FairyChatMom, we should be leaving Savannah tomorrow, and getting into St. Augustine the day after. I’ll be sure to wave when I go by.
If you’re interested in possibly going down to St. Augustine and having a beer or a bite of dinner, I’d love to meet you (and any other Coastal North Florida Dopers). E-mail me.
Sunday, hmmm? We’ll be going to Daytona for Biketoberfest and coming back right past StAug. Lemme talk with my fambly and see if we can swing by for a meet-n-greet at the very least… I’ll e-mail ya!
And I’ll be fighting the temptation to stow away, especially after the week I’ve had!
Billdo, please keep posting!
Wasn’t Charleston beautiful?
Just posting to say I’m reading your dispatches with great interest – keep 'em coming. I wouldn’t want a lack of responses to indicate a lack of interest. 
sssooooo, very jealous now.
do you want to hear about work day from the uttermost depths of hades?
FairyChatMom, I’ve e-mailed you my cell phone number. I’m not sure when we’ll get in on Sunday, but if we don’t coordinate, you can try to stop by and find us at the St. Augustine Municipal Marina. I probably won’t be able to pick up e-mail after this, and cell service is sporadic offshore, but my phone always takes messages. (And we may be short of crew for a leg or two down the Florida coast. Hmmmmm…)
Sophie, I’m making enough people back on land jealous that I think I have to keep posting. Charleston really was beautiful. I’m glad we had to spend the extra days there waiting for the autopilot part. Though I must tell you that by the end, I was a bit sick and tired of all of the perfectly maintained historical houses and well-ordered shops. I was looking for something grungy or out of place, but I was utterly unable to find anything.
Jodi, this forum is Mundane and Pointless Stuff I Must Share. I’m not worried about a lack of interest, just an outlet for my blathering. Glad to hear you’re following along, though.
rocking chair, sure I’d like to hear about your hellish work day. It would make such an interesting contrast. I’m almost forgetting what a work day is like. 
See you all at the next port.
We’re 15 miles off the Georgia coast, powering south on a beautiful, flat, sunny, but mostly windless day.
Yesterday was spent hanging around the marina. We’re far enough ahead of schedule that we decided to spend an extra day at Palmer Johnson relaxing and waiting for a patch of high winds offshore to blow over.
The big activity of the day was an exercise of mounting the storm sails. After the big blow on the prior leg, we realized that we had a new storm jib and storm trysail, but had never taken them out of their bags. There was a light breeze blowing from starboard, just enough to allow the sails to draw slightly when we had them up.
We first mounted the storm jib, a small headsail designed to fit over a roller-furling jib. Along its luff (forward edge) it has a large flap of red sailcloth that wraps around the headstay and any the jib rolled up on it. The flap is fastened back to the luff of the sail by a series of clips.
Thus began an episode of the four stooges go sailing. Each of us had a slightly different idea of how the sail should go on, and the sail had a few ideas of its.
The first major tussle was when we tried to decide on the direction in which we should fasten the red flap around the headstay. The start-from-the-top and the start-from-the-bottom factions had some heated words over the issue. The dispute was finally resolved when someone noticed that the sailmaker had labeled each of the clips with a letter of the alphabet, starting with A at the top. I had no idea whether the order of the letters had any real significance, but it brought the warring parties together.
With this behind us, we started hanking the sail on from the top and slowly raising it. As the sail was about halfway up, someone had the clever idea that it would be nice to have the sheet (control line) attached to the clew (aft corner of the sail) so that the sail wouldn’t go flapping out-of-control across the dock when the wind caught it. Gene raced back and bent on the sheet before we look foolish over that.
Eventually we got the sail up and drawing nicely, with only minor arguments over what to do. After admiring our handiwork we took the sail down. Then we were faced with the task of folding it.
We’re a group of four experienced sailors who have collectively folded hundreds of sails. We each went to a corner of the sail (don’t ask how this is possible on a three-cornered sail), and each proceeded to fold in our own unique way. We soon realized that we were all working at cross-purposes, so we paired up and started to fold the sail in only two incompatible ways.
With Peggy and me working from the top, and Gene and Joe working from the bottom, we managed to meet in the middle only somewhat askew. Rather than face the horror that would be refolding, we declared it good enough and managed to squeeze it into the sailbag.
After a short break we attempted the storm trysail, a small sail to be set in place of the mainsail in high wind conditions. More hijinks ensued, but we managed to get the sail up without injuring any bystanders or ourselves. When had it raised, the crusty dockmaster walked by, looked up and down at our boat tied to the dock with this small sail set in a light breeze, and said: “That doesn’t count as sailing.”
When we finished our morning’s exercise, Peggy brought out the steak salad for lunch, and mixed up a pitcher of Planter’s Punch. We spent the afternoon lazing about. I think I won the high achiever award by walking into town to go the drugstore for some toothpaste.
For dinner we to Tubby’s Tank House, a local seafood restaurant. The special of the day was grilled mahi-mahi over angel hair pasta with a Thai peanut sauce. Peggy, Joe and I ordered it and were quite pleased. After dinner, and pie for dessert, we went out to Tubby’s deck, where they had a singer-guitar player playing tunes in the cool evening.
We went back to the boat fairly early, and I fell asleep almost immediately, worn out from my difficult day of relaxing. I woke up early and went onto shore to log onto the internet. While online, I found a page showing the naval ship that passed us on the way into Savannah. It was a Large, Medium-Speed Roll-on/Roll-off Ship ( http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/ships/ship-takr2.html ), which can carry an entire U.S. Army Task Force, including 58 tanks, 48 other track vehicles, plus more than 900 trucks and other wheeled vehicles.
After I logged off, I went back aboard, taking the morning’s Krispy Kremes aboard with me. Fortified with a donut, I went back ashore to sample Palmer Johnson’s fantastic shower facilities one last time. As we were making our preparations to depart, Joe dashed up for his last shower, and as he came back aboard, we commenced the process of casting off.
Getting away from the dock was a bit difficult as the wind was blowing us in and there was strong ebb current. We had to maneuver back and forth, and when the wind caught the bow, fend off the cruiser docked ahead of us. As we were maneuvering, and I was pulling our stern line, I heard a loud splash. One of our crewmembers had a misstep by the opening in the lifelines, reached out to grab the missing lifeline, couldn’t grab what wasn’t there, and fell into the water. I promised that crewmember that I wouldn’t reveal who it was in my journal, so I won’t.
After the splash, Peggy continued at the helm as I ran forward to fend off. Gene dropped a fender down from deck on a line, and the unnamed crewmember held on to it for a moment until a dockhand pulled the crewmember onto the swim platform of the cruiser ahead of us. We got the boat into the channel, and picked the crewmember up on the fuel dock. The unnamed crewmember then went below for his second shower in just a few minutes.
It was about 0900 when we were in the channel, underway, with our full complement of crew. I took the first watch, piloting us out the Wilmington River and Wassaw Sound. I extended my watch until we reached the offshore buoy at 1130 so Peggy should have some additional time to plot our course for the day and to pay her back a bit for the hour of watch I missed on the prior leg. I then went down for a short nap, came up, nibbled on some lunch, and pulled out my journal.
Dawn is breaking as I write this. We’re 15 miles off St. Augustine sailing along on a broad reach, gaining ground before we gibe back in. A band of low clouds stands like warriors to the east, guarding the arrival of the sun. Overhead it is clear, with only a few wispy cirrus clouds floating lazily along. Joe is lighting the stove for coffee, and Gene, on watch, is fiddling with his fishing gear.
Yesterday afternoon at about 1500, the wind had picked up enough to sail. We settled in on a broad reach, making about 5 knots of headway through the gentle swells in 8 knot winds. Gene had his fishing pole out, but was getting no hits.
At 1700 I began what turned out to be a glorious watch. The first half hour was quiet, sailing along and watching Gene change fishing lures. Then Peggy brought up dinner, a succulent beef stew she cooked in her pressure cooker.
As I was finishing my second helping, the dolphins came up. We had dolphins swimming and playing all around our boat. They’d broach right beside where I was sitting in the cockpit. Gene went forward to watch them play off our bow.
We watched the dolphins, transfixed, until Peggy brought up dessert. It was freshly baked pineapple right-side-up cake. It was originally supposed to be pineapple upside-down cake, but through wind, wave and minor galley mishap (my fault, actually), it righted itself. Whatever its attitude, it was mighty good.
The final scene of my watch was the sunset. At 1845 the sun turned from yellow to orange and began to sink slowly below the horizon. When it was about a quarter of the way down, it seemed to hesitate, not wanting to end the beautiful day. Eventually the forces of rotation got the best of it, and at 1900 I handed the wheel over to Peggy in the fading twilight.
After a brief snooze on deck, and a longer one in my bunk, I came up just after midnight for my 0100 watch. Sitting quietly on deck, enjoying the warm night, I fell asleep again. It was 0120 when I woke up to see Gene happily fiddling with the radar, unaware that his watch should have been over.
Gene went below to make a cup of soup while I began what would be a quiet watch. The only thing passing for excitement was a brightly-lit tug and tow crossing more than a mile abeam of us. At about 0200 we passed to the east of Jacksonville, 22 miles out to sea. (FairyChatMom, did you see me waiving?) At 0300, Peggy was still below, so I let her sleep for a while. At 0320, having served a full two hours, I woke her up. When she was ready, I passed her the helm and took my traditional post-watch nap on deck before going below to sleep in my bunk.
As I started to write this morning, the dolphins returned. This time there was a pod of at least a dozen of them, with several young. I interrupted my jotting to stand on the bow and watch as groups of four and five of them weaved their way across the front of the boat, swimming and cavorting, often broaching in unison. I hope my pictures came out.
aaaarrrghh, dolphins as well!!!
i always get a bit app. when dolphins play around boats. i’m afraid they will get hurt. on the other hand it is one of the greatest delights in the world. i hope your pictures look great.
and me at work just looking at the picture i took of a porpoise that danced around the boat in alaska.
Woo hoo!
Got to meet Billdo last night. Got a tour of Reality. Shared some beverages and munchies with the crew. Swapped sea stories. Watched the sun set in St. Augustine.
Notice the green?!? I am so envious! If I wasn’t a semi-responsible adult, I’d have tried to stow away.
Eagerly looking forward to the rest of the voyage! At least I can sail vicariously… <sigh>
Hey Billdo…i’ve been keeping up on your logs and have enjoyed reading about your adventure…sounds like the four of you are having a great trip…not to mention the fishbite, the man overboard, the misfunctioning autopilot, the jammed steering, and wasn’t there a near miss with a barge or large boat?? great memories are being made with every adventure…is there any room on board for everyone with all that food and drink that was taken along? the meals sound terrific…of course, why wouldn’t they be considering the great cook you have on board…stay awake on your watches and keep safe…ohhhhh, and could you do me a favor? say hi to my sister,Peggy, and my nephew, Gene, for me… btw…great pictures too…nice looking crew and i have never seen a better looking bloody hand…
Hey Billdo-
Got your postcard and finally had a chance to read your whole thread. Looking forward to hearing more…
Back from a day of sightseeing in St. Augustine, I’m sitting on deck, having a beer, and writing my journal.
After the sunrise of the dolphins, I took the helm at 0900 as we sailed up to the St. Augustine Inlet sea buoy. When we turned off the autopilot to furl our sails in preparation for entering harbor, I found that the steering problem had returned.
The problem occurs only when turning the wheel to starboard with the autopilot disengaged. Sometimes the wheel will “hang” and stop rotating no matter how hard you turn it. If you shift the wheel slightly to port it will release, and you can continue to turn the wheel to starboard. It has happened both with the autopilot control arm attached and with it detached, though it appears to be a bit better with it detached. We’ve examined every part of the steering system that we can get to, and can find no answers. Perhaps on the next leg we’ll have some more methodical sea trials to see if we can find some pattern to its happening.
Gene had taken the wheel when the problem occurred and kept it for the run in, while I kept an eye on the chart. Coming out of the inlet was some sort of huge monstrosity, with all sorts of strange booms and masts sticking up and out. Looking at it through the binoculars, we guessed that it was a dredge barge being pulled by one tug and pushed by another.
Because it was taking up most of the channel, we tried to call it on the radio. When we eventually got it, its captain answered in a thick-as-mud drawl. I asked what side he would prefer us to pass him on. The upshot of his response (or at least what I could gather from his barely understandable voice over the radio) was that he was coming straight down the middle of the channel, and he didn’t give a damn what we did. I told him we’d pass him starboard-to-starboard. He didn’t even bother to respond. Gene steered us through the inlet, around the tug, and down the somewhat confusingly marked channel toward the marina.
As we approached, Peggy tried to raise the marina on the radio. Initially, she used the formally correct radio hail: “Conch House Marina, Conch House Marina, this is the Sailing Vessel Reality.” When they did not answer the first hail, she gave the somewhat more informal: “Conch House Marina, Conch House Marina, come back to Reality.” As usual with this hail, this got their attention, and they responded with our dockage assignment. Gene kept the wheel as we docked, piloting us neatly onto the head of a T dock in an adverse wind and current.
After we got settled down, we went into town. St. Augustine the oldest continuously-occupied (by Europeans) community in the United States, having been founded by the Spanish in 1565. In its long history, it has been controlled by Spain, England, the United States (briefly), Spain, the United States, the Confederate States (briefly), and the United States. In the late 1800’s it was developed as a resort town by railroad magnate Henry Flagler.
The city is a fascinating mix of Spanish colonial, British colonial, turn-of-the-century overwrought American excess and (fortunately not too much) late 20th-century American tourist trap excess. The range of attractions include: the Castillo De San Marco, a fort built by the Spanish between 1672 and 1695, which was never taken in battle despite many attempts; the Gonzalez-Alverez House, a house built in the early 1700s and occupied and modified over its life by a of a Spanish soldier, a British tavern-keeper, another Spanish family, an American who turned it into a tourist trap, and finally the St. Augustine Historical Society, which restored it; the Ponce de Leon Hotel, built by Henry Flagler in 1888 as a top-of-the-line luxury hotel, now converted into Flagler College; and the original Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum.
We’ve spent the last day and a half touring the city’s various attractions. It was definitely worth the visit.
It’s 1430 on a gray afternoon. We’re about 6 miles from the Florida coast, heading south. We’re on a port tack just off downwind under mainsail alone, making about 4 knots in 7 knots of wind. I’ve been on watch since 1400, and its been so quiet I thought I’d pull out my journal just to keep myself alert. So, as I scan the empty horizon between sentences, here goes.
Yesterday evening we were visited on the boat by message board member FairyChatMom and her husband. They live in Jacksonville, about an hour north, and have a 37 foot Fisher sailboat. Peggy made appetizers, and we all sat on deck for a couple of hours chatting mostly about sailing-related topics. FairyChatMom said that she did, in fact, stay up to 0200 the other night to watch me waiving offshore, but she didn’t say it very convincingly.
When Gene’s job this past summer as a sailing instructor came up, the FairyChats talked about how they met, when they both were in the Navy. He was a sailing instructor (how’s that for a rough billet to have), and she had just transferred onto base. She decided that taking sailing lessons would be a good way to meet people. Four weeks later they were married, and the marriage is still going strong after 18 years. Joe responded that he too had eloped, but for a change he didn’t start telling Air Force stories of his own.
The FairyChats eventually said that they had to get up early for work tomorrow. We took them for a tour of the boat below decks, and somehow we continued talking. After a few more “we gotta go’s” over an indeterminate time, we managed to disengage from chatting and they left.
After that we went into town for dinner at the Columbia Restaurant, which bills itself as Florida’s best Spanish restaurant. Joe and Gene had the house special Red Snapper Alacante, Peggy had the Filet Mignon with flaming Bourbon sauce, and I had shrimp and chicken in a lobster bisque sauce. After a great dinner, none of us was in a position to argue with the restaurant’s claim.
As we were preparing for bed back on the boat, Peggy set the air conditioning the way she likes it, approximately meat locker temperature. When I woke up shivering in the middle of the night, I had to zip myself entirely into my sleeping bag to get warm. I waited until Peggy woke up and could be convinced to turn the air conditioning down before I came out of my cocoon.
We woke up to a foggy morning and slowly made preparations to get underway. Gene went into the aft locker to reconnect the autopilot, and in his explorations got a strong lead on the problem.
It seems that the autopilot control arm that was just replaced sometimes gets stuck as it is being pushed in by the steering gear. The problem does not seem to occur when the autopilot is engaged and controls the steering with its motor. However when it is on standby or powered off, it will stick when the control is being forced to retract as the wheel is turned to starboard.
We’re now prepared to disconnect the autopilot control arm rapidly in the event of a problem. We’re still confused as to why a brand new control arm would break, and why we’ve had similar problems when the arm is disconnected.
At 1000, when the fog had lifted a bit, we took off. Once we got to the St. Augustine Inlet sea buoy, we put up the mainsail and decided that the jib would be more trouble than it was worth on our downwind point of sail. Once we got settled down, I went below to read and take a brief nap.
From the time I went topside an hour before my watch until now, as my watch is nearing its end, I’ve seen only one other vessel in the slowly lifting haze.
Hey, man. Checking on the SDMB for the first time in about a week and a half due to surgery. Glad you’re having fun. When you due back?
Yoiks - gave you the wrong impression here, I fear. Steve was teaching sailing outside of his regular duties - evenings and weekends. Tho I know he’d kill to get an instructor billet at the Academy… After we wed, we taught the next class together. Then we quit teaching and life moved on.
Well, rats! If we’d known that’s where you were going to eat, we’d have skipped a good night’s sleep!! We enjoyed our dining experience there once upon a time - hmmm, Steve’s got a b-day on Sat - mayhaps that’s where I’ll take him…
We’re in Port Canaveral, Fla., the inlet just below Cape Canaveral. The skies are darkening as a thunderstorm gets ready to blow through.
My 1400-1600 watch yesterday remained dead to the end, with the only change being slowly dropping wind. By the middle of the next watch, Gene reported that the wind had gone down to three knots, and were only making one knot of progress. Peggy denied his request to start the engine, as dinner was almost ready.
Peggy soon brought up chicken in a Madeira wine sauce with mushrooms, carrots and potatoes. Dessert was a homemade apple crisp. After we ate, we threw on the engine and started to power to the south.
After dinner I went below to read for a while and, you guessed it, nap before my watch. My 2200 watch was another peaceful one, running under power on the autopilot. The one point of interest was a small ship that ran into our path, and then stopped. It was brightly lit and appeared to be a passenger-carrying vessel. Our best guess was that it was a gambling ship that had gone into the high seas outside the 12-mile limit and stopped. With a small course change on the autopilot, we easily avoided it.
At 0000 I handed the watch over to Gene and fell asleep on deck. This time I stayed asleep on deck until my next watch at 0600, which was a sunrise watch.
As the skies gradually lightened, we piloted our way into Port Canaveral. At 0800 I was on the wheel and Peggy and Joe were on deck. Peggy asked if I wanted her to go wake Gene up for his watch, and I said that I’d keep the wheel to give him some sleep. About 20 minutes later he stuck his head out commenting how he guessed he overslept.
We tried hailing the marina on the radio several times as we approached, but got no response. We pulled ourselves into the marina’s fuel dock and tied ourselves up. Peggy went up to the office to see if we could get someone to assist in fueling us.
A few minutes later a small U.S. Navy harbor security patrol boat piloted by a civilian security officer came up to the fuel dock. I helped him tie up, and we started to chat.
Some time later a rather surly young dockhand appeared. He was dressed in a tan work shirt with the marina’s name on a patch over the breast pocket. To go with the uniform shirt, he was wearing a pair of bright orange baggy pants that stopped at mid-calf level with snaps running down the side.
Almost as soon as he opened his mouth, his dominant characteristic became apparent: his utter and profound absence of awareness of what was going on around him. When he came down the dock he saw Reality and asked if it was ours. When I replied in the affirmative, he asked for her name. I said “Reality” and pointed down to the name painted in foot-high letters on the side of the hull. Perhaps because he expected to fuel the naval patrol boat Warlock (docked just a few feet behind us), or perhaps just taken aback when confronted with Reality, he asked for the name of the boat again. I repeated the name, again pointed to the foot-high letters on the hull, and you could see the gears in his brain creak slowly in comprehension as he carefully wrote it down on his receipt pad.
As we were fueling, Gene asked him what there was to do in the area. Despite our being in the heart of ‘Florida’s Space Coast’ tourist area, the dockhand’s only response was that there were a couple of clubs in Orlando, but they were a 45 minute drive away. The idea that an arriving sailboat might not have automotive transportation had apparently never crossed the two working synapses in his brain. Joe quipped, “we had better start walking now,” but apparently this blew right by him.
As we were finishing fueling our boat, the dockhand looked over at the security officer and asked if we were together. I still can’t figure out under what possible circumstances a uniformed, armed naval security officer would be with the crew of an incoming cruising sailboat. The dockhand then commented what a great job the officer must have, cruising around the harbor all day with a six-pack. He didn’t seem to have any idea of what the naval authorities might think about their security officers having a six-pack on duty.
When we were all done, Gene asked the dockhand if he could assist us in getting off the dock. The dockhand asked when we were leaving, and Gene replied, “immediately.” The dockhand then turned and walked up the dock. When Gene tracked him down in the marina office, the dockhand said that he had sent someone (who never appeared). We got ourselves off, and were helped into our overnight slip by a couple of dockhands, who appeared to be the two competent people that actually made the marina run.
When we went up to the marina office we saw that the attitude and aptitude of orange-pants-boy was not unique among the marina staff. Never in our over a century of collective boating experience had we seen a marina office staffed with so many people doing so little (and poorly at that).
After waiting on line for quite a few minutes at the dockmaster’s office, the dockmaster told us that she had put our materials out front at the cash register in the marina store so we could pay for our dockage and fuel together. Unfortunately orange-pants-boy was now behind the register. Eventually he figured out how to run Peggy’s credit card through the charge machine. When she was signing the charge slip she realized that she had only been charged for the fuel, and not the dockage. This befuddled him so much that he had to call the dockmaster for help.
Once we finished at the marina office, we spent a lazy afternoon aboard and ashore. I walked the almost 4 miles to Jetty Park at the inlet, and saw that we were indeed in the middle of a major commercial shipping port, with little around it. All of the attractions of Florida’s Space Coast were quite a distance away.
No one that I asked had any idea how to get from the port to the Kennedy Space Center by public transportation. I called the local transit system, Space Coast Area Transit (with the unfortunate acronym SCAT). After waiting while the hold recording proudly told me that they serve more than 2,800 riders per day - I’ve been on subways with more people than that - the customer service representative explained that Space Coast Transit does not go to the Space Center.
As I sit here on deck and eat Peggy’s famous bean dip while waiting for the rain to come, I’m still trying to figure out the easiest way to get to the Space Center.
Bill’s Boating Safety Tip of the Day: A boat down the dock from us has a white-painted plow anchor mounted on the bow rail. Neatly lettered down the shank is this important safety advice: “Not for use as a flotation device!”
We’re underway from Port Canaveral to Fort Lauderdale in 20 knots of wind and 6 foot slow-rolling seas. We’re under storm jib and reefed main on a broad reach, and the autopilot is keeping up with the seas broad on our quarter. I’m on watch, and there’s no one else around us, so I have time to catch up on my journal.
After Peggy’s bean dip the night before last, we ate dinner below as a series of aggressive thunderstorms came through. Peggy made bow tie pasta with chicken, rice, beans, chili and tomatoes. We opened a bottle of red wine that we got in the small winery in St. Augustine, and discovered why North Coastal Florida is not known among the major wine-producing regions of the world. I could have made better by spiking sweetened grape juice with vodka - imagine a harsher Maneschevitz without the subtlety and grace.
My activity for the evening was laundry. As I was waiting for the dryers to slowly dry my clothes, I had an inspiration. It’s off-season and we’re in Florida, land of the cheap car rentals. There was an Avis dealer at a hotel up the road, so I made a one-day reservation for a subcompact at a rate of $32.00, including taxes.
In the morning, as scheduled, Joe left us. His nephew Phil and Phil’s wife Mary Ann came to pick him up. Joe was going to stay with them at their house in Daytona Beach for a few days and then return to New York. We hugged and said our goodbyes, sniffling over what a great time we had.
I got the car, and Gene and I went off to the Kennedy Space Center. Peggy had been there before, and wanted a day aboard to get organized. It looked like just about every vehicle in the parking lot was a rental car, so I decided to park right next to the “Parking Area 4 - Discovery” sign to avoid having to try my key in each of the hundreds of white Chevys in the lot.
Gene and I went to the ticket booth and got our passes. As we were on line, we noticed a security officer with a submachine gun across his shoulder in addition to his pistol. We went through an airport-style metal detector before the entrance turnstiles.
The first thing we decided to do was to take the bus to the Apollo/Saturn V exhibit. As we were walking down the cattle chutes to the buses, an attendant tapped me on the shoulder and said, “you’ll be my next bus.” As I contemplated my future life as her bus, she snapped a chain across the path and walked away. A moment later she came back and directed me and those following me to the third bus waiting nearby. As the first two on the bus, Gene and I got the first seat.
During the drive there were short video segments about the Space Center interspersed between the driver discussing what we were passing. Security remained tight; the bus driver (driving a brightly-painted Kennedy Space Center bus) was required to show his ID card at a road checkpoint. Along the way we passed the Vehicle Assembly Building, an absolutely massive structure built to assemble the moon rockets, and now used to put together the Space Shuttles.
When we got to the Apollo/Saturn V exhibit building, we first went into a room with a very good video presentation on the history of the space race and the moon rocket program. After that we passed into the actual launch control room used for the Apollo launches. In it they replayed over video screens and on the clocks and instruments the launch countdown sequence from Apollo 7. There was a strong tension in the room even for the reenactment. After the launch, the doors opened into the main exhibit hall containing an actual Saturn V moon rocket.
The Saturn V rocket is huge!
That’s really all there is to say. The immensity of the three main rocket stages - fuel canisters stacked up to propel a small capsule into space - is breathtaking. The Space Shuttle, even with its tank and rocket boosters, is at least on a human scale. The Saturn V is a Roman candle of the gods.
In among the exhibits was a true treasure, a white-haired gentleman wearing a Rockwell jacket like those stacked on the backs of the chairs in launch control. He had been an engineer for the fuel systems in the second stage of the rocket, and had been in launch control for each of the Apollo take-offs. He was there as a volunteer, answering questions from the public.
We had lunch in a cafe there, and saw the Apollo XI landing and moonwalk presentation. As we were waiting in a corridor for the doors of the theater to open, there were televisions above our heads broadcasting news footage leading up to the landing. The broadcasts stopped at the moment when the lander went around the dark side of the moon and mission control lost contact. As we filed into the theater, the repeated radio hails, “Eagle, this is Houston,” echoed ominously.
As we took our seats, contact was regained, with the men at Mission Control in Houston on film showing visible relief as Neil Armstrong’s voice came over the radio. I didn’t realize how dicey the actual landing was. Contact with the lander was lost unexpectedly several times before touchdown, and the computer control over the landing site was a significant distance off. Armstrong took over manual control of the lander in the last moments to get it down, using almost all of his maneuvering reserve of fuel. We saw the men in Mission Control holding their breaths as the fuel timer was running out. We were almost as relieved as they were when we heard: “This is Tranquility Base, the Eagle has landed.” The moon walk was almost an anti-climax after that.
We went back to the main visitor complex and saw several other exhibits, including a full-size mockup of the Space Shuttle, the astronauts memorial wall, and an Imax film about the Shuttle, with large segments shot by astronauts in space.
When we were done with the Space Center, we drove back to the boat and picked up Peggy. We went for dinner at the Durango Steakhouse, where Gene and I had some very good steaks, and Peggy had beef fajitas. We then went to the grocery store for provisions, and stopped in Ron Jon, a massive, 24-hour surf shop in Cocoa Beach, where we found nothing worthwhile to buy. We loaded our provisions onto the boat, and I wrote some postcards before falling asleep.
In the morning I returned the car after a stop at the post office. When I got back, we left the slip in a highly adverse wind and current. It wasn’t pretty, but we got out without injuring any persons or vessels.
While we were still in the harbor, Gene and I went forward to hank on the storm jib. It went much more smoothly than our trial run, though we did find that fastening it from the bottom was the thing to do, despite the letter coding.
Once we got out of the harbor, we hoisted our sails and were underway. With the short-handed crew, Peggy decided that we each stand 3 hour watches to give ourselves a full 6 hours between watches. As I started my watch at 1400, I have the helm until 1700.
Bill’s Boating Safety Tip of the Day: This one is submitted by Gene, who suggests that when raising a foresail, it is not recommended that one stand straddling the windward jib sheet when it can be jerked violently upward when the sail catches wind.
We’re 7 miles north of the Sea Buoy outside Fort Lauderdale. Wind and sea conditions remain about the same as yesterday, with us on a broad reach in 20 knots of wind over large rolling seas.
Most of my first watch yesterday was uneventful, until about a half-hour before the end. I was sitting just in front of the wheel, when I heard the autopilot beeping. I jumped around the helm, and saw the autopilot flashing “motor off.” I jabbed the standby button, and felt the wheel freeze in my hands. I yelled for Gene to disconnect the control arm, and once he did I could steer again.
Gene climbed into the aft locker to investigate and found that the control arm would neither extend nor retract in standby mode. It did, however, seem to work in autopilot mode. Peggy came up and took the wheel as Gene and I worked to reconnect the control arm. Once together and switched on, the autopilot seemed to be working fine.
Gene went below while Peggy and I were on deck. A few minutes later, the autopilot went out again. Peggy grabbed the wheel as I dived for the aft locker to disconnect the control arm. We were back to hand steering for the rest of the trip to Ft. Lauderdale, where we hope we can get the autopilot fixed.
I finished out my watch and handed over the wheel to Gene at 1700. I tried napping on deck, but the motion of the boat made me slide of the cockpit seat, do I went below and slept in my bunk until a bit before my 2300 watch.
My 2300 watch was mostly uneventful, with just a few other vessels passing some distance away. I kept myself going with Wint-O-Green Life Savers and Jolly Ranchers. When Gene came up at 0200, he had the clever idea of putting the stereo on with the speakers set to play only outside.
I tossed and turned more than slept until 0700, when I went on deck for the sunrise in advance of my 0800 watch. As Peggy handed over the wheel, she said she had decided to go back to 2 hour watches. She went below and set an alarm clock next to Gene’s ear.
My 0800 watch was fun, with a bit of traffic to liven up the morning. Just before my watch, I had stacked the CD player. I started out with Supertramp’s Breakfast in America, which I decided was the perfect album for a morning watch.
At about 0900 I saw a ship in the distance that looked a bit unusual. It quickly approached and I thought to myself that it was either some specialized merchant ship or a warship. As it passed abeam of me about two miles away, I saw it had a large turret gun on the foredeck, and the lean lines of a destroyer. It was another naval vessel hard at work.
As we approach Fort Lauderdale, the sun is forming a circular rainbow around the mast.
I’m taking a vacation from my vacation as I fly up to New York from Fort Lauderdale for a few days.
I took over the watch at 1400 yesterday as we were approached the sea buoy off Port Everglades, Fort Lauderdale’s seaport. There was a great deal of heavy shipping in the channel, so we decided to furl our sails a ways from the sea buoy.
Because we were using the storm jib, which fastened over the roller furling jib, Gene had to go up to the forward deck to help haul it down and secure it to the deck. I had to turn the bow into the wind to drop the sail, which also meant that we were headed directly into the six-foot waves.
In a sea, a boat can be seen as a see-saw with a moving fulcrum. The boat pivots on its momentary center of buoyancy, which shifts forward and aft as wave peaks and troughs pass along the hull. To bring the sail down, Gene was perched on the bow rail, just about as forward as it was possible to go. As such, he was on the very end of the see-saw, and the longer end at that, as the bulk of the buoyant volume of the boat is located aft.
In a following or quartering sea, as we have had for most of the trip, the boat is moving in the same direction as the waves. This means that the boat’s rocking motion is relatively slow (though the seas coming from astern can easily turn the boat, making steering difficult). In contrast, when heading into the seas the boat’s speed and the waves’ speed of advance add together to make for a very short period to the boat’s oscillations. As a consequence, the waves become much steeper relative to the boat’s progress, making the boat’s motion both quicker and more aggressive.
As I headed into the wind and seas, the bow began quite dramatically to dive toward the waves and then hurl toward the skies. We started dropping the sail as we were coming into the wind, and as Gene moved quickly to bring the sail in he didn’t immediately notice the motion. However, once he paused for a moment before lashing the sail down, he realized he was moving about rather more than he cared to be.
I was holding the boat steady into the wind and seas so as not to change the motion as Gene moved about the deck, until Gene, frozen in place, started waving frantically for me to turn before he was going anywhere. Once we were off the wind a bit, and the mainsail was filled to steady us, he shifted back to lash down the sail and then came aft. Furling the mainsail was much easier, as it is an in-mast roller furling system, which can be fully controlled from the cockpit.
Once we were settled down, I turned west to head into the Port Everglades Inlet. As I was heading down the center of the channel between the first set of buoys, for the heck of it I squared myself on a pair of range lights marking the center of the channel. I was glad that I did because I soon found that the strong winds and seas coming from the north were pushing the boat quickly toward the south edge of the channel. I had to turn the boat almost 30 degrees to starboard to crab up to the center of the channel as we got to the entrance breakwaters.
Once inside the harbor, things quieted down. We turned south down a channel where several cruise ships were docked. Outboard of them were two marine patrol boats and two of the ships’ lifeboats keeping us on the east side of the channel, well away from the cruise ships. After a turn into a side channel, we called the Harbor Towne Marina and were directed into a slip. It is a lovely facility with competent help, despite the silly spelling of its name.
Over the past few days I have been growing a bit homesick for my friends and family in New York. Also, it was our 21st day out, and even when you get along with them very well, after three weeks in a 47-foot boat with the same people it can get a bit close. In addition, there were a few loose ends in New York that I had left undone in my rush to get away
Because we were so far ahead of schedule, and we were waiting for our new crew member, Joan, to fly in on Thursday, and we were scheduled to be in Fort Lauderdale for almost a week. I decided that if I could get a good fare, I would fly back to New York for a few days. I got a very nice internet price on an early morning flight today and a late return flight on Thursday. Unfortunately, I’ll have to miss the Fort Lauderdale boat show, one of the biggest, but I’m on my way home.