Florida Sailing

We woke Thursday morning to a
bright sparkly morning - coffee on deck!

 On the Thursday midnight deck watch, things were definitely looking up. From there on, sailing was more like the other trips I have been on - requiring layers, bouncy, but overall warmer and less challenging. On that midnight watch we were closing with the Florida coast. We crossed back over the Gulf Stream, and saw the Bahamas light on the up ahead on the left, marking the Florida strait. To the right up ahead, we couldn't spot any land but there were clearly lights looming on the horizon lighting the night sky in that direction. 

On that watch, for the first time ever in my life, I observed the movement of the stars. (Or, as my NASA scientist neighbor pointed out, the rotation of the earth causing the apparent movement of the stars.) We were headed due south, and that put my one sure star constellation, the Big Dipper, right behind us. We had a bright sky, no clouds, and the looming light pollution from Florida was still far ahead and in the other direction. The Big Dipper was upside down, emptying its contents down to the sea below. I followed its two pan stars straight down to Polaris, the North Star. I located it right away as I got on deck at midnight. Three hours into the watch, when I went to look at the Big Dipper again, it had moved! Now it was sideways, holding some of its contents back. MAGIC! A few nights later, one of my watch mates showed me how to use the big dipper to find Arcturus (follow the arc of the handle) and Spica (spike that same line out farther) and finally a small square constellation called the "spanker" that was always oriented to true south. (Repeating the mnemonic for my own benefit.)

Thursday morning - this is one of
most comfortable spots because it
has a back rest!

That morning I hung out on deck for after-breakfast watch before mine, with the weather finally conducive to being up there with nothing to do. As it turns out, the Captain decided to set more sails without calling out more people. And it turns out they have a saying, "on deck, on duty"! So I got to actually help haul on big heavy lines to raise the main and trim the other sails. And, my help was actually useful and even necessary. They have a big racket device where two baseball-bat sized sticks are stuck in and used as levers, and that is used for final grinding up of certain things. I got to serve on one side of the rachet for the first time! It was hard! My shoulders and biceps felt it, as I put my whole weight into it.

Friday off the Keys

As the day wore on, we came in reach of cell phone signals from shore, followed shortly thereafter by visual. We followed the southern curve of Florida along from Miami and then along the Keys. Remarkably, the wind followed along behind us, making the same curve. And for the first time, it was T-shirt weather. Friday afternoon found us off Key West, and then we shot through the passage between the Keys and the Dry Tortugas, and finally headed north. Still, the wind followed us! Though, it dropped in strength considerably.

The day spent off the Keys was different. We were in contact with the shore, both via cell signal and also the VHF radio at the wheel was full of chatter. After several days of seeing and hearing from no-one else, it felt like we had emerged from some other world. I did not check news, only texts and emails. I figured I didn't need to know anything about the larger world beyond my friends, family and neighbors. Several of the crew members had spent time on boats in Key West, and they reminisced about the boats and the lifestyle (some of which we heard from on the VHF radio!). As the weather had moderated, making it easier to move about the ship with fewer layers on, boat chores piled up for the crew. 

The crew in the rigging doing chores

As we headed north, and the wind dropped, it got hot! We were going to be early into St Petersburg, but there wouldn't be any dock space available until Thursday. So there was no point in making the kind of excellent time we had been making up till then. With the wind dead behind us, on Saturday the captain dropped the large fore-and-aft sails on both masts and at the front, leaving only the square sail high up on the foremast. (The "foretop"). With just this sail up, the awnings could be rigged - one between the two masts, and one over the boom all the way to the back of the boat. The shade was VERY welcome - it felt like 20 degrees cooler immediately. 

In charge!

So we poked along at 3 knots (roughly a walking pace) for the rest of Saturday and Sunday. There were many boat chores to be done aboard - sanding and painting, polishing, sewing leather chafe gear to strategic places on the rigging, adding more "thimbles" into the rigging to feed lines through, reducing tangling. With the boat doing only a little bit better than drifting, the crew left the handling of the ship to us guest crew. We took over the helm and the boat checks, letting the crew get on with specialized tasks uninterrupted. No-one needed to touch the sail for those two days! I felt pretty good about being in charge until I heard the chief mate say to the second mate "it's not like they can hit anything of even go far off course at this speed!".

A word about the crew. The bulk of the crew is in their twenties, with one just 21 years old. I was happy to note that 7 of the 12 professional crew were women! (Apparently the Pride has made a point of having a co-ed crew from the very beginning. I'm just a little too old to have jumped on this, but I'll never know if I would have had the nerve anyway.) The Captain is roughly my age, and has been with the Pride project from the beginning, back in the late 70s, though not exclusively and not always full time. Last year, they appointed another Captain, and the two of them now trade off voyages, allowing time for other pursuits. But I've only sailed with this Captain, and I wonder what life would be like under the other. This Captain had his management style from the 1980s described as "likely to bark orders and corrections" - still true! But this first of the season shakedown voyage involved a great deal more explanations before executing maneuvers, and I really appreciated it. 

A view of the salon and the galley
Good head clearance, and the only actual place to sit
Also one of the many many ladders,
and the support pole for the mast

The First Mate is a woman just shy of 40, I'd say. She has been aboard the Pride and several other ships, but has also been a world-class roller derby champion and and general contractor, among other gigs. She was my watch leader, and so we had some downtime to hear life stories. She is convinced she is right to be going to sea right now.

The longtime cook quit just a week before the voyage! The organization went to town beating the bushes for a cook, and the poor woman they got had never been on a boat, had never cooked professionally, and was a vegetarian who had never cooked meat. But she was very game! (She was also a former world-class roller derby queen, currently at loose ends.) She fell, she got seasick, she got burned, but she got right back up and kept things going. So the food was very basic, but it was more than just edible. We had scrambled eggs or oatmeal for breakfast, with bacon or sausage some days. Lunches were leftovers from the night before, and sandwiches or wraps (including the crew favorite fried spam one day). She had an always-on diesel stove and oven, where burner strength was handled by moving pots closer or further from the hot side. Until we turned the stove off when we got to Florida, and she had to learn to use the propane stove. She also had a giant electric rice cooker and equally giant electric fry pan, and even though the engine was off, we ran the generator twice a day to charge batteries and make enough juice for her to use the electrical appliances. She made brownies one day, but could only do it when the angle of heel wasn't extreme - otherwise all the batter would slide to one side. Dinners were spaghetti, sloppy joes, meat loaf, baked salmon. Plain, but more than just edible, and very appreciated.

I got to know and like my watch mates. The two professional crew members included a very personable young man from Berkeley, CA, and the 21-year-old woman from Tampa, our destination. Both had been working on boats for a while, but were mostly new to the Pride. They had rigging skills and were happy to keep busy with boatkeeping chores during the day watches, but at night we all sat around the helm, taking turns steering and doing boat checks, but with plenty of time to talk. I think of the young man as "1911 guy" - he dresses in classic seaman's clothes, and when everyone else was hunched over their phones at first contact on Thursday he grabbed his paper journal. The young woman was "Florida girl", left home at 17 and has been working on boats ever since. She was crew on a school ship that had college students, and I think she learned a way there of distancing from the students that spilled over into some distance from us guest crew. But she did love to talk about herself! The adage of "ask them about themself and they will think you are a fascinating conversationalist" was rarely more true. I liked hearing about her experiences and life goals, so different from mine. 

Sunday night a large pod of dolphins came to join us! There was a mother with two babies, and several other adults. They stayed playing in our very placid bow wave (still traveling at 3 knots) for a long time - maybe 45 minutes. They were truly magical and a delight to see.  We could climb out on the rigging supporting the bowsprit and get right above them. We had also seen a few dolphins that didn't stay long while we were out in the ocean. There in the ocean we also saw windrows of floating sargasso weed (Florida girl retrieved some and identified the tiny critters that live there) and many many schools (flocks?) of flying fish. They scoot along in the wave troughs, and I was always surprised how long they stay up and flapping. They truly look like birds at first glance. The first time I ever saw them was on the voyage to Bermuda two years ago. We also had some luminescence in the wake and on the white caps.

Sunrise at anchor in Tampa Bay

Early Monday morning, after my midnight watch was over, the engine started up for the first time since a week ago Saturday - 9 days and 1200 miles ago! Our single sail came down. We were entering Tampa Bay, which is crazy big - much bigger than I thought. Before breakfast, I heard the anchor go down.

It was Monday, and we couldn't go the last few miles to St Pete until Thursday. The plan was to stay there and do more boat keeping, including putting the dinghy over the side and painting the hull. It was pleasant weather and forecast to stay that way, but I was tired. Also a bit stir crazy - I was getting the fewest number of steps ever recorded on my fitbit. 

My cabin mate, Florida Man, was even more ready to get off. He is a very serious sailor, but had no interest in scraping and painting, and he didn't have the arcane skills of splicing, worming, and servicing that was going to be done on the rigging. And he had clashed with the engineer, and knew that though he had skills, she was not a supervisor he would like. But Florida Man lived about 30 miles away and thought how nice it would be to beside his pool with a cold beer in his hand, rather than rocking and hot on the boat. As the Captain reviewed the plans for the next few days, FM asked about the possibility of going ashore. The captain declined, citing distance and time to get to a landing place. Florida Man countered with other ways to get ashore, and the Captain was accommodating, if FM could arrange it. I asked him to book two seats on whatever he could do, and went below to pack.

Florida Man called the closest marinas looking for water taxis or a pickup, but no-one was interested. He asked the Captain if it was ok if he simply flagged down a passing boat. We had attracted a fair amount of attention, being so beautiful and distinctive. The Captain was concerned for his paintwork, but he thought they'd be able to rig something safe for us and the paintwork both. FM had also checked for rental car availability, but came up with nothing at the two local airports. He didn't have ready transport available to come from his end, but then he checked into Ubers, and figured out it would be in the neighborhood of $100 - if he could get someone - and decided it was still worth going for. I checked my airline's website early, and they were still selling tickets for that day's flights to Baltimore - they had three non-stops in the afternoon. And, should worst come to worst, there would surely be a hotel room available to go the next day. Very unlike me, I decided to go with the flow.

Jumping ship!

Just after lunch, I heard the hails and realized Florida Man had been successful! I scrambled to finish stuffing my bags, and started to haul them on deck. There was a nice runabout with a couple in it standing a distance off. We had put our own dinghy over the side already, and so FM and I lowered our bags over the side, followed them down the ladder (the curved side of the Pride always makes this very challenging for me) and were driven over the runabout. Again, bags first, then us, and off we roared at 30 mph towards shore! They were a couple from Newfoundland that spent every winter in their condo on the south side of Tampa Bay. They asked where we wanted to go, and we said "anywhere we can get Ubers" - with my destination the Tampa airport and his much farther away south.  So they took us into a large marina, helped us carry our bags to the office by the parking lot. They were so happy to be of help, refused any money ("let us buy you a drink, at least." "No, no, happy to help. Now we have a story!")

I booked my flight home in the uber on the way to airport - that's a first for me! In the airport, I changed from shorts into long pants, in a restroom stall that was bobbing around furiously, making it difficult to get my foot through the leg. The airport continued to bob, as I first sat in a comfortable chair in air conditioning, and then got a hamburger and fries. Last aboard the Southwest flight (last to check in), middle seat home aware of how stinky I might be! Uber home, where my lovely little dog was so very happy to see me. 

It took three days for the bobbing around to settle down. I'm now well rested, and this seems like a distant adventure (except for the bruises continuing to blossom and change color).