Author: Ajit

New Orleans was a great experience. Bourbon Street with James and Denise was really fun. We had regrettably bid James farewell after a mildly crazy evening on Bourbon Street. James actually fled directly to the Airport in the cab that dropped us off at the Marina after our revels. He was concerned he was being “Shanghaied” — in the very best sailing tradition.

The Seabrook Marina where we were staying was incredibly friendly and hospitable. We’d met some really nice people, but, we had to leave.

On April 19, Denise and I untied the dock lines and headed east along the GIWW headed for Pass Christian, Mississippi, along with Jack and Sharolyn of Heaven’s Island, and Bob and Ellen of Shibumi. While Denise and I were all for anchoring out, the other two boats who’d been traveling together from Kemah, TX were less enthusiastic about doing so. Pass Christian, MO it was.

Pass Christian is a cute little harbor. I realized why it was so named when after entering the marina: the entrance was so shallow that by the time you tied up, you’d found religion. Besides that, the most notable feature of Pass Christian for me was the food at Shggy’s Beach Bar. It was outstanding. I have yet to eat a better tuna tartare.

Since there seemed to be an acceptable weather window — low pressure system was moving into Boloxi the next evening — I decided that we should take the opportunity and head off for Tampa rather than wait around.

Denise and I headed off under clear blue skies, dolphins played in Pearl’s bow wave, it was warm and humid, Denise decided it was bikini time. We had wind pretty much on the nose as we headed out so we didn’t even bother to raise sails. We just motored.

As we passed Ship Island and the Fort that was on it, Denise and I chortled at all our friends who were back freezing various parts of their anatomy back in Portland. This was the life! We finally had warm, blue water, and dolphins. Ship Island receded into the background. We were about to be “at sea.”

That was the easy bit. The rest of the trip proved to be quite eventful. As evening drew on, we started to see lightening to the west, behind us. That was a bit unsettling as Pearl’s mast was the tallest thing for miles. Denise, who was at her best early in the morning, took the early watch while I got on email via the ham radio to my fiend Joe. Joe confirmed my worst suspicions by looking at weather radar: we were being boxed in by weather behind us and to the south of us. Decision time: head for Tampa or redirect to Pensacola or Panama City. We chose to head to Panama City.

As it turned out, that was a good call. On the one hand, we got pounded by the weather. On a couple of occasions it rained so hard that visibility was reduced to less than 100 ft. Fortunately, our previous experience on the GIWW had prepared, so the storms that hit us weren’t as unnerving as they could have been. When we finally made it into Panama City, it was raining so hard we had trouble distinguishing where the city marina was located. We finally found them, and tied up at the fuel dock as is was late and the harbor master had taken off for the night.

Picture Gallery

Denise and I spent a couple of days in Panama City recovering from our joust with the weather and waiting for things to get more settled. While the part of Panama City we were in seemed pretty depressed, I took the opportunity to chat with local tackle stores, and purchase some fishing gear that I was assured would work on our trip through the gulf. The best advice I got as it turns out came from the harbor master at the Panama City Marina. The lures he recommended kept getting hit over and over as we sailed down from Panama City to “Tampa.”

The trip from Panama City down the coast was the best time we’d had yet. For the first time since leaving Portland and her last sail on January 01, Pearl had all her sails up, and was flying along on a beam reach. We moved down the coast at a pretty good clip and arrived in Tampa late evening on the April 26. This was a bit unexpected. We had planned to get to Tampa around daybreak.

May 12, 2012 — Key West, FL

Back at a dock in civilization. Showers! Connectivity! People. Bustle. I miss the cleanliness and clarity of being at anchor, but we had to head back to ship Joe off to his life.

The trip back was pretty uneventful. We cleared the mooring pretty quickly after getting up — not waiting for breakfast, which Denise produced under way. After exiting the channel from the Dry Tortugas under power, we raised the sails and tried to catch a couple of boats in the distance that had left earlier. We did pretty well until the boats managed to point impossibly higher than Pearl, and the wind dropped, and we lost them over the horizon.

Sails down, engines on, we picked a direct line back to Key West. Passing the boats from earlier in the day around Boca Grande, we discovered they were motorsailing.

We got to Key West around sunset, and what a fabulous sunset it was. It couldn’t have been a better ending to a fun weekend trip. I can’t wait to head back.

May 11, 2012 –The Dry Tortugas, FL

After a pleasant evening and night at Boca Grande, and fortified with one of Denise’s hearty breakfasts, we were off to Fort Jackson, and the Dry Tortugas. Fort Jackson is pretty large and and used to house a couple of thousand people. The fort is built of some 16 million bricks, all of which had to be shipped in from Pensacola. Since there are springs or other sources of fresh water, the “basement” level of the fort consists of a giant cistern — now brackish due to the incursion of salt. We spent the morning pottering around the Fort. It was fun.

As the day drew on and it got warmer, we decided to go snorkeling. Denise and Cita seemed to be veteran snorkelers. Joe on the other hand was a complete novice. We spent a little time getting him accustomed to the experience before attempting to find a reef. I have to admit that I was impressed by how quickly he took to it.

May 09, 2012 — Fort Jackson, The Dry Tortugas

Boca Grande is what I had envisioned when I dreamed about cruising: very few people, open spaces, slightly wild, almost completely off grid. Very cool.

Our first stop out of Key West on May 08, was Boca Grande Key. It’s a small key about 20 mi out of Key West.  En route, I trolled a lure. As we got out of the harbor channel, I hooked a decent sized Mahi Mahi (Dorado). The fish was about 10 lbs, and therefore a keeper. Mahi Mahi are very pretty. They are brilliantly colored in golden yellow blended with blue-green. Taking this fishes life was something that gave me a lot of pause for thought. He was beautiful. It seemed like a shame to kill him. Denise the daring was given the task of dispatching him, gutting, and filleting him. I’m not quite up for that yet. he was dinner for a couple of days.

Boca Grande is the prototypical deserted island. It has one palm tree and a lot of scrub. That’s it. The water around it was shallow and crystal clear. Denise and Cita got quite excited when they started to see the bottom as we approached. There were two other boats when we arrived. We anchored and headed in for some time in the warm blue water that we’d been craving. This was what I had been hoping for ever since Pearl left Texas.

The next day after Densie whipped up one of her customarily hearty breakfasts, we headed off for the Dry Tortugas.

 

 

May 05, 2012 — Key West, FL

Getting from Cabbage Key to Key West was interesting. Cita, who suffered a bad case of mal de mer between Venice and Cabbage Key had somewhat recovered. She was thrilled to be back on the ICW in flat water for a bit.

Fortunately, the weather was pretty settled. While Denise and I were looking forward to getting back into open water and sailing overnight, Cita quailed at the prospect. Getting out of Cabbage Key was a cinch. Nothing like the spin cycle we were in getting out of Venice. Once out of the channel, we broke out the sails, tuned a smidge east of due south, woke Otto von Helm (autopilot) and settled in.

The wind was light — 10kts out of the south east. The sails settled the boat. We meandered towards Key West at a sluggardly 3.5 kts to weather. Late afternoon, the wind dropped down to about 5 – 6 kts. We kicked in the engine and started motoring. While it would have been fun to putter along, this would have meant getting to Key West on the manana plan — which wouldn’t have worked since we were meeting Joe there on Sunday. Motoring it was.

Sunset was spectacular. I forget what we had for dinner. My guess is that it was a beans and rice combo with veges that seems to work well when under way. I am not sure that cheesy stuff like lasagne and pasta works well for this. Cita and Denise deserted me after a while, and I was left on watch by myself at the tender mercy of the stars.

And then it got fun. Around midnight, the wind started to pick up and veer to the West. It climbed from the 5 – 6 kts it was to 10 – 12 kts, and then to 15 kts. Wheeee! Time to break out the sails. I couldn’t resist. The sails came out, Pearl heeled a bit, the engine was turned off. I was back in my element.

The wind continued to build until it was 20 – 25 kts — my idea of a great time. Unfortunately, since we were fairly deep, the water got choppy, Cita and Denise came back on deck. Denise was happy to be sailing again but Cita was beginning to look a bit green again. It was, however, had to deny Pearl the wind.That, was fun sailing. Stars. Brisk wind.

We made it to Key West on Saturday afternoon. The sun was out. We came in on the main ship channel from the north, following a barge with a tow. We followed the channel in, took the dogleg at the harbor to get to the Key West Bight Marina. Voila! Key West, and off to the Schooner Wharf bar for a cold Beer!

 

 

May 03, 2012 — Cabbage Key, FL

Key West, here we come! We were finally getting out into open water. Doing another ditch run to get us out of Sarasota was ok, however, I was dreaming of fair winds and open water. Getting out of the short narrow channel connecting Venice to the Gulf was like stepping from a bathtub in a washing machine on the wash cycle.

Cita, who is susceptible to motion sickness took about 5 mins of the wash cycle to turn green. Despite my attempts to get her to steer, look out into the distance, and otherwise do stuff, she averred and headed below. Big mistake, but sometime you just have to do what you feel like you have to do.

Once we got far enough from land, we unfurled the sails and headed south. This steadied the boat some, but we really didn’t make much headway as the winds were really light and from the south-south-east.

The further we got from land, the worse Cita felt got. Pearl’s pitching and roilling reall got to her. Hunkered down in the cockpit, poor Cita got the burps. Urrrrrrp! one-one-thousand-two-one-thousand … Urrrrrp! It seemed like she was burping every 15 – 30 secs on cue, like the mating call of a particularly persistent sea bird. Denise and I couldn’t figure out how and from where Cita generating so much gas.

After a while of getting nowhere slowly, we figured we’d furl the sails and motor towards Boca Grande, the entry point to Cabbage Key. As we approached the pass, we noticed a large fleet of sport fishing boats hanging around just off the main channel. The were casting vigorously for some large brownish fish or the other that seemed to come to the surface and do a little roll. At first I thought they were sharks hitting bait fish at the surface, but that wasn’t quite it. I was puzzled. And then it hit me. They were fishing for Tarpon — large, bony, spirited fish that need to breathe in air periodically.

[Curiously, the record for a Tarpon is something around 50 lbs, caught in Sri Lanka.]

As we got inside of Boca Grande and headed south, we noticed a pretty bay off to the south east — Pelican Bay. It had a few sailboats at anchor and it looked idyllic. Further, it would get the boat stopped and let poor Cita recover a bit. It wasn’t to be. Pelican Bay is only for shoal draft boats ( ~ 4ft draft) and Pearl does not qualify. Needless to say, we ran aground in the soft mud.

At this point, I really didn’t want to mess around any more. I wanted to make Cabbage Key before dark and get the anchor set for the night, so we motored down the ICW once more and did just that.