part 1: predeparture checklist and meeting capitain david
After a long month-and-a-half of quarantine and continued uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, the time had come to finally meet Offbeat, our 2010 Leopard 38 sailing catamaran. This would be the first time we would see her as her newest owner and finally start the journey north from Fort Lauderdale to Salt Ponds Marina in Hampton VA. We received the thumbs up from our hired captain David that we had a good weather window to start our journey. The winds looked to be in our favor for the first couple of days but then would turn on our nose for a couple of days, so we would be relegated to the InterCoastal Waterway (ICW) during the poor weather days to motor and make what distance we could with the poor weather. Sailing baby!
With this news, we began frantically packing what we thought were the “necessary” items for the journey as we only had two days to get from the lake house in Virginia to Fort Lauderdale. It was off to Enterprise to get a car rental, which at the time seemed like a risky proposition because of the pandemic and all the unknowns that came with it. Despite this, a minivan in hand we shoved as much crap as we could into that bad boy and headed out the next morning at o’ dark thirty to conquer the 975-mile journey in one day. This certainly would be one of the more bizarre road trips we had ever made for a number of reasons, most of which was we were not totally sure if the state of Florida was going to let us in as they had been turning folks from some northern states away at the border of Florida and Georgia due to pandemic fears. Fortunately for us, we had Florida license plates on the minivan so we were hoping this would let us go incognito.
We iron manned the trip south and got across the Florida border with no issues, although they were stopping random cars at the border, especially those with New York and Connecticut plates. Pulling into Fort Lauderdale was quite eerie as it felt post-apocalyptic from just two months earlier when we were shopping for boats. After contemplating staying in the van for the night to avoid contracting COVID-19, we decided to grab a hotel room, right on Fort Lauderdale beach, at a fraction of the price it would have normally been. It was a couple of victory beers and off to bed as the next day was going to be a full one as it was prep day on the boat for the trip North.
Up early, we were off to our first of soon-to-be way too many trips to West Marine to spend what seemed to be our life savings on gear and spares for the boat. Parts sourced, we were off to see our new home for the first time since the survey back in February… what a feeling! The boat turned out to be in better shape than we imagined, being that it had sat in a tropical climate for the past 4 months without being moved. We had a lot of pre-departure work to get through so the nostalgia only lasted a few minutes and then it was off to work.
We had Just Catamarans on the boat first thing to fix a faulty bilge pump, replace zincs and props on both sail drives, and clean the bottom. In the meantime, Kelley was working her tail off just trying to get the boat reasonably cleaned and organized with all the crap we ended up bringing down, way too much by the way, along with getting rid of all the stuff that the previous owner had left behind. I was out running around replacing engine starter batteries, topping the fridge up on freon, and just going through the boat, doing my best to address any other issues we may have discovered once actually stepping foot onto the vessel.
On top of all of these tasks, we needed to pick up the new dinghy that we had purchased from Nautical Ventures. We did not have a trailer to transfer the dinghy via land so we would have to motor the dinghy from the docks at Nautical Adventures to the dock where Offbeat was currently tied up to in Fort Lauderdale. Furthermore, although we were getting rid of the actual dinghy itself, the motor attached to the old dinghy was still in relatively good shape so we decided to keep that and simply transfer it onto our new dinghy. To do this we first needed to take the 9.9hp outboard off of the old dinghy, load it into the rental minivan, drive to nautical Ventures and have them put the outboard on the new dinghy. This is where we would meet our Capitan David for the first time. Arriving at the dealer, David was already there to greet us and sprung straight into action. He recommended getting rid of the existing fuel in the outboard gas tank for fresh fuel so he proceeded to use a water bottle he dug out of the trash, deposited the old fuel into the rental car gas tank (because where would we put the old gas, and heck, it’s a rental), then installed the outboard onto the new dinghy, and then he was off motoring the dinghy back to our sailboat, maneuvering throughout the various waterways of Fort Lauderdale. This all happened within just a few minutes of meeting the guy and the entire time he had a huge smile on his face. I could tell from here that this was going to be a trip of a lifetime as this guy was truly a South African Legend.
I dropped the rental car off at the Fort Lauderdale airport, which also felt eerie as there was not a soul to be seen anywhere in the airport, and grabbed an Uber back to the boat. Within five minutes of me arriving back to the boat, David was there and looking over every nook and cranny of the boat making sure he was comfortable with all the working systems before we departed for the 900 nautical mile journey north. For the next few hours, we worked furiously into the dark to get the boat into somewhat decent shape before our early morning departure.
The plan for the night was to depart the dock we were at and anchor in nearby Lake Sylvia, as it is illegal to stay on a boat docked behind a house overnight in the city of Fort Lauderdale. David, being the legend he was, said, “Let’s just turn the lights off and see if the homeowner notices.” After sitting in the dark for about a half-hour we just decided to retire to our cabins and hope we were not awoken by the homeowner with a shotgun through the window. What a crazy way to start this journey with Captain David. The guy has guts! Luckily we were up so early the next morning, the homeowner never even realized it, so off we went to start our journey north!
