Part 2: Days 1 thru 4, will we ever get out of Florida
This is part 2 of our 4 part series about our Journey moving our new boat north from Fort Lauderdale, FL to Hampton, VA. Click here to see Part 1.
Day 1
Well, no shotgun through the window or knock on the hull so it appears we were all good sleeping through the night on the boat. Up at a quarter till 5 David had both engines running within 5 minutes of the alarm clock going off. We unplugged the shore power, pulled the lines and we were off. To say we were anxious was an understatement, but with David at the helm, we were off and running without any issue. Straight away, David had us at the front of the boat shining channel markers with a flashlight as we headed out the Port Everglades inlet and straight into the Atlantic ocean. Trial by fire baby! This was David’s style and a perfect way for us to truly be immersed in the experience and learn as much as possible. I remember thinking to myself, as I will never forget this moment… here we are, on our new boat departing a safe harbor for the first time in the pitch dark with some random dude we met at a boat show driving our new to us boat that we had spent years saving for, all during a once-in-a-century pandemic. What a world, but so awesome all at the same time!
Out of the inlet safely we hoisted both the mainsail and headsail (genoa) and made a beeline for the gulf stream. For those a bit rusty on their geography, the gulf stream is a warm ocean current in the western North Atlantic Ocean that moves north along the coast of Florida and then turns eastward off of North Carolina, flowing northeast across the Atlantic. It flows superfast and so sailors, and boaters in general, going north love to “catch” it so they can ride the current and get additional speed. The plan was to grab the stream and see how much northerly we could make throughout the day.
Fortunately, it was early May and the days were long so daylight would be in our favor. The west wall of the gulf stream in this area runs pretty close to the shore (roughly 6 to 10 miles), so it took about an hour or so before we started feeling the effects of the stream and began hooking it. We averaged 10 to 12 knots for the entire day and it was fantastic. Smooth seas and we were hauling ass! As we bent around Lake Worth, we continued our diagonal for the Fort Pierce inlet where we faced our first boat malfunction. We had rolled in the headsail but left the mainsail up as it can still provide lift to the boat and can be used as a safety backup in case of an engine failure when entering an inlet. We were treading water in the inlet waiting for the North Beach Causeway Bascule bridge to open so we could pass through, when, all of a sudden, we heard a loud SNAP. David’s instinct immediately cued him into the mainsail Halyard. He thought the entire line had snapped, which would have been a major setback. Fortunately, after a bit of investigating we noticed that the pulley that the halyard is attached to was still intact as was the halyard line itself, it instead was just the shackle that holds the pulley to the mainsail that had broken. Good news indeed, but this would still require someone to go up to the top of the 65-foot to repair the pulley.
We found a safe anchorage nearby the bridge to fully assess the situation. We then traveled up the Indian river maybe another mile or two and set the anchor in a safe place out of the ICW channel. David, being the consummate captain that he is, insisted that he would climb the mast and sort out the issue on top of the 65-foot tall mast. David, always calm in hectic situations, gave clear and concise instructions and we had him up and down the mast and the issue sorted within 30 minutes of setting the anchor. This is the reason we hired a captain, it is situations like this for newbies that could have really put a damper on our experience and really could have cost us a lot of money as we would not have known where to even start to diagnose the problem, let alone fix it.
Anchor up and we were back underway. Rather than calling it for the day, we proceeded for another 2 hours or so up the Indian River and anchored in what is still one of the most memorable anchorages to date. It was a beautiful sunset and we had a couple beers on the front of the boat on the trampoline. This was the first sunset for us as new boat owners in a gorgeous setting… This is what we had been dreaming about for years and it was finally a reality! After soaking it in for another hour or so, we were off to bed. It was a long day and we were to have another long day tomorrow. Day 1 we traveled 110 nautical miles (that is a lot of miles to cover in a sailboat in one day) so we thought this trip was going to be a breeze! Ha. How naive we were.
DAY 2
Up early the next day, we were motoring up the intercostal with calm winds to start the morning. As the morning went on the winds began to turn onto the nose and before we knew it we were motoring into a 20 to 25-knot headwind making barely 5 knots. One thing catamarans hate doing the most is motoring straight into the wind. With this it causes the engines to work a lot harder than normal just to make decent speed. As we are hammering the engines we notice that one of the engines began to steam a little, then a lot. So we backed off it for a bit and then the steam subsided. We brought the engine back to revs and steam appeared again within a couple of minutes. This was odd as we had just replaced the heat exchangers on both engines. This issue persisted all morning to the point of slowing us down to around 4 knots, which was just unacceptable if we were going to make any time. Needing fuel we decided to pull into a fuel island and check it out. We noticed the water pump was leaking water, but also noticed that the bilge of each engine had a considerable amount of water in each. This could have been there for a while or just recently appeared. We didn’t have much of a baseline as this was a new boat to all of us and had not made note of this before departure. Impeller was all good so we believed it had to be the water pump. Surprisingly we had a new spare on board along with a new belt. Not a huge job, we quickly swapped the pump and belt out. This seemed to solve the issues and we carried on.
Still motoring into a headwind, we finished the day only able to make it just south of the Brewer Memorial bridge outside of Titusville, Florida. A whopping 55 nautical miles in 14 hours of daylight. Drastically different from the day prior when we had covered 110 nautical miles, nearly double the distance! Ouch! Fortunately, we had a nice anchorage and sunset and a few beers to help us all forget how hard of a day this really was.
DAY 3
We rolled out before daylight with hopes of making up some of the miles we had lost the day before. Our goal was to reach Saint Augustine, FL, as we had the other engine’s water pump shipped there yesterday with hopes for it to arrive early the next day. David had wisely advised that we should just replace the other engine’s water pump so we are starting fresh on both, as the forecast was looking like we were going to need to motor a fair bit. Not to mention, a weak or faulty engine is a serious safety issue.
We made good time to New Smyrna inlet and decided to jump outside (the term to go “offshore”) to try and avoid some motoring and make time as the boat will most certainly sail faster than it will motor, especially with the motors acting up as they have been. We had great wind right up the bum and it continued to build throughout the morning. We were sailing wing-on-wing in 20 to 25 knots true so a little tricky, but captain David felt good about how the boat was behaving. So much so that he handed me the wheel in the building following seas and wanted to let me feel how the boat maneuvered under “sporty conditions” as David liked to describe them. We were having a blast surfing down waves at 10 to 12 knots as the seas began to build to the 4 to 6-foot range. Unfortunately, Kelley was not feeling quite as well as she was starting to feel sea sick. This would be one of many times Kelley got sick on Offbeat.
Fortunately, we made great time and were able to duck into Saint Augustine Inlet where we had arranged a slip so we could make the necessary repairs on the water pumps. While we were there in the safety and ease of a marina, we figured we should just do a full maintenance service on both the engines. This consisted of oil and fuel filter changes, belts, air filters, and the second water pump, all of which had to be done by noon the next day so we could still maintain our schedule. You are always watching the weather when you’re on a sailboat and everything is dictated by it. We got to the slip and got all the oil and filter change done before we even went to bed that night. Whew! What a day.
The next morning we were again up at dawn and David and I were back into the engine compartments, I was pulling the other old water pump off as David was vacuuming out the water from the engine bilges and cleaning all the leftover grease from the previous owner so we could have a fresh start and gauge as to where any water or oil may be coming from. It was at this moment that I realized just how fortunate we were to have met David at the Annapolis Boat Show and how lucky we were to hire him as a captain. At the sight of an engine failure, any other captain would have parked our boat at the dock, tossed us the keys, and said, “Call me when you have the boat ready”. Not David. From the moment we tied off to the dock he was either in the engine rooms with me or advising me on how something needed to be fixed. He was completely “hands-on” and extremely knowledgeable, and all with an amazing attitude. He truly is a great guy, so generous with his time and you could tell he wanted us to learn and succeed and have a good time at this liveaboard sailing lifestyle.
After a long scramble in the morning, we fired on both engines and the water flow looked better than it had been prior to swapping the water pumps and belts. Encouraged by this, we decided to make as much headway as we could and continued motoring north up the Mantazanas River, a part of the ICW, towards Jacksonville, FL. Looking at the charts we noticed that there was a free dock on the other side of the St Johns River that would be a perfect landing spot for us to tie up and get some much-needed rest, as the plan was to take off the next morning for our first overnight to somewhere in South Carolina.
