Blog 027 – Old New Friends As We Head South Again

In six days we’ve covered a big chunk of the US east coast on the North Atlantic Ocean. When we left North Carolina it was a chilly 30 degrees outside. Time to get to some place warm. We left New Bern in company with Coryphine, a beautiful Cheribini designed sailboat, with her owners Cookie and George. They went as far as Morehead City, NC then we were on our own. The following morning after pulling up anchor we squeezed passed a dredge taking up a huge part of the Beaufort Channel and watched as four anchor cables went right under our keel. We made it past without a scratch only by the grace of God!

Finally out of the Beaufort inlet, we set the sails and began the slog across the arctic tundra (just a little humor) of the North Atlantic. Our first overnight at sea was a frigid night and Liana was bundled up like… well, remember the scene from A Christmas Story where the little boy gets bundled up by his mom before he goes outside and he’s got so many layers of clothes he can hardly move? Yep, that was Liana. She even had a set of dry suit cozies on under all those layers. We ate hot, precooked-by-Liana meals and drank lots of steaming hot coffee. It seamed with every degree of latitude that slipped under our keel it got a degree warmer and by Charleston, SC we were in the 70s and pealing off the layers.

Fifty miles off the shores of Charleston we were visited by dolphins swimming in our bow wave. They swam just under the surface only coming up for a breath every know and then. They swam effortlessly keeping up with us, crossing our bow and sprinting out ahead. It seemed like play time for them and they occasionally swam sideways and looked me right in the eye and then with a big smile took off again. They are truly one of the reasons we love the ocean so much. Unfortunately, Liana missed this entire encounter. She was off watch and sleeping soundly. I tried to wake her but she was out of it after a rough night. (Liana: I really thought that by the time I woke up and got to the cockpit they would be gone. I was wrong, darn! Steve got to play with them for quite a while).

Charleston was a harbor to drop anchor in and get some rest after a couple grueling sleepless days at sea and to wait out the storm system passing through. We found the commercial anchorage we were anchored in to be the rolliest night we’ve spent at anchor so far. But we were so tired we didn’t care and went to sleep even amidst uncomfortable rolling and banging noises. Imagine taking your home, rolling it 30 degrees side-to-side constantly with things rocking around in cupboards and closets and doors creaking incessantly. In the morning we pulled up a sloppy mud-caked chain and anchor. Liana hosed everything down including the topside deck and windless. By the time she had everything put away on the bow she was covered in muddy slime. (sorry, no pic). As the fog was lifting we slipped out into the main channel. We ran the radar and kept on track by the range tower at Fort Sumpter and the second tower that stands as a sentinel in the middle of the bay. These ranges are here to keep the supertankers and cruise ships in the center of the channel when they start to be set by the heavy currents coming sideways just before reaching the jetties. Today we are glad they are not obscured by the fog as we line the upper and lower one up and we are going strait down the channel.

So begins the next leg of our journey south. Liana and I spent hours going through every weather program we had available to make a safe decision on when to leave. We choose to go between two low pressure systems that were both very strong. We would have mostly clear sailing with only a few hours of wind right on the nose. If we had any mechanical problems, we might be stuck in a nasty front only hours on our tail that would last several days. A good friend called and helped us come up with a good back up plan should the weather turn to crap on us. Thankfully, we did not need that option. We had a beautiful sunrise and a good down wind sail, but by early afternoon our fears of getting slowed down were realized. We had much stronger winds off our bow than projected so we started motoring early knowing the other front was right on our heels.

We put out a fishing line and in a few minutes the reel was singing as it payed out line. Something was on! This would be the first fish ever caught by us on Silhouette. After looking at our fish picture chart we discovered it was a “little tunny” tuna. And just a few moments (no, really) after we put the line back in we had another fish on. Apparently, they travel in large schools. It turns out we caught about 15 lbs of tuna in about 20 minutes. What fun!

Then weather began to deteriorate and we also had a problem in our dinghy. As the waves began to build it was jumping like a fish on a line and in all of the motion the tie down straps popped the fuel cap out and fuel was splashing on the dinghy floor. Liana didn’t think it was a good idea to get out of the safety of Silhouette and in to the unsteadiness of the dinghy but we couldn’t think of a better way to stop the spread of gas. We said a quick prayer then I climbed inside the beast and retrieved the fuel tank and cap, but not before I was splashed and smelling like gas too. We washed everything down and secured it on deck. I also re-secured the dinghy so it would not bounce around in the heavy seas. The seas continued to build to about three meters. This became one of our roughest nights, but it began with a beautiful sunset.

Later, I was out on deck and saw the flash of light so brilliant I thought it might be a signal flare. I woke up Liana just in time for us to see the next one. It was an explosion of electricity in the air like something neither of us had ever seen. It was lightning, but it looked like fire balls exploding in midair. My guess is, it was hitting a control tower. At nearly a hundred miles offshore we have eight of these on the chart in roughly a hundred feet of water depth. They are owned by the Navy and were once used as navigation beacons for aircraft. Now they are just huge iron structures standing hundreds of feet in the air with legs deep into the Atlantic Ocean. We found them to be quite disconcerting because if a ship was to hit one the ship would be destroyed, and out of the eight we passed only one had a working beacon to show it was there. Many sailors reported the lights out and the US Coast Guard commented that they are now scheduled for removal. Thank God for gps. Salt spray covered the windows and each wave shot us up, then splashing down in its trough, sending white foamy water fifteen feet to either side of us. We could see the waves splashing red and green, lit up from our running lights on the bow, like Christmas lights. This wild ride went on for hours. Around 3:30 am Liana was on watch and decided she needed to wake me up. I was sound asleep on the bench in the cockpit. When I groggily came to my senses I could hear the wind screaming. We had a double reef in the mainsail and now it was straining at the seams with nearly 30 knots of wind hitting us on the beam. It was time to become a power boat for a while. This meant going out on deck in big waves. I put on my harness and clipped into the jack lines. Liana turned us up into the wind as I had the challenge of wrestling down the main sail. We eventually got it stowed and were back on the best course for the waves. Around 4:30 am I took over the watch and Liana went to sleep. By the time she woke up, the wind and the waves had calmed and I had put some canvas back out (head sail) and we were back to sailing.

By noon we were less than a hundred miles from St Augustine, FL and the wind had died down to nothing. The seas were calmer than we had seen all year long. We pulled into the inlet channel and the municipal marina had a surprise for us. Mooring ball #D27 on the northside of the bridge – our favorite spot. We had spent a month here last season so it was like pulling into comfort and familiarity. Eighty degrees and we’re in shorts and t shirts. Our fowl weather gear is going to get a much deserved break.

While here we had some old-new friends pay us a visit. Ok, let me explain. They are neither old nor new friends but it’s an interesting story. When we were flying back from Brunswick, GA via Orlando, FL after looking at Silhouette for the first time we were seated beside Tez and Christine Brooks and their lovely daughters, Jadyn and Anicah. They are missionaries with The Jesus Film Project. These are films that have been tailor-made to every spoken language, so anyone can hear the story of Jesus in their native “heart” language. Well, we talked the whole flight and then said good-bye. They live in Orlando and it seemed unlikely we would meet again or would we? God has His ways. Somewhere it says, His ways are higher than our ways – I didn’t know that 20,000 feet was what that actually meant. Sometime later we were flying back to Brunswick via Orlando, this time to buy Silhouette. So life found us again at 20,000 ft in an airplane and guess who we bump into? Tez and Christine. It’s a small, small world. They were flying back from a missions conference in Colorado and had to fly a day later than expected. Once again, we talked during the flight. Since then we’ve stayed in touch. We enticed them out to the boat with tacos and to hang out and enjoy the beautiful waterfront view of St. Augustine or should I say shorefront view. Out came the hammock-it was a hit. Then we dinghyed to shore for a stroll around town as the girls went for a ride on our bikes. We had a wonderful visit! Thanks guys for a fun afternoon.

As soon as we get a break in the weather we will head offshore again “Bahamas for Christmas”. Maybe!

Thank you Lord for yet another safe trip and good old new friends.

You can find out more about the Brooks and The Jesus Film Project at: www.BrooksCruMissions.org