Back ashore again

We are back ashore again

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Saturday 11/29/2014

We left Southport NC around 1:00 pm after waiting for the tide to turn and not have to fight it on the way out.  We felt we had a good weather window for several days of travel offshore.   We left the river and turned to the SW to start our way to Florida, as expected the wind, what there was of it, was right on the nose.  We had expected this for the first day and planned to have to motor until it should change directions.  The sun set with a spectacular display of shades of orange on the horizon for almost an hour.  During the night the wind came up 10 to 15 knots but still on the nose.

Sunday 11/30/2014

The winds died and the seas calmed down so that we had light winds and flat seas all day.  We had a pod of dolphins join us.  This was the largest group so far and they stayed with us for a good ten minutes playing in our bow and stern wakes.  A little later Cori noticed something in the water that looked like a pile of debris.  Just then it raised its head.  We had our first sighting of a sea turtle.  The wind never did come up so we continued to motor.

Monday 12/1/2014

Monday got to be eventful.  We had been motoring for so long that we were running low on fuel.  Early Monday morning it happened, our tank was empty.  We were carrying two five gallon jerry jugs of fuel so we added them to the tank and started out again.  We decided to come in at Fernando Beach to refuel.  Fernando Beach is on the St. Mary’s River and is the border between Georgia and Florida.  We wanted to stay out for another day rather than take the ICW so we headed back out.  By this time the wind had finally made its shift from SW to NE.  We wanted to try and sail.  We put out all of the sails and ran for a disappointing 3 knots.  We couldn’t run at this speed so we dropped all sail and started motoring again.  The wind shifted to its forecast Eastern direction and started building waves.  We were going South so this put both on our port beam (left side of the boat) causing it to roll with the waves.  Needless to say this is not a comfortable ride.  The waves continued to build during the day and overnight to 3-5 foot seas.  The rolling continued so we decided it was time to get back inshore.  Our options were limited, all required going all night and going in at Ponce Inlet or further down the coast at Cape Canaveral.  We chose Ponce Inlet.

Tuesday 12/2/2014

We arrived at Ponce Inlet around 3:00 am.  We needed to wait until daylight to make our entry.  The Inlet is small and badly shoaled and it is important not to miss a marker or make any mistakes.  We motored back and forth outside the entrance until sunrise at 7:00.  We made our way in with 3-4 ft breaking seas on our stern.  Not a fun ride with all that was at stake.  We made our way in and decided to continue our way down the ICW.  We stopped for the night at Cocoa FL, just down from Cape Canaveral.

Total distance covered 1:00 pm Saturday until 3:00 pm Tuesday – 458 nautical miles.

For the non-sailors, here is today’s lesson.  Distance on water is measured in nautical miles and speed is measured in knots or nautical miles per hour.  A nautical mile is defined as “a unit of distance that is approximately one minute of arc at any Meridian.”  A land mile is 1760 yards and a nautical mile is 2025 yards.  A nautical mile is slightly longer then a land mile.  A knot used to measure speed therefore is a smaller number then mph.  For our purposes 6 knots, our usual cruising speed, equals 7 mph, the speed of a typical jogger.

We will be uploading videos later.