Running Amuck

Sailing out into the open ocean can be a scary proposition. Out of sight of land, and out of cellphone and internet range, the off-shore sailor can find him- or herself in an unexpected storm with nowhere to hide. Equipment failures, health crises, falling overboard - all nightmare scenarios for a blue water boater. But the one disaster you will thankfully almost never encounter while out in the deep blue sea is running aground.

Georgia ICW

The ICW is a set of protected waterways that are just inland of the Atlantic, made up of rivers, canals and inlets that provide a pathway north and south for traveling boaters. Many areas of this meandering snake are very shallow, particularly at low tide, and are maintained by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), who are mandated by law to cut through the low spots regularly to ensure a mean low depth of at least twelve feet. Because they don’t dredge the entire waterway, but only a very narrow channel, this results in a deceptively wide body of shallow water with only a thin cutout for boats to pass through, not unlike a very narrow two-lane country road. It’s not for nothing that the ICW is nicknamed “The Ditch” by boaters. The USACE is also in charge of checking the channel markers periodically and, if necessary, move them to reflect the latest shoaling of a constantly changing bottom. Unfortunately though, they don’t catch everything, and due to chronically low government funds for dredging, the depths are inconsistent. Things can change so rapidly that sometimes even updated charts are just woefully wrong.

A couple of weeks ago, we crossed over from the Bahamas to Florida, joining the ICW at Fort Pierce. Since then, we have been working our way north, looking forward to revisiting some of our favorite stops from our trip south, and hopefully discovering some new places as well. We spent a lovely Easter holiday in Vero Beach  - “Velcro Beach” to the locals, due to the hoards of boaters who travel down there and end up staying indefinitely. Leaving Vero behind, and looking to anchor in a little cove just south of New Smyrna, we suddenly found ourselves hard aground. True, we were off the beaten track, well off the “magenta line” that indicates the ICW route, but our chart plotter still showed that we had plenty of water under our keel. Clearly this wasn’t true.

Barely aground, still upright but stuck in the mud

No real reason to panic though; I have learned this by now. Just wait for the tide to come in and then you’ll float off. And we were intending to anchor here anyway, so not being able to go anywhere for a few hours was really not a big deal. Rick used the extra anchor, which has rope rode instead of chain, and ran it out in the dinghy to set it. He cleated it off at the stern so that he could later use the winch to help get us off the shoal. Then we had our usual evening routine of cocktails, dinner, and bed.

Around midnight or so, we were awoken by a reassuring rocking of the boat - we were floating free! But we were also completely turned around. Once the boat was released from the bottom, the current had swung it completely around, and since we were anchored from our stern, the anchor rode got all tangled up with our rudder. Oops. We started up the engine to turn us back around, but the rudder was so tightly wound with the anchor rode, we couldn’t go anywhere. We were going to have to untangle things by hand.

Rick always seems so cool in these circumstances, it’s easy to think that everything is effortlessly under control, no big deal. But this time, my mighty hero came a bit unraveled. It was the middle of the night, after a very long day of motoring, and he was exhausted. The lines he was trying to run weren’t cooperating. I was trying to help, but I just couldn’t understand his instructions, and of course that resulted in a predictable string of bickering between us. And then the damned dinghy motor stalled on him.

That’s when Rick just started maniacally laughing.

We had to do some fancy finagling to get it all unwrapped and re-secured from the bow, but it did work out in the end. Friggin’ charts.

After a wonderful second-time-around visit to St. Augustine, we again headed north, knocking out thirty-five miles each day, averaging six to seven hours of steaming. The stretch from Florida’s northern border up through Georgia is particularly squirrelly, winding back and forth like a string of small intestines (try not to think too hard about that metaphor). This type of terrain, criss-crossed by strong tidal currents, makes a great recipe for shoaling, and sure enough, we noticed a number of abandoned boats on the way that had either run aground or succumbed to some other calamity. Rick has developed a morbid fascination with these wrecks, taking pictures of as many as he can so he can add them to his “collection”. He tells me that he sees each of them as an image of the human condition. I think it's just an intellectualized version of rubbernecking after a car accident. But what do I know?

Just south of Savannah, we saw a stellar example of the run-aground sailboat, high and dry on a sand bar, and Rick grabbed his camera to document it, handing me the wheel. The boat looked abandoned to me, but Rick was pretty sure the owners were still aboard. “Wow, how could they have misread their chart plotter so spectacularly?!!” we said to one another. I don’t know about Rick, but I was smiling to myself in that self-satisfied way, thinking how we would never have been that stupid. Oh Karma, why did you have to be paying attention? I was watching the chart carefully, sticking to that magenta line like glue, but somehow… something was off. The sand bar that held that forlorn vessel was directly in front of us. Rick came back to the cockpit and questioned my course, but I was adamant that I was doing just what the chart indicated. I was like the lady on the phone who insists that you don’t exist because, “that’s what it says in the computer.”

So, I bet you can guess what happened. Yup. We ran aground, only a couple hundred yards from the boat whose beaching we had been admiring. With the keel on Valkyrie, we draw five feet below the waterline, which means we need at least that much depth to stay afloat. Our chart plotter said we should be in twelve feet of water even at low tide. Our depth sounder read “3.4 Ft.” You do the math.

Why do you need a keel for sailing? Well, when the wind fills up the sail that’s attached to your mast, that same force from the wind will tip your boat completely over if you don’t have something to counter balance it. Hence the keel. Generally, the bigger the boat, the deeper and weightier the keel. Other designs work off of the same principle, just using a different method. The traditional Hawaiian outriggers, for instance, or the modern catamaran. No keel down below, but pontoons to keep the boat from tipping over by buoying up the leeward side (away from the direction of the wind).

Hawaiian Outrigger Sailing Canoe

If we owned a catamaran, we would obviously be much less likely to run aground, particularly in the ICW. There are some other advantages as well, like more internal living space, and a less tippy ride, which appeals to the sea-sickness prone (me). But owners of these crafts tell us that the ride, while indeed less tippy, can be rather jolting and uncomfortable. We’ve also been told that the noise of the rigging while underway can be quite loud and grating. Not exactly the peaceful sailing experience we enjoy on Valkyrie. Plus from an aesthetic standpoint, at least in our opinion, monohulls have it all over cats. No, we’ll stick with what we have and risk the occasional grounding, thank you very much.

Wait - that's not a boat!!

When we ran aground this time, we were about an hour short of low tide. Mistral, the sailboat totally above the water ahead of us, had run up just south of high tide, a much more serious problem. After Rick set our extra anchor, a now familiar task in the ICW, he took off in the dinghy to visit our neighbors-in-distress, offering help if needed. 

David and Barbara were not happy campers, telling Rick about their episode with TowBoatUS earlier in the day. Apparently, the towboat had made the elementary error of attaching its towline to Mistral’s stern, and then trying to haul it off the sandbar sideways. The sailboat’s rudder was just as mired in the sand as her keel, and the predictable result was not only that they failed to free the boat from the shoal, but they also broke the rudder. Now, Dave and Barb are waiting for another towboat to come fetch them once the tide returns. They’ll need to be towed all the way to Savannah, where they will face costly repairs that may take weeks. Our predicament is certainly minor by comparison.

Valkyrie did rise above the water a bit at low tide, and we heeled over some, but it only took a few hours more to bring back the water, and off we floated. All we had to do then was to pull in on the anchor Rick had set hours earlier, and we were well clear of trouble. Unfortunately for Mistral however, their second towboat had not arrived, and the rising water and changing current threatened to strand them even higher up on the shoal. Once the water came back in force, they would have no steering without a rudder, and would be at the mercy of the currents. Rick helped David set his anchor so that at least they would be spared that disaster while they waited for the latest tow.

We finally headed out, hoping to use the last few hours of daylight to get a bit farther north before anchoring for the night. As we pulled past Mistral, David gave us a giant wave from his boat.

There but for the grace …

Remember These Shores

Good-bye Bahamas. We had a blast. Gorgeous beaches, friendly people, warm climate, and a rum punch or two. We will miss you.

Our Bahamian experience was not totally what we expected, though. Aside from our boat issues, for which the Bahamas cannot be blamed, there were some cultural and geographical dissonances that we did not foresee. For instance, our imagined vision of the Bahamas included lots of palm trees, fronds swaying in the breeze, lining white sand beaches lapped by beautiful blue water. The water was certainly a beautiful shade of aqua, but the palm trees appeared to be imported. We really only saw them clumped around resorts and populated areas. The wild, uninhabited islands had only scrub pines and mangroves, beautiful in their way, but somewhat barren compared to our tropical fantasy.

There were other things that surprised us too, like the weird, almost complete lack of birds. No seagulls, pelicans, or herons, although we did see two or three egrets, and every once in a while, a tern. We’ve been told that there are birds, but they seem to be land birds, so while on the boat we couldn’t see them.

We had both been looking forward to visiting those out-of-the-way islands, finding ourselves alone on an unspoiled island landscape. Never having made it far south to the more isolated islands of the Exumas, we can’t really make a judgment about the whole of the Bahamas. But all of the islands we did visit were plagued with trash. Possibly left there by other boaters, most of it probably washed up on shore from garbage dumps out in the open ocean, the beaches we visited were laden with plastic items; bottles, buckets and other containers. Totally aside from how the sight of all that junk detracted from our aesthetic experience, it was distressing and disappointing to see the direct and ugly consequences of human disregard for our natural environment.

 

Plastic Trash on Great Sale Cay

The weather was also somewhat of a surprise. While it was warm most of the time, there were only a few days that could be called “hot”, and while that is not necessarily a bad thing, there were probably as many days of long sleeves as there were great swimming days. I actually enjoyed this because I could more comfortably cover up from the sun. But it wasn’t what we expected.

Culturally, we had a few instances of disconnect and miscommunication with the locals. The laid-back, “island time” sensibility in the Bahamas is no mere myth, and even though we tried hard to not be ugly American tourists, expecting things to run the way they do back home, we didn’t always succeed. For instance, I had to take a couple of flights home to Baltimore during our Bahamas stay, and after arriving at the tiny airport, I noticed that my flight was listed as “Departed” on the TV monitor. I started to panic because I wasn’t due to leave for another hour. When I rushed over to ask one of the airline attendants about it, she replied, laughing, “Oh, don’t pay any attention to those monitors!”

Another time, while trying to order food at a restaurant counter in Nassau, we carefully looked over their extensive menu displayed on the wall. There was also a list of “Specials” written on a small easel on the counter. We chose one of the specials, but were told that particular dish wasn’t available that day. We chose another of the specials, but again, not available. After a couple more tries, I finally asked what was available. Out of that whole menu, only three items were being served that day, none of them on the “Specials” board. We looked at the people behind the counter in disbelief. They looked at us the same way. We ordered the three things that were available, and even though we clearly didn’t understand the protocol, the meal was delicious.

So what did we like the most about the Bahamas? Rick will miss the swimming, snorkeling and walks on the beach. He loved the extravagantly billowy Caribbean clouds, so different from the often ill-defined smudges so often overhead in Baltimore. I couldn’t get enough of the brilliant aqua-blue water, almost always clear to the bottom, and would sit staring at it for hours. I fell in love with the pastel colored houses, and the big-hearted friendliness of the people. Our stay may not have been completely what we expected, but we still had the time of our lives.

We spent our last week moving steadily up the long arc of the Abaco Islands, stopping at Treasure Cay, Green Turtle Cay, and then the uninhabited Powell and Great Sale Cays before making the hundred-twenty-mile overnight crossing over to Florida and rejoining the ICW. Baltimore, here we come.

Absolutely Abacos

Well, it’s been big doings on the SS Lollipop. We finally broke loose from our chain of bad luck, and escaped from Nassau, up to the Abacos Islands. 

On our way north from Nassau, we made a brief stop at Royal Island, just at the northernmost tip of Eluthera. We only stopped there to catch our breath and get a good night's sleep before shoving off in the morning for the Abacos. I'm not sure what we might have missed there, but at least now we can say that we've visited all of the main island groups in the northern, or so-called "near" Bahamas. Bragging rights are important, you know.

Unfortunately, our bad luck from Nassau came along for one last attempt to thwart us. In the middle of our passage to Marsh Harbor, we got ambushed by a sudden rage, an unexpected twenty-five to thirty knot wind that tore our mainsail. It was pretty hairy for a bit there, as we were in a very narrow spot and could easily have ended up on the shallow shoals nearby, and could not safely get the sail down until we had passed it. We had to motor through with the already reefed sail flapping and ripping, flapping and ripping. Just add this episode to our already long list of calamities. It's a very old sail, and luckily the fabric didn't rip, just the stitching. I have good needles and thread aboard; it's not hard to guess what I'm going to be doing the next couple of days...

Hand sewing the mainsail

The Jib Room in Marsh Harbor

Rib Night!

While here, we got to know some wonderful people. David and Lori are the owners of Ubuntu, a forty-foot French-built catamaran. They do adventure and experiential learning charters in the Bahamas for young people and adults. David is also an artist, and he very imaginatively painted their mast and spreaders, making their boat a very cool floating objet d'art. We spent a very enjoyable evening with them aboard Ubuntu, along with their charter partners, Jean Claude and Ellen. Jean Claude is French and speaks no English, while David and I were the only non-French speakers in the group, which made for some very entertaining charades-type moments. Even so, they are all very experienced Bahamas sailors, and they had great suggestions that helped us in planning the rest of our trip. 

You could arrange for your own Ubuntu visit here or here.  

Ubuntu  

David and Lori

After a couple days laying in groceries and resting up (repairing the sail), we ventured out to visit some of the more famous Abaco spots for cruisers, all short hops of only an hour or two away. Lady Luck finally came along with us, great weather and no equipment failures. Hopetown is a big destination for cruisers, according to the guidebooks, but those books don't really say why, except that it has a much-photographed lighthouse. What they do say is that you can't anchor in the little harbor. There are a limited number of inexpensive moorings, but you can't reserve them ahead of time; there are few nearby alternatives if all the moorings are taken. We were afraid to go there and get skunked, particularly in a bad blow. Who needs to see another lighthouse anyway? But David and Lori spoke about it so enthusiastically, we decided to backtrack south in order to give it a try, and boy, am I glad we did. On our way we snorkeled at Mermaid Reef, outside of Marsh Harbor, and then walked on Tahiti Beach at Elbow Cay. Beautiful white sand beach, and lovely palms, but perhaps a bit too touristy for us. It was pretty crowded.

Kabuki (zinc, for snorkeling) sunscreen - be very afraid.

Floating snack barge on Tahiti Beach

EVERYONE drives these things here

Hopetown turns out to be a lot like my favorite place - Block Island! Except more compact, and with palm trees. And everyone is on a mooring, so no dragging worries! We had no problem getting a spot, and even had a great view of the lighthouse from our boat. The beach is, if I may say, even more beautiful than the one at Block, and we had it almost completely to ourselves. Good restaurants, charming pastel-colored cottages, laid-back vibe... The only bad thing about our stay was that it was too short. 

"Reef Wreck" - a version of a rum punch

Next we went to Man-O-War Cay, a small island community made up mostly of descendants from British Loyalists. It's a boat-building town, famous for the William H. Albury Ship Yard, and its namesake, "Uncle Will". A good two-thirds of the island's residents can trace their ancestry to the first Albury settlers. The place has a pleasing blue-collar feel, with real salt-of-the-earth types, hard-working but friendly people. To continue a bit with my New England analogies, if Hopetown is like Block Island, then Man-O-War is like Rockland, ME. Of course, there's one major difference; the sale of alcohol is banned on this island. Don't worry though, the drinking of alcohol continued unabated on Valkyrie.

The first night on Man-O-War, we got to help out a couple of fellow sailors who found themselves aground near the entrance to the little harbor. Larry and Amy, owners of a big forty-five foot Beneteau, had misread a confusing channel marker, and ended up on a shoal, plowing onto it at maximum high tide. Usually when you find yourself hard aground (I say "usually" because it's an embarrassing, but common mistake, which we know well), you wait for the tide to come in, and then your boat can simply float off. But if you get stuck when the water is at its highest, no tidal cavalry is coming to rescue you. Rick tells me that typically, high tides come in pairs, one slightly higher than the other. The best you can do is wait for the next high tide - twelve or so hours - and hope to then be blessed with the bigger one.

Larry and Amy's Beneteau, the bow completely out of the water!

We happened over there in our dinghy when Larry and Amy were in the middle of their vigil, and we tried to make them feel better by making boat jokes and offering to help. I'm sure we weren't the only ones to do this though, and I could tell that Larry in particular was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed by their situation, and probably by us too, so we dinghied back to our boat for our sacred cocktail hour. Sitting up on the foredeck with drinks and munchies, Rick kept bringing the conversation back to Larry and Amy and their predicament. We had helped them put some lines around the nearby navigation post earlier, but even so, Rick was very worried that if they managed to get slightly off the sand at high tide, the current and wind would push them further on to that shoal. If that happened, they would be out of options, and could very possibly lose their boat. The standard procedure in such a situation, Rick says, is to set an upwind anchor so that you can winch yourself off as the tide comes up.

We only have about an hour of daylight left, if that. "Let's do it!" I exclaim. After a gin and tonic, anything seems possible. Rick dumps our heavy fluke-style anchor into the dinghy, along with it's two-hundred feet of heavy rope rode, and we speed off. 

After announcing to Larry and Amy that we are there to bother them once again, we set to work trying to set the anchor off of the Beneteau's stern. The water is a bit murky, and we can't really tell what's going on down below. Has the anchor caught or not? Rick jumps in with his snorkel mask and dives down to check, leaving me on the dinghy with the motor on idle. "Keep the dinghy nearby!" he yells over to me. 

Up until now, I had presented a fairly good impression of someone who knew what she was doing around boats. I had been helping with the rope lines, and offering suggestions, just as if I were Rick's equal partner. And I loved it. How great to pretend I was a real sailor around people who didn't know any better! Alas, within only a few moments of taking over command of the dinghy, my cover was blown. I knew how to work our smaller motor, the one we left in our garage in Baltimore. This was the newer, bigger one, the one that I had let Rick deal with exclusively for the past four months. All motors are alike though, right? I couldn't get the thing out of idle, and with Larry and Amy looking on, I helplessly drifted into the corral of lines that now streamed out from the stranded boat. I bet I was squealing in an embarrassingly girly way too. Rick had to swim over to get me. I'm no sailor; I just play one on TV.

We never did get the anchor to set, due to a deceptively rock-hard bottom. But we made use of the long line we brought by running it around a fairly distant channel marker piling. Completely soaked, we returned to our boat in the dying light. Amy phoned at a little before ten-o-clock to tell us that they had gotten off the shoal and were safely on a mooring. They claimed that our last efforts had totally done the trick, and seemed sincerely grateful for our help, even rewarding us with a thank-you bottle of wine the next day. They never mentioned my snafu on the dinghy, and neither did we...

We are totally enjoying the Abacos. Unfortunately, we have only one more week before we need to cross over to Florida and head back north. Bad luck or good, makes no difference now. We're headed home.