We awoke to a nice breeze and everything set except for two things, we had intended to stop in the bar for one beer while we were doing laundry…. that said, after a few beers and a few plates of spicy crab claws we had “a little hitch in our giddy up” on Monday morning. The other issue was having an offshore harness for all three of us. Now I know the bar situation sounds unnecessary, but it paid off. We got to talking with the other patrons and the bartender about our plight. Brian (the bartender) agreed to sell us the needed harness. Amazing where help can come from isn’t it? Unfortunately we had to get him out of bed.
We set out from Southport motor sailing with both sails up at about 6.6 kts. The weather warmed slightly to very nice temperatures. The main attraction after clearing the other traffic had to the dolphins. They were too fast to get a picture, the show was great at times jumping completely out of the water not more than 6-10 feet away from the boat.
It was very relaxing compared to the ICW. Just follow a course, sometimes with the autopilot instead of the constant attention needed to stay in the canal. We organized ourselves into 3 hour shifts with the first starting at noon. Since we had 3 people that meant one round was 9 hours, 9 times 3 is 27, given the 24 hour day your shifts for the next day move one slot forward each day. If I had the noon shift day one, I would have the 3PM the next day.
As night fell the radio chatter fell off the full moon made it delightful. Dennis made us a meal of fried chicken, green beans and garlic with some potatoes mixed in (manly man food). The main event of the night came when a Navy cruiser came across the vhf stating it’s coordinates and informing us that they would be imposing a 5 mile no contact zone around “His war ship”. We responded and were informed not to deviate from our course and that they knew where we were. We never saw them out there, but we sure heard them on the radio!
When morning came the weather was great! Warmed up to 70 degrees smooth sailing but we knew a front was on the way. We tried to outrun the gale force winds to get to Jacksonville FL. The weather caught us and we barely made it into Charleston. It seems other people had the same idea and most of the moorings were unavailable. We did find one though, it was on the other side of a fixed bridge that was 50 to 58 feet high depending on the tide. According the specification sheet on the boat our mast was 53 feet without antenna. We pushed on for the bridge against the wind and tidal current. I think the phrase was uttered more than once “I’m givin’ all she got, Captain!” . We passed under the bridge at 1:53pm, low tide was 1:51. It was a little tense.
After getting to the dock with the temperature at 65 degrees, the rain came and it dropped to 30 overnight. Tomorrow we will check the weather on how resume the trip.
Good job sailors! What a tremendous 24 hours! Impressed at your grit and resilience.