so we left Miami beach! We left on Saturday the 29th, around noon, Erik and I convinced Kyle to come sail with us up to Jacksonville (and soon after convinced to go all the way to Savannah!!)…it was raining, i was at the helm, Erik and Kyle were pulling out sails, figuring out the motor, running around, while we were dodging the usually insanely huge vessels trying to kill us…
there is no way to show how big these boats are…but every one of those is the size of a semi truck, and we were trying to stay out of the way!
freighter…parking
anyway we had a pretty difficult sail out of the miami inlet…but once we were out it was lovely! We had the push of the Gulf Stream, “ride the snake!” we were going 11 knots!! toward Fort Pierce to pick up Zac, who happened to be in florida visiting family, and wanted to come sail with us!!
We sailed overnight and got to Fort Pierce at 5am, dropped anchor and dropped our heads on slightly damp pillows, and slept for a few hours, before waking up and going to find ZAC!! One thing that has been really great about having Kyle on board and having more confidence sailing is that we cruised in under sail, no motor? no problem 🙂
We found Zac, big ol back pack, wearing an amazing outfit, ready to sail!!
Zac in professional seaze styles
threw him on board and took off! We decided that we would not go out to the ocean at first, for sake of easy sailing and the weather was looking pretty crazy, we sailed the intra-coastal waterway…a bit longer, and very difficult to sail at night, and sometimes looking at the sprawl of $$ all over….though it was really FUN and we had such a lovely time stopping at night, running aground (woops!), and seeing dolphins, and manatees!
We stopped in funny small towns, wandered around, easy sailing…like retired cruisers…ahhhh the life!
BUT! the second day of sailing, Zac woke up with some back pain, then slipped on deck and put his back in a bad place…he couldnt turn his head, he was hurting…we had to stop, we found an abandoned dock, (lucky us!) tied up and then convinced the owner to let us stay for the day (which was pretty easy with an injured sailor), forced zac to call his dad, and waited for his dad to come pick him up…no more sailing for zac, sadly! We were pretty bummed! We loved having Zac on board, and had fun waiting around for his dad to come. We took advantage of the weather and when Zac took off we did too, just about sunset we set off for the big ol ocean!
ready to cast off the dock!
We were going to go to Jacksonville, to drop off Zac (originally and drop of Kyle), but we convinced (not very hard!) Kyle to go all the way to Savannah with us so we decided to skip jacksonville and head to Brunswick Ga….get out of Florida!
We sailed all night, all day, and until 10pm, anchor up to anchor down was 26hrs (we made amazing time)
Some features of the trip: Leaving the inlet was INSANE!!! the most insane ever! seriously, it was really intense, the waves though not huge were 4ft-ish and all over the place, the tide was coming in (against us) and there was shoaling off to our port (waves breaking over too shallow waters) AND another sailboat coming in the inlet…there was not a lot of space, the boat was pitching all over the place, the motor was running the main was up, the motor alternated from being completely submerged to 4 ft above the water, then it died (duh), we pulled out the jib, erik got it started, we pulled in the jib, it was crazy…then erik said we cant do it we have to turn back, kyle tried to turn us back and in doing so we realized that we were almost out, so we fought it out, and made it safe and sound….nothing broken, nothing bad…everyone laughing and saying “holy shit!!, that was crazy!” and we sailed…we sailed all night, and then in the morning put up the spinnaker and had it up ALL day!!
sailing with the spinnaker up!
In the middle of the night we were visited by some dolphins, which was strange for us, night time dolphins…they were crazy jumping out of the dark waters, at first erik (who was steering) thought that they were a whale, they were so close and loud! luckily they were not a whale, dolphins cant put a whole in yr boat! THEN the next morning we were visited by DaveMattews, the bird! a small sparrow landed on our boat and stayed all day, in and out through the v-berth window, letting us pick him up and landing on our heads and hands, and kanoodeling with kyle…
kyle and dave matthews (the bird)
landing on erik in the vberth…
erik with dave on his head in the v-berth
We had another epic sail into the Brunswick inlet, spinnaker flying high (we had is up all day!), the tide going out pushing against us, though a million times easier then leaving the night before, we kept the spinnaker up, and had no problems, we looked all over for dave but figured he took off, then we saw A TORTUGA!!! a turtle a turtle, a giant sea turtle raised its big ol flipper up from the ocean and waved at us as we sailed by! all my dreams come true a turtle! finally. it was the best….we dropped anchor and tucked in sleepily…the next morning (today) getting ready to go to shore we were struck with tragedy: we found davematthews, dead. he some how got his lil self stuck behind all these sweaters on the shelf, we didnt know! we didnt see him…it is the saddest thing of this whole trip i think…we gave him a proper bural at sea…
funeral preparations, good bye davematthews. we love you.
sorry to end things on this sad sad note
We are safely in St. Simons Island, drinking coffee, interneting, checking tides and winds, leaving tonight headed toward the Ogeechee River, where we will leave Pleiades, and head home. to the minneapolis summer, our dear friends, and family, and home.
