November 20, 2013 – Day One: The Rode Out West

With Big Mom tended to and Alabama in our rear-view, Phillip and I set to planning our Thanksgiving voyage.  Due to the rush trip to North Alabama for the funeral and the lost time from work, we both needed to put in a few days at the office to make up for it before we took off again, so we settled on a departure date of Wednesday, November 20th, which would still leave us 10 whole days at sea.  Now, while a trip east to Carrabelle, Apalachicola and the like was still do-able, it would be a stretch as Carrabelle, alone, is a two-day passage, assuming good weather, and I can tell you what we did not have that week was good weather.  A front was set to pass through, leaving us with 25-30 mph winds and a predicted 6-9 foot sea-state.  Not something you want to jaunt out in just for fun.  There were plenty of anchorages we had heard about on the western route, so we decided to stay protected along the ICW inshore and head west in search of (what else?) — women, whiskey and gold!

Here is an overview of our planned voyage:

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We planned to head over to Fort McRae first for a couple of days on the hook, then ease in to Pirate’s Cove to dock up and hang out with the local riff raff for a day or two.  From there, we would jump over to Ingram’s Bayou (a place many of our sailing buddies kept telling us was one of the most beautiful, pristine anchorages over that way) to drop anchor for a couple of quiet nights, before we made our way over to The Wharf in Orange Beach where we had reserved a slip for Thanksgiving.   Phillip’s clan was also planning to rent a condo there for the holiday and we – as true cruisers tend to do – were planning to make full use of their facilities!  There is nothing like a hot shower and a washer and dryer after seven days at sea!

All told, our trek out west was going to be about an 8-9 day trip and we had planned one last anchorage on the way back (likely Red Fish Point – just near Fort McRae) for one last night of solitude before heading back to the real world.

So, we set off on a brisk sunny Wednesday afternoon (Nov. 20th) and headed to our first stop — Fort McRae:

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Now, we’ve been to Red Fish Point many times, so the passage across Pensacola Bay and through the little inlet by Sand Island was all too familiar territory.  No sweat.  We could make that sail with our eyes closed (assuming, of course, no other boats, bouys, or a shore).  Stevie Wonder style!

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Yeah baby!

But, we had never made the “uey” around the corner and into the inlet between Sand Island and Fort McRae.

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And I’ll have you know I had to Google the word “uey” for the proper spelling.  Urban Dictionary says: 

  

To take a U-Turn 
   I guess this is a New England thing.
   Cab driver : “I’ll just bang(make a/take) a uey on the next stoplight”
Although I’m not sure that’s just a “New England” thing.  I think ‘to bang is to make’ rings true just about anywhere.  
We had a phenomenal sail over.  But, I will say, we had not been out on the boat in weeks and I think just about any conditions would have been ‘phenomenal’ to us as we were just thrilled to finally have water moving across the hull.  Although many may disagree, runny noses and chilly fingers just aren’t enough to make any sail UN-phenomenal in our book.  But, apparently we were a little rusty.  I’d love to say we executed the ‘uey’ around Sand Island perfectly and eased right on up into our anchorage by Fort McRae.  But that’s just not how it happened.  As we were making (banging I guess the New Englanders would say) the bend, the boat lurched forward and let out a slight groan.  With my hands on the bimini bar, I could feel the soft, thud of the ground we hit below.  And let me just say for the record – although I’m a little reluctant to admit it, we have done it a time or two now (run aground) – but it’s never a feeling you get comfortable with.  It’s a sickening, discomforting movement of the boat and instantly identifiable as contact with the treacherous bottom below.  Thankfully, for us, it was a soft, sandy bottom and Phillip had the sharp skipper skills to back us out, “bang out” a bigger loop and get us into Fort McRae with our keel in tact.
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Now, I’ve heard some people refer to this anchorage as “party alley” because it’s usually chock full of sailboats, power boats, trollers and the like.  Hence the “party.”  But, we were hoping that on Thanksgiving it would be pretty sparse so we would have plenty of room to spread out.  Sadly, that wasn’t the case.  There were three other boats in there, a marker for some sunken hazard, a bouy and a tight shoreline that we had to deal with.  Enter the infamous Swing Radius.  Now, most of you are smart enough to make a pretty good guess as to what that is, but humor me for just a moment for the newbies.

Imagine your anchor as the center of the circle.  The radius, then, is the distance from your anchor to the stern of your boat:

Swing radius

Using the radius, you can then plot out a hypothetical ‘circle’ your boat could occupy depending on which way the wind or tide pushes it.  Now, with several “obstacles” around us – three other boats, an immovable marker for the sunken hazard, a bouy, and a nearby shore with outstretched shoal, we had to be sure we dropped enough anchor chain (known as “rode”) to hold our boat secure while not creating a swing radius so large it would allow us to strike the surrounding obstacles.  We typically like a 7:1 ratio.  Meaning, if we were in 7 feet of water, with 4 foot freeboard (distance from the water line to the deck), that’s 11 feet total depth, so 77 feet of rode.

Now, while getting the anchor set right is important, making sure we had a proper cocktail at sunset easily trumps it.  So, with the tight parameters, we dropped about 55 feet of anchor chain (an approximate 5:1 ratio with our ten feet of total depth) and set to our evening ritual.  A book and cocktail at sunset.  Could there be anything better?

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But then another boat pulled up nice and tight near us and set us both on edge.  We started looking around, running and re-running our calculation of the swing radius and speculating, once again, as to the approximate distance to the shore.

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With both of us being born fierce litigators and each a few drinks in and, thus, a little more ballsy to boot, Phillip and I embarked on an exhaustive debate about the swing radius.  I made a rough calculation and explained to Phillip my educated guess as to the radius, to which he naturally responded:

Answer

With no one else on the boat with us, a riveting discussion ensued, in which I had to drop some serious geometry knowledge on Phillip that, if translated to a demonstrative aid, would look something like this:

Rode

Length of Boat +  [ (Rode )– (Depth + Freeboard )2 ]1/2

Simple, right?  I thought so.  Or at least I was sure, in my eloquent, unslurred, precise and persuasive frame of mind, that it was.  And, I told Phillip as much.  To which he responded:

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Fine by me!  I had made my peace with it.  I offered my best pitch – full of reason and geometry and gin – and my plight had fallen on deaf ears (or ogling eyes – although I consider them to be synonymous).  I set about to “banging out” another drink or three and resting my weary mind while Phillip got up about every hour to try and make out the markers and shoreline in the dark of night as the wind began to howl over the boat.  I kept a shoulder turned to him, pretending to be sleeping soundly (lah-tee-dah) as he was checking GPS coordinates on his phone, but I was wide awake and just as worried as he.  The sounds and motions of the boat from below were incredibly deceiving.  What could just as easily have been the wind and a smooth shift of the boat in the water sounded, in the v-berth, like the keel wedging into sand and the boat preparing to tip over.  Neither of our weary minds were resting.  Phillip made one last trek topside, and I heard him walk up toward the bow, my eyes following the sound of his footsteps in the dark.  Then I heard them pound quick on the deck above as he scurried back to the hatch and shouted down to me:

“Annie, I need you up here now.  We’re moving.”

November 9, 2013 – “When Are You Going to the Islands?”

Isn’t that what you’re all thinking?  At least that’s what I get asked three times a week.  (Yes, I’m talking to you Bleeke!)  Soon, people.  Soon.  Stick with me.  But, I’ll tell you, even when we do get there, it’s not going to be any more beautiful than this:

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And, when we cook up a meal in the galley off the coast of some remote island in the Keys or Bahamas, it’s still going to look like this:

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Adventure is relative and can be found anywhere.  Usually, it’s the act of getting there that’s the real “journey,” not the destination itself.

But, you want to see us on a passage.  I get it.  So do we, minus the transmission fluid catch this time.  Although I’m sure you want to see some equally entertaining minor disaster occur that we have to resolve in true MacGyver fashion with bubble gum, nail polish and sheep shears (all of which we keep on the boat for just such an occasion).

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I’ll see what I can come up with.

Trust me, we were ready to get back out there, too.  With the summer pretty much behind us and all of our major boat chores done, the rubber gloves finally came off,

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and we set down to plan our trip.  Which we, of course, had to do over wine and dinner – a whole roasted snapper, anyone?

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Between work, family and my obligatory appearances on the rodeo clown circuit, we had about two weeks to work with in November.  Yes, we do plan to go longer and further later, but that will have to come later.  All evidence to the contrary, we do have to work.  I can’t stress to you enough how expensive boats can be.  Now, let me remind you how far the actual Keys are:

To the Keys

I think even MacGyver’s scruffy eyebrows raised with that one.  It’s about a four-day passage offshore, if made straight.  That’s 96 hours of solid sailing, which means someone always at the wheel, even with auto-pilot, you still need to keep a lookout and stay close to the helm, particularly at night.  This means, for four days, you only get to sleep in one-to-two hour snatches.  It’s fun, don’t get me wrong.  There’s a certain sense of freedom, adventure and accomplishment when you finish a passage, but it is also a very tiring stint at sea, even in the best of conditions, exhausting and harrowing in the worst.  If we made the four-day passage straight to the Keys, we would need a day or two to rest and recover and that would leave us about one day to enjoy the Keys before we had to start meandering back, two or three, perhaps, if wanted to make another four-day epic passage back across the Gulf.  But that would put us on a tight schedule, and we learned the hard way during The Crossing that you can never be on a tight schedule when sailing.  You have to build in a cushion for the weather.  It’s just part of it.  We hated to push the Keys trip back, but it had to be done.  Trying to squeeze it into the tight travel window we had this winter was not going to allow us the time we wanted to truly enjoy the Keys.  Plus, there were plenty of places we wanted to cruise locally and enjoy.  We decided we would make the trip to the Keys in the spring (after skiing season – of course – that’s a must!) and stick around these parts in November.

Phillip and I decided to head East to Carrabelle.

Carrabelle

That’s about a two-day passage straight.  Forty-eight hours, assuming a good weather window.  If you recall, our boat spent some time over in Carrabelle when the transmission went out, and we really enjoyed poking around the sleepy little mariner towns around there, which feel like they’ve been preserved in time, when sea-faring sailors roamed the streets, rum bottle in hand.  We wanted to head back and spend a couple of days immersing ourselves with the old salts and eating some of the best fresh oysters I have ever let slither down my throat.

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We then wanted to take our time heading back inshore, protected along the Intracoastal Waterway (as much as we could … we would have to pop out into the Gulf for several stretches where our mast height (50 feet) won’t allow us under the bridges).  We pulled out the charts–and the snapper–and started plotting our passage.

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And, what meal is complete without fresh homemade bread and salad?  … None we know of.

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The plan was to hope for good weather, so we could head straight for Carrabelle, spend a night or two there boozing with the locals, then mozey our way back to Apalachicola for some local fare, another night or two to booze again and get our fill of fresh oysters.  Then, we thought we would check out Port St. Joe, a great littler marina there, Cape San Blas (lots of cool anchorages there, too), head back to Panama City in hopes of catching another sighting of our Lady Legs-a-Lot (you remember those heels!), then make the twenty-four passage offshore back to Pensacola.

November trip

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Even with a few extra days’ cushion for potential bad weather, this trip, even taken leisurely, would still easily fill two weeks.  We planned to leave November 15th and return on the 29th.  This was going to be a significant passage for the two of us – heading offshore for a four-day passage.  While I may have proven some creative gumption and gusto in surviving the dinghy debacle and transmission fiasco during The Crossing, this was going to be my first true offshore voyage as First Mate.  I started glossing over our old sailing books again, working expletives back into my everyday conversation, upping my rum tolerance and practicing my knot-tying skills on empty wine bottles.  Oh, and watching weekend-long MacGyver marathons.  That helps too.

A two-week passage in the blistering winter?  Done.  I was packing all my gear.

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Aside from the mullet, MacGyver ain’t got nothing on me!