I have returned from the sea! This past weekend I took the first step in the long journey transporting Windsong from Inglis, FL to St. Augustine, FL. The trip will take me down the West coast of Florida, through the Okeechobee Waterway, and up the East Coast. The first leg was the long journey from Inglis to Gulfport near St. Pete, a total ride of about 90 nautical miles and well offshore. The entire journey is outlined in this picture:
Let me recap the story thus far. I purchased Windsong in July, 2009 from the previous owner, Paul, in Inglis, FL. Inglis is a small town on the West coast of Florida in a region called the Nature Coast. The Paul was kind enough to allow me to keep the boat at his house up the Withlacoochee River. I would visit the dock about every other weekend cleaning and fixing up the boat.
I am by no means an experienced sailor. I have only done a few day trips in very easy conditions. I’ve braved one squall, but it was in the Inter-coastal waterway in St. Augustine. The worst threat to me was running aground. Being an inexperienced boat owner and novice sailor, this is an intimidating boat to learn to operate. The first time I took the boat up the river the engine’s cooling water impeller busted and caused the engine to overheat. Spew steam out of the expansion cap, which I first thought was a fire brewing down below. It was pretty traumatic for a first ride and my confidence in the boat went down, as did my overall spirits. I spent the next couple of months trying to diagnose and repair the problem, learning as I went along. Eventually we were able to get it fixed and […]
More and more lessons to be learned – dinghy towing can be hazardous
A passage from passage from Marathon FL to Fort Pierce
December 2009
I first became aware of Saffanah surfing E Bay and I first saw Saffanah at anchor in Boot Harbor in Marathon FL. She is a 32 Downeast cutter built in the seventies in Costa Mesa CA, and definitely showed her age – weathered and crazed hull, sad canvas, lousy sails, no electronics, a busted motor and grungy water line. But stepping aboard I immediately had the feeling she was a match for the West Sail 32 I had regretfully sold ten years ago. And so once more I re-demonstrated the very first watery lesson learned (or very obviously never learned) – a fool and his money soon part.
A year later after having her hauled and stored at the Marathon Keys Marina and Boat Yard, and a few thousand dollars later, she was functionally ready to begin her trip to Jacksonville FL where I plan to address the cosmetic issues she so sorely needs.
So on the Day after Thanksgiving 2006 we motored out of Marathon circled the point and entered Hawk Channel.
We had planned to leave the Tuesday before Thanksgiving but a cold front blew through the Keys and even the task of provisioning for the trip was difficult with the wind and rain coming down in torrents. I had never actually sailed Saffanah but knew in my heart she would handle as well as my West Sail. But I did have a concern that the old Perkins, although very thoroughly reworked by the great diesel, David Brown, would be reliable. David had cleaned the fuel tanks, replaced all hoses, rebuilt the water pump and […]
St Lucie Canal/Okeechobee/Caloosahatchee/Gulf Coast ICW
For a few years I kept my boat in Daytona Beach. While Daytona Beach offers Bike Week, NASCAR, a great beach with hard bodies, and the World Series of Softball, for a sailor the place has a big limitation. St Augustine and Ponce Inlets offer the closest access to the Atlantic Ocean and in either direction several bascule bridges and an hour or two of motoring must be addressed before an inlet is reached. So for several years Threshold was more of a floating condominium than a sailboat, and I stayed on board a couple days a week.
Orlando is centered between Daytona and Tampa/St Petersburg and I had debated both options heavily with the decision to put my name on the St Petersburg City Marina waiting list hoping for a slip to open.
My mother always admonished me, “be careful about what you ask for – you may get it” and true to form one day I received the unexpected telephone call from the St Petersburg City Marina, “you have a slip next month if you want it.” Without out question this marina is one of the most appealing locations along the east coast; similar to ones in downtown Baltimore or in Miami and Ft Lauderdale’
Located in the refurbished sections of downtown St Petersburg one can enjoy the ambiance of a beautiful city and yet have a great bay or harbor to day-sail with little restriction – direct access to Tampa Bay and unrestricted access to the Gulf of Mexico. So Threshold had only a month to get from Daytona to St […]
1999 once again gave me the opportunity to revisit the very first watery lesson that I had learned – a fool and his money soon part. Another windfall bonus, a great Annapolis yacht broker, and a West Sail 32, which this time was a real “sail away’ package, all came together in the back yard of “Threshold’s owner. I was commuting from Atlanta to Washington DC, and any reasonable pragmatist could see the economics of living on a sailboat at the Shem Creek Marina in Annapolis and traveling back home on the weekends. Pretty doggone logical decision in my mind. And, God forbid, should the job transfer me someplace else, good ol’ Threshold could easily move with me. Sweet!
And this time I had charts and a monochromatic hand held Garmin GPS so getting from Baltimore to Shem Creek in Annapolis posed few navigational problems. Only one bridge to pass – Shem Creek. I picked up the boat at the local marina after the survey and paid for a fresh bottom job and with all of the confidence in the world, stepped into the cockpit, started the engine, cast off the lines and fifty yards later ran aground on the sand bark that the yard foreman had previously warned me about.
But Threshold was strong and had a powerful Perkins engine with a three blade prop and the twenty year old lessons learned from the ICW immediately returned to my mind. Simply turn the tiller full port, pointing the bow to what I thought to be deep water and gun the Perkins. Thankfully, the marina had a little power boat with a tow line and […]
Bodhran ready to go back in the water after a week’s haulout:
Well Bodhran is back in the water after a 10 day haulout. The biggest item on the project list was to reinforce the mast step. My mast had caused the deck to buckle ¼ of an inch around the mast, so I pulled the mast off, jacked up the deck, and had a bracket fabricated to reinforce the area and hopefully fix the problem. We also painted the hull, scoured the prop and coated it with Peller Clean (a silicon anti fouling for bronze), cleaned, buffed and waxed the topsides, repainted the shear stripe, removed all the caulk and rot from under the caprail and injected thickened epoxy to fill the voids.
Tiffany and I taking a break in the shade of Bodhran’s hull:
The new mast bracket on top of the compression post:
It was a pretty full 10 days. Fortunately for us, Christian and his boat Irie were in the yard. Christian is friends with Greg and Bonnie and Bob and Cary from back in Bellingham. He and his ex were caretakers out at Eliza Island before taking off across the Pacific. It was nice to have an extra hand in the yard, a person to bum tools and advice from. He also happens to have a van and very generously let us borrow it to make runs into town for parts, groceries and beers. He also got us out one night to Tutukaka to visit Rick on Guava Jelly and play some music before Rick had to fly back to Seattle for the Winter. Distraction was also provided by Arek and Iwona who drove up from Orewa and took us up to explore the area north of the Bay of […]
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