The plan for my Spring Break was for me to fly to Florida, meet up with Craig and his parents, sail around southern Florida for a few days, fly out of Miami to Las Vegas, meet up with friends there and go rock climbing for a few days. A typical Johnson round-trip - SLC to West Palm Beach, Miami to Las Vegas - all courtesy of a free ticket from getting bumped.
I was trying to clean up my room before going so I picked up a pile of stuff that was basically stocking stuffers from Christmas - mostly little chocolate things and one big lemon candy thing shaped like a lemon. I was going to toss it, but thought I should probably taste it first, so I jammed it into my mouth. Soap! It was a fancy hand soap. Oops.
The flight out is fine, Ma and Pa Lobdell pick me up. Craig comes in the next day and we manage to screw around packing the boat and buying sunglasses until that afternoon. Finally, we are off and motoring down the Intra Coastal Waterway, basically a big canal that runs the length of the East Coast.
The boat is a 45 foot sloop, which I guess means it has a main mast and a jib line. Underneath, there are 2 bed cabins, 2 heads, a main saloon, and a navigation area. It is basically at an RV's size and comfort level. There are little storage nooks everywhere. I sleep on a foldout bed in the main room.
The first 2 days we motor down the ICW. The excitement there is in going under the bridges - or more precisely, in waiting for them to open, since traffic piles up and maneuvering gets kinda hairy. Life on board is relaxing, we mostly eat snacks and look at all the impressive houses along the way, and the even more impressive boats. At night we play cards, or take the dinghy to shore and check out the local beach scene.
Our route to Miami is blocked by a fixed bridge that is too low for our mast. So it is time to test the open water. A problem is that winds are high, at 30 MPH, and the seas are choppy, with 6-9 ft waves. Craig happily proclaims that I will be hanging over the sides within 5 minutes.
Twenty minutes later, Craig is staring down at his fingers, looking kinda green. I think we all feel a bit touched, but luckily, it doesn't get any worse. Mostly because a storm hits. Winds hit 45 mph, but the ferocious rain manages to flatten the waves down a bit. We get the sails down and inch forward slowly under diesel against the wind. I think this is pretty cool. I think Diana is a little less happy with the situation.
We survive and enter Miami harbour. We anchor across from the city skyline, which is quite pretty at night.
Since the weather is still pretty bad, we plan on sailing down in the Bay of Biscayne to Key Largo. The bay is pretty shallow, so the important thing is to hit the main channel separating the lower from upper half.
Sailing is cool. It is fun to switch the sails from side to side and it is a neat feeling to have the boat surge forward with a gust of wind. Mr. Lobdell also teaches me a little navigation, so I learn to plot a course and check position and stuff. I feel pretty cool placing my compass points and using the parallel rules.
As we head for the channel, I have the binocs out and am checking for channel markers. Craig says - "Hey, there is a guy fishing or something over there." I check it out - I can barely make him out, but it looks like he is waving. I kinda wave back and look some more - he is doing the 2 arms over the head wave now. I pass the binocs around, thinking this guy is in trouble.
We turn towards him, going slowly because of the shallow water. As we get closer, it becomes clear that he is kneeling on a overturned Hobie catamaran. He has a thin wetsuit on. When we get close enough to hear him, he yells "I'm freezing". The day was quite cold, especially with the strong winds.
We swing the boat around and toss him a line and haul him on board. He says that he had overturned at 11AM and had watched 10 boats go by through the channel. It was now 5:30PM, getting dark, and we were the last boat. The man was a 50 year old writer who was trying to cat across the bay to go solo camping on a key - nobody was expecting him.
Since he was weak and cold, Diana took him below while we tried to tow his cat. Eventually I dove in and tied a line to his boat - the water was great, but I guess after 6 hours it would be chilly.
Ralph had been on the radio to the Coast Guard, and they eventually joined up with us. They arranged for a salvage boat to meet us, and we transferred our castaway to them. That was pretty dramatic, with the high winds and waves and darkness - we basically shoved him over when the two boats got close.
We ended up towing the cat for a good hour before salvage got to us - we were pretty concerned since we were off our route, but couldn't get back on while towing the boat. We had to manuever again to transfer his sail, and then spent another 15 minutes circling while trying to figure out how to get our rope back. Eventually, the salvage guy just tossed it in the water and it sank.
We headed back for the channel in the dark - Craig had the spotlight out and was using it to pick out markers when it overextended and pulled wires out of its socket. I ended up in the bow with a flashlight, until we got the spot working again by jamming a finger against the plug. I was glad I had learned some navigation basics, since I was chacking our position on the chart from the GPS to make sure we weren't about to run aground.
Eventually we reached our anchorage. I think we all felt pretty good about basically saving someone's life, and pulling together to get out of a tight spot.
The next day we headed back to Miami to pick up Teena and to drop me off.
I flew out the morning after, after a nice evening of looking at some wedding pictures. I caught my connection in Atlanta, headed for Las Vegas. About halfway there we lost hydraulics in the wheels, so we made an "emergency" landing in Dallas/ Ft. Worth. I spent most of the afternoon there while they tried to get some replacement planes. This was screwing up my Vegas plans, so I bailed out and headed home for SLC.
This turned out to be a good thing, since the floods in California were now hitting Vegas, and my friends who went down there gave up and turned around after they heard I switched. So I saved myself a long car trip.
It is now three days since I have been on board, and the world still keeps swaying back and forth. I guess I was meant for the sea. The writer we rescued was kind enough to send me one of his books, a tale of rum smuggling in Delaware during Prohibition.