Going Places Where Most People Don't

This post is supposed to be from Savannah, but it’s not. We were headed to Savannah everything going fine until… the auto pilot stopped working.

We were about 15 miles off the coast of FL roughly abeam of Jacksonville, and the auto pilot started going off course. We tried resetting it many times, but no luck. It would work for a while and then not.

After many hours of trying to hand steer Stray Catz in a quartering sea, we finally threw in the towel. We hove to and plotted a course for what I thought was St Simons Island, GA. It turns out I must have been tired, because it was St Marys, GA instead. Oops, but it gave us the opportunity to explore Cumberland Island, and rest.

After a day of rest and exploration, we took off for St Simons Island via the intra coastal waterway. This started out to be a very pretty trip. Lots of dolphins. Roseate Spoonbills. Kylan saw a stingray do a flip out of the water.  Beautiful country. Beautiful day.  Until St Andrew Sound. That’s where everything went down hill.

I had this great idea that we would scoot out to the ocean and go around the Atlantic side of Jekyll Island. According to the charts I had, it should have been ok. The charts were wrong. We headed out to sea, but the charts and the channel marks didn’t line up. When the depth gauge read way more shallow than it should, and way more shallow than I was with two miles from land, I did an emergency turn around and started following my tracks back the way  I came. While on the way back, I called TowBoat US and asked for some info. They said ABSOLUTELY DON’T go that way.    I wished I would have called them hours sooner.

Now the next problem. We have to go around the other side of Jekyll Island, and it’s low tide. Low tide was great for the one bridge we had to go under, but not so good for the narrow undredged channels we had to drive through. I do believe we were pushing a little mud at one point, but Stray Catz kept going.

We did finally make it to St Simons, GA and without any real incident, but for me, it was too much of the wrong kind of excitement for one day.

We’ve been in St Augustine for almost two weeks and we have had a great time while we were here, but we’ve also knocked off a bunch of projects.  Kylan and I tied a safety net a between the lower lifeline and deck all along both sides of the boat. That should keep the dogs from being washed overboard, but it sure was a lot of knots to tie.

We got the mainsail repaired.  That was the easy part. Taking the sail down removing the battens, replacing the battens and replacing the sail back on the boom was the challenging part. Even though we started each time in calm winds, inevitably the wind would pick up at the most inappropriate time. Let me just say there is enough canvas in Stray Catz mainsail that it shouldn’t be loose in the wind and should be in the sail tracks.

We’ve made many other upgrades and maintenance items, some scheduled and some not. I started the engines on Wednesday only to find no water coming out of the exhaust like it was supposed to. So after about three hours of sweltering labor, the starboard engine is sporting a new sea water pump belt and impeller. This gave Anna and Kylan the opportunity to take the dinghy out by themselves and go get the parts needed to make the repairs. There is a lot of shallow areas in the Mantanzas river at low tide. Just ask Kylan.

We are finally coming around to the getting the getting around without a car routine. Anna and I took the wrong bus and ended up walking about two miles. That’s not so far except I was carrying a nice big watermelon. I think we’re getting use to this cruising lifestyle.

Now it’s time to move on, but not before watching a pretty good fireworks show. Nothing compared to Boomsday, but a good show just the same. And from where we were moored, a great place to watch them. On top of all that, with all the small back yard shows we could see we were watching fireworks late into the night.

It’s off to Savannah in the morning. Should be bout a two day sail. If everything goes right. I’ll let you know.

Until then, Happy Independence Day to every one.

The trip to the Bahamas was by design a training experience for all three of us. That is why Mark went with us. He was to teach us the ins and outs of this particular boat. After all he owned the boat for twelve years, so he knew all the ins and outs. Like any true sailor Mark had very strong opinions as to how things are supposed to be done and which products work, which ones don’t and so on, so  I’m not sure he was totally thrilled with some of the changes we’ve been making to Stray CatZ.  It was a great training opportunity for us though, and I know we all learned a lot. I only mention this because even though we were in the Bahamas, it wasn’t all just fun and games. Only mostly 🙂

Here is a recap of the highlights; We spent a total of three days at the dock at Browns Marina in Alice town. That’s where we took care of some maintenance and cleaning items, but more importantly, we installed a brand new Garmin radar unit for the boat. That required sending Mark up and down the mast numerous times. And for some of my Knoxville friends, yes I am radar qualified.

We walked around Alice Town and Baily Town and did a little beach combing on N. Bimini. Wow! There are a lot of conch shells there.

We spent a couple of days snorkeling. One of the them near some rocks off shore of N. Bimini and another day we were at the Sapona shipwreck. Both times we saw an enormous amount of fish in all shapes and sizes including nurse sharks, barracuda, cow fish, angel fish and a porcupine fish. There was beautiful coral and we even caught a live conch, but released it, because no one was motivated enough to clean and prepare it.

We spent a couple of nights anchored off Cat Cay. Right off the end of the runway, so we could watch the planes come and go, and I would feel at home.

Every day the sea turtles would swim near the boat, but by the time we got in the water to swim with them, they would disappear. At night I would sit on the transom and look into the water and watch the light show of the bio-luminescence. It reminded me of watching the fire flies back in TN, only with more colors.

The water there was so clear, we could see large  creatures swimming beneath the surface. We would guess at the species based on the shape, but who knows for sure. No one jumped in to verify.

On the way down to the anchorage Kylan caught a three-foot barracuda, which of course we released before it could slice us up with its razor sharp teeth.

On our last full day, we finally launched the dinghy only to discover the water in the fuel tanks from the six weeks at the dock in Ft Lauderdale. A few hours were spent cleaning the carburetor, which worked as a temporary fix only, so we could go ashore and enjoy an overpriced meal on Cat Cay. Unfortunately we didn’t see any more iguanas.

The next morning we took off bright and early bound for Ft Lauderdale. The winds although from the right direction were not strong enough to really help. Mark was in a hurry to get back to a father’s day meal with some friends. Maybe he was just anxious to leave us and move on to the next chapter in his life. It only took us about 7 hours to get back, but when we got to the dock, it was occupied. Unable to reach anyone and not sure what to do, we tied to the neighbors dock which was empty, and left a note. Fortunately the neighbor was understanding and Stray CatZ rested peacefully back in the USA.