no shore line and only a few prominent tall structures like smoke stacks with smoke or steam, and those only vaguely through the haze of distance. It took us about four hours to cross the lake.
Finally locked through into the Caloosahatchee river at Moore Haven (about a two foot drop) at 14:20.
Have anchored at La Belle about 25 miles up the canal from Ft.
Myers.
We will meet Genie, my wonderful sister, and Nando tomorrow for supper and shanghai (a verb) Nando for the next several days of the voyage to Mobile.
John and Mike
Monday, March 23, 2009
Everything has been going so well with arriving at draw bridges, turning bridges, bascule bridges and locks just in time to get through quickly that we were bound to get our comeuppance. Today we did. While transiting the second half of the canal/river from Okeechobee to
Ft Myers we had to wait at every bridge and lock.
The first bridge we came to at 8:00 we had to wait until 9:10 to open since the local rush hour took precedence over our passage.
Another bridge was being repaired and finally opened only one side of a double draw bridge and we had to be careful to fit the mast through the open part. This is not a difficult maneuver for a salty experience mariner. Even I didn’t have too much trouble.
The locks we had to pass had all just started loads through in the same direction we were going requiring us to wait 20 or so minutes extra.
We didn’t mind much. The scenery and wild life is always interesting.
During the last part of our trip down the Caloosahatchee a pod of dolphins accompanied us for a mile or two. They have such power and grace and swam only a few feet off both sides of our boat as if trying to get a look at these strange humans with orange zink-oxide on their lips and noses.
John got a pretty good picture of two of the dolphins.
In Fort Myers, while docking the boat John accidently jumped into the Caloosahatchee in a place warning of alligators.
John wasn’t able to catch any of the alligators and we were so busy getting him out that we didn’t document the swim on film.
John wasn’t able to catch any of the alligators and we were so busy getting him out that we didn’t document the swim on film.
Genie and Nando met us at the Marina in Ft Myers and took us to lunch and shopping to replenish our supplies. We shanghaied Nando for the next leg of the trip and now have someone aboard who actually is a mariner with the added attraction of being an excellent cook.
Every body is snoring. I’d better too.
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Monday, March 23, 2009
Today we got started a little late as the marina folks didn’t show up to sell us fuel till after 9:00
We left the Caloosahatchee, rounded Pine Island and started north between Pine and Sanibel Islands.
Dolphins again escorted us for miles.
We raised the stay sail to steady the boat (as a 2 foot sea was hitting us broad on the beam) and picked up more than a knot. We then raised the main and added a bit more speed.
After an hour we shut down the engine and just sailed for several miles. When the wind shifted we added the diesel power back in to maintain our torrid pace.
When we docked for the night at Little Gasperilla and after doing laundry and showering at the marina, Nando fired up the grill and made the best lamb chops and eggplant you can imagine. We opened a bottle of red wine and relaxed after a pounding on rough water.
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Tuesday, March 24, 2009
We had a long day of sailing from Little Gasperilla to Bradenton Beach.
The boat worked well and we enjoyed a breakfast that Nando cooked underway of avocado, sausage and egg burritos.
Tomorrow we will traverse Tampa bay and maybe stop to see the boat nearly bought at the municipal marina.
The traffic on the waterway was heavy and dominated by folks with lots of horsepower, speed and little regard for others.
John skippered the boat across Sarasota Bay which is a very long, open-water run miles across while I did some planning in the cabin.
Listening to the boat work was a pleasure and the rushing of water past the hull gives an impression of speed far beyond the several knots actually being made. I half expected to find us miles farther along when I returned topside.
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| Listening to the boat work |
Though the boat works well the computer will not allow me to send pictures so we are working out an alternate method.
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Wednesday, March 25, 2009
We didn’t get started today till late due to high winds in the morning.
The winds were so high this morning and the sailboat adjacent to ours in the marina nearly crushed his dinghy trying to get underway. This encouraged us to try to get underway since we don’t have a dinghy. We got away with some expert line handling by John and Nando.
Today we made it to St Petersburg after a frustrating day of late start, wrong turns (twice) and slow bridge openings.
The wrong turns were mine and lack of experience deciphering nautical charts didn’t help.
My resilient personality allowed me to rebound after only hours of grumbling and cursing.
Chef Nando prepared bacon of the sea this morning and for supper we had tuna, grilled eggplant and rice risotto with green onions and sausage.
Our navigation may not be great and though lost we might be, we eat well.
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Thursday, March 26, 2009
We all slept well at the marina.
We were able to refuel at about 7:30 and again head north for Indiana.
After we were underway, Nando cooked breakfast burritos using some of the baked potato we had left over from last evening and bacon of the sea (fried crisp salmon) avocado and our last real egg with some Egg Beaters. They were tasty and hot on a chilly morning.
Weather bulletins have been warning of high winds out of the south and west but the weather we could see looked fine and we had the protection of operating in the Inter-coastal Waterway clear to Tarpon Springs to look foreward to.
We made steady progress hampered somewhat by bad timing of the bascule or opening bridges that we had to transit.
Each time we had to stop to await a bridge opening we noticed higher wind speeds out of the south until while waiting on the bascule bridge south of Dunedin we were being pummeled with winds of 20 plus mph and gusts to 50 mph..
I was familiar with the marina at Dunedin (having stopped there to look a boat when I was shopping for one) and so when the water kicked up to whitecaps in St Joseph’s Sound and wind with 60 mph gusts, we put the helm over and made for the Dunedin Municipal Marina where they said we could sit out the lousy week-end weather, predicted for the next three days.
John Asel left us here in Dunedin and is driving my Jeep back to the land of milk and honey (Columbus, Indiana) to be back at work in the Tech Center at Cummins on Monday.
His ready willingness to successfully tackle any task on the boat will be missed as will his good council in planning and navigating. Also he doesn’t snore loudly, which cannot be said for the rest of the crew.
Good friends like John are rare and to be treasured.
My daughter Anna brought the Jeep, from Gainesville, to John with the help of her beau, Jon Frey. It was great to see them both.
Nando and I intend doing a little fishing for the next few days and I will dive to see why the swing keel is jammed in the centerboard trunk.
As I close this note the boat is rocking and wind is howling in the rigging and Nando is sound asleep, sounding like we forgot to shut off the engine, but we are snugly tied to a solid pier.
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Date: Saturday, March 27, 2009, 10:46 PM
We walked around town investigating and looking for
breakfast. We found a place serving a range of items from
salmon to grits and had a great meal.
While searching for a laundromat I ran across an estate
sale where I bought a bicycle for a few bucks. It has good
tires that hold air and is a big improvement on walking.
We both then pulled everything out of the lazerette (a compartment near the back of the boat under the cockpit seats) to see what we had and what we could lose.
It was like Christmas. We found the auto-helm and
installed and tested it, finding it works fine. We found
the boat hook we have several times wished for. We found an
oil pump for drawing the oil from the engine during oil
changes.
We also found many things no longer or never needed and
discarded those to simplify our life.
I dived under the boat and tried unsuccessfully to dislodge
the keel from the centerboard trunk. I think if I had a
crowbar I could do it but I’d also, likely, sink to the
bottom. If weather is good enough tomorrow I’ll try
again and maybe be able to work something along beside the
swing keel like a hacksaw blade.
The wind is again howling and the boat is bucking against
the mooring lines.
I miss my new grandson Finn and everybody else and think
I’d like to take a break from having all this fun.
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Friday, March 28, 2009
Nando and I replenished the boats stores today. We took a taxi to the local Publix grocery and also got 12 volt wiring to provide power for the auto-helm and GPS, at the local autoparts store.
I rode the bicycle to get 50 lbs of ice (took two trips).
Tomorrow we continue the journey.
We got alarming news this evening about Nandos mother, Izabelle, in Fusa, Colombia, having trouble breathing. Nando called his nephew, Gilberto, there and then his sister Flora (a doctor in Fusa) who was with his mother at the hospital and was relieved to discover that his mother was much improved and being treated for pneumonia.
He spoke with his mother and she sounded good. We are keeping the cell phone on to get any later news.
The temperature today was chillier than yesterday, so I didn’t dive today.
It has turned cold here this evening, in the fifties, and we have closed the boat up to try to keep warm.
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March 29th and 30th
Sorry about being off the air for a couple of days.
Nando and I are glad to be alive and here at Cedar Key, the land of marinas without docks or anchorages.
Two days ago we started out for Cedar Key from our Duniden Municipal Marina.. Nando and I had really enjoyed the town and laying around the marina waiting for the weather to moderate, but getting back underway had its appeal also.
We weren’t two hours gone for cedar key when the ammeter continued to show a high charge rate commiserate with initial recharge after starting but much too high for continuous operation.
We anchored off the channel for a while and tried to find what was wrong. Failing to find the problem cause we headed for another marina, several miles north of the one we had just vacated.
Cedar Key is 70 nautical miles north so predawn start and arrival at nightfall leaves little room for underway problems like exploding batteries, etc.
What we found was that the float charger which the boat seller had told me was wired into the shore power circuit, allowing unlimited use of 12 volt systems when in port was actually hanging in the bilges and that after being off the water for three days with no engine operation, the two very big batteries were nearly dead which kept the alternator charging at a high rate for a long time.
That probably wouldn’t have been a big issue as the batteries would have eventually charged underway as they had been doing up till then.
So we got underway again yesterday at 05:00 in pitch black. About 40 minutes later (still pitch dark), while using the gps and spotlights to navigate the last of the intercoastal waterway, I ran into a channel marker. The markers are often, as was this one, on a tall piling (telephone pole).
I can tell you that is an experience that brings you wide awake all at once..
Except for a big scratch on the rub rail on the port side and our nerves, there was no damage. About ten minutes later the sky lightened enough to navigate normally.
We initially had a little following wind and set sail to help the engine. Then we had hours of no wind and lots of sun and heat.
About 40 miles into our voyage, when we were about as far from anyplace as we would be, the engine started lugging down. We immediately took it out of gear which let it run normally causing us to suspect the propeller or transmission, so we again anchored. This time there was no channel as we were in the open gulf.
Doing first things first I checked the oil level in the transmission and it was low. I added about 4 ounces which brought it up to it’s 1.1 pint full level. The next check was to see if that had relieved the problem. While preparing to get underway Nando brought in the anchor we had put down and it had a crab trap, line and buoy attached that appeared to have recently been caught on somebody's propeller shaft.
Anyway, we tested the boat and found it was fine.
Near the end of our day the wind came up and we again shook out the jib to help the engine by a knot or so.
We motored and sailed all day till 18:30 when we arrived at the head of the Cedar Key main ship channel which enters the archipelago from the south. It took us till sunset, at 19:30, to traverse the channel to Cedar Key. That channel must have been laid out by Zorro. There are several turns greater than 90 degrees in it.
We called the marina manager when we arrived, as had been prearranged, and he came out to the end of the jetty and directed us into a hard grounding right after high tide in a place where a 5 foot tide is not uncommon. Turns out that a storm a few weeks before had silted in the passage into the marina but that he hoped we would be able to get through and help reopen it.
Thirty panic-stricken and frenetic work-filled minutes later with some very kind and very timely advice from a gentleman with a Australian accent, we were again afloat, though some worse for the wear.
After directing the grounding the marina manager pitched in along with a couple of other employees and tried to make matters worse by pulling the boat harder aground in an attempt to pull it into the marina.
We took the bicycle off the transom and put it in the main cabin so we could use the rear boarding ladder. I got in the water and walked the “channel” they imagined was there. One 20 foot long portion had water that didn't reach the top of my kneecap. I told them we were leaving.
While trying to back the boat using the engine, the reverse gear quit functioning making it impossible to retract on engine power. The harbormaster then offered the advice that we close the cabin windows to reduce the amount of water that would enter while the tide was out and the boat would be laying on her side.
The advice yelled at us from ashore, by the gentleman with an Aussie accent, was to swing the main boom out and have a person hang on it to heel the boat and reduce the boat’s effective draft, while kedging with the anchor and sheeting winch.
Kedging is the process of taking the anchor away from the boat in the direction you wish to go and then pulling the boat to the anchor. Nando worked the boat from aboard while I did the work required in the water.
I walked the anchor to its scope and Nando winched like there was no tomorrow and the boat began to respond. Two more drops of the anchor had us nearly off the shoal.
I climbed aboard over the boarding ladder that for some reason now was missing one of its two pivot pins. This required me to secure it to withstand my curvaceous bulk by rigging support from one of the aft mooring lines that was handy.
I scrambled aboard and put the marine drive in forward which immediately killed the engine. Suspecting that the harbor master's line with which he had tried to pull the boat into the marina might be involved I again went over the side and dove under the boat finding several loops of the line around the shaft and fouled in the propeller. I was able to pull a few loops off but couldn’t hold my breath longer so came up and yelled for Nando to hand me the "knoif". (Crocodile Dundee II (1988) - Better Than Average Scene (4/10) | Movieclips - YouTube)
The "knoif" is a large survival knife (looks like the huge Bowie knife that Crocodile Dundee used in parting the hair of a tough in the movie by the same name), a little less weighty than a small anchor. Nando had taken some time to hone it to a seriously sharp edge. He says that a dull knife is dangerous.
I dived with it and cut, with a touch, the line at the middle twist around the propeller shaft, forward of the shaft support strut, and the line came free. During that last dive my glasses came off, but I was just able to catch them before they became incorporated in the muck on the bottom of the sound.
While this was occurring, Nando was kedging from the cockpit, reattaching the main sheet and securing the boom.
When I got back aboard, I restarted the engine and was relieved, when the marine gear was shifted to ahead, that the engine continued running and produced the thrust we needed to push us the rest of the way off the shoal.
By now it was pitch dark with a cold, driving rain.
We drove the boat straight ahead into the night. Nando got the spot light out and lighted the area ahead. There was a boat almost identical to ours anchored ahead and we decided that area should be our destination.
The depth sounder indicated we had 15 feet under us when we dropped two anchors and shut everything down. We are here.
I felt like laying right where I found myself, in the pulpit, up forward, and did so until Nando sounded worried that I might have had a heart attack. I was soaked, smeared with muck and sand, exhausted and chilled by rain and cold wind blowing hard but so happy to be afloat that I didn’t care about any of those minor discomforts.
I took a bucket shower on the foredeck and rinsed off my belt and watch.
Nando and I agreed that things were bad but bound to improve.
We were wrong. A storm came up in the middle of the night. Nando describes it as raining cow shit and hammer handles. The wind screamed in the rigging and the boat groaned in every joint. Since we are on a windward shore we didn’t get much sleep.
This morning we worked to straightened up the mess from last night. I went into the engine room to see what I could see and discovered the shift actuator cable, for the marine gear, had slipped in the bracket and wasn’t allowing the shift linkage, on the marine gear, to reach the reverse position.
What a relief when, after repositioning the linkage, we tested it to find it works perfectly.
I also found a loose fuel suction fitting on the top of the fuel tank. I disassembled it, sealed it and put it back together being careful not to break anything since we are anchored out and have no way to get spares.
I also repaired 3 fresh water system leaks that were causing the demand pressure pump to run occasionally when no one was using water.
We checked the oil level for the engine and added a little.
Getting the dipstick back into its hole is a real circus trick, since you have to hold a flashlight in your mouth while looking through one opening in the engine room, hold a mirror with one hand and position the dipstick backwards from what you are seeing in the mirror through another engine compartment opening. It makes you not want to pull the dipstick and took me a half hour the first time. I can do it in a few minutes now.
The boarding ladder was repaired with a new pin that we had available from our sundry stores
We found my billfold that I had thrown below before first going into the water, last night.
Without a way to replenish our fuel here, we are now ready to sail to a nearby port (within 10 gallons of diesel fuel) when the weather breaks again.
Nando is fishing for supper and reports sunny weather but the forecast is dismal for today and tomorrow.
We checked our ground tackle and reset an anchor and are as secure as we can make ourselves.
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March 31st
We are still here in Cedar Key with the wind blowing and waves rolling through our unprotected, but only available, anchorage.
Our destination, as soon as the weather breaks and timing allows us a high tide arrival, will be the Suwannee River where they have diesel fuel, groceries, showers and dry land to walk on.
Nando fixed bacon of the sea (crisp cooked salmon), the last of our eggs in a carton and tortillas mid-morning when the seas settled enough that we felt it safe to light the gasoline stove. It was hot and delicious.
We are tired of Cedar Key!
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April 1st
What a night! We took turns standing anchor watch while the winds screamed and the boat pitched on beam ends.
The anchor drag alarm was going off all night long causing us each time to determine if we had lost our ground tackle.
One of the three sailboats in this bay sank and was demolished last night about 600 yards to the east. No one was aboard. The other sailboat (also an O’day 28) and we came through OK
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| One of two other sailboats in our anchorage ( the one that didn't sink ) |
We have made ready to leave and the weather is improving.
Radio Weather said “SYNOPSIS…A COOL FRONT WILL MOVE THROUGH THE WATERS TODAY. HIGH PRESSURE WILL SETTLE OVER THE WATERS FOR THE WEEKEND BUT ANOTHER COLD FRONT WILL MOVE THROUGH ON MONDAY. HIGH PRESSURE WILL BUILD INTO THE AREA FROM THE WEST ON TUESDAY.”
We will be glad to see the last of this inhospitable place.
Nando’s mother’s condition is worsening and he is anxious to get to Colombia.
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April 2nd and 3rd
We transferred the fuel from the 5 gallon can to the main tank.
which brought us up to “3/4″ of a tank. This is a level that
experience has shown is probably 11 gallons.
We secured everything aboard that looked like it could get loose and fly around the cabin, since the weather reports are for up to 6 foot seas out of the west (the direction we are heading). The few miles of ship channel that we were required to run, out of Cedar Key to the open gulf, would provide a good test of how well the transmission linkage and fuel system repairs perform.
We weighed anchor and were glad to see Cedar Key start to become a memory, rather than a place where we dreaded finding what staying another day might bring.
The weather service was still issuing small craft warnings north of us and reporting winds higher than I would normally head into, but staying another night in such an unprotected anchorage, on a windward shore, with dwindling provisions and the need for Nando to reach a location from which he could travel, overruled reservations based on obtaining a pleasurable voyage.
I had found and entered way points, in the GPS, for the trip to Suwannee through Griffith inlet. To get there we left Cedar Key to the west through a very narrow channel surrounded by vast shallow water between the channel and the few islands bounding it.
We ran into 4 and 5 foot seas and winds head-on which made the boat pitch fore and aft uncomfortably every several seconds but this was slowly enough for the compass and GPS to give us an accurate idea of our direction and position every 30 seconds or so.
Making just slightly greater than 3 knots we bucked the seas for a couple of hours until clear of the channel.
As we approached the final marker for the channel, from the east, we had breakers plunging on both sides of us and marveled at how seaman only a few decades ago faced such fearful forces without the current navigation tools.
We then set a coarse north to follow our waypoints to Griffith Inlet. This was generally sailing with the seas on our port beam which produced a healthy wallow but was not as bad as it could have been
and was much better after Nando suggested that dropping the centerboard might help. The centerboard steadied the boat considerably.
(note; the centerboard had been stuck in the upper position
with repeated attempts to free it by prying from below during free dives
proving fruitless. During our last marina stop before Cedar Key we
met an industrious diver, Mike, busy cleaning boats there and he
offered to pry it free. He worked hard and after about 15 minutes of shaking and prying managed to accomplish the task.)
We reached Griffith Inlet and turned east to follow the markers into the
Suwannee River but upon approaching the 5th marker and with a powerful incoming tide behind us, we began getting depth readings that diminished below 3.5 feet (the Dawg House draws 3.25 feet). Having too recently enjoyed the rewards of grounding, we turned about, sharply, and anchored in deeper water to get more information.
We again consulted the tide charts and determined that we had 2 feet of a rising tide that would not peak for a couple of hours. We tried to contact Millers Marina by phone and found that we had no Verizon service. We called the Marina by radio with no response the first time but finally, by going to the higher broadcast power setting, were able to raise them.
They explained that, if we kept to the very middle of the marked channel, we should have no trouble. We upped anchor and headed in again, being extra vigilant about our location in the channel.
Again, the depth decreased to 3.5 feet, held there for several seconds and then increased quickly to 6 feet and finally to 14 before reaching the marina, a few miles later.
The water of the Suwannee River, at the mouth, is like liquid black onyx with so much tannin dying the water that it truly appears to be the color of used motor oil. I wouldn’t have thought this would be beautiful, but it is.
We arrived at the Miller Marina and were directed to a floating dock near the office, where we were told that, though they have no showers ashore, we could use the facilities on one of their houseboats.
Nando grabbed his dop bag and was gone only to return a few minutes later with the news that he had no sooner gotten nude as a noodle in preparation for his shower when he was interuped by Bill, of the marina and told that the houseboat he was on was ready for the renting party to come aboard and that his shower would have to be on another boat.
We were also told that we had to move the Dawg House to a different slip. We got the moving done and Nando got his shower and, when he returned, he told me I would like the shower. I knew there would be something notable in relation to the facilities.
It turned out to be a shower stall that only exceeded my dimensions by the excess depth we had in the channel that afternoon.
There is no Verizon service in Suwannee (the carrier for both mine and Nandos cell phones and this computer) so we found a pay phone, called my wife, Susan, in Columbus to let her know we were safe in port and to relay our payphone location to Genie (my sister and Nando’s wife) in Naples so arrangements could be made to get Nando to Naples where any other required movements could be initiated.
Genie called and said she would start from Naples at zero dark thirty and meet us midafternoon the next day.
I have decided that pressing on without a crew to temper my often imperfect, occasionally impetuous and rarely, well-reasoned judgement, during what is proving to be a bad weather season in northern Florida, might be imprudent.
Bill at Miller’s Marina has agreed to keep the Dawg house for up to a month while I accompany Genie and Nando to Naples and take advantage of their hospitality.
On Day 20 Nando and I cleaned the Dawg House, including the ice box, refueled the main tank and 5 gallon Jerry can, took down and stored the main sail, topped off the oil, checked coolant, packed up clothes and unloaded food stores that will not keep and locked up the boat (giving the combination to Bill at the marina who has committed to look in occasionally to check the boat).
Genie arrived on schedule and rescued us from the seclusion of lazy Suwannee.
We had a dinner of oysters and catfish near Fanning Springs and then Ramboed (a Dave Kochanczyk-coined verb) all the way to Naples.
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Nando has flown to Fusagasuga, Colombia to be with his family.
He had gotten word, before he could finalize travel arrangements, that his mother, Isabelle, was comatose and before I could get him to the airport at 2:00 this morning, in Miami, that she was deceased.
Isabelle was a wondrous person and dear to many including my parents (deceased), my sister and me. What a pleasure to have known her.
Everyone she touched felt her goodness and enjoyed her friendship.
Her effect on the tempests of life was as oil on water.
She shaped her life and others’ in positive directions, and took what living brings, in stride.
We have done some crying and happy remembering and will do a lot more.
Heaven, if there is one, surely exists for the Isabelles of the world.
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May 10,2009 attended the graduation of my daughter, Anna, from Florida State University.
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May 13, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Nando and I are preparing to resume the voyage of the 28 foot, masthead sloop “Dawg House” bound for Indiana. Nando has signed on to crew till Mobile, Alabama where I hope to shanghai some other crew member or two for the river voyage north.
The Dawg House presently lies at Suwannee, Florida, in the Marina owned by Bill Miller. I have stopped by a few times in the last several weeks to assure myself it is not taking on water and to attend to some chores.
I have replaced the marine transmission oil, and engine oil and moved the bicycle from the pushpit rail, aft of the cockpit, to between the lifelines and starboard shrouds and secured it to the shrouds. this should get it out of the way yet make it handier than it was previously.
My good friend, Doug Folkerth and his wife Leslie, both serious boaters and bicyclers, invited me to borrow a dinghy that their yacht had outgrown. As they are off cruising the east coast, their friend, Scott, in Gainesville showed me the boat. The upshot is that I bought the inflatable boat and 3.5 horsepower engine. Doug is an ex-Cummins marketing guy and assures me I can have hours of fun skiing behind this rig if I would just buy his skis also.
Such a boat would have afforded us the ability to get ashore at Cedar Key, and several other locations, when we needed such capability, acutely.
I converted the gasoline stove to propane and tested it. This is, altogether, a much handier and safer arrangement.
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| Suwanee Florida |
I caulked the pulpit attachment flanges with marine sealant. This stopped the small amount of leakage into the vee birth area that had been occurring since John Asel and I installed the pulpit at Green Cove Springs.
Nando and I are going aboard May 19th with the hopes of catching the morning tide the twentieth and making an overnight passage, across the Gulf, to Apalachicola, weather permitting. This may also allow us a sliver of moon for part of the night passage.
If the weather doesn’t permit the passage, as planned, we may go skiing.
****************************************************************
My sister Genie and my daughter Anna dropped Nando and me at the Marina last Sunday evening.
Nando and I bent on the main sail and modified my installation of the Bimini in preparation for making the 130 nautical mile crossing from Suwannee to Apalachicola.
Intended voyage Suwanee to Apalachicola
We got underway at 11:00 Monday with a forecast of 1-2 foot seas and scattered thunderstorms.
We cleared the Suwanee River and channel with no problems, having learned the parts of the GPS information that are unreliable or outright wrong upon arrival on the 2nd of April.
We set a course straight out across the Gulf at about 292 degrees. We motor/sailed at speeds to 6.9 knots till about 17:00 when the coast guard called us and informed us that the Coastal Training Area south of Apalachicola was closed to our passage as we were just about to enter it.
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| Sunset on the Gulf |
We turned 30 degrees north to skirt the eastern edge of the area but, in so doing, our beam reach became a following breeze blowing at about our speed and direction (335 degrees) north.
The extra distance needed to thwart Pythagoris and go around the Training Area made our 130 mile passage about 150 miles.
Nando had been wanting to scatter some of his mother's (Isabelle's) ashes on the gulf waters that connect her Colombian home to her American home. A beautiful sunset and seas presented a peaceful opportunity for this.
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| Nando spreading his Isabelle's ashes |
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| Nando enjoying the calm before the storms |
The seas, at least were calm except for a 2 foot wave on our beam which, every couple of minutes, got organized enough to throw us around the cockpit and rattle all the metal and glass objects stowed below.
When we turned west toward Apalachicola we were hit by one of several scattered thunderstorms we would experience over our 25 hour passage.
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| Behind St Georges Island and still being hit by thunderstorms |
To a sailor two hundred yards can seem awfully close, in mid Gulf.
We passed the bell-buoy several miles off the east pass of Apalachicola Bay about 06:20 and were just beginning to have enough light to navigate the inlet.
After entering St. George's bay we still had 25 miles of Intercoastal waterway and the affliction of somehow being the focus of the "scattered" thundershowers.
The several miles in St. George's Bay were made extra special by the very narrow (100 foot wide) dredged channel and fierce wind and rain that tried to blow us out it.
At one point while working very hard to stay in the channel, in a driving rain, we got a call from a boat going the other way in the same channel at about our same position. We each agreed to try to hold to our right hand sides of the channel. We never saw the other boat but we must have passed very close to each other.
Our voyage ended, aptly, with us beating the last thunderstorm, bearing down on us, into slip 13 at the Water Street Marina, by only enough to get soaked while tying up the Dawg House.
Lightning struck a steel tank at the neighboring business a few minutes after our arrival as a parting salute.
Nando and I made use of the shower facilities and then went in quest of a seafood dinner. We found wonderful oysters on the half shell with a horse radish that made our heads feel they were being steam cleaned from the inside, cold beer and a passable martini.
****************************************************************
We got underway at 7:00 this morning and passed through some of the most beautiful country, taking the inland waterway to Panama City.
Nando fired up the stove and cooked great salmon omelets and super coffee. We also had arrepas prepared per Isabelle's recipe by her grand children.
Nando insists that everything tastes better when boating and maybe that's the secret though everything he cooks at home tastes better also.
We saw one 10 foot or so alligator today but in turning the boat around to get a picture of him swimming we scared him and he dove. Some time later I was able to get a picture of a fig tree wrapped around a cypress tree. Luckily we didn't scare the fig tree.
Weather was bright and sunny all day though we could see lightning inland.
About 3:00 we were surprised to find a crab, about the size of A golf ball, hitch-hiking on the cockpit floor. He must have come aboard in the night up through the self bailing drain for the cockpit. I'm certain he was happy to be put back into the water.
One reach across the bay west of Panama City was wide enough and had such a fine wind blowing across it that we put on sail and reached a speed of about 7.3 knots before running out of bay and wind.
The last hour and a half of our passage was like an air show, watching the F-22s flying out of the Air Force base next to Mexico Beach doing training flights.
We arrived at the Panama City Marine about 4:15 local time which is 5:15 eastern time.
After showering and shaving we walked into town and found a good restaurants with oysters on the half shell and crab chowder with garlic toast.
We're headed for Pensacola tomorrow.
****************************************************************
Nando and I moved the Dawg House to the fueling dock and added 11 gallons of diesel to replace the fuel burned in crossing the gulf and from Apalachicola to Panama City. This totaled about 210 nautical miles.
After fueling we again got underway for Indiana via Destin, Florida. The inland waterway took us through West Bay and about 20 miles of river.
We had a short day since the Marina at Destin had no slips available and we decided to stop short of there in the mouth of the river and anchor out tonight.
After anchoring we tested out the inflatable boat and engine. Everything worked swimmingly with the boat and engine proving easy to start and maneuver. I even tested out the oars to see what difficulty might be expected if the engine were to fail.
The boat was easy to row at about twice the speed of the 1.5 knot current in our anchorage.
After our boat test we fired up the grill and cooked some lamb chops and corn on the cob grilled in the husks. This combination was outstanding for a couple of sailors that had a banana for lunch.
Nando is fishing with a rubber shrimp for bait and not getting a nibble while I record our progress towards Mobile Bay.
I forgot to attach any photos to yesterday's note so here they are with today's.
I also forgot to mention we left from Apalachicola and almost immediately ran into in a fog you could slice with a knife. Luckily it lasted only a couple of miles and our GPS kept us in the channel at a very leisurely pace.
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Sorry I was off-line for a couple of days. My computer battery ran down yesterday and wouldn't let me compute.
I charged it today and it seems to be working alright again.
When last you heard from us we were anchored off the channel in a river near Fort Walton Beach.
Nando decided to sleep up on deck that night to get what little there was in the way of a breeze.
About 2:30 he called and awakened me and said to come see the boat that was coming. I went topside and saw about 400 feet of 20,000 horsepower tow boat with enough search light power to see a half mile ahead coming towards us on what looked to me to be a collision course.
Nando assured me he had shined his light on us and that we were out of the channel. The boat ran through about 100 feet from us and his passing sucked our boat out of the side channel we were in and pulled our anchor free of the bottom. We were caught in the current running back in the direction from which the tow boat had come from.
I started the engine and put the GPS on line while Nando pulled in our dragging anchor. We then spent about a half hour getting the anchor to catch again in the gassy, off-channel location to ensure that if another towboat came through we would be safe.
As it happened another towboat did come through, going the other way about an hour later and our anchor held fine.
We got the hell out of there about 7:00 the next morning and cruised about 65 miles to Pensacola where we stayed the night in a very nice marina with an oyster bar across the street where we had very good, though somewhat smaller oysters than we had enjoyed at the previous locations.
We refueled with 7 gallons of fuel in the morning and struck out for Mobile.. We made it to the Bay but decided to anchor out (far off the channel) for the night rather than make the 35 mile run into the night sharing the busy channel with the other shipping during a night run to Dog River.
Nando is trying his luck fishing with a plastic shrimp while I document our day.
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We spent last night about 1/4 mile out of the marked shipping channel that crosses the southeastern Bon Secour (Mobile) Bay. During the night the boat started vibrating and buzzing which woke me up. I got up to see if we had a UFO hovering above us and found a towboat pushing a few hundred feet of barges past us in the channel.
I was happy we had anchored well clear or his path.
We got underway at first light and cut across the bay from southeast to northwest and into Dog River south of Mobile several miles.
There we tied up at the Dog River Marina and went into town in the courtesy car to sample the local oysters. We found them outstanding and huge served with a horse radish that Sadam Hussein would not have hesitated to use against the Kurds, had he the chance.
Genie is on her way to retrieve Nando tomorrow. I'll be leaving about 10:00 if things go as planned to make the top of Twelve Mile Island, on the Mobile River, before nightfall. That will end the Intercoastal
Waterway and Gulf portion of the trip and begin the, river, canal and lake portion of the trip.
I'll be single-handing the boat till John Asel, my experienced and trusty crewman can join me enrout or anybody else that wants to sign on for some adventure.
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Genie drove all night, from Naples, to pick up Nando at the Dog River Marina today.
We all went for breakfast at the Mobile Radison to celebrate the beginning of the freshwater phase of the sailboat adventure.
I finished doing my laundry and bought some ice for the ice box and took in the mooring lines at about 11:00 and set out singlehanded for my first river anchorage at the north end of Twelve Mile Island on the Mobile River and got there about 5:00 after encountering a current of about 2 kts.
Had a supper of hot dogs and beer while planning the next leg of my trip.
Saw many interesting sights while passing through Mobile including ocean going cargo ships and an experimental Navy vessel.
Ships grounded at Sand Island, about a mile south of Mobile
I sure miss Nando. He is such fun to travel with and always such a positive influence and a super cook.
Mike
I’m sorry to have been off the air for so long but the Verizon system doesn’t have super connectivity where I am these days.
I last informed you that I had anchored at the north end of Twelve Mile Island about 9 river miles north of Mobile.
I spent a pleasant night there and awoke to watch with interest as the huge towboats passed a safe distance from the Dawg House.
I wanted to get an early start the next day so I checked the engine before going to bed and topped off the 18 gallon tank with 4 gallons of a 10 gallon reserve I have brought along in two plastic diesel fuel containers.
The extra fuel is insurance against not being able to purchase fuel along the way. So far the only Marina claiming on the internet to have fuel along the part of my river route covered was no longer in business.
I spoke with Bob of Bob’s Fish Camp at mile 118 and he has fuel for me and a place to tie up for the night. This is very rare along the Tombigbee River. It looks like I must reach his location on the fuel I have (18 gallons in the tank plus 6 in reserve).
The Dawg House burns about 2 quarts per hour at 2300 rpm. On the river, against the current each two quarts yields about 4.5 miles or 9 miles per gallon. 18 gallons should get me to Bob’s easily unless I run into stronger currents or winds.
I left Twelve Mile and motored to the Alabama River Cutoff. This waterway is no longer navigable but the entrance does provide enough depth to anchor safely out of the channel.
Upon arriving I was pleasantly surprised to find the anchorage a narrow channel lined on both sides with very agreeable plants. Mimosa, willow, poplar, elm, live oak and honeysuckle with fish jumping so frequently and high that I vowed to cook one if he landed in the boat.
There was a pleasant but weak breeze blowing though my river garden so I braced myself for the onslaught of mosquitos and no-see-ems but am happy to report that I was not bothered, at all, by such critters.
I slept really well and since my journey, today, only was for about 27 miles to the Sunflower Cutoff, I had no need to get an early start.
I lazed around enjoying the watery Eden while fixing a breakfast Nando would have been proud of. Real egg mixed with boxed egg, cheese, onion, and hot dog sausage omelet served with hot Colombian coffee and some cranberry juice.
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I have arrived at the Sunflower cutoff where there are supposed to be three bouys separating a part of this wide section of the river from towboat traffic. Unfortunatedly the bouys are not here and there being no place safer I can go within the hours of daylight remaining, I have pulled into an area 7 feet deep and put an anchor fore and aft to hold me in the area so I can get some sleep.
We’ll see.
Tomorrow I have to get up and gone as early as I can see the obstacles in the river to make Bob’s Fish Camp by nightfall.
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Thursday June 4th
I didn't get but a few winks of sleep last night.
Tow boats, anchor drag alarm, shallow water alarm and mosquitos.
I needn't have worried about making it to Bob's though. The same thing that caused the alarms caused me a fast trip to Bob's
The Corp of Engineers stopped adding water to the lower Tombigbee in anticipation of rain that didn't happen so I was going upstream against no stream today. It added 1.2 mph to my already blazing speed of 4.2 so that I literally flew.
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| Limestone banks below the Coffeeville Dam |
I locked through the dam at Coffeeville about two miles before Bob's Fish Camp. This raised the Dawg House about 30 feet.
I got to Bobs at about 14:00 just in advance of a frog strangler, complete with lightning and ragged looking clouds that could have turned into tornadoes.
Had a great catfish dinner, bought ice and fuel and am ready to hit it early tomorrow.
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| Floating dock at Bob's Fish Camp where I broke a rib |
I fell getting off the boat, the last time, and broke a rib. It doesn't cause much pain except when I sneeze, laugh, cough, breathe or lay down. I will continue the trip unless some other complication arises.
Mike
Got started at first light out of Bob's.
Had an apple and some water standing by for later consumption and coffee brewing.
Nearly froze to death today in Alabama. It drizzled, off and on, and the wind blew out of the north and I thought I might see snow. Well; it was in the sixties.
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| Will of the wisps in early morning on the Tombigbee |
About the time I got to Barrons Landing (which is not a landing at all but a wide place in the river that allows anchoring out of the channel) the sun came out and the temperature warmed a little and I took a refreshing foredeck shower.
I fixed rice and Ramen with queso blanco and cut up hotdogs. It was heavenly!
About 18:00 a power boat dropped anchor in the same area. Dick Bingham and his wife are headed back the way John, Nando and I have come through the Okeechobee Lake/canal system.
Dick needed a chart for the Florida West Coast that I no longer need so he motored over in his dinghy for it.
This location is very pretty and peaceful and I look forward to a peaceful night's rest.
Mike
Some of the very circuitous Tombigbee River
Got some sleep at Barrons Landing and got underway at 6:40 in the morning.
There was sea smoke on the river which cleared by 8:00 and then there was a nice cool breezy day for a trip to Demopolis.
Locked through the dam raising the Dawg House about 40 feet.
I decided to stay at the Yacht Basin in Demopolis for two nights to afford a chance to change the oil and filter for the engine and do some shopping.
They were nice enough to lend me their courtesy car for a trip to Walmart this morning and I couldn't stop myself from going through the drive through lane at Mc'donalds for a bacon egg and cheese biscuit.
Tomorrow morning it back on the river/waterway system.
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After a leisurely two night/one day stay at the Demopolis Yacht Basin, I got underway early and covered about 50 river miles and locked through one dam, anchored overnight in a beautiful safe backwater and then covered about 50 river miles and locked through two dams.
One of several dams on the Tenn Tom WaterwayI spent that night, the ninth, at the Columbus (Mississippi) Marina. They lent me their courtesy vehicle and I went to town and bought a replacement cell phone since my other had quit working a few days ago.
Early today (about 5:30) I fixed a breakfast. Crispy-bottom eggs, queso frito, fried onions and hotdog sausage, with orange juice and coffee.
Since there is just me; I threw the lines off and ate my breakfast underway..
Today I covered 65 river miles and locked through 4 dams. The dams were fairly close together and they co-ordinate the process by informing each other what vessels are coming. They were all ready each time I got to one.
Tomorrow I expect to lock through three more. The last has a lift of 84 feet in only one lock. I'll try to get some pictures of that.
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| 84 foot lift dam at the head of the Tenn-Tom Waterway |
The 84 foot lift lock onto Bay Springs Lake leads to a canal that takes you to Pickwick Lake, above Pickwick Dam on the Tennessee River which is situated where Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee all share a border.
I spent the night there, at the Aqua Yacht Harbor and borrowed their courtesy car to drive into Corynth, Mis. for supplies.
The rib/s I broke at Bobs fish camp are feeling better, allowing me to breathe without too much pain.
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Today I sailed the boat onto the point on the Tennessee River, Pickwick Pool where the GPS showed the boat straddling the "Tee" intersection of three states' lines. Pickwick is a broad piece of the Tennessee River with almost no perceptible current. But after I locked down 30 feet below the dam, I was in a very swift current taking me north towards Shiloh, Tennessee. The GPS was showing nearly 11 mph indicating that I probably had a current of more than 5 mph. I felt like a speedboat after so much time at less than 5 mph going upstream for hundreds of miles.
I spent the night behind Jeter Towhead. It was a wonderfully beautiful place and I enjoyed a peaceful, red sunset.
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June 17th
Made it to Tennessee's Paris Landing State Park and Marina today. I'm so worn out from long days of travel that I have decided to spend a couple of days here, ride the bicycle into town for some groceries and get some sleep while the boat is tied up, safe in a slip.
While I was refueling the boat a violent storm came through the marina with wind, rain and lightning. I had to rush and double up the mooring lines and, then, get the fuel cap back on, quickly, to keep water out of the tank.
As the wind first reached the marina it gathered up everything light like air mattresses, floating toys, towels, loose papers and trash. As this vanguard of flying flotsam passed me, I was able to harvest an interesting air mattress that had a peripheral air tube with mesh in the center. Turns out it is very comfortable for floating in the river.
The wind was so blasty that it rocked the top-heavy, narrow, floating fuel dock and threatened to upset it. But, as Captain Ron says of violent storms "they come on you fast and they leave you fast".
Both nights at Paris Landing featured huge invasions of Mayflies. Where-ever a light was shining the air would be black with them and they were piled up there in the morning.
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June 19th
June 19th
I sailed (really sailed, as in shut off the engine and listen to the sails flap and water hiss) from Paris Landing Marina in Tennessee to Ken Lake Marina in Kentucky. It was a short trip in water wide enough to allow proper sailing and, with a decent wind and made for a pleasurable day.
Rain threatened but never materialized and I arrived at Ken Lake Marina (just south of the Kentucky Highway 68 bridge over Kentucky Lake), in the early afternoon.
I hitched a ride to the resort lodge and had a great soup and salad and Barbequed ribs dinner. The lodge provided a courtesy car to take me back to the boat.
I spent the rest of the evening and the next morning, straightening the boat up for the arrival of Susan and John on the 20th.
They arrived in the mid-afternoon as they had had some car trouble when leaving Columbus, Indiana. The garage that had just done Susan's Sebring's (she calls it her mid-life Chrysler) oil change didn't get a stone shield, underneath the car, fasted back on properly the day before, which caused loud, distressing noise as the car reached highway speed.
It was wonderful to see them but sad to, again, have to kiss Susan good-bye after having only seen her for less than two weeks of the previous two and a half months.
John and I spent the night at Ken Lake Marina and again visited the resort lodge restaurant.
The next day we motored to the Kentucky Lake Marina, adjacent to the Kentucky Lake Dam and Lock so we could refuel replenish ice and get an early start on the our trip up the Tennessee and then Ohio River to Turtle Creek at Florence, Indiana (mile 529 of the Ohio).
It was what we, in Kentucky, call god-awful-hot. So John and I did a lot of swimming
The next morning we had to wait 2 hours while a towboat and barges locked though, before we could lock down to the Tennessee River for the 22 mile cruise to Paducah (birthplace of my mother and father, myself and my two sisters) and onto the Ohio River, at mile 935.
Upon reaching the Ohio we were confronted with by a huge river with powerful current flowing opposite our direction of travel. Our initial speeds, even at engine rpm pushed 200 further than my comfortable cruise of 2300 rpm was just 3.3 to 3.5 mph. We had 406 miles to go and hoped that our speed wouldn't decrease as might happen if rains were to fall upriver or if the river narrowed and/or shallowed.
By using the insides of the channel on river bends (of which there are plenty) we were able to shorten our path and get into slack current which helped our speed. We also stayed as close to a river bank as we dared in straight sections of the river, since the current there is weakest.
These tricks pushed us to an average speed of more than 4.5 mph.
This "cheating" however required high vigilance as the logs, root balls, dimension lumber and tires on steel wheels that comprise a considerable part of the river flow also is to be found in these slow waters.
Cheating on the left side in a bend brought us face to face with several huge tow boats coming around the bends the other direction. We would determine, in a radio call to the towboat, how we could pass without being chopped into flotsam. Towboat captains were universally friendly and accomodating in these matters.
We ran from before sun-up to dusk to maximize our daily travel. This would yield us about 14 hours travel time per day.
We spent one night at the Nu Plaza Marina and Yacht Club behind Dutch Island near Evansville, Indiana. We took showers there, in the dark, in a machinery nitch, behind an ice machine and a gasoline storage tank our modesty protected by a torn shower curtain.
The bathroom facilities were a funnel attached to the wall in another nitch with a hose leading over the side or a porta-potty next to the gang plank on shore. The "Yacht Club" evidently didn't have a service agreement with anyone to empty this facility.
We were happy to continue our voyage early the next morning.
We spent a few nights anchored off the channel with the anchor drag alarm set and the hope that any passing towboat captain would hear our snoring and avoid running us down.
One morning we found a 20 foot long, 18 inch diameter, waterlogged tree trunk snagged in our anchor line. We had heard it hit during the night but had assumed it was only an earthquake in the near vicinity and gone back to sleep when the water level in the boat didn't increase quickly. We were able to, after about 20 minutes of work with the boathook, persuade the log to continue its journey to New Orleans.
In Evansville we saw the LST 325 docked on the north side of the river. We passed her close aboard her starboard side and viewed sadly the poor condition of her hull.
LST 325 at Evansville, Indiana
My friend Dave Kochanczyk and I had visited her when her crew of WWII navy veterans had brought her to Clarksville, Indiana, where she was one of hundreds built during the war in an effort to outstrip the enemy's ability to sink allied shipping. The Navy veterans had found and bought her in Greece and brought her across the Atlantic.
The next morning we had to wait 2 hours while a towboat and barges locked though, before we could lock down to the Tennessee River for the 22 mile cruise to Paducah (birthplace of my mother and father, myself and my two sisters) and onto the Ohio River, at mile 935.
Upon reaching the Ohio we were confronted with by a huge river with powerful current flowing opposite our direction of travel. Our initial speeds, even at engine rpm pushed 200 further than my comfortable cruise of 2300 rpm was just 3.3 to 3.5 mph. We had 406 miles to go and hoped that our speed wouldn't decrease as might happen if rains were to fall upriver or if the river narrowed and/or shallowed.
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| Nunn on the Ohio |
By using the insides of the channel on river bends (of which there are plenty) we were able to shorten our path and get into slack current which helped our speed. We also stayed as close to a river bank as we dared in straight sections of the river, since the current there is weakest.
These tricks pushed us to an average speed of more than 4.5 mph.
This "cheating" however required high vigilance as the logs, root balls, dimension lumber and tires on steel wheels that comprise a considerable part of the river flow also is to be found in these slow waters.
Cheating on the left side in a bend brought us face to face with several huge tow boats coming around the bends the other direction. We would determine, in a radio call to the towboat, how we could pass without being chopped into flotsam. Towboat captains were universally friendly and accomodating in these matters.
We ran from before sun-up to dusk to maximize our daily travel. This would yield us about 14 hours travel time per day.
We spent one night at the Nu Plaza Marina and Yacht Club behind Dutch Island near Evansville, Indiana. We took showers there, in the dark, in a machinery nitch, behind an ice machine and a gasoline storage tank our modesty protected by a torn shower curtain.
The bathroom facilities were a funnel attached to the wall in another nitch with a hose leading over the side or a porta-potty next to the gang plank on shore. The "Yacht Club" evidently didn't have a service agreement with anyone to empty this facility.
We were happy to continue our voyage early the next morning.
We spent a few nights anchored off the channel with the anchor drag alarm set and the hope that any passing towboat captain would hear our snoring and avoid running us down.
One morning we found a 20 foot long, 18 inch diameter, waterlogged tree trunk snagged in our anchor line. We had heard it hit during the night but had assumed it was only an earthquake in the near vicinity and gone back to sleep when the water level in the boat didn't increase quickly. We were able to, after about 20 minutes of work with the boathook, persuade the log to continue its journey to New Orleans.
In Evansville we saw the LST 325 docked on the north side of the river. We passed her close aboard her starboard side and viewed sadly the poor condition of her hull.
LST 325 at Evansville, IndianaMy friend Dave Kochanczyk and I had visited her when her crew of WWII navy veterans had brought her to Clarksville, Indiana, where she was one of hundreds built during the war in an effort to outstrip the enemy's ability to sink allied shipping. The Navy veterans had found and bought her in Greece and brought her across the Atlantic.
She is the only LST to revisit her production site at Jeff Boat. My Father served aboard three LSTs During WWII and I was proud to serve aboard one, the 509, in Vietnam.
Our last night on the river we spent upstream several miles from Louisville at a pleasant marina (Heather's on the River), that had a nice restaurant and an open-air night club with a good blues group playing right next to our boat. They knocked off early enough (on a Sunday night) for us to get our beauty sleep in preparation for what we hoped would be our last day's travel home.
Just to give us a proper goodbye, the winds rose to about 25 mph during the day, blowing against the current going the other way and building up a very unpleasant choppy, following sea that made the ride quite uncomfortable.
All was forgiven when we locked through Markland Dam and came in view of our journey's ultimate destination, Tracy Hinman's Castaways Marina in Turtle Creek at Florence, Indiana.
Don't call the Coast Guard. We Made It!!!!!
We had locked through 20 dams, gaining more than 500 feet in elevation (sharing a lock only twice with another vessel), traveled more than 2600 miles on two canal systems, eight lakes, nine rivers, eleven bays, the east and west Florida Intercoastal Waterways and the Gulf of Mexico. We had passed through the waters of seven states.. We were ready to be home.
Rout of the Dawg House from Green Cove Springs, Florida to Florence, Indiana
I must say that the Dawg House came into Turtle Creek high, wide and handsome. I did a "Captain Ron" docking Captain Ron's docking manuevers (youtube.com) and John stepping onto the pier and secured mooring lines as I killed the engine.
As I said "We Made It!!!!!"
Susan drove from Columbus to fetch us home, while we made everything aboard ship-shape for her arrival and piled supplies and luggage on the dock.
The Dawghouse opposite Warsaw, Kentucky
My friends, John and Nando, made this trip-of-a-lifetime possible and helped give me the confidence that we could accomplish it. I love them for that and for all their fine personal strengths (some of which I hadn't known before they were exposed by need during our voyage).
Picture from the Dawghouse's mast-top. Old friend Nit Noy, a 34 foot trawler (belonging to friends Paul and Marty McGraw) sits on the other side of the dock.
Susan will never understand how much she gave me when she helped see such a hare-brained idea through to completion. She kept home and hearth alone, for months, while helping facilitate the movement of people and material needed to complete the The Great Sailboat Adventure.
