The ocean was the most incredible deep clear blue you can imagine – totally unexpected and nothing like I’d ever seen in a photograph or movie. The entire voyage was like a series of little trips rolled into one as the oceans landscape was forever changing – just as I would begin to get settled it would change again. I had expected to have a fear of being out of sight of land – but it never developed. I was never overwhelmed by the oceans enormity – as to me the size felt like only the parts I could see – this large unbroken circle of water. The sky though was enormous and it was the sky that at times overwhelmed and terrified me – never the sea. Only four hours into my 30 hour adventure the sky gave me a glimpse of its potential for fury.
I started my passage early on Friday morning- casting off from my raft up with DJ at 6:30 a.m. after some last minute preparations and baking two batches of muffins. I stowed Coleen’s bicycle inside the cabin and removed the extra Danforth anchor from the bow rail and stowed it in the anchor locker. I put all the fenders inside – and except for one jerry jug of water the decks were clear. I had an extra jerry jug of diesel and gasoline lashed to the swim platform. The dinghy was rigged for towing with an extra line as I had decided not to deflate and stow it inside – as I knew it would give me some comfort knowing it was back there.
The NOAA forecast called for 1 to 2 foot seas with SW 5-10 knot winds, decreasing to 1ft and 5 knots overnight and slight chance of thunderstorms. The passageweather.com forecast was even more promising. It looked good for a smooth journey for a first timer. As I traveled through East Pass between Dog Island and St. George’s Island it was a little choppy but I put it down to being pass related. After traveling past the sight of land with 3 to 4 footers I realized it was yet another bad forecast. Thankfully the wave period was long – meaning the waves were far apart so overall it wasn’t too bad.
I had enough wind to sail. I had a bit of an argument raising the mainsail as it kept getting caught in the lazy jacks. I finally decided to take down the bimini so I could see what was going on. I then had a huge fight with the bimini. It blew out of it’s fittings when I unlashed it, and so I ended up wrestling it into the cabin. I thought it would be safer there if a big wind came through. This was actually no easy task as I was really getting knocked around inside the cabin, but finally I won and it was at least out the way enough that I could secure the companionway hatches if needed.
The wind ended up being a bit more than forecasted and when it passed 15 knots I decided to put in a reef as there were also lots of clouds in the distance. I actually surprised myself and managed to tuck in the reef in less than 5 minutes – world record for me! As soon as I got the reef in the boat quit heeling and actually picked up speed. Now I will admit that although I was sailing I still had the engine running in neutral – as I was a little worried – ok scared.
After the reef it was actually much more comfortable to the point of going inside the cabin. I thought to wash a few dishes while I still had hot water from running the engine. Just as I started inside the companionway I glanced over my left shoulder and yelled an expletive I’ll not repeat. I grabbed the VHF mike and called DJ. Yelling a little too loudly I’m sure to “look over to your port – what the hell is that?”
A huge wall of water was rapidly approaching from the East. It was easily ½ mile wide and fell down from a huge bank of clouds. At the bottom where it touched the water it was swirling and churning up the sea into a huge mess. Higher in the sky and just ahead of it a twister was forming. It’s rotation was quite clear, but it was still high up and had not yet formed to the point of touching the water. DJ who was about a mile behind me, just calmly said to keep going the way I was headed and to put the engine in gear and go fast. I quickly got up to my top speed of 6.5 knots. Now 6.5 knots is not a lot of comfort in this situation and it wasn’t entirely clear to me which way that thing was headed. It seemed unlikely that I could out run it – my only hope was to head away from it. I felt quite certain that if it caught up with me I’d end up in Davy Jones locker for sure! I just kept going because really what else could I do. Actually I was more worried about DJ as he was far closer to it. He took down his sails in the midst of my frantic radio call and prepared for the worst. Thankfully it passed behind us as I’m quite certain I didn’t out run it! Overall a very humbling start – yet turning back was not an option as the storm was between me and land – so I kept going – but also began to keep a more watchful eye on the sky all around me – not just what was ahead.
I decided the dishes could wait and instead grabbed a quick coke. The seas began to flatten but this brought large swells. I munched on ginger cookies, and then broke out the ginger gum, but thankfully never felt seasick.
By 3 p.m. I was having the time of my life! The seas had settled down to a comfortable motion. The wind had shifted to the SE – right on my nose so I was motoring – but even that was ok. I was sitting in one of the stern rail seats, listening to music, singing (because if you can’t sing at the top of your lungs in the middle of ocean – I mean where can you do it) , drinking iced tea and looking out at the most beautiful sight you can imagine. This time the clouds were just lovely puffs of white –and I swear that for the longest time I actually saw the most incredible face in one of them – although just as I grabbed the camera it disappeared.
All of sudden a short distance ahead I saw something large and brown that I thought was maybe a log (hey I’m used to rivers). I wasn’t really sure what it was but knew I didn’t want to hit it so I jumped down from my perch and grabbed the wheel to divert my course. As I passed it I tried to see what it was – but am still not really sure. It was about half the size of my boat, brown and a little leathery looking and as I passed it it seemed to roll and show a flipper. Maybe it was huge turtle or a small whale – not sure, but whatever it was it was totally cool.
I saw a few birds now and then, and some little tiny flying fish. The flying fish came out when the water was almost calm. They jumped out in bunches of four or five and sped across the surface faster than I could grab the binoculars. I saw them lots of times, but never close up and only when the water was calm.
There were also a few boats from time to time – mostly seemed to be fishing boats. I tried to measure the amount of time it took from when I saw one pop up on the horizon until it got close but never managed to quite do it. Besides it would not have been a very meaningful measurement as some were go fast boats and others were trawlers. Still it was a little comforting to see other boats from time to time.
At any given time I was never more than 40 miles from the West coast of Florida. Now that doesn’t seem far and when I was planning the trip it seemed almost reasonable. It wasn’t until I actually got out there that I realized that in a slow boat 40 miles is forever. Forty miles is about six hours from land at my top speed – not very reassuring. I’ll admit that I wore my harness and life jacket the whole time – even when the seas were calm. I was quite cognizant of the fact that if I fell overboard no one would be coming back to get me – so although it was uncomfortable after many hours and actually rubbed my neck raw in one spot – I wore it anyway. I took off the tether when I went in the cabin and put it on again from the companionway. My friend DJ got a good laugh out of it – seeing me in my tether in calm seas sitting in the stern rail seat, but it worked for me. Hey, I’m clumsy and my boat has very narrow decks!
Sometime around 4 p.m. I noticed that DJ’s boat was pretty far ahead – too far for comfort. I called him on the radio and bribed him into slowing down so I could catch up by offering him a coke. (I figure he was already out). After a few minutes I caught up and tried to throw him a bottle. Instead I managed to hit a solar panel (which thankfully wasn’t damaged) and it fell in the water. It was still floating so I challenged him to go back for it. Believe it or not he managed to go back and snatch that little thing out the water in one attempt. I guess he’d be good in a man overboard situation.
Around 6 p.m. I noticed DJ was falling behind. He called me on the radio and said he was drifting and needed to change a fuel filter. I headed back and made lazy slow circles during the 10 minutes it took him to change it. It was nice to have a little break. I was amazed at how quickly he got it done- especially considering how long it took me to change mine at anchor!
Around 8 p.m. the wind picked up a little and had shifted a bit too so we decided to sail for awhile. It was nice to turn off that noisy engine, but really we didn’t have enough wind to sail fast. My trip meter went from showing 12 hours left to 33 hours. We decided to sail until dark anyway just because. It was so peaceful and quiet.
In the distance I could see that the seas were changing. They looked dark and unsettled up ahead and a little uneven where they met with the horizon. I made the mistake of getting out the binoculars to look. Then I realized those uneven parts on the horizon were WAVES! That freaked me out to the point I decided not to look ahead in the binoculars again. It turned out they weren’t that huge after all – just some more 3 footers – but they looked huge in the perspective of a near flat calm.
Just before dark it clouded up again – this time not friendly puffy clouds but those scary dark kind and they were behind us again though quite distant. I fired up the engine but left the mainsail up and reefed as it made for a nicer ride. I got that done, and then realized that with those clouds it was going to be really dark. So much for the full moon I had counted on for light. For whatever reason, I had a small panic attack. I started to think that if it were dark and one of those walls of water or twisters were headed my way I wouldn’t even see it, or what if I hit a whale or a crab pot. Any number of awful scenarios started running through my head to the point where I broke out into a full sweat and very nearly passed out. I finally sat down, closed my eyes for a few minutes and got a grip – telling myself it would be stupid to die from worrying about something that hadn’t actually happened. I said a few prayers too asking for courage and wisdom to not do anything too stupid. That seemed to help and although I was still scared I knew that I’d probably get used to it in a couple of hours – as long as it didn’t storm. I had thought that all those nights I’d spent sailing on the lake would make me feel comfortable sailing on the sea at night – but it’s a totally different experience.
Those ugly dark clouds stayed behind me for several eerie hours. I decided I felt more comfortable if DJ’s boat was ahead of me rather than on the side, so I trailed behind a good distance following his white lights. Although it was somewhat comforting at one point I realized he could have fallen off his boat miles ago and I could be following an empty vessel. I really tried hard not to call him on the radio more than every couple of hours, but hey I was scared. Not that he was entirely reassuring or chatty – pretty much all he ever said was “ok”. (He later told me he was saying “you’re ok” but I never heard that part.
Meanwhile he seemed to be straying way off course – according to my GPS. I found out later he was watching the squalls on his radar and trying to help us avoid them. Sometime just around midnight we ended up going under this huge nasty looking bank of clouds that I’d been dreading for hours. It was the most amazing thing. Just as I got under them I could actually smell the rain. I called DJ on the radio and asked him if was raining up there – he said no but he could smell it. I don’t think I’ve ever really smelled rain like that before. I got out my foulie jacket to be ready, but it never did rain the entire two hours we were under those ugly clouds.
I kept thinking that once we got past them we would see the full moon, as there were stars up ahead and to the starboard side. Sure enough we eventually got there and the full moon was incredible. It made such a light it was amazing. One time when a little cloud passed over it – I actually got worried thinking my steaming light had gone out until I realized what happened.
It was windy maybe 15 knots, but head on – so no sailing and it slowed us down a bit according to the GPS reading. In my perspective it felt like we were flying through the dark. Sometime around 2 a.m. I settled down and began to enjoy it. The moon was out, the ugly clouds were way behind us and it was so very beautiful. I listened to music on my ipod, and played a little scrabble on my iphone. Once every hour I set the timer for 5 minutes and shut my eyes. I never really did sleep but it still felt good. I was counting the hours and minutes until daylight. It got a little chilly and I put on a sweatshirt and covered up my legs with my foulie jacket.
I saw the lights from 5 fishing boats but all were far away I really got into the groove around 4 a.m. and was just lying in the cockpit looking ahead and was actually pretty relaxed. I’d figured out hours before that you can’t really see anything in the water at night so there was no point in keeping a watch for anything other than boats. I thought it would be daylight around 5 a.m. but was disappointed as it didn’t really start to get light until 6 and the sun didn’t poke up above the horizon until around 7. But then what a sunrise, not only was it beautiful I’d never been so happy to see one!
I was nearly dancing a jig as we got closer to land. We couldn’t actually see land until about 6 miles away as it was pretty low – but what a sight! I was elated that not only had I made it – but that I had overcome such a huge fear.
Would I do it again – well maybe not that exact run – as I don’t plan to go back – but I am definitely looking forward to my next passage! But I never ever want to see another huge water spout!!!!!
7 Comments
Kyla
7/12/2009 10:21:51 am
You are awesome. What bravery to go out there and do that. You are my inspiration Mary. Congrats on your first passage. Alone. In the dark. whew.
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Phillip
7/13/2009 03:26:24 am
Let me know when you put up the pictures
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Emily Lim
7/13/2009 06:00:22 am
Wow, so proud of you...my entire office has been listening to me update them on your progress. We are all living vicariously through you. Will you come to the lake this weekend? When you are home?
Reply
Kyla
7/13/2009 06:05:50 am
Could the animal you saw have been a manatee? It sounded like it. They are in that part...
Reply
Lance
7/14/2009 07:21:43 am
What a fantastic story and adventure. Thank you for sharing it.
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