Sailing Terrapin

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….