Passport's Adventures: Florida

Our sail started out easy and uneventful. Lyra, although not thrilled at leaving a wonderful non-moving house and being sloshed about on the boat at sea, was coping well. I headed to bed early to let IB have the first watch. I awoke late at night to find he had never awoken me for my watch only to discover that there were ‘issues’. The water was turned off as a fresh water line in the boat had broken and the autopilot was broken. Fortunately, we had the foresight to have the wind vane steering set up and ready for use so we didn’t have to resort to the dreaded hand steering, however with light wind and motor sailing as well as rough seas the wind vane needed constant attention and adjustments. Between our ‘issues’ and a declining weather forecast we went into St Mary’s inlet and picked up a mooring at Fernandina Beach. Although just barely inside the Florida state line, we did indeed make it to Florida! Once in port with the water line repaired, we discovered the autopilot mounting bracket had completely broken and the autopilot unit had fallen off. IB managed to hobble together a temporary repair and it was ready to go the next day. Since the weather window was closed, we headed south on the ICW. Since we skipped all the shallows and problem areas of South Carolina and Georgia it should be smooth sailing (or motoring rather), after all we were in warm sunny Florida .. right? …. we were very wrong.

The first day brought dripping rain and 50°F highs, as well as many shoaled areas that required careful transisting. The second day, despite carefully trying to follow current information through the many shoaled inlets we still managed to run hard aground near Mantanza’s Inlet. At this point we are becoming old pro’s with Towboat US, I quickly made the call and the captain patiently waited for the towboat and no damage was sustained. We were easly towed back into deep water and were able to continue on our way. I did figure out during our wait that we are equipped with phones that have internet access and google maps satellite images that clearly show the deep water and shoals! Wish I would have figured that out earlier, but it will save us some guessing later on. Due to the delay, we couldn’t make it was far as we had hoped that day and with limited anchorages in Florida we stopped at a marina for the night.

The second day was completly uneventful. No boat problems. No cat problems. Just moved from the marina to further south down the ICW.

The third day. .. Should be all good by now, we were entering into larger bodies of water and the inlets were all behind us. But of course we should know better. We were making good time through Mosquito Lagoon when we started hearing a ..thunk ..thunk.. thunk and feeling vibrations in the boat.. we had picked up a line that wrapped around the prop. This required stopping and anchoring just to the side of the ICW, where IB dug out the dive gear, donned a wet suit and went for a little cold water swim to remove the line. We thought that would be the end of it, and continued on our way, however we noticed there was still some vibration. When we made it to our anchorage at Cocoa, FL, IB reluctantly went swimming again in case there was another line on the prop. The prop was clear but he discovered that the cutlass bearing was shot, allowing movement in the prop. This would require scheduling a haulout to repair, but since we were only a day away from our current goal of Vero Beach we could easily make it and deal with the rest of our ‘issues’ from there.