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St Augustine to Ft Pierce
St Augustine to Ft Pierce
The winds were predicted to 10 to 15 with gust to 25 but when I had the radio on to check the marine weather forecast I noticed a steady 25 with gusts to 41 on the anemometer, at the time I was on a downwind course at 5 knots. That means the winds gusts were as high as 46 mph. That's quite a big difference from the predicted 25, about 4 times the energy. Needless to say it was storm conditions on the boat once again. When I was growing up as a boy scout, our troop had the nickname, "The Rainmakers," every time we went camping it rained. We stayed even though all the other troops packed up and went home. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing, we learned how to survive and eventually even enjoy camping in the rain. That is an important part of my upbringing and I'm sure has helped make me who I am today. I learned to enjoy challenges and adventure and overcome difficulty and what others might think to be obstacles. That's some history that helps understand my next statement. I've been sailing on the boat twice now and both times it has been stormy when not predicted. Maybe I need to consider giving the boat the name "Storm maker."
Back to the trip, This time I moved the boat from St Augustine to Ft Pierce Florida, an entrance to the intercoastal Okeechobee waterway. I planned on coming in to the next inlet south but cut this trip short This means I'm done with the ocean portion of this trip the next obstacle to overcome is getting the 53 foot mast under a 49 foot bridge. I came in at Ft Pierce for a couple reasons, I had intended on coming in the next inlet south. The storm had forced me to drop down to one sail and I was on a downwind run which meant I had to continuously be at the helm. For the last 24 hours I spend 22 at the wheel, I was making good progress but getting very tired. I wasn't till the last hour that I figured out the best thing to do when on a downwind with just the stays'l was to turn loose of the wheel and just put a correction in when needed, about once a minute or so and sometimes up to 5 minutes. This experimenting and learning will be a major part of a lot of the next couple dozen or so trips, learning what works best with this boat in different situations. I still need to figure out why the autopilot isn't working, it has to be in the control circuitry. It almost works, enough to make me think it might twice now. The 24 volt alternator is similar, I finally got info from the manufacturer and with that was able to check some things on it. I now am real sure the solid state regulator has problems. I was able to full field it and charged the batteries for 15 minutes that way but the filed amps started dropping and by 30 minutes were down to zero and the output also followed suit. While debugging the regulator I found a bad in line fuse that appeared good, that's always a tough one, a glass fuse that looks perfect but doesn't conduct. The 24 volt alternator is important enough that I should have a spare on board, so I will look for another one.
I did continue to charge the batteries one at a time with the 12 volt alternator and I still have two other big 8D batteries I've never hooked up (need more heavy cable and battery clamps) plus three good car type 12 volt batteries on board all fully charged so nothing is critical in that department.
One of the other reasons I cut this portion of the trip short was to get back to my car and try to get to Punta Gorda to a dance with the PlentyOfFish singles group on Saturday evening. They have been asking for me to come back to dance for about 6 months now, and I figured I could make it to this one if things went OK.
So right now I'm sitting on an outside retail display bench in front of the Flying J truck stop writing a first draft of this on paper with a sign in front of me saying "Sailboater needs ride North to car in St. Augustine, Share gas" but absolutely nobody is paying any attention, I've only had one person even acknowledge the sign in over an hour and a half. I was hoping it would entice people to ask questions like "How big is the boat?" and felt that after a little discussion they would find I'm intelligent and interesting and offer a ride. I was dressed in clean clothes, a western shirt and new jeans and boots, (I needed the boots for the dance.) Before this I stood on the northbound interstate entrance ramp for an hour with a sign "St Aug, 1/2 gas" but got no response so I moved here. I've had to walk all the way from town over 5 miles with my dry bag to get here. Again hitchhiking the whole way without any success. I then moved from the auto entrance to the trucker entrance of the truck stop and at least I got a few people to talk to me. By this time it was getting on into the afternoon and I decide to check with the bus or train schedule. I went inside and asked for phone book, the only one they had, has the part of the page for bus lines neatly ripped out. somebody did know that greyhound stopped at the other truck stop two miles down a side road and knew the phone number for them. A call there got me the number for the greyhound desk and I was told a bus left at 3:10 for St Augustine in 40 minutes. So I packed up and started heading that way half the time walking and half running and always hitchhiking, after more than a mile it was obviously more than two to the other truck stop and I started trying to flag down passing motorists but they just went faster, I even eventually stood in the middle of the road waving my arms but they would slow down and then quickly avoid me at the last moment. I ran into a roadside fruit market to see if anybody there could help me get to the truck stop and bus station two miles down the road, but once again everybody was too busy with their own self importance to help a stranger. I would bet over a couple thousand people had passed up the chance to help a stranger or even stop to find out was was wrong when somebody was pleading on the roadside for help with two hands overhead waving the distress signal. To say I was getting frustrated is putting it very mildly. Walking and running in the new boots had given me blisters on my feet, that was even before the first three miles. I did take some time at the truck stop to drain and attend to those but as you can imagine my feet were still quite sore and not getting any better. I even tried to flag down a Greyhound bus but it also went right on by. I then called the bus station again and found out I had missed the bus but another left at 5 so I could slow down. I finally made it to the truck stop and after spending an hour in the rest room cooling down and drying off, and cleaning up all the sweat I got on the a bus. There is much more to this part of the story but all get back to it in a couple minutes, for now back to the boat trip.
The first day with quite reasonable winds was very good, better than expected, except the autopilot would not steer the boat. I found that if I held out the yankee jib with the spinnaker pole and then put the stays'l out the other side with a preventer the boat would steer itself with the wheel locked on a downwind course extremely well. The call this running wing and wing, one sail to either side. I spent most of the first day running like this, I could get some sleep for an hour at a time and since I had started the trip tired that was very welcome. I left St Augustine at three in the morning. At 5pm the previous day my new friend Gordon Hand had dropped me off at my kayak after I left my car at his place. It was approaching low tide and it was lower than I had seen it here. I met Gordon at Krystal drive in, he asked if that was my kayak on the car outside, I was inside working on my laptop since Krystal drive ins have wireless internet. We talked about kayaking, boating, Alaska, camping and fishing trips since we had both spent much of our lives doing these things. There were many places both of us had been too. Anyway when I kayaked out to my boat, or I should say attempted to kayak, it was more sliding a kayak across a mud flat where I normally just glided right along, I found my boat high and dry with an extra foot of bottom paint showing. The surprising thing (at least to me) is it was sitting straight up and down, I had figured it would be well heeled over in this situation. I would even rock back and forth with waves and return to vertical, I guess it makes sense, the keel on bottom just reduces the gravity load on the boat and less flotation is necessary to hold it up, as long as a wide portion of the bottom is still under water it would still be stable vertical, just never thought of it that way. I ended up kayaking (sliding, with much effort) across the mud flat because I was sort of tricked into the shallows just getting more and more shallow always looking like it was just about out of it but not. It would have been much easier if I had gone around the island but for some reason 20/20 hindsight is always much clearer after the fact.
With the boat high and dry I had a couple choices, none of which were move the boat right now, basically after weighing all the options it was decided I would sleep and wake at 3AM and leave at that time. I really didn't want to run that channel in the dark by myself and start sailing solo for the first time in this boat in the dark but an adventurous life is full of things that often aren't the easiest or safest choice. I didn't sleep much that night. I woke up at 3 pulled anchor, motored out the channel and set the stays'l and jib and was quite happy with 3-4 knots and self steering on a downwind course straight south. I could attend to other things on the boat like the autopilot and alternator and every once in a while scan the horizon for other traffic. Only twice did I see other traffic and alter course for 15 minutes or so to make sure no danger existed. Most of the time it was just me and the sky and the waves. A bird would appear every once in a while, or some flying fish would break the surface, one landed on the front deck; a turtle floated by and of course there where dolphins and jumping fish being chased and breaking the surface trying their darnedest not to be another's dinner. During the middle of the day I raised the mainsail and found I could increase speed to about 5 1/2 knots but had to steer continuously. I felt 4 knots without steering worries was the best alternative at this point. By 5 in the morning the next day the wind had picked up to 25 knots and I decided I needed to reduce sail, so I pulled the yankee down. It had been raining for the last couple hours and the temperature had dropped considerably. I didn't have time to search for gloves, I thought I had a pair but not waterproof ones. So my steering hand after a few hours was quite cold and prunish looking. My rain suit and boots did a good job, the rain was not hard, a steady drizzle for about the first 6 hours, then just cold and windy and for a couple minutes even some sun peeking through. Sailing with the stays'l alone required constant attention to the wheel. It would self steer if I locked the wheel and set the course to a crosswind reach but that would either take me mostly to sea or toward land. For two hours in the next 24 I chose this to get an hours sleep. I was moving at over 5 knots with just the stays'l so progress was good. The last hour I needed to get ready for finding and approaching the channel into Ft Pierce so I left the helm and went below to quickly to find charts, laptop, reading glasses, flashlight, setting up the search light and about a dozen other things, each time I would return as fast as possible to the helm and often find the course exactly where I left it even though the wheel was turning wildly left and right with each wave. I found that fighting the wheel to hold the course steady in this situation only made things worse, every once in a while when the average course has deviated from what you want you should put in a correction and then turn the wheel loose and let the boat care for itself. That sure was nice to figure out, wish I had learned that about 23 hours earlier. Finally I found the flashing channel markers and about an hour later I traveled the last 4 or so miles to them, things don't happen very fast a 5 miles an hour, I started the engine and pulled down the Stays'l and started to motor in toward land. I found I was not making much progress, it had something to do with fighting a 25 to 30 knot quartering headwind and having sails still loosely bound to the spars and desk stanchions. I pushed the throttle to full and checked the gps and found I needed to crab in at 30-40 degrees to fight the sidewind and was making about 1.2 knots headway. I took a long while but as I got closer to land the wind velocity was dropping and I was making more progress. Once in the main channel it became very narrow for somebody that was solo in a big boat with lots of blind spots and having to fight a strong cross wind with lots of windage. At one point I was following the flashing green channel markers, which was difficult since they are on for about a second and off for three or more seconds. Three seconds is a very long time when your trying to line up two lights flashing at different times and you are fighting a sidewind in unfamiliar waters and have poor visibility. Once inside the channel got extremely narrow and then I felt like I wasn't making any progress at all, I wasn't I was aground. It turns out I was trying to cross a shallow, from one green maker on one channel to another green marker on another channel on the other side of the shallow area. A couple minutes of full reverse and lots of churning silt and I was once again in the main channel, soon after I had finally figured out the partial harbor chart on my laptop was rotated 90 and north was to the left. Then things started to make sense. I lost my temporary depth meter the last trip, I did buy a replacement at BassPro when I was driving down from Charleston to St Augustine, got a great deal, $50 for a new last years model $150 fish finder but I hadn't hooked it up yet, so I'm still finding depth by braille method. I found the anchorage, dropped anchor and went to sleep. It could be the tiredness might have influenced my chart reading problems, ya think??
I selected the items I needed for hitchhiking, driving back here and dancing and kayaked in the next morning, hid my deflated kayak behind some large pipes on shore and set off walking to the interstate 5 miles away, hopeful to get a ride.
Now back to where I left off I got to the bus station/truck stop and bought the ticket to St Augustine then went about cleaning up and cooling off in the rest room up from my 9 mile walk/run. After that I looked at the ticket and it was to arrive in St Augustine at 11:40 but it was AM not PM it was the next day with a 13 hour layover in Daytona. I went up to the desk and informed them there was a slight problem, I was not about to spend 13 hours in a bus station. I could walk the 52 miles from Daytona to St Augustine in the 13 hours time. I wanted my money back for that leg. They said there would be a 20% cancellation fee and that would be about equal to the savings. I argued, and pointed out I had paid with visa and will just cancel payment on this. I had to discuss this with the supervisor not in till the morning or the 800 national number not in till Monday.
I got on the bus and planned to use the first to legs, to Orlando and then Daytona, and called Gordon to see if he could drive the 40 some miles form his place to get me in Daytona, he said that would be fine but he would be about an hour after I got there, no problem, yes please, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Sitting in the bus at Orlando, we've got a 45 minute stop, I decide to get something to drink, I go inside the bus station and find triple priced everything, so I go across the street to the quick shop and find a 2 liter bottle of pop for $1.59 or 16 oz for $1.29, knowing me which did I get? I don't think I need to answer that one. Anyway Back to the station and I go through security that I passed on the way out. They want to take my pocket knife, after a couple minutes discussion on how I just got off to bus with this Swiss army knife and there was no security in Ft Pierce they said this is Orlando not Ft Pierce, they give me two options throw the knife away or pay them $5 to mail it to me, I explain I live on a sailboat how can they mail it to me, they once again say I have two options, I say "no, I have three, I can turn around and walk out that door," they agree, I have three. I choose the third and walk out, go around the bus station to the entrance where the buses drive in, ignore a sign that says buses only and walk up to the bus and the driver checks my ticket and lets me on. Later after hearing me talk to some others on the bus about my problem with the 13 hour layover and ticket refund problem he tells me he can drop me off at the St Augustine interstate exit. Mr Morris the bus driver also mentioned that just this last week he got a note from corporate about how everybody in the organization should treat customers like they are guests in your home, and he made a comment to the bus, " did I feel like I was a guest in somebodies home when they told me about the 20% re-ticketing fee?" Mr. Morris is one of the good people in this world, thank you. I also met Emmanuelle from Haiti in the seat in front of me, she has a restaurant, La Differance, in Ft Pierce on orange street. I'll stop in and have a meal when I'm back that way in a couple days. It turns out I walked right by it when I was heading to the interstate. I called Gordon and informed him of the new plans, that he only had to travel the 7 miles to the interstate exit now. The next morning waking at Gordon's I felt the floor moving, once again, just like on the boat I woke exactly when I needed to, I don't know how the body does this but I can sleep for an hour if I need to or 6 if I have that luxury. We had a great breakfast, traded some more stories, and he presented me with some things he felt I needed for the boat. A new pair of gloves, again not waterproof but he said to warm for him in Florida, and a salt water fishing rod and reel. The gloves were acceptable but the rod was too much, he insisted. When out at the car I remembered I had the little red wagon I picked up in Charleston but had no idea what I was going to do with, I asked if he had any use for that and he said his grand daughters would love it, so at least in my mind, a trade was made.
I drove up town to the marine thrift store and bought the four triangular water tanks that will fit under the floor keep my central bilge clear, strapped them on and headed south to the boat and Punta Gorda to the dance. I dropped off the tanks and picked up my kayak, I stopped to fill up gas and met another of the good people in the world. Cory Black was also filling up and noticed my front tire was a little low on air, I told him it has been that way for the last couple hundred miles and I figured I'd fill it when I found free air someplace. Basically he had no intentions of allowing me to drive with that slightly low tire, if he could do anything about it. He offered his cigarette lighter air pump and we filled it up. I then raced across the state to Punta Gorda and went dancing and am now back at Norm's in Labelle with my two old boats. Soon I'll head back to the new one. It's pretty cold down here right now, but not anything like home. I'm told snow has been on the ground for over a week there. I had intended on really ragging on the lack of quality people in south east Florida, since I couldn't even get one out of thousands of people to help me, even just to stop and determine the problem with the distress signal. Then I find a few gems that are in the area, they are few and far between down here. I guess that's why I live in Kansas. ----------------------------------------- Ft.Pierce to Stuart I was sitting at Norm's Monday afternoon and checked my email, it said I had a message on my phone, the free one that you can call and leave a message and it gets emailed to me. It was the coast guard, they said I needed to contact them immediately and gave me a number. I called and I needed to move my boat, it would be in the way of a large crane barge that would be coming through next morning, so I packed up and headed back to my boat, when I got there it was obvious that the coast guard hard searched for the hull number on the boat and that's how they found me and knew to call that number. That's the number I gave when I documented the boat. I moved the boat that evening to another anchorage they had suggested and then next morning went about exploring town, finding the library, and marine stores, it was rumored there was a large marine thrift store in town. It turns out it is new surplus and they are quite proud of most of their stuff, but I did get a good deal on ring type oar locks. I need to find a set of matching windows that I can put into a pilot house windshield, I want to install one on the boat. I also need some brass sail hanks and sail grommets, and always want to add to my collection of spare hardware and blocks. I have found some great deals on books at West Marine stores, basically my impression about West Marine is that you have to need something real bad to buy something there, but I've found they often have extreme clearance prices on old books that haven't sold. I've bought four or five at $2 to $3.55 in the last couple weeks in three different stores. While at the library I saw a sign for a talk about local estuary flora and fauna and sat in on that, I met the presenter Captain Chop Lege, It was a good discussion and he was also going to host a nature walk the next afternoon so I decided to stay till then. I went over to my new friends restaurant and had a Haitian meal of Tassot, fried goat. I used to raise goat but have never had it fried, very good. She also had a small plastic shipping box out back near the trash that I know fits my bilge well so I asked and now have one more to help keep stuff sorted on the boat. This one is red, my others are black and blue, so when I see the red one it will take me back to the bus ride to St Augustine and my friend Emmanuelle and her restaurant. Back at the boat I saw something yellow floating by with the current, I finally could make out that it was a dump truck, I threw the kayak in and paddled out to retrieve it. Tonka, kids toy, if you were wondering, I got it just before it hit one of the other boats anchored out. Not many boats could claim to be hit by dump truck floating down the river with the current. I guess not many other boats have one on board either. One more thing on my boat just waiting to find the right home. I showed up for the walk but was a couple minutes late, 6 miles out of town, nobody was there, no cars, no people, I didn't know if I missed them, had it been canceled due to the windy and possibly stormy conditions or moved to another location just before I got there? I decided I would do the walk myself after a few minutes waiting, I went inside the gate and found that the area was closed, that gave more credence to the moved theory and I had remembered up the road some older folks like I has seen at the talk the day before getting out of there car and a ranger like pickup. So I headed that way and hiked tat trail briskly to catch up. I found the group but it was not the group I was looking for, and the pickup was owned by a local fisherman, not having any luck. While I was walking back Chop drove up in his truck and asked if I was lost, turned out he was late too, about fifteen minutes and was glad to know nobody else had showed up that he missed. We drove around a couple of the areas, he had some things to check and we talked about the plants and animals. He had a passenger friend from Okeechobee where he lives, Seahorse, a older Seminole tribes person, we talked some about the casinos in eastern Connecticut, I shared the story about how the largest casino in the world was started and owned by a tribe made up by two people, a mother and her son, bar owners, that petitioned the government back in the 60's to have one armed bandits in their bar. They got recognized as a tribe and the rest is history. I also found out every man woman and child in the Seminole tribe gets $5000 a month, where do I sign up? My blood is red just like theirs? Chop has a boat, he takes people out on and the boats captain lives in Stuart and he could probably give me a ride to Ft. Pierce the next day, so I now had a plan shaping up for getting boat and car to Stuart. I left at 5 that evening, south with the boat heading to Stuart and a plan to meet George Snyder at the marina at the south end of the bridge the next morning at 10:30. I had a somewhat eventful trip running the 20 miles down the Inter coastal waterway. The channel is very narrow but straight as an arrow, often times the depth outside the channel was 3 feet or less. I still haven't installed the new depth gage so I have no information or warning with that. I need to learn a little about depth gage sending units, this one had a standard transom mount, I need a round thru hull. Need to learn if I can use different sending units of cut into one and re pot it in thru hull form. At the beginning I did run aground trying to put up the jib, I'd run forward, do some stuff, and run back to correct the steering, I was sailing with the main at the time in a 10 knot cross wind moving at about 3 knots. No problem but had to pull down the main to get ungrounded with full engine power in reverse. I decided to only sail with the main. The channel markers are as far apart as possible and still just barely be able to be seen with a high power spot light. Basically just keep on a straight course and the next marker will appear. I replaced the burned out port nav light bulb with the red led tail light I had converted to 24 Volts and was using as a reading light over my bed. I had noticed that it is very voltage sensitive with the electrical construction choices I made to make it as efficient as possible. If the voltage got below 20, they shut off. I need to rethink that problem. Anyway I still have a problem with the 24 volt charger but I can charge the lower 12 volt battery in the 24 volt circuit with the engine starter battery charging system. So one of the two house batteries was getting charged well. Half way down to Stuart my red nav light had all but quit, the upper battery was now at 8 volts. So I dropped anchor in the channel and went below in the engine room and changed the four battery connections so that the upper house battery was now the lower and would get charged. Soon before then my spot light quit, so I was then down to just a wind up flashlight to find channel markers. For three more hours traveling at 3 knots slightly above engine idle the markers appeared pretty much right where they we supposed too. I did study the charts to see if error to one side or the other was best. After finding the turn to head up the Okeechobee waterway to Stuart I did run aground, but that was due mostly to 2 year old charts and the flashlight not being able to find the next channel markers. It was a near full moon that helped some too. Soon I found a good place to anchor and did so, a place called Hells gate. The next morning I can go the last 5 miles to a where I needed to end up. I did that and met George next morning no problem. In the marina they had a free box for boaters to share stuff they didn't need, I found a spot light that needed a bulb, a bottle of compass fluid and a service kit for a Wilcox and Critendon head. All three of which I can use. Today I found out the new light didn't need a bulb, just a loose connection, It's back to 100%, I'm pretty sure the one on the boat is just a connection too. I can always grab the one from the Hughes, I have plenty of everything here in Labelle with two boats and salvage from a few more. (PS, I fixed the original light, it was just a loose wire, still need the correct plug for the new one though, the one in the Hughes has the proper plug, so now I have a couple spares) I have no idea about my fuel level, I motored for 7 hours at a fast idle expecting to run out at anytime. I chose not to go through the last bridges due to that and short time to meet George. I need to make a sight gage installed just before the engine fuel pump that will work for whichever tank is connected. Right now there is nothing, just two big tanks. I put 25 gals in one tank and have 10 more on deck in 5 gal cans, but have motored quite a few hours since then. Coming down from the original marina in Charleston I found at full throttle I use over 2 gals an hour at about 6 knots. I met George, he's driving a tiny Geo car but my rolled up kayak and paddles fits in the trunk no problem. We had a nice conversation on the way to Ft. Pierce. I picked up my car and headed to the library to check email. On the way I found a flea market and stopped to walk around, soon I saw a familiar face I hadn't seen in a couple years. It was of Bill Thornburrow, he used to manage the Manhattan Milling Grain Elevator back home, that's where I bought all my animal feed and lots of other farm stuff. He and his wife Mellie were down here for a vacation staying at the next town south. He had said he hadn't seen me out having salad bar lunch at Dillons food store back home for quite a while, but has seen Phil Kirmser, one of my old professors that I often ate with, eating alone. I then checked email and headed back to Stuart to check on the boat. Then I'm off toward Labelle to watch the Superbowl stopping on the way to check on that problem bridge. I stopped at a dead end road that is close to the bridge in Indiantown and walked up to house that has a boat dock with power and sail boat. I was going to ask questions about the problem bridge, but Alan, said he had never been there, always traveling east to the Atlantic. He asked some questions about my boat and I told him some details and explained I just brought it into Stuart that morning and it was anchored out there. Even though I was now about 25 miles from the boat and probably millions of people live in this 25 mile area, He said he knew the boat, we had passed in the channel that morning and I waved to him. He offered to give me a ride back to my car on this leg of the journey. Both of these things that happened sure make the world seem small. I looked at the bridge and it is narrow as well as low. I haven't done the calculations but I expect I need 22 degrees or more of heel to get under the bridge and more then 28 and I'm to wide to fit. I might rethink this, after I get the boat through I have to turn around in a couple months and take it back, at that time I won't have all the tanks on deck. After thinking about it overnight, I've decided it still would be much easier to have the boat here, so I'll bring it through the bridge and probably go out the other way, I've never been to the Florida keys anyway, It'll add at least a week travel time, but I'll see more that I haven't seen. --------------------------------------------- The boat is now in Indiantown, I'm back in Labelle headed to a gun show tomorrow. I get about 6 miles a gallon at 3.5 knots and 1200 rpm with a 1 inch wake. Today I did one of the scariest things I've done in a long while, climbed my mast on a rope ladder. Soaked with sweat when I got down. I need to attach the ladder to the mast track. That will reduce the fear factor a lot. My mast is a little taller than I though, 54 feet 3 inches to the top of the light, 53' 6 if I pull the light, antenna and wind sensors down. But I also found out the problem bridge is 58 wide instead of 28, no problem now, I can lay the boat almost flat if I have too.
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