Florida

Florida
27 July 2008

Blue Moon is packed and ready to go. Go on the truck that is. As I step onto the dock for the last time, Kuno just wants to check one more thing on the foredeck. That is when I hear a distinct splash sound. Not much I can do, the fishing net is locked up inside. Unsure of what Kuno dropped, I look into the water, but whatever it was, it doesn’t float. “Oh well” says Kuno, “I never liked that phone anyway.” Kuno hates Blackberries, but this one served us well, keeping us in touch throughout the trip (good thing I haven’t seen the phone bill yet). On the bright side, the phone is the only thing we have lost overboard during the whole trip. In fact, as we contemplate the end of our sailing adventure, we realize that we have had only very few mishaps and that as sailing trips go, this one went really smooth. I give most of the credit to Kuno, who never ceases to amaze me by his capabilities, ingenuity and plain smarts to deal with anything that comes his way.

Leaving Bimini, I was worried about coming to Fort Lauderdale. I read somewhere that Port Everglades in Ft. Lauderdale is the third busiest port in the US. We are not used to much traffic and here, container ships, cruise ships, fishing boats, power and sailboats, even kayaks, you name it, are all around us. And the bridges! Within the first thirty minutes of entering Ft. Lauderdale, I have the biggest scare of the whole trip going under a highway bridge that supposedly had enough clearance (just) for our mast to pass. Nervous as it is, Kuno says to me: “Look up to see if we will make it”. Well, have you ever looked up at something really tall directly above you and judged the height? Impossible, I was sure we were going to hit. But, the bridge clearance was as high as stated and we passed with a foot or two to spare. And then the Intracoastal Waterway and later New River opened in front of us and with it a passage through some amazingly beautiful neighborhoods of Ft. Lauderdale. We meander through surprisingly narrow channels about two miles inland. Every once in a while a big boat comes from the other direction and we have to stay to the side to fit. Incredible mansions along the way are fronted by docks with one or more boats tied up. The amount of money floating on the water in this area is incredible. The annual revenue from the marine business in Ft. Lauderdale alone is supposedly four billion dollars. Seeing the amount of boats, I am starting to believe it. I can see though why people like living here. It is very beautiful.

After another five bridges, including a railway bridge, that all open on demand via marine radio, we arrive at our final destination, River Bend Marina on New River. And now the hard work starts, dismantling Blue Moon in preparation for the long trip to the Northwest. Other than securing everything inside the boat, we have to take off and store the sails, bimini, dodger, boom and mast with all the stays and shrouds, the life raft, the dinghy davits. The deflated dinghy goes on the foredeck. Not having done this before, we get a rigger to help us take down the mast and prepare it for transportation. To break the boredom, Tatiana practices her RipStick skills and by the time we are finished she becomes quite proficient. While working on the boat, we sneak in a one day trip down the coast through Miami and the Keys. We love the coast, with its one continuous beach and fancy mansions along the way, but after having been through the Bahamas, the Keys hold little excitement for us. We drive through a bit of the Everglades Park, full of mangroves, shallow water passages, manatees and crocodiles. In fact, it seems that all of Florida is just very low lying and any new development starts by filling in a swamp. And we note that there is a lot of development going on. I guess Florida is still in denial about global warming.


And then it is finally time to send Blue Moon off. As I watch her, ready to be picked up by the lift, she seems very small. Without the crowning glory, her tall mast, she seems naked and vulnerable. But I think of the times when she faithfully got us through tall waves and high winds, strong and proud. And I can’t wait for when we have her home, mast up and ready to sail the BC coast. Once she is on the truck, we say good bye and drive toward our last adventure, the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral and Disneyworld.

Kennedy Space Center is fantastic. Very well done and so educational. Emotional too. Admittedly, to the amusement of my daughter, I cry even during children comedy movies, but I couldn’t help but shed a few tears of pride watching a replay of Neil Armstrong taking the first step on the Moon. I didn’t realize how many problems they had during the landing. They lost communication with the command centre, then they realized that the landing module was going too fast toward the Moon and will miss the selected landing area, the computers on board had several intermittent failures and were navigating the module toward a rocky landing area from which they would not be able to take off again. Eventually, Neil Armstrong took control, ignored the computers and the control centre, and to everyone’s astonishment landed in a completely new spot with literally no landing fuel left. It made me realize that during the first flights the astronauts really had at best a fifty fifty chance of coming back. Pretty impressive stuff. In total, twenty four astronauts have died during missions or training. More than half of them of course perished in the two disastrous space shuttle missions. I can’t imagine the stress of all involved in launching a craft after a preceding disaster. And so we learn about the Apollo missions, get to see a real Apollo rocket and the Moon landing module, and about the space shuttles, including taking part in a simulated take off and walking through a training shuttle clone. Some of the equipment from the early days, like the Moon landing module (see picture), looks like something out of a whimsical cartoon, very basic and crude, almost funny looking despite its underlying sophistication. We drive around the compound and see the assembly building as well as launch towers. It would be very cool to watch a space shuttle being launched, but the next one is only in October. The first shuttles were launched in early eighties and for a while, in late eighties and nineties, there were as many as seven or eight missions per year. Last year there were only about three or four and this year so far two. Out of the five space shuttles built, three are still in service. A little funny story about the prototype glide test space shuttle Enterprise is that NASA wanted to name it Discovery, but about a hundred thousand Star Trek fans petitioned President Ford for the shuttle to be named Enterprise and apparently, looking for any votes he could get, Ford made NASA change the name. And so Enterprise was born. Or so we were told...

I am in awe of the space program, leaving aside the political drivers of the past. The visit leaves me with a sense of pride in mankind, in how much can be accomplished against what common sense might tell us is impossible. If only we had always enough wisdom to apply our ingenuity to the right goals.

Exumas to Bimini, Bahamas

Exumas to Bimini, Bahamas
19 July 2008

The contrast between our last few days in the Exumas and the hoopla of Nassau is unsettling. I got used to our slow days and quiet evenings in empty anchorages more than I realized. I thought I was missing the civilization of restaurants, stores and entertainment, yet when I got all of that in Nassau, I wished we were still in the Exumas. There is a lesson in this observation and despite the fact that we have spent a lot of time thinking and talking about “living in the now” on this trip, apparently I have not quite succeeded. Like the lizard above, I should learn to just stay still and soak the moment in for as long as I can.

The last few cays of the Exumas provided some memorable moments for us. Sometimes the best comes when not much is expected. On chart, Shroud Cay didn’t appear to hold much interest. The shores are lined with mangroves which makes exploration on foot impossible. Instead we hopped in the dinghy and started exploring the shallow channels that crisscross the Cay, calmly winding its way among the mangroves, providing shelter for birds and fish. In fact, for a shallow draft boat, the channels could provide a decent hurricane shelter. We meandered through many turns until the channel suddenly widened and opened to the other side of the island with one of the most spectacular beaches we have seen. The water was a deep turquoise in the middle of the channel, changing to the slightest shade where it spilled onto the white sandy beach with just a hint of pink. With the change of tide the water in the channel was running quite fast and we kept floating down the mouth to the sandbar just outside in the ocean, then running back to do it over again. The water, even on the wild side of the islands is warm, but when we dig our hands half a foot into the sand, it is nice and cool. No wonder so many of the sea creatures live inside the sand.

Leaving Shroud Cay the next day, we stop at Norman’s Cay, a private island with shady history tied to the Medellin drug cartel. Purchased by its boss sometime in the seventies, it served as a waypoint to smuggle drugs to the US. There is a wreck of a good sized plane in the bay that sits just below the surface and we anchor close by to check it out. I heard and read two stories about the plane. One said that it was shot down, the other that the pilot was high on drugs and missed the runway. He missed by a lot I might add. We snorkel around the plane that is still in an amazingly good shape, including the full body (sans cargo) and wings, a propeller on one of the wings and even some wiring in the cockpit. Small patches of coral are starting to envelope the wreck. I should note that while I like looking at coral and small colorful fish, I am never very comfortable snorkeling, especially when there are giant rays, nurse sharks and barracudas swimming around me. I have learned that none of them will bite me unless I bite them first (an unlikely situation), but that does not mean that I am comfortable around them. Throw a wreck of a plane into the mix and all I can think of is a big shark hiding in the belly of the plane waiting to surprise me. So I tentatively stick my head into the plane, making sure that Kuno is nearby as potential bait.

And then it’s just an overnight stop before we set out toward Nassau over the shallow Yellow Bank. The name is quite appropriate as the water here really changes from turquoise to yellow. We are not sure why. It is a good thing that we have the habit of having a lookout on the bow when crossing the banks, as this time we come across a number of coral heads that are not marked on the chart. It is hard to say how close to the surface they reach, to us they just appear as black patches in the water. We don’t take a chance and steer around them.

The Atlantis resort and marina on Paradise Island across from Nassau will be our home for the next four days and we can see its massive towers for hours before anything else of the island appears. We have been warned by many people that anchoring in Nassau is difficult and there are a lot of break-ins, even in some of the marinas. While Atlantis is outrageously expensive, it has the added attraction of an enormous water park. I am not sure who is more excited about it – Kuno or Tatiana. The marina wrap itself around the casino and the hotel and despite being fully booked, we end up being the only sailboat there, and as such a bit of a curiosity. This is definitely the land of power boaters. The more horsepower and fishing rods, the better. The water park turns out to be a lot of fun and not surprisingly, Kuno ends up being the most adventurous. Several slides feature nearly vertical drops and while I am quite happy to watch others scream as they plunge down and contemplate potential safety issues (like what would happen if one leaned forward on the vertical drop), Kuno lines up for slides with names like The Abyss and Leap of Faith. Tatiana is somewhere in between, not a chicken like I, but with a healthy sense of life preservation. Our favourite feature is The Current, a mile long circular river where one floats through waves, rapids, tunnels etc on a tube. Elevation is gained by being transported up, tube and all, on a conveyor before continuing onto another round. One can take a detour to various tube slides, most of them pretty wild. Unfortunately too wild for me as I end up with a whiplash. Atlantis also has some well done aquariums and we get to see hammerhead sharks, manta rays and the recently transferred (I think from Asia) lion fish that is spreading throughout the Bahamas and devouring reef fish at an alarming pace. Just like with the Portuguese Man-o-War, I am struck by the combination of a beautiful form and deadly impact. The rest of Atlantis feels artificial, overdone and overpriced and after four days we don’t mind leaving. Perhaps it just feels that way to us because of the pristine places we have just seen.


Back on the water, we are now in the deep again and it is time to pull out the fishing line. And this time we succeed. It seems appropriate that I am just reading Hemingway’s classic The Old Man and the Sea about an old fisherman catching his biggest marlin ever. And while our fish is tiny compared to that, it does many of the tricks that the story describes. Regardless of the size, there is a sense of excitement for me, who has never fished before. Sometimes the fish speeds up and with no pull on the line it feels like we have lost him, other times he dives or goes sideways causing Kuno to wonder how big he actually is. When we pull him out, he is beautiful, with big eyes and yellow sides. But the color quickly vanishes once he is out of the water. We are sure it is a tuna, but it is more difficult to tell what kind; we settle on Big Eye Tuna. Delicious dinner follows.

Our last stop before leaving Bahamas is Bimini, Hemingway’s fishing port. Here, the near presence of Florida can be really felt, as powerboats from Miami can, in good weather, cross within a few hours. There are more boats on the horizon than we have seen in weeks. We even see several sailboats. We arrive in Bimini in the morning after a night sail from the Berry Islands. The wind is light and we motorsail most of the eighty mile trip. Sailing at night has become comfortable for us and we switch our watches depending on the wind, the trickiness of the passage and how tired each of us feels. The only difference is that with the increasing boat traffic, we have to be much more alert now. Sometime toward the morning the wind died completely and as I wake up, we are gliding on 13 feet of completely still water, able to see the minute detail of the underwater life as if in an aquarium. It has a surreal feeling. We watch a barracuda make a quick pass and a little fish is no more. We see sea stars and blades of grass at the bottom. Not a ripple disturbs the water other than the wake of our bow.

But wind is our friend in more than one way as we soon come to realize. The stillness brings out the heat and bugs and it is virtually impossible to keep the boat at a reasonable temperature without letting in the bugs. As we are in a marina, we plug into the shore power and start up all of the fans that we have on the boat (a total of five), but even then it is barely bearable. Undeterred though, we explore the North Bimini Island, first on a dinghy and then on an rented electric golf cart that has seen much better days (many, many years ago). Offroading is definitely not its strength and Tatiana and I have to push it out of the deep sand when we take it a bit beyond its limits. Bimini is completely geared toward fishing, but, to my surprise, has very little tourism infrastructure otherwise. Even finding a decent restaurant for lunch turns out to be a challenge. But, to our excitement, the mailboat arrived today (it comes once a week) and that means fresh fruit and vegetables in the store. We load up on apples, bananas and tomatoes, as we haven’t seen anything fresh for days. Even Tatiana, who loves to live on pasta and rice, is desperate for something fresh. But progress is coming Bimini’s way and a change is in the making as a grandiose resort / marina / vacation housing project is being developed in the northern part of the island. We have seen the same happening on many of the Bahamian islands and although the islands are by no means untouched by tourism, I suspect that it is nothing compared to what it will be in ten years’ time. Especially on the islands close to Florida. Perhaps the Out Islands will keep their innocence longer.

A new life springs into us as the wind picks up again the next day and Tatiana and I decide to climb the mast, something we haven’t done before. Climb is a bit of an overstatement, as in reality Kuno winches each of us up in a bosun’s seat, with only a slight help from us whenever we can step on the mast spreaders or pull up on the shrouds. Our mast is 54 ft high above the water and that is pretty high when one is perched up top. But the view is fantastic. To give us a sense of what it is like when there are waves (we are in a marina), Kuno rocks the boat. While I am quite tentative about this, Tatiana thinks this is great fun and asks if we can do it more often. I am just hopeful that I will never have to climb the mast while underway.



After more then a month, it is time to say goodbye to the Bahamas and embark on our last sail of the trip, forty miles to Fort Lauderdale. A truck is scheduled to pick up Blue Moon in a week’s time for its long journey to the Pacific Northwest. I hope she will like it there…

Exuma Cays

Exumas, Bahamas
8 July 2008

“Look, he likes pizza!” exclaims Tatiana as she watches the big fish residing under our boat devour what was supposed to be her dinner. More and more pizza goes overboard, followed by red beets (which the fish didn’t like) and cookies (no luck either). Poor guy, he is probably going to throw up at night.

We finally succumbed to the lure of catching our own dinner: we are now in the ranks of cruisers who (attempt to) fish. Not successfully yet, just hopefully. After a search through the various lockers on our boat, Kuno discovered all that was needed to fish here. We are told it is pretty simple – a yoyo with a lot of nylon string, weight, big hook and a colorful squid. Picture this. Day 1: We let out the line, hook and all, and wait. And wait (other cruisers noted that it usually takes only a few minutes to catch something). Maybe we are going too fast. We adjust the speed. Nothing. At the end of the day, Kuno reels the line in and dryly says: “That was a very safe way to fish!” Not understanding what he means I look up and see that the hook was still inside the cork that we put on for safety during storage and handling. Ok, lesson learned. Take the cork off before fishing.

Day 2: Line goes in minus the cork. We adjust the speed and 30 minutes later there is a pull on the line. While Kuno starts reeling the fish in, I go get the fish identification chart and rum. Not to steel our nerves, but to subdue the fish. It is apparently a much more pleasant experience than using the winch handle. Kuno pulls a grey toothy beast in, nice dinner size, about 10 pounds. I pour a good shot of rum into his mouth and gills, while Kuno yells: “Mount Gay? Are you crazy?” Well, I thought I would make his passing a pleasant one, so that he doesn’t get a headache. Kuno and I start studying the identification chart, finding, to our dismay, that it is a barracuda (we think). Edible, but not top of the list. Potential issue with ciguatera poisoning. We decide to throw him back in on the chance that he can recover from the rum. We have pizza for dinner instead. And as for the next few days we will be in a park area with no fishing allowed, we may indeed remain unsuccessful in our attempt to feed ourselves from the sea on this trip.

We are now leisurely moving through the Exumas chain in the Bahamas, relishing the last few days of solitude before we enter the whirl of Nassau, and ultimately the dreaded dismantling of the boat and putting it on a truck in Ft. Lauderdale at the end of the month. While we are not looking forward to the mayhem of organizing the departure, all of us are starting to look forward to coming home.

We arrived in the cruisers’ mecca at the south tip of Grand Exuma, Georgetown, expecting to find a lot of boats, but by this time of the year, especially as hurricane Bertha is trying to make up its mind which way to go, the Exumas are empty and we have many of the anchorages to ourselves. Georgetown was an exception, with a few cruisers, who like us, for some reason or other, are late in their schedules, and a few boats who plan to weather the hurricane season in the area. After days of not meeting another boat while passing through the Out Islands, it is nice to have some company. We stay for a few days, just playing on the beaches, eating burgers in the beach bar, reading and sharing experiences. A huge rainstorm passes through our anchorage one night and washes Blue Moon from the accumulated salt. We haven’t noticed, but other boats also had an orange coating from an African sand storm that blew over us a few days ago.

I will forever have Exumas associated with the color of turquoise. I have never seen so many shades of it as in the water here. The Exuma islands are fairly flat, quite barren and there is very little civilization. But as we sail across the inside banks, the colors of our surroundings are of brilliant white beaches, jagged grey rocks and different shades of turquoise. The photographs can never make it justice. Yesterday Kuno was pointing out to Tatiana that the clouds have turquoise underbellies from the water reflection and she replied: “What do you mean? I don’t see turquoise clouds.” Turns out her grey lens sunglasses filter out so much of the vivid color that she has spent this vacation observing much blander scenery than we have. So now she is living the technicolor dream of brown polarized lenses, amazed at what she has been missing.

A big part of Exumas has been set aside as the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park in 1959, the first such park in the world. Fishing is prohibited and it shows when we snorkel around here – we see yellowfin tuna, grouper and lobsters meander right under our noses without any fear. We resist the temptation.

We snorkel into the Thunderball Cave off Staniel Cay, a location of another 007 movie, Thunderball, and the variety of fish and coral we find there is amazing, illuminated by streams of sunlight coming in through the holes in the cave ceiling. Tatiana gets spooked by the swarming of the little fish around her, as somebody drops a piece of fish food into the water. Hundreds of them zoom in to eat the little morsel. I don’t know how the fish do it though, but no matter how close they get to us, they never seem to touch. The bottom of the anchorages and bays is littered with conch of all sorts and we have never seen so many baby conches as here. Apparently the concentration of conch inside the park here is 31% higher than outside of the park. It is funny to look at the ground and see the shells move, as they drag themselves along the sandy bottom in search of food. Nurse sharks and stingrays have become a common sight wherever we are, just gliding around us, looking for food. Many nights we shine the flashlight into the water and drop some food overboard to see what creatures come out. A group of yellowfin tuna was particularly excited to get some leftover schnitzel.

Anchoring in the Exumas is tricky, very unlike anything we have experienced before and we often pick up a park buoy instead of having to set two anchors. Even then, Kuno usually dives the buoy at slack tide to make sure that it is solid. Jumping into the water off the boat at any other time is dangerous, as the current is too strong. The Exumas, with its many cays, banks and cuts behaves in an unpredictable way. Well, unpredictable to us anyway. The tidal current through the anchorages is so strong, that on regular basis we hang on the buoy opposite to the wind or sideways to the wind. Last night we were doing 360’s, luckily on a buoy, not on anchor. The tide is important here and we rely on it when we pass through some of the shallower spots, giving us an extra foot or two under the keel if we time it right. I am often on the bow as a lookout, but it is so difficult to tell the depth; the water is so clear that I can see the rocks and sand ripples as well in 12ft of water as in 8ft. Yesterday I was telling our friends on another boat about our uneventful passage of the day across the banks, when Kuno piped up: “Well, actually, I kind of missed the middle of the channel at one point and we were in 6ft of water.” Oops, we have a 5ft 8 draft. Of course, the culprit was the current, or so Kuno says. But the reality is that the charted channels are somewhat unreliable, as the sand banks tend to shift over time. So we sail by looking and feeling and watching the depth sounder like hawks, all the time marveling at the bright turquoise around us.

And Tatiana, true to her style, is reading her way through the Caribbean, completely oblivious to many of the sights and marvels, including the skeleton of a 52ft sperm whale behind her!