Panama

Our approach to Colón, Panamá was both thrilling and intimidating, intensified by occurring at the end of a 4-day passage with little sleep, right at first light on the morning of May 14. We hadn’t seen a fleet of freighters that size since we were in Singapore and maneuvering among them was a true white-knuckle experience.  Regulations required us to contact ‘Cristóbal Signal Station’ on the radio when we were within 2 miles of the entrance to Colón harbor and though they were extremely busy, they gave us explicit instructions.  Entering right behind us through the opening in the 3-mile long breakwater was one of the mammoth Disney cruise ships, which had to slow down to match our snail’s pace of 6 knots so as not to over-run us.  It was a relief to pull into Shelter Bay Marina with its substantial docks, excellent facilities and mill pond-like conditions.  They made us a pretty good offer on an extended-stay rate which we accepted and we got started on the long list of projects we wanted to complete before we left for San Diego.

Shelter Bay Marina is on the grounds of what used to be Fort Sherman, one of two military installations built by the US to provide security for the Panama Canal.  Both installations were turned over to the Panamanian government in 1999 as part of the treaty signed by Jimmy Carter.  However, the Panamanian government either wasn’t interested or didn’t have the resources to maintain the buildings, roads and other aspects of a large, complex installation and the jungle is a powerful force that will overtake whatever it wants unless a great deal of time and effort is spent to keep it at bay.  Wild life abounds in the form of mantled howler monkeys, white-headed capuchin monkeys, sloths, iguanas, crocodiles and lots more.  From our berth at the marina, we could hear the howler monkeys.

Also near the grounds of Fort Sherman is the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Fuerte San Lorenzo, a fort built in the 16^th century to protect Panama’s Caribbean coast.  We toured the fort which was fascinating but lost count of how many times it was destroyed and rebuilt (I don’t remember who destroyed it the first time but I do remember that Sir Henry Morgan (of the rum fame) destroyed it the second time.).

The majority of cruising sailboats transit the Panama Canal in the December to February time frame and though many slips at the marina were empty, there were still a few cruisers there and they made an effort to maintain a ‘community’.  The morning ‘net’ on the VHF radio was expertly controlled by any one of several volunteers and it seemed to have a pretty good level of participation.  There were daily yoga lessons, water aerobics in the swimming pool and a weekly pot luck dinner.  As with many cruiser communities we’ve become associated with, there were a few people who seemed to be there forever, some that knew everything and some who had nothing to do with anyone.

The Panama Canal Authority requires every yacht that transits the Canal to have at least four line handlers and whereas a transiting yacht can always hire professional line handlers, it’s cheaper and more fun to recruit a fellow cruiser who is interested in gaining the experience before they take their own boat through.  I posted a 3x5 index card on a bulletin board near the marina office that Ruthie and I were available as volunteer line handlers and less than 30 minutes later, there was a knock on Rutea’s hull and there stood Luc, a Belgian who was looking for two line handlers for his 54-foot catamaran.  He invited us for cocktails that night and it was there we met his wife, Elaine.  Luc speaks excellent English but Elaine not so much and their three young children not at all.  Their transit was to be a single-day, meaning there would be no overnight mooring in Lake Gatun.  Since we needed to pick up our Canal Authority-assigned advisor at 0500 at the ‘Flats’, we needed to leave the marina at about 0300.  It was hard for either Ruthie or me to get much sleep that night, knowing that we’d have to wake up at about 0200, make coffee and button up Rutea for the day.  We were right on time as we were about to step aboard the big cat when Luc met us on the dock.  Our transit had been postponed by a day.  “Go back to bed,” said Luc.

Gatun Locks with Giles and Artur

The next morning, at the same time, we cast off the dock lines shortly after 0300 and steamed towards the rendezvous point.  Our advisor was right on time and we were just heading into the first of the three Gatun Locks as the sun was rising.

One of 46 tugs used at the Canal - $15M each

There are any one of several configurations that a yacht can be assigned when transiting the Canal.  If there are several yachts transiting at the same time, a ‘raft’ can be formed and the outside boats have the required 7/8” lines go ashore where workers place the eyes in the ropes around massive bollards.  Another configuration is for the yacht to be against the wall of the Canal and hopefully the robust fenders that the agent provided will keep the yacht from being damaged.  A third option is for the yacht to tie up to a tug or work boat that is tied to the wall.  The big cat we were on was assigned to tie up to a 60-foot work boat.  The work boat was kind of a grungy thing and since it didn’t have an enclosed toilet, the owner had opted to rent a ‘porta-pottie’ and place it on the aft deck as Canal regulations require all vessels to have an enclosed head.  Besides showing lots of wear and tear, the work boat belched thick clouds of black exhaust from its engines, which were never shut down.

Bridge of the Americas

Our transit went smoothly enough and was even boring at times.  We made it through the final lock and into the Pacific while it was still light and anchored between Isla Culebra and Isla Flamenco.  Luc and Elaine offered to take Ruthie and me out for dinner but the children were already falling asleep, so we requested they just take us ashore.  They insisted, though, woke the children and all of us piled into their small dinghy for a wet ride into the dinghy dock.  We had dinner, found a nice hotel, said ‘au revoir’ to Luc, Elaine and family, got a decent night’s sleep and took a bus back to Colón.

The next couple of weeks where whirlwinds of activity aboard Rutea as we prepared her to sit patiently in her slip while Ruthie and I returned to San Diego.  We were able to find a cruiser who was willing to look in on Rutea and that gave us a little piece of mind that if something were to happen, at least we’d know about it before we returned to be surprised.  We left Shelter Bay Marina and Rutea in the early morning and shared a cab with a cruiser who had business in Panama City, about an hour-and-a-half drive away.  We checked into the squeaky clean Hotel Coral Suites and even though we were there well before check-in time, they showed us to our spacious room.

Armed with a copy of Lonely Planet for Panama, its top edge fluttering with bits of paper marking important pages, we set out to discover this city whose skyline resembles that of Miami Beach in Florida.  As per usual, Ruthie and I walk everywhere and, fortunately, Panama City is mostly very flat.  That didn’t stop me, though, from working up enough perspiration to completely soak my clothes, the tropical heat and humidity continuously torturing me.

One of the highlights of our tour was visiting the old part of Panama City, which, like many cities, has undergone revitalization and now hosts trendy shops and tony eateries.  We easily spent three hours in the museum on the building of the Panama Canal, the saga of which almost reads like a fictional murder mystery.  For lunch, we walked back to the fish market, a massive facility for both wholesale and retail seafood sales, complete with many restaurants and stalls.

That evening we got together with a cruising couple we had met at Shelter Bay Marina (who were also leaving their boat and heading home) and after cocktails in our room, we walked to a restaurant with a dinner show featuring traditional Panamanian folk dancing which was far from professional but had much in the way of effort, dignity and pride.  We all felt it was very worthwhile and the food was pretty good, too.

Then, one more time, Ruthie and I boarded a plane for home, knowing that probably it would be the last time we’d leave Rutea in a foreign port and fly home.

Book Review of 200,000 Miles by Jimmy Cornell

I wrote this review on my iPhone while waiting for a flight and had originally posted this on cruisersforum.com but only got one reply.  Just yesterday, I got the idea of submitting it to some of the cruising magazines for publication, however, a search revealed that there are already many reviews of the book published.  I like my review better.

Ruthie with Jimmy Cornell

While we were at the United States Boat Show in Annapolis October, 2017, we had the good fortune to meet Jimmy Cornell at the Hydrovane booth. We purchased his book, 200,000 Miles, had him autograph it, chatted for a couple of seconds, took a photo and got out of the way as a long line of other cruisers were waiting to meet him as well. This is my take on the book. 

Most cruisers know Jimmy Cornell as the author of World Cruising Routes, what many in the cruising community consider the Bible of guide books. Our own copy of WCR is badly worn, many of the pages dog-eared, some pages stained with spilled coffee, lots of notes in the margins, etc. Whenever we're planning a passage, it's our first reference - you would think that as many times as we've referred to it, we'd have it memorized by now. Of course, we haven't always agreed with the advice in WCR (it suggests giving the north end of Madagascar a 20-mile wide berth - it would have been much better to keep 'one foot on the beach') but we largely credit its advice for making our circumnavigation free from hazardous conditions - that and good luck. Even if you're not considering a circumnavigation, the book is an interesting read. But, this review isn't about WCR. 

200,000 Miles is part autobiography and part 'how to' manual. He describes his humble beginnings in Communist Romania, his father who challenged the Party and his fascination with the sea for which he had no explanation. Born with both brains and brawn, he managed to get to the UK, where he met and married Gwenda, who bore them a son and a daughter. A career with the BBC allowed him some freedom of movement and while the children were still young, he bought Aventura, a small ketch on which they completed a 7-year circumnavigation, the first of his three. This was well before the advent of electronic navigation and Jimmy would always announce their position and distance covered in the last 24 hours at lunch - when they launched their cruising website, it was Jimmy's son who suggested they call it 'noonsite'.

It was fun to read about many of the same places we had visited: Vanuatu, Suwarrow, Thailand, Chagos, South Africa and St. Helena to name a few. However, his description of cruising Antarctica was enough for me to slam the book shut, look my wife in the eye and say, "We're going!" Whereas I found some of his descriptions of places to be a little tedious (" . . . and we were warmly welcomed by the people there . . . "), his vivid descriptions of cruising Antarctica were captivating, compelling and fantastic. My wife and I were fortunate to have been able to cruise Patagonia aboard some friend's boat (got to sail around Cape Horn, go ashore, meet the lighthouse keeper and his wife, have our passports stamped) but JC's description of Antarctica makes me want to make that our next destination. 

I didn't find his trip through the Northwest Passage to be nearly as interesting but I was able to still learn much from it (a Diesel engine will run on Jet-A fuel although JC added 2-stroke motor oil).

He occasionally went on a rant - he finds it incredulous that so many cruisers no longer carry paper charts (guilty) and that he thinks it's completely unnecessary to have an outboard motor of more than 5hp (we have a 5hp outboard but we also have a 15hp - guess which one we use most?).

It was almost a relief to learn that Jimmy Cornell isn’t a ‘purist’:  When he realized that he was running late to make the attempt at the Northwest Passage, he put Aventura IV on a freighter in order to arrive at the jumping off point on time.  Whereas he’s capable of undertaking most repairs himself, he doesn’t hesitate to hire mechanics, laborers, etc to do the work.

Throughout the book are his suggestions in a blue field (titled ‘Tips’) and I found I agreed with most of them (paper charts notwithstanding) and even gave me validation for some of my laziness - if Jimmy Cornell stores his boat with the main left bent to the boom, so can I.  Also, there are lots of quotes from people, some famous, some not.  Only go on trips with people you love. –Ernest Hemingway

There is a long chapter about cruising rallies and JC rightfully takes credit for establishing them as a viable way to cruise. He doesn't explain well how he was able to organize so many of the events that participants of his rallies were able to enjoy but I was envious as I read about the meetings with mayors, governors and kings. Still, it's hard for me to imagine a satisfying circumnavigation in 17 months - we're well into 7 years and we're not finished yet (there's still Antarctica!).

The photographs in the book, of which there are many, are breathtaking. It made me realize that despite the thousands of photographs that we've taken, it hasn't been enough. Perhaps it's the photographs of Antarctica that has me swooning but, regardless, most of the other photos are likely to light a fire under the most sedentary cruiser. 

Granted, I was predisposed to liking the book before I bought it - World Cruising Routes has been a big part of our circumnavigation – but, nonetheless, I found 200,000 Miles to be a worthwhile read, if not great literature. Highly recommended.  Available on amazon.com.

Jamaica

View from Erroll Flynn Marina

While we were still in the Bahamas, were ‘discussing’ our route to Jamaica.  We had wanted to visit Cuba but our insurance carrier specifically excluded coverage for Cuba, Venezuela and Honduras.  There was no argument about whether to transit the Windward Passage but there was ‘discussion’ on whether we should head for Kingston (on the south side of Jamaica) or to Port Antonio on the north shore.  The main advantage, in my point of view, was that Kingston offered a better angle at which to cross the western Caribbean – if we were on the north side, we wouldn’t be able to turn south until we reached the western end of the island, which is about 78°West.  This would mean a close reach all the way to Panama with beam seas.  The other side of the ‘discussion’ was that Kingston was notoriously dangerous for tourists.  In the end, it was ‘decided’ that we’d make landfall at Port Antonio.  On board for this passage was our good friend, Christie, whom we met when Ruthie was in university.

Though the Windward Passage is well known for squeezing the trade winds between Cuba and Haiti, our passage through there was so light that we had to motor most of the way.  Arriving at dawn, we steered into the well-protected harbor of Port Antonio, past the rarely-used cruise ship terminal and into the small but nice Errol Flynn Marina, where the eager-to-please staff helped tie us up to the non-floating concrete docks.  Once the marina office was open, we checked in with them and they made arrangements for Customs and Immigration to come to the boat.  A man on the dock sold us a Jamaican courtesy flag.  The other yachts at the marina were flying country flags from all over the world, a part of cruising that we had missed while in the US and the Bahamas.

The hills surrounding the harbor were dark green with thick tropical jungle and the sounds of construction, crowing roosters, squealing school girls and traffic created a constant din.  We were approached by Famous Man, an elderly man who poled a lashed-together bamboo raft around the marina, taking orders for fresh fruit and fish.  We ordered bananas.  Famous Man had dreadlocks down to his waist and very few teeth.

Once Customs and Immigration had cleared us in, we took the short walk into the center of town and followed our traditional routine that we almost always follow when arriving at a new country:  First, find an ATM that looks relatively safe, second, buy a local SIM for our mobile phones and third, find a grocery store.  The ATM is usually not too difficult but buying a SIM can often be confusing.  The line at the DigiCell store was long and once we made it to the counter, we made few friends in the line behind us as it seemed to take a very long time before we had completed our transaction.  The center of town could have been in any country with a developing economy – few modern buildings and many buildings were in need of repair.  As we walked through the streets, we kind of stuck out among the crowd.  Instead of the laid-back atmosphere we often found in many part of the Caribbean, here it seemed like most people were focused on their tasks.  Still, everyone was very friendly and many people approached us, trying to sell us various things.  Christie bought a couple of home-ripped CDs.  I had several people stop me and look me right in the eye, their heads cocked a little to one side and say, “Are you finding EVERYTHING you’re looking for?”.  I didn’t bother explaining that I come from California, where the ganja is legal and very strong.  Besides, we keep zero cannabis on the boat – it’s too much of a liability in some countries.

Our Lonely Planet guide book for Jamaica said that the very best jerk chicken in all of Jamaica was in Port Antonio and we were able to find the place without trouble.  It was a small, v-shaped building with a small window at which to place an order.  Through this window you could see out behind the building where a large, home-made barbecue was belching smoke and an old, heavily-perspiring man was tending the meats cooking.  The smell kicked our salivary glands into high gear and the chicken was so good that we ordered from this place every day we were in Port Antonio.

The open air market had a fabulous collection of fruits, vegetables, eggs, spices and other odds and ends.  Again, everyone one was very friendly to us, frequently offering us samples and willingly smiling when we asked for a photo.

The marina office arranged a car and driver to take us to Ochos Rios, a wide, shallow river that flows through Jamaica.  Guides pole lashed-together bamboo rafts through the jungle while the tourists sit back.  However, after a while, I asked the guide poling our raft if we could change places.  So, he sat back while I tried to pole us along and I quickly found out that it wasn’t as easy as it looked.  After running us aground, my guide took over.  We stopped for lunch at a planned spot and had a surprisingly good meal of curried goat and vegetables that was heated over small wood fires, the outsides of the pots thick with black soot that had accumulated over the years.

 

Discovery Bay

In order to leave Port Antonio, we still had to clear out with Customs and Immigration, even though we were going to another port in Jamaica.  We had an easy sail over to Discovery Bay (we had cleared out to Montego Bay but stopped for the night in Discovery Bay) and I was a little disappointed that the bay was as rolly as it was.  The loud music blasting from one of the shore-side cantinas didn’t help me appreciate the bay any more.  But we only stayed one night and the next day we sailed into Montego Bay.

Montego Bay Yacht Club has two docks for Med-mooring but it seemed  expensive and a little dodgy at best.  Besides, with Rutea’s davits hanging over the stern, Med-mooring loses a lot of its appeal.  We anchored just off the yacht club but very close to the cruise ship terminal, which was busy with traffic of the behemoth ships.  The yacht club charged us a fee for anchoring.  The following morning we were up early to talk with Chris Parker about our passage to Panama.

Chris Parker runs a weather forecasting service out of Florida for yachts on the East Coast of the US and the Caribbean.  He broadcasts his forecasts on single side-band frequencies and, if you subscribe to his service, you can ask questions of him.  We have been listening to Chris Parker for years and his patience amazes me.  Time and again I have heard boaters call into him and ask for a specific forecast for which he had just described to the previous caller in great detail.  But, Chris, without skipping a beat or his voice betraying any frustration with repeating the same lengthy forecast, goes into the same detail all over again.  He is thorough – almost to a fault.  I waited for an opportunity for the radio traffic to clear so I could ask Chris about our passage to Panama.  We had a good, clear signal and I could hear him thinking.  He paused and then said, “I don’t want to freak you out . . .”.  As long as we’ve been listening to Chris Parker, we had never heard him say those words together.  He went through his forecast for us and ended it by saying, “If I were you, I’d leave sooner rather than later.”  It took Ruthie and me about two seconds to decide that we would leave the following day.  Our friend, Christie, had a flight booked for two days later so she had to scramble to find a hotel for one night.  Ruthie and I began going through our off-shore check list, checking out with Jamaican Customs and Immigration, a quick final provisioning and preparing a first-night-out meal.

We left the following morning, amidst numerous squalls full of thunder and lightning.  Once clear of South Negril Point, the wind filled in from the southeast and the seas built to about 3 meters.  We settled in for the 500+ mile passage.

The Bahamas

Manjack Cay

Ruthie and I had taken refuge at the Charleston Harbor Marina as a strong southeast wind had made virtually all of the anchoring spots untenable, its stratospheric rates notwithstanding.  The wind veered to the northwest making ideal conditions for our passage to the Bahamas except for crossing the Gulf Stream – the river of warm water in the Atlantic Ocean that flows from the Caribbean Sea (not the Gulf of Mexico) up the east coast of the United States at a rate of about four miles per hour and about four billion cubic feet of water per second.  Despite the many eddies and counter-currents, the Gulf Stream flows north and when it meets a wind that has any northerly components, it can develop steep, dangerous seas that must be avoided, especially for a small sailboat.

Charleston

We had subscribed to Chris Parker’s weather forecasting service, it’s available both on line and over our single sideband marine radio, and we had been talking with Chris daily about when a ‘weather window’ would open for us.  After several days of hunkering down, Chris advised us to leave the next day, giving us specific coordinates for crossing the Gulf Stream.  With a modicum of anxiety, we cast off our dock lines and headed out into the Atlantic, placing a high degree of confidence that Chris knew what he was talking about.  As it turned out, it was an easy 370-mile sail, if a little cold, with no significant seas and we wound up having to heave to off the entrance to Spanish Cay to wait for daylight to enter.

It didn’t take us long to discover that we had the wrong anchor for the Bahamas.  The weed-covered sand bottom was almost impenetrable to our 30-kilo Bruce anchor.  After several attempts, I dove into the water with my face mask on to see what was happening while Ruthie tried to back Rutea down and I could see our anchor skipping across the sea bed, refusing to set.  Ultimately, we were forced to tandem anchor – using two Bruce anchors, one shackled to the other with 50 feet of 3/8ths chain.  Even though neither of these anchors would properly set, we knew it would take a substantial wind to cause us to drag with both of them out there.

New Plymouth on Green Turtle Cay

Most countries require that visiting yachts (or vessels of any kind) clear into the country within a short period of time after arrival but since the wind had picked up again, we chose to stay in the protected Crab Cay until the wind had lightened.  Once it did and we made our way south, we were confronted with a long parade of sailboats heading north and west, leaving the hurricane-prone Bahamas for the relative safety of the USA.  We cleared Bahamian Customs and Immigration at one small office in Green Turtle Cay and after paying our US$300 for a cruising permit, we were official.

 

Marsh Harbor, Great Abaco Island

Of the roughly 700 islands that make up the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, the Abacos Islands in the northwest part of the archipelago, the Exumas in the central part and Great Inagua Island at the southeast extreme, only a small percentage are inhabited and many islands are privately owned (Johnny Depp owns one as does Nicholas Cage).  We made our way to Marsh Harbor on Great Abaco Island where we rendezvoused with our good friend, Christie, who had recently sold her bed and breakfast on the Oregon coast.  Freed from the 7/24 demands of being a hotelier, Christie was eager for warmth and downtime, although she arrived at the dinghy dock in the midst of a tropical downpour that had reduced visibility to just a few feet.

We found the charts for the Bahamas to be very accurate but the gin-colored water made depth perception difficult and we had to rely on our depth sounders as much of the water is extremely shallow.  We never really got used to just having twelve inches of water beneath our keel but we still delighted in sailing in such delightful conditions, clear skies, gentle beam reaches and warm water.  Catching a twenty-pound dorado (mahi mahi) on our way from Great Abaco Island to Harbour Island, about 50 miles, made for some delicious sashimi, ceviche and fish tacos.

Hog Cay

Our guide book said that Warderick Wells Cay was not to be missed, however, as it is a marine reserve, you must pick up a mooring and anchoring is not allowed.  As we were advised, we called the reserve headquarters as we approached on the VHF radio and were told that there was no vacancy on any of the inside moorings but we could take the mooring in between Warderick Wells Cay and Hog Cay.  As we approached the mooring, our collective breaths were taken away with the spectacular beauty of the place:  Only one mooring in the crystal-clear water between the two cays and it was ours.  What we didn’t know at the time was that the current screamed through there reaching its peak velocity four times a day.  The mooring was well-built but the load on our mooring line was tremendous.  It felt like we were underway even though we were attached to a mooring.  After two nights, a vacancy became available on the ‘inside’ and we moved over.  While making a payment to the reserve headquarters, we ran into Pete, on the 54-foot catamaran, Downtime.  We had met Pete seven years before when we were crossing the Pacific.  Small world, big ocean.

Many of the people who cruise on sailboats prefer the isolation that can be had while others thrive on being part of the cruising community.  Ruthie and I fall somewhere in the middle.  So many of our most rewarding friendships have developed through our contacts in the cruising community and we feel our lives are richer for it.  What struck both of us was that there wasn’t much of a community among the cruisers until we got to Georgetown, where hundreds of cruising boats gathered.  The town itself was a little sleepy and dusty without much evidence of any unique Bahamian culture but we were able to find some fabulous jerked chicken.

Roseate Spoonbill - Juvenile

Our last stop in the Bahamas was at Great Inagua Island, which is just 50 miles from Cuba.  Morton Salt has a huge operation there and is the largest employer on the island.  They have flooded huge areas as evaporating ponds, which has attracted a wide array of wildlife, mostly birds.  Our guide book mentioned a guide who would drive you around and we contacted him but he referred us to his niece, Tara, whose primary occupation was being a school teacher.  Being a tour guide pays much better than being a school teacher so Tara played hooky for a day and drove us around the island.  Her knowledge of the birds and where to find them was astounding and she was able to spot birds that none of the rest of us could have ever seen.  She drove us into town, introduced us to people and we had a fabulous take-out lunch which we ate by the water’s edge.  It’s about 470 miles from the northwestern tip the Bahama archipelago to Great Inagua Island at the southeastern corner but it was here that we had our most memorable stay.

Matthew Town, Great Inagua Island

Mining Salt

Tara

Flamingos 

Burrowing Owl

RUTEA EARNS HER STRIPES

February 2018

Norfolk Yacht and Country Club, March 1, 2018

Really, we must be crazy.  Who in their right minds leaves Norfolk, Virginia, in the winter time to transit south on the east coast of the United States?  Well, you know…we had wanted to be home for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hannukah, New Years, Birthdays and then still have time to cruise the Caribbean before hurricane season.  Who says we can’t have it all?

After arriving back to Rutea’s holiday home in Cobb’s Marina next to Little Creek Navy Sub Base in early February, the first thing we needed to make sure was working was the heater!  Icy winds blew in off of the Chesapeake as we readied Rutea to launch back into the water.  Living on the hard is hard, but living on the hard in the winter time is even harder!  Remember, you can’t use the head on the hard and in freezing temps the climb down the 14 foot ladder and trek across the boat yard in the middle of the night is a long and arduous journey!

Of course we were watching the weather the entire launch process and knowing that March comes in like a lion we were prepared to watch some heavy weather pass by.  What we didn’t know is that this year March not only came in like a lion, it would go out like a lion as well.  We were ready to go, tired of being in a marina, tired of provisioning, tired of the ‘to do’ list, even more tired of the ‘to buy’ list so we had the bright idea of departing even in not-so-perfect weather, avoid Cape Hatteras and the Atlantic and head south down the Intra Coastal Waterway (ICW).

As we were anchoring in the Lafayette River outside of the Norfolk Yacht Club our first night out, we heard the Coast Guard calling freighters one by one, name by name.  We thought that very unusual as we had never heard the likes of that before so we decided to ‘lurk’ or follow one of the conversations on the VHF radio.  We were shocked to hear the Coast Guard telling each freighter one by one, that they were ORDERED by the Commandant of the Coast Guard to deploy storm-rated anchoring tackle as there was a major storm system approaching.  Now we knew that there was heavy weather approaching and we were in a well protected anchorage but we looked at each other and asked, ‘do we have storm-rated anchoring equipment’?  Neal decided to call the Dock Master at the Yacht Club and render his opinion about the holding in the anchorage and after talking with him, he told us he would prefer it if we came into the yacht club until the storm passed and he would offer us a port of refuge for hazardous conditions.  Bless his heart!  It turned out to be a near perfect storm, a real nor’easter which turned into a weather bomb for D.C., New York, Boston and the New England coast.  Rutea took waves over the bow at the dock and after two days of winds up to 40 knots was completely encrusted in salt.

Great Lock on the Virginia Cut

Leaving a day or two after the blow and heading out past mile marker 1 on the ICW what we realized after reading about it in the guide, is what ‘wind-driven tides, depths and currents’ means.  The ICW is notoriously shallow.  It is perfect for power boats, shallow draft sail boats and kayaks!  The center of the waterway is supposed to be dredged to ten feet but there is constant silting and the Army Core of Engineers has run out of money to continue to dredge every shoaling spot.  On top of this, that infamous nor’easter blew, literally blew water OUT of some places in the water way and INTO other places.  For example, the locks on the Dismal Swamp route (inviting, eh?) were closed because of water levels too high.  On our Virginia Cut route the lock was only operating at low tide or until enough water ebbed out and when we arrived and called to the Locktender, he told us to just anchor somewhere because he didn’t know how long it would be (Hours? Days?) until the lock would reopen. Upon transiting the Great Lock, the Locktender told us that the drop was five feet higher than usual and he didn’t know how long it would take to get back to normal. 

Surprise, surprise!  On the south side of the lock wind had blown water further south and all depths were more shallow than charted.  That meant hand steering and watching every ripple in the water, wondering if it was a shoal, a stump, or a rock. It also meant it was super challenging to find a place to anchor our 6.5 ft. draft boat that was not in the center of the waterway which you cannot anchor in even at night because there is tug boat traffic.  Next challenge- Currituck Sound.  Sounds are wide open, shallow, swampy areas.  Beautiful, remote and wild even in the best of conditions a boater does not want to wander outside of the water way or even pass another large vessel going the opposite direction for fear of running aground in very soft, sticky mud.  But who knew that a nor’easter could literally blow water out of the Sound and make it even more shallow and that the water could take months to return or at least not return before a southerly wind would push it back in!

Frost on the Cap Rail

Miles of meandering waterways took days and days to transit.  Of course having to time lift bridges, swing bridges, and bascule bridges made the going even slower and by the time we got to Georgetown, South Carolina, we had covered 410 miles and it had taken us eighteen days.  Okay, so that’s 410 miles, 3 lift bridges, 7 bascule bridges, 9 swing bridges, 1 lock, 1 hard grounding (we don’t want to talk about it) and 28 fixed bridges (many of which are only 65 feet tall and Rutea’s mast is 62 ft.).  All in all, it was a fantastic but intense experience.  An experience we are glad we had but probably would not want to repeat- at least in a deep draft boat.  The surprising part is that inland waterway traveling could be as challenging as any of the other sailing we have done!  The interesting part is that we still learn something new every day.  Fortunately, even after 18 days in the ICW, Rutea does not wear the brown beard on the bow and water line that stains most ICW boats due to the muddy water but she earned an even better stripe which was once again getting us safely to another port in another new (to us) part of the world, through unknown waters.

Georgetown, South Carolina

Maine

We are slowly catching up with our blog posts.  We cruised Maine from July 27, 2017 to August 31, 2017.

We actually welcomed the bad weather that hit Gloucester as it forced us to take a respite from break-neck speed at which we’d been traveling, if there’s any way to construe five miles per hour as ‘break-neck’.  Our schedule had been rigorous (for us) with trying to press the most miles out of every day for what seemed like weeks on end.  As with many modern cruisers, we were looking for a ‘weather window’ with which to make our passage to Maine, even though it was only a short distance.  The winds were light but we were able to sail the entire way and made landfall at Rockland, Maine, after an easy overnight sail.

The Seven Seas Cruising Association was coincidentally holding one of their ‘gams’ in Rockland Bay that weekend and the bay was full of cruising sailboats.  I was answered almost immediately after I had released the key on the VHF’s mike, asking for a recommendation for anchoring.  Not only was the information helpful but the person who answered said they had been following our progress north and had been expecting us.  Were people talking about us?  Had we done something bad?  It wasn’t us!  It was a boat that looked like us!  Even though we weren’t members of the SSCA, they invited us to participate in their events, which we politely declined as we were eager to make it up to Castine.

Castine

Sailing north up Penobscot Bay was both uneventful and thrilling at the same time.  It seemed like years ago we promised Joe and Judith Sandven that we’d sail there.  Our guide book had cautioned that visiting yachts should pick up a mooring, which we did, but we later anchored out as there was nothing to be concerned about.  Our rendezvous with Joe and Judith was properly celebrated and Ruthie and I fell in love with the picture-perfect New England community immediately.  The farm just outside of town that Judith was raised on hasn’t been active agriculturally for many years and she allows the fields to be hayed at no charge and no shares.  The old barn remains mostly the same as it has been for almost 100 years but the house has been modernized and has all the creature comforts anyone could ask for, including a nearly idyllic setting and pastoral views.  Joe gave us the keys to his 2005 Ford Crown Victoria and I hadn’t driven a car that large in years but it was not just convenient but fun to be able to drive the back roads of Maine.

One of the errands we took in the Crown Vic was to find a very hard-to-find butcher shop as we were looking for something special to cook for Joe’s 88^th birthday.  Google maps directed us to this obscure area that might have been at one time a commercial district but all we could find was an abandoned warehouse.  We called the number and complained to the person that answered the phone that we couldn’t find the place.  “All we can find is an abandoned warehouse,” I whined.  “Come on in,” the person answered.  Inside the ‘abandoned’ warehouse was a huge walk-in refrigerator, complete with display cases and a cashier.  We selected fabulous steaks, appropriate for an 88^th birthday party.
  I nearly caused a wreck as I was trying to pull over to a roadside stand that had wild blueberries for sale.  Ruthie bought six quarts of berries, a case of Mason jars and canned 24 half-pints of blueberry jam on board.

Ellsworth American Article
 

Unbeknownst to us, Joe had contacted the Ellsworth American, the surprisingly-well written newspaper for the community of Ellsworth, Maine, telling them that his circumnavigating daughter and son-in-law were in Castine and it would make a worthwhile story.  Neither Ruthie nor I expected any follow up but we were delighted when Stephen Rappaport contacted us and asked if he could interview us.  After all, talking about us is our favorite thing to do!  Stephen, a recovering attorney, was taking a summer vacation from New York about 25 years ago in Ellsworth and never went back.  He spent almost two hours aboard, questioning us and listening intently, only giving information about himself after we prodded him.

If one was to merely give the navigational charts of Maine a cursory glance, it would be easy to deduce that sailing those waters could be complex and challenging.  There must be millions of rocks, ledges and other hazards that the wary sailor must be vigilant about.  However, the charted obstacles are only a small part of the difficulties one is faced with while sailing in Maine.  The first hazard one you won’t be able to spot from studying the charts happens to be the Maine Department of Marine Resources, which grants permits for lobster fishermen to place traps – and their associated floats – in the Maine waters.  Last year, the Department issued permits for over 2 million traps.  Granted, there are strict regulations regarding the size of lobster a fisherman can harvest and it has become a sustainable industry but trying to keep those 2 million traps from becoming fouled on your prop or keel takes constant attention.  It is unknown if we did foul our prop on one of the traps as Rutea’s prop shaft has a line-cutter attached but we zigged and zagged continuously in an effort to keep clear of them.

145' Rebecca Under Main and Mizzen

The other challenge we found sailing in Maine that we couldn’t have detected from the charts was the pea soup-thick fog that found us.  We could be sailing along on a bright, sunny day and it would seem like a wall of fog would suddenly descend and envelope us without warning.  Of course, we have radar that can pick up very small targets but maneuvering between the lobster floats, the lobster boats and the other hazards found in Maine waters was very intense at times.

As we made our way further ‘Down East’ – which describes the northeastern coast of Maine – another issue that we had to contend with was the increasing strength of the currents and the higher tidal ranges the further north we traveled.  Rutea draws almost 7 feet and, usually, if we find 15 feet of water, we think that it’s plenty deep to anchor but that isn’t so if you have a 9’ tidal range.  We would make every effort to time our passages through anywhere narrow to include a favorable current.

The furthest east we went was to Roque Island, a privately-owned island and one of the few in all of Maine to boast a sand beach.  The owners of the island allow cruisers to use the beach (but not venture inland).  It was delightfully remote and a few boats came and went while we were there but we loved the coniferous-covered land.

Ordering Lobster Rolls at a Lobster 'Pound' in Blue Hill

On our way back west, we anchored in the lovely Blue Hill Bay and took advantage of the dinghy dock at the Killegewidgwok Yacht Club as a place to leave the dink while we hiked up Blue Hill.  It was a pleasant climb and kind drivers would stop as we walked the sides of the road, offering us rides.  We also made a final rendezvous with Joe and Judith there but made promises to share Thanksgiving dinner together in San Diego.

Someone had told us of a special anchorage in between Harbor Island and Hall Island – they were absolutely right – unless the wind was out of the north and the wind was howling out of the north.  We dropped our anchor there anyway and stayed for about 10 minutes before we weighed anchored and bashed about 3 miles north to the lee of Friendship Long Island.  We had hoped to leave the following day but the wind hadn’t abated at all.  Small craft advisories had been posted by the Coast Guard for strong winds and rough conditions.  Ruthie and I ‘debated’ about what to do.  Throwing caution to the wind, we weighed anchor, tucked a double reef in the main and headed back to Gloucester.