Good morning! Sorry for the delay in posting; Internet access here at the Naples City Dock is a pain, and I suppose I’ve been on strike, preferring resting and doing nothing to taking care of business. Nevertheless, I have put together some notes and stories about our passage from Gulfport to Naples. In fact, I spent quite a bit of time during the passage mentally composing my blog entries about the experience. (During the first day, I decided the title would be This Had Better Be Worth It. Things improved after that, and I’ve had a couple of days of recovery in Naples, so that doesn’t seem quite necessary any more.) Given 5 very long days to think about it -- and given my intense need for distraction during that time -- I composed quite a lot! The notes that follow are the highlights of those mental ramblings and should paint you a picture of life as a deep-water sailor. Enjoy!
First, last, and always foremost
Frank is my hero. With his entire crew incapacitated much of the time, he bore a heavy burden indeed. His watches were longer, his rest periods were busier, and his responsibility for getting us all back to shore safely was huge. He never faltered and he never complained. I was already pretty fond of him before this trip ;-), but my admiration for him now knows no bounds.
The days have character
A lot of things about the trip are already blurring together, but less so than I might have thought. I think this is because the 5 days we spent at sea were surprisingly distinct, as these next few sections will show.
Thursday – Day 1 – Rainy, chilly seasickness hell
The big weather system that we had hoped we would be tucking in behind was still very much in residence in the Gulf. We rocked and rolled and took in most of our sails and still did better than 5 knots in the right direction. The girls and I were so sick, from the outset, and even iron-stomach Frank succumbed eventually. We were somewhat underprepared for the cold, so we were terribly uncomfortable outside. Plus, everything below decks that we hadn’t stowed properly and a good bit that we thought we had ended up tossed every which way. The ensuing mess meant the inside wasn’t terribly comfortable either. We got through this day not so much with grit and determination as by the simple fact that we had no choice but to do so. In the Captain’s Log, Frank described this day as “Survival conditions,” and I’m afraid it was no exaggeration.
Friday – Day 2 – A little less rainy, a little less chilly seasickness hell
Signs that the weather system was moving away were the only thing that kept us going. Land was no longer in sight when dawn broke, and the water was a deep, pure blue. We were literally surrounded by storm clouds, but our regular drenchings fell into the category of showers rather than squalls. I got out the silver emergency blankets and we used those to line our rain gear. It helped the warmth situation immensely and left me kicking myself for not thinking of them sooner. The entire cockpit and good portions of our bodies were soon tinted silver, since that silver stuff rubs off of cheap space blankets, but it was well worth it. Our seasickness continued unabated. Not wanting to be too graphic, I will just say that I did all right while I was driving, but once relieved of that duty, I would “make a stop” on the way to the companionway, go below to strip out of my rain gear and make a stop in the galley, walk the ten feet forward to the head to make a stop there, and then collapse into my bunk. Most unpleasant.
Saturday – Day 3 – Twilight at the end of the tunnel
Oh, the relief as the seas calmed down! People tell me that the third day is always when things start to get better, but we’ll never know, because the conditions were so markedly improved by our third day. We all managed to eat a very little bit and – most importantly – to start taking in fluids. The skies were thick and gray, so that we couldn’t tell 11 a.m. from 4 p.m. Twilight all day. That suited Chloe just fine, since she stayed below all day. She’d found a spot – lying crosswise on one of the dinette benches – where she didn’t feel sick. She read and slept all day and began caring for our poor, neglected, storm-tossed rats. (Their water bottle went flying on the first day, and I was worried about them but beyond helping them. They owe their little lives to Chloe.) Marjie, meanwhile, stayed in the cockpit most of the time and was still one miserable kid. I had to bully her into taking small sips of water. By the end of the day, when she ate half a slice of bread with jelly, she and we began to know she would be all right. So, things improved. But there was still a fair amount of tedium, and I’m sure you can imagine our dismay when we realized we’d need a fifth day to get there.
Sunday – Day 4 – This isn’t so bad
With the weather turning ever more pleasant – warm but with enough overcast to keep us from broiling – we got a glimpse of what the passage would have been like if not for the bad weather. The sea was actually CALM, and we had Singular Experiences (see below). Chloe came abovedecks and Marjie actually sat up. We’d gone 24 hours without “feeding the fish.” As night fell, we could see the glow from Tampa, and it was comforting to know that we could end our passage at any time simply by heading due east.
Monday – Day 5 – Nature’s last laugh
It was a beautiful day. The sun was out, the seas were calm, and we were almost there. Unfortunately, our Conservative Navigation (see below) and a shift in the wind meant that we had to take a power-boaters-don’t-have-this-problem jog back out to sea to get around the headland at Fort Myers. How depressing to spend hours going in the wrong direction!! Okay, okay, we were still headed south, but – with the way the Florida coast curves to the southeast – we were heading AWAY from land. Ugh. We did that until I simply couldn’t stand it any more, then took aim at Naples. We were running downwind now, with a stiff breeze and waves pushing us east, so our speed was about 8 knots. Cruising, indeed! But the wave action wasn’t pleasant and driving the boat as it surfed took a lot of energy and attention from our sleep-starved selves. I managed to broach the boat once, fortunately with no harm done except to re-trash the interior that Frank had recently tidied. By nightfall, the clouds rolled in again, and we had to dig out the raingear. (Our raingear being rather icky with sweat and saltwater by now, this wasn’t thrilling.) I felt totally disoriented. My tired brain was not quite able to simultaneously reconcile that (1) though the land and lights were on our left with a big empty nothing in front of us, we were going the right way, and (2) though the coastline was in sight and curved around to be directly in front of us, we were in no danger of hitting it. I spent a few hours alternating nonsensical worries that we were off heading out to sea with even more nonsensical worries that land was about to jump out and bite us. To cap things off, the wind shifted again to come straight at our noses. There was NO WAY we were going to do the purist sailor thing and do a bunch of tacking and jibing to come into Naples under sail. We fired up the diesel and motored the last 3 hours, anchoring about midnight off the Naples beach, in the rain, just outside the channel that leads to the Naples boat basin.
Singular experiences: Dolphins!
On the fourth day, there were dolphins. Oh, my, how there were dolphins! We were cruising along, feeling mostly human again by now if a bit bored, when there was a sudden commotion alongside the boat. A pod of dolphins arrived with much speed and fanfare and began frolicking around us. There were at least 30 of them, in a wondrous variety of sizes and colors. The girls ran forward to see them better, while I enjoyed all the slicing fins and splashing breaths from the wheel until our cries of excitement woke Frank. Then he and I took turns driving and going forward to watch their show at the bow. That was definitely the best viewpoint: seeing those sleek forms zip and dive and dash as they played with our boat was amazing and glorious. There were several babies in the pod, with one little guy no more than a foot and half long joining his elders at the bow. Fabulous sight. We cruised along together for probably half an hour, til even the teenager dolphins had enough hot-rodding and the pod moved off.
Singular experiences: Merry and Pippin
During a rainstorm in the fourth day, a significantly bedraggled little brown bird arrived on our boat. Shellshocked and shy, she at first huddled on the bow pulpit looking distinctly pitiful. We left her alone to rest – we were at least 100 miles from shore!! – and by morning, she was hopping around deck like she owned the place. Alone with her for the moment, I started calling her Pippin. As the sky lightened and my family began to stir belowdecks, she got increasingly brave, til the moment came when she perched on the companionway, eyeballed the interior with visible curiosity, and then flew right on in. Marjie and Chloe were thrilled.
Not long after this, Merry arrived. He plopped down out of nowhere to perch on a coiled line hanging next to the companionway. I called out to the girls to let them know we now had two birds, and Chloe cautiously stuck her head out to have a look. He was too tired to be perturbed, so she slowly reached out a hand toward him. He let her pet him! A few minutes later, she had him perched on her hand, and a few minutes after that, he was sitting on my shoulder while I drove the boat, listening with great curiosity to my whistling.
Interactions with these little friends dominated the rest of the trip. Pippin nibbled on some spilled rat food and whatever tasty tidbits she was finding on deck during her constant patrols. Merry wouldn’t eat anything, but he grew increasingly comfortable with us, and even seemed to seek out our company. At one point, he discovered a conveniently concave little spot in Frank’s discarded rain jacket and burrowed and nestled in there with evident great pleasure.
As we neared the end of our trip, you will recall that things got a little hectic. I did my daring 360 in the sailboat, we had yet another rain squall, we took down the sails and started motoring, etc. Somewhere in there, Merry took his leave. We were only about 10 miles from shore, so we have every hope that he is now happily munching food from some backyard feeder, but we *really* wish he had stayed with us all the way to Naples so we could be sure.
Pippin did just that, though. After we dropped anchor and made our way below to collapse utterly, I found her sitting in the open window in the head. I wished her a good night and went to bed. When we awoke the next morning, she was gone.
Points of reference
When you’re out in deep water, you don’t have land masses, radio towers, buoys, and the like to use as points of reference while steering the boat. Staring at the compass or wind indicators for hours is not exciting and, for me, not conducive to good steering or a calm stomach. Here are some things I used to help me stay on course:
- Sail shape and sounds (sails make unpleasant noises when you’re not steering right)
- Wind direction
- Wave direction
- Oil rigs (first night only)
- Stars (when we could see them)
- The new moon (when we could see it)
- Cloud shapes (unless they were moving)
- City glow (last two nights only)
Here are some things that did *not* help me stay on course:
- Other boats that I’d mistaken for stationary objects
- Gut instinct
Conservative navigation
One principle of upwind sailing is that you should sail “tight to the wind,” meaning you point the nose of the boat as much into the face of the wind as possible. This is because no boat can sail directly upwind and some boats are, in fact, really bad at sailing anywhere close to that. If you get as close to it as possible, you will be free later to “fall off the wind” – sail so the wind is coming comfortably over the side of the boat – and point directly at your destination.
Well, for two days of survival-conditions sailing and without consulting each other about it, Frank and I both endeavored to sail a bit tighter to the wind – in this case, more east than south – than our course required. We had these huge southerly swells that we just *knew* had to be pushing us south, and one just never knows what the wind is going to do later on in the trip. Thus confident that we weren’t going to miss Florida entirely and with other more pressing priorities on our minds (surviving), we didn’t check our relative position on the chart until the third day. We realized then how far east we’d come and how much south we needed to go. That’s about when the wind changed and “falling off” was no longer possible. Instead, we had to sail downwind, and we couldn’t point as southerly as we wanted to without a bunch of maneuvering that we didn’t have the energy for.
The result of all this was that we “came out” near Tampa instead of near Naples. Not the end of the world, but it probably added twelve hours to our passage.
Sleeping at sea
Reading between the lines, you may have figured out that Frank and I didn’t require Marjie and Chloe to stand watches. They were both too sick initially, and then Frank and I were in a groove and just happy to have them pretty much taking care of themselves. So all steering on the passage was done by the adults. Since the longest either of us took the wheel was about four hours, you can see that Frank and I got our sleep for those five days in small doses. I discovered a variety of ways a tired, seasick KreweQueen can sleep under those conditions.
While on watch:
- Slumped over the wheel
- Sitting upright at the wheel
- Standing at the wheel
- In any position, with eyes wide open
Note: These are not as dangerous as they sound. The sails make those aforementioned unpleasant noises and wake you up if you start to drift off course.
While not on watch:
- Curled up on the stern seat next to the captain
- Curled up on the low-side cockpit seat
- Curled up on the floor of the cockpit
- Stretched out on the floor of the main cabin
- Curled up crosswise on the slightly damp sheets of the very noisy forward cabin
- Stretched out on the side deck
- In the rain
- In the sun
- With blankets
- Without blankets
The 110-degree diet
We had a small lunch as we left Gulfport. That was about it for food for nearly three days. Then we had some very small, bland meals here and there as we finished out the passage. There's no scale onboard, of course, so I can only guess at how much weight I lost. Let's just say that, while I wouldn't wish the 110-degree diet on an enemy, I am quite pleased with the results!
Technical notes
Days 1 and 2 – As we left Gulfport, the wind and waves increased. We gradually took in sail until we were running with only the jib sail, and even that was furled to about 50 or 60 percent. We held a rough heading of about 110 in a close reach and did about 5 knots steady.
Day 3 – The wind had eased up considerably, but we were all SO tired that we didn’t add any sail back on, being quite sure that would be Mother Nature’s signal to kick us in the head. Besides, we were still making about 4 knots. By end of day, the wind shifted so we were running downwind.
Day 4 – Returned to full sail. *Tried* to hold a heading of 125 or so, but it meant a careful balancing act to keep the sails full of wind.
Day 5 – Full sail mostly, with occasional variations in the amount of jib we had out. Standing rigging on this boat keeps us from pushing the boom out enough to run downwind smoothly, so the price for our excellent speeds (8 knots or better) was a whole lot of muscling the wheel around. We jibed out to sea at a heading of ~135 for several hours, then back in to Naples at about 120.
And in conclusion
Naples. City of the rich, evidently. We motored up the channel to the Naples City Dock, flanked by gigantic mansions that inspired thoughts of hurricane vulnerability. But it’s definitely Florida!! Palm trees, lovely beaches, mangrove swamp, and dozens of million-dollar power boats.
I totally impressed myself by piloting the boat into the gas dock like a pro. To my desperation-tinged inquiry about guest facilities, the clerk replied, “Of course!” We filled up, found our slip, and began the recovery process. SHOWERS!!!!
It’s all been rather surreal, but no moment more so than our first shore dinner Tuesday night. Remember all we’d been through, then imagine my near-hysterical, laughter-and-tears reaction when the waiter at the marina restaurant presented us with a basket of bread and said, “And that’s mango butter with honey.” Of course it was. What else could we possibly have on our bread at such a time?!
We’ve spent the last few days doing as little as possible. We have managed to clean the boat, stock up on provisions, and have a little engine adventure involving a bad batch of diesel (the dockmaster apologetically took care of having the bad pumped out and we’ll fill up with a complimentary tankful today). We also had a few meals that we didn’t have to prepare and walked around Naples a good bit. A fine little vacation!
What’s next
We leave Naples today for the Dry Tortugas, a small collection of islands at the western end of the Keys. They comprise a National Park, complete with a ranger-staffed fort to explore and lots of good snorkeling (finally!!!). About a dozen tour boats come out there daily from Key West, but before and after tour-boat times, we should have the place to ourselves.
