Sailing Terrapin

Thursday, December 22, 2022

St Mary's south to West Palm Beach

While Terrapin was safe in the yard in St. Mary’s and a hurricane was at the door, we took the opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving with family. Baxter, Kala and I are grateful every day for each other, for family, for the challenges we face that make us stronger, and for the beauty within adventurous experiences. We drove north and stayed at our house in Western NC for a few days, spent the holiday with family in GA and then back to our house in the NC mountains.

After Thanksgiving, we prepared a few last minute things to take back to Terrapin and we headed down to St Mary’s to finish the bottom job, buff the hull and a couple other projects. Some of the projects included changing the blades and nose cone on the wind generator, identifying a leak in the fuel manifold, working on the refrigerator that wouldn’t cool, buffing the hull, getting a health certificate from a vet for Kala’s entry into the Bahamas and other odds and ends.

Our plans this winter season involve sailing to the Bahamas. On the US East Coast, in the winter, sailing to the Bahamas involves moving south as you have the weather to do it. Some boats move along the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) which is essentially a large man-made canal that parallels the coast. It is protected from the wind and waves that could be present offshore. Terrapin has a mast of 69’ which doesn’t allow us to go under the bridges that span the ICW, which are 65’ as a standard. So we look to the offshore forecast and move as far as we can with safe conditions, when we can. Once we are far enough south, approximately Palm Beach, we look for a forecast to move east across the Gulf Stream (a 50 nm wide current that moves north at 3+ knots along the Southeast US coast) or a forecast to continue moving south towards Miami, where we will eventually head east to the Bahamas.

In St Mary’s, GA, we were 300 miles north of Palm Beach, so we found our weather window and headed to our next stop along the way - St Augustine, FL, the oldest city in the U.S. We have been to St Augustine many times on Terrapin, as it’s a great place to stop before continuing south. The municipal marina has a rather large mooring field under the Bridge of Lions and all the amenities with a lounge for sailors, nice hot showers, decent wifi and laundry facilities. There are also several good marine resources to help with any repairs that needed to be done and we definitely had a good list going.

Our passage to St. Augustine was an overnight. The winds were aft of the beam and the weather was pretty benign with a nice, calm sail. We left at 3pm and arrived at 2pm. Quick and easy.

Once we arrived, our project list continued to grow – it now included:

· Going up the mast five times to repair the anchor light

· Walking to the marine services store 4 times to find the right brass fitting to repair the leaky manifold

· Working with the refrigerator guy to figure out why the refrigerator won’t cool or the compressor keeps turning off

· Troubleshooting and fixing the AIS (Automated Identification System) which allows boats to “see” us when we’re offshore

· Finding a way to clean the dirty, nasty stains that were on our deck from the boat yard

While we were in St Augustine, we had some fun times - walking on the waterfront every morning, including a walk on the wall around Castillo de San Marcos, we enjoyed watching the FIFA World Cup finals in Meehan’s Pub and we had a boat parade that went through the mooring field right in front of Terrapin. But we also had cooler temps that moved in along with several days of rain and wind. Cold temps vs. human body temps and cooking steam, etc… cause condensation and damp conditions down below. We were ready to continue moving south. We found our next weather window and made plans to hop to West Palm Beach. It would be a 200nm passage, about 36 – 48 hours depending on conditions.

WPB has also been a frequent stop for us - when we returned from Cuba, the Caribbean or the Bahamas in the past. In addition to a Homeland Security office where Americans can check back into the country, there was a great marina with laundry, wifi, showers and a dinghy dock – or so we thought….

Sanding the bottom

Bottom job done

A day of fun in St Mary's

A little St Mary's history

Family Time

Changing out the nose cone and blades

Prettiest girl

Sunset before we left St Mary's for St Augustine

Traffic as we passed the St John's River into Jacksonville, FL

Castillo de San Marcos in St Augustine

One of the Lions guarding the Bridge of Lions in St Augustine - Terrapin in back on left

Great donut shop in St Augustine

They even have doggie donuts!

Trying to clean boat yard stains with baking soda and vinegar

FIFA Semi-Finals Croatia vs Argentina

Bridge of Lions at sunrise from Terrapins deck

FIFA World Cup Semi-Finals France vs Morocco

The St Augustine Sea Buoy

Thursday, December 1, 2022

Back In The Water - Week One

You know those weeks where you have a to do list a mile long and you are head down and trying to check things off - the wheels are in motion and if you stop making progress the whole plan falls to pieces. Then, at some point, mid-process, you take two seconds to reflect and realize time has flown by and you also realize what seemed like an hour has been a whole day and what seems like a day, or even two, has been a whole week? If that's ever happened to you - then you'll be able to relate to our last week.

We left our house in NC, where we have been living since 2019, partly because of Covid, partly because of family, on Sunday evening. We were headed to Savannah to our Valiant 47, Terrapin, who has been on the hard since we moved to NC. We would do a quick overnight in Atlanta to see family and be at the boat yard late morning with a scheduled launch at 2pm. This would give Baxter plenty of time to do things like put the plug in, check the stuffing box just one more time, and also to clean up the bilge area that he has been fighting with the secondary pumps for about the last three years.

In any case, we arrived at the yard to find the space Terrapin had called home, completely empty with jack stands tossed to the ground. It was only 1100 - ugh! The last time Terrapin was on a 50 Ton boat lift without us around, the shaft was ripped out from the bottom of the boat (from the strap catching underneath). We walked around the corner to find Terrapin on the lift - shaft intact - being lowered towards the water. Ok - I guess this plan is moving forward at full speed.

We spent the next two days on the dock making a sometimes defeating list of what works and what doesn't work. Sometimes, it's a matter of deciding if you're pushing forward or falling back. Kala was working hard too. Living on the boat can be demanding for a 12 year old dog, even if she's done it for most of her life.

We bent on the sails (main, staysail and genoa). We stowed the provisions. We made a plan for how to get under a 65' bridge with a 69' mast at low tide. Baxter cleaned out the bilge. We decided where we would haul out and paint Terrapin's bottom - 101nm south of Savannah - and we checked the weather.

The next day, we untied the lines and took each challenge step by step. We made it under the bridge, then navigated the shallow ICW against the incoming tide. Next, we headed offshore and pointed Terrapin's bow to 195° South on a beautiful broad reach. It was comfortable and easy to fall back into a rhythm - Terrapin was telling us how happy she was to be back on the ocean. She moved confidently and quick. So fast in fact, we made it to the St Mary's inlet earlier than planned. It was 0430 - a very dark 0430. The red and green buoys that marked the channel seemed so close. With a north wind and a channel that ran east - west, we had wind and waves pushing us out of the channel. With just a reefed main, we sailed through most of the channel and turned our engine on only as we approached the the pinch point with land on both sides. There were lights from the WestRock concrete factory shining on a section that was only 20ft deep. We were out of the channel and could see enough to know we had room to swing - we dropped the anchor and went to sleep.

Four hours later, we woke up and dropped the dinghy to head into Fernandina Beach. Kala enjoyed her first dinghy ride in 3 years. We enjoyed a great lunch at The Happy Tomato. What's a trip to land without boat projects? After lunch, Baxter and Kala checked out the local marine store for a new windlass battery and I walked to a gas station to fill our dinghy gas tank. The next day we moved Terrapin over to Cumberland Island - it was so peaceful and quiet with very few boats. We could see the wild horses walking on the beaches and down the trails laced with moss-covered oaks. We had officially turned the corner.

But the challenges weren't over - there was a weather depression north of Puerto Rico that had a high chance of developing into something bigger and it's path seemed to be pointing straight to our location. If our plans to haul out worked, it wouldn't be an issue, but we had to consider what would happen if the yard couldn't haul us out. Where would we anchor? Would we try to find another marina?

Would we stay on the boat? Monday was our haul out day and the storm would start moving in on Tuesday. We formulated plans A, B and C and hoped for the best. Monday morning, there was a beautiful sunrise as we made our way through the marshes on the St Mary's River to the boat yard. They were ready for us right on schedule - hauled us out, tucked us into a great spot and we secured Terrapin for the now forecasted Hurricane Nicole.