Rural South Carolina

6/28/07 – I slept in relatively late this morning and ate a hearty breakfast of oatmeal. I weighed anchor at around 10:00am and got going. There was a good south wind for a good part of the day so I sailed and motor sailed all day. I was debating whether or not to anchor in Georgetown for the evening or continue on to another anchorage further north. I finally decided to keep going because as I looked ahead on the charts, I noticed that there were very few good anchorages for about a thirty mile stretch between Bucksport and the North Carolina border. I continued north on canals through cypress swamps. These were very interesting; there were large trees that appear to be growing right out of the water at high tide. At low tide, all of their roots are exposed. I dropped my anchor at the mouth of a creek and after a day of seeing nearly no boats, a guy on a jet ski rode up and said hello. He warned me about the alligators in the marsh but said that the chances of getting bitten by one were very low. I decided to tempt fate and went swimming in the first fresh water of the trip, but only after scanning the surface of the water very carefully for ‘gators. I had a nice pasta dinner and watched the sun set over the cypress swamp.

Leaving Charleston

6/27/07 – My grandpa has been sailing with me for the past week and we ended up in Charleston. We have been staying at the house of his cousin, Kathy, and her husband, Joe (you will hear more about that week in an upcoming entry written by my grandpa.) Joe made a breakfast of eggs and bacon for Kristin, his granddaughter, and me. Then I got all of my things together and packed them up. After saying goodbye to Kathy, Joe drove me to the marina and dropped me off. My new autopilot was waiting for me so I got that all set up before casting off. I motored over to the gas dock to refuel and fill my water tank for the first time since I left North Palm Beach. I then left the marina and sailed across Charleston Harbor, passing all the sights I had seen from land: the Battery, Fort Sumter, Patriot’s Point, and more. I kept motoring and motor sailing north all afternoon to an anchorage up a creek near McClellanville, South Carolina. It was a bit difficult going back to my normal eating schedule on the boat after eating like a king for the past several days. I normally eat a large breakfast and a large supper, skipping lunch so I don’t have to stop during the day. I ate a pasta dinner and for the first time since I departed North Palm Beach, the mosquitoes were bothering me enough to make me go below and put the screens up.

Guest Entry: Jim Bassett

[Notice to anyone who reads this description of my week on the East Coast with grandson Zachary and cousins Kathy and Joe Schlechta: Apologies for the verbosity but I’m kind of writing this for myself as well as for other readers so you have to live with the boring stuff – assuming you find a little something in here that transcends boredom. Thanks for understanding.]

Sometimes one lucks out and gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something truly irreplaceable.

That’s what happened to me this past June when I was asked by grandson, Zachary, to accompany him on all or part of his epic journey by sailboat from Florida to New England. Fortunately, the week of Tuesday, June 19, through Tuesday, June 26, worked for me so that became the appointed time.

I found some really cheap airplane tickets on Airtran, flying to Savannah GA on June 19 and returning from Charleston SC on June 26. In the meantime, I realized that for several years, I’ve had an open invitation from a long lost first cousin, Kathy Alexander Schlechta, who lives in Charleston with husband Joe, to come and stay with them and to see all the sights that Charleston has to offer.

I should point out that the last time Kathy and I saw each other was probably at our grandmother’s funeral in 1959 or thereabouts. So, this whole journey was beginning to turn into a wonderful adventure.

I flew out of MSP early Tuesday morning after Mary and I went to the wrong airport terminal, not realizing that Airtran uses an auxiliary terminal in Minneapolis. Fortunately, we had allotted enough time so that I made it with many minutes to spare.

After an uneventful flight, I arrived in Savannah, not quite knowing how I was going to traverse from the airport to Thunderbolt Marina where Zach and the boat were staying. However, I grabbed a Shamrock Cab Company cab, along with some other folks, and I discovered that I had one of the most helpful cabbies ever. He not only gave us a nice “tour” going into town but, after he had left all the other passengers off, he drove me to where he thought I could catch the #24 bus to Thunderbolt.

Unfortunately, the cabbie had the wrong street so, after kind of stopping lots of traffic as I frantically caught a bus going back to the right street and then caught the #24 (for the horrendous fare of $1.00), I made it out to Thunderbolt where Zach was waiting at the bus stop for me. Problem number one solved.

I needed a haircut so found a barber shop near the boat – an all-black barber shop, I think. I asked the guy who was about to cut my hair for a haircut just like he had (dreadlocks) but to no avail. He said he couldn’t help me so he cut it short just like always. Kind of fun listening to the guys and gals in the shop discussing current events in the neighborhood while I was being sheared.

We had supper at Tubby’s, the only decent eating place within walking distance of the marina. Nice place with some good nautical atmosphere.

We decided to take Wednesday for some Savannah touring so went back downtown Wednesday morning where we hooked up with an Oglethorpe tour. Our tour guide turned out to be a rather nice lady who grew up in Wisconsin and had a cabin in northern Minnesota. The tour was good and we were able to at least get a nice overview of the city. One of the places I really wanted to see was the Mercer house, featured in the book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, a story set in Savannah. We saw it!

We also saw enough rain to just about flood downtown Savannah. At one point the water was running over the curbs. We wound up running from building to building and getting pretty much soaked. However, we did manage to get to a lunch place, an old railroad dining car at a depot turned into a museum and visitors’ center, where we waited out one downpour before wending our way to a maritime museum where we had too little time to see much but we at least did see something.

Then, back on the #24 to Thunderbolt. After returning to the boat, we walked to some gas station/convenience stores and tried to stock up on food and drink but the pickings were sparse. We got enough though to fend off starvation. Then back to Tubby’s for supper.

We departed Thursday morning after having some nice conversation with a guy and his wife who were sailing a beautiful 40’ Leopard catamaran. Pretty interesting boat and fun to talk to the owners.

Sailing was not really sailing Thursday. We motored (with the 9.9 hp Yamaha outboard motor) nearly all the way although we did have the jib out for a couple of hours. The jib is oversized and it provides a lot of power, assuming the wind is right. We went out into the ocean for most of the morning but it was quite rough and we were continually having waves wash over us so we decided that getting back to the Intracoastal Waterway would be better. We came back into the lee of Hilton Head Island about noon and spent the afternoon in much better conditions although we were already soaked so it didn’t make a whole lot of difference.

We anchored north of Beaufort SC and settled down to some gourmet spaghetti prepared by Chef Zachary. Considering the source of the spaghetti, a gas station, it was quite good although I’m hoping Zach doesn’t quit his day job.

One of the highlights of the day was watching the dolphins which accompanied us a lot of the time. It’s pretty fun seeing them in the wild.

Friday we continued on the Waterway, motoring most of the morning but sailing in the afternoon. The Waterway ranges from being really wide, sort of like Lake Pepin in Minnesota, to really narrow, like going up a river. However, with the right wind, it’s pretty easy to sail even if it’s a narrow passage.

One downer during all this time – and during the whole journey – was the fact that Zach’s autopilot was broken. I think it broke the day before I arrived and he got it fixed the day after I left. Dang! Rotten timing! It would have been nice to have it running but we survived using our arm power to control the tiller.

Another downer about this time was that we didn’t have the forward hatch dogged down tight so a lot of water came in and soaked Zach’s computer. It quit working and he wound up having to buy a new one in Charleston. We tried to get the old one fixed but when the fixing guy heard it had seen salt water he told us to forget about it. Apparently salt water is death on electronics.

We anchored in a neat little inlet Friday night in what the chart said was 11’ of water. After a pleasant supper and a good night’s sleep, we awoke in the morning to discover that we were high and dry. The chart had lied to us. We could tell that we were about at the low point for tide so we knew we’d eventually get out but we had to wait until noon to get going after the tide had come in.

In the meantime, we were making arrangements for the big meeting with Kathy and Joe, meaning a number of phone calls to report our progress.

We also got a phone call from son (uncle) Luke, telling us that he and wife Amy have a friend in Charleston, Jason Crandall, who owns a slip at a marina in Charleston, which was empty at the time and which we could use. We had made a reservation at another marina kind of out of town which was going to cost us $60 per night so this was really welcome news. We called Jason and made arrangements at his marina.

After we got afloat again Saturday, we went the final thirteen miles or so to Charleston, found the marina and finally found the slip we were supposed to be in. We showered, called Joe and Kathy and were picked up by them. This was certainly a thrill for me, seeing a rather close relative for the first time in nearly half a century. We went to a nice restaurant, Locklear’s, for supper and then went out to their house.

Zach and I had intended to stay on the boat. The outside temperature was about 95 degrees with humidity to match. The inside temperature in Joe and Kathy’s house was about 70 degrees with low humidity. They pretty much insisted that we stay with them so, after a few feeble protests, we decided that we’d better do that. I had told Kathy previously to be careful about what she asked for because she might get it. So, she wound up with a couple of groady sailors staying at her house.

As one might expect, we were treated like visiting royalty by the Schlechtas. Wow! We spent Sunday visiting Fort Sumter, the Civil War submarine Hundley (the first submarine in history to sink a warship), and the site of the Sofa Company fire which had taken place the Monday before. The fire took place only minutes from Schlechta’s house. The site was a very somber place, as you might imagine. There were lots of flowers, mementos from fire departments from all over North America and a lot of tears. Not a fun place to visit, of course, but a place that had to be seen. If people didn’t appreciate fire and police people before seeing that, they would have to afterward.

We ate supper that evening in one of the nicest restaurants I’ve ever been in, California Dreaming. It’s on the waterfront and has gigantic windows overlooking the harbor. When you walk in you are almost overwhelmed by the view. They could have served corned beef and hash and I still would have been awed.

We decided for Monday’s activity to go to a plantation so we chose one that seemed to be sort of representative of the area, Middleton Place. It dates back about 250 years and was the site of a very large rice growing operation. We kind of did the whole shebang with a horse drawn tour of the grounds, a tour of the buildings and an African American tour, all of which pretty much filled up the day. One of the nice things about this visit was that Joe Schlechta who went with us had never been there before so it was a new thing for him as well as for Zach and me.

I liked California Dreaming so much that I asked Schlechtas if they would mind going back for a second evening in a row, which they graciously agreed to do. We called Jason Crandall who went along with us and who told us lots of good flying and sailing stories. He’s an Air Force pilot whose girl friend just went through pilot training in Oklahoma with Amy, our daughter-in-law. Since Joe Schlechta is a retired Navy guy, they had lots of military stories to swap and, of course, Zach and I ate all this up with relish.

Departure day was Tuesday morning or, more precisely, Tuesday in the middle of the night, or so it seemed. Joe got up at what I thought was an ungodly hour and took me to the airport for another uneventful flight home.

All in all, this was one of the great adventures of my life. Plus it was a bit of a double-edged sword with the sailing and the meeting with Kathy and Joe, all in one trip. Zach and I had a great time on the boat and I even learned a thing or two about sailing from him. (But I try hard not to admit that my grandson knows more about sailing than I do.) And certainly when one sees a close relative for the first time in nearly fifty years it is a thrill that very seldom happens. I wouldn’t trade the week for anything.

Savannah to Charleston

My grandfather joined me for a week from 6/19/07 to 6/26/07. There will be a special guest-entry written by him coming in the next few days.

Nearing Savannah

6/17/07 – I motored and motor sailed up to about fifteen miles south of Savannah today. I found a good anchorage with some houses nearby so I could steal some of their wireless internet to check my email and update my blog for the first time in nearly a week.

6/18/07 – I made my way up to Thunderbolt today and saw many very large houses during the trip. I went a little ways up a creek to anchor and found a very good spot. I ate dinner and read some more of my book. The tidal current changed in the evening as expected. The wind also picked up but as usual, the wind and the current were opposite directions. The boat swung back and forth for a good while and finally the anchor line got tangled up in the rudder as she swung over the anchor line. I thought I would have to go swimming but was able to untangle the line from the rudder with the gaff hook before any damage was done. I did not want this to happen again so I set out a second anchor from the stern and pulled myself so that I was suspended between them. This configuration will not allow me to swing but can put tremendous stress on the vessel and the tackle so I will need to be careful if any storms come up tonight. There has been thunder and lightning to my north, west, and south all evening but so far there have been clear skies above me.

More Georgia

6/16/07 – I sailed all day through more marshes and large wide-open sounds. I stopped to anchor in the afternoon on a shoal in the middle of a large river. There was very little wind so this unprotected anchorage was perfectly suitable. I had a nice dinner of macaroni and cheese and watched a very good sunset. I was miles away from any city or even any other human beings so there was very little light pollution when the stars came out.

Georgia Swamps

6/15/07 – I ate some oatmeal for breakfast and weighed anchor. I sailed through Jekyll Sound and Saint Simon Sound but had to motor through the narrow, windy rivers that made up the rest of my day’s journey through the vast Georgia marshes. I decided to anchor in a little creek just off of mile 666 on the Intracoastal Waterway. I jokingly wondered if bad things would happen at that particular location. The current was very strong but the wind was even stronger going in the opposite direction. The boat could not decide which way she wanted to lay to the anchor that I tried to set out. It did not help matters that I was in the middle of a giant swamp for miles around and the bottom was the softest mud I had ever seen. Soft mud is extremely difficult to set an anchor in. I tried all sorts of things and finally got one anchor set after quite a while of trying various tricks. Not wanting to drift into a bank of the creek and rip my rudder off in the middle of the night, I set out a second anchor which seemed to hold reasonably well. I went below to read and try to figure out how to get a new jacket and autopilot. I noticed that the wind had begun to shift so I went outside to see what this would do to my anchoring situation. Both anchors began to slip as I drifted downstream. I was very frustrated with this anchorage so I picked up both anchors and backtracked a bit to another small stream off the Intracoastal Waterway. I had some more difficulty setting an anchor in the very soft mud but I think I got it figured out.

Wild Horses

6/14/07 – Some heavy rain woke me up at about 6:00 this morning. I got up to shut the hatch so I could go back to sleep without fear of having my things get wet. The rain stopped about an hour later and I got up again and ate some cereal for breakfast. I bought some milk at the beginning of the trip that is super-ultra-pasteurized and packaged in boxes similar to juice boxes. It keeps for months without refrigeration so I bought a whole bunch of it to use for cereal in the mornings. After breakfast, I lifted anchor and began my final leg of the trip through Florida. I came to Fernandina Beach at around noon. The first thing that I noticed was the smell of the huge paper mills in the city. They made the whole area smell awful. I stopped for some fuel at the city marina and then continued into Cumberland sound. This is where the Saint Marys River exits to the ocean, which is the boundary between Florida and Georgia. The very southern part of Georgia is very sparsely populated so I was not able to get cell phone reception. I saw some tall and dark clouds coming up so I went to put my raincoat on but the zipper broke as I was zipping it up. Just then it started to rain. I found some spare line in the cabin and wrapped it around myself several times just to keep the jacket closed. I did not stay very dry but at least it was better than nothing. Later, my tiller pilot broke. I had noticed some water droplets under the screen earlier that morning that concerned me but it was just beeping whenever I plugged it in and it did not do anything. I got to a good anchorage about twenty miles into Georgia next to an island with wild horses running around on it called Little Cumberland Island. The wind shifted in the evening so I was no longer on the windward shore so my boat was tossed around by the waves but I didn’t feel like backtracking several miles to the last good anchorage so I just stuck it out.

I woke up in the middle of the night and went outside. I had anchored right next to a beach but when I looked around, I was at least half a mile from any shore. I had to think for a minute to get my bearings. The tide had risen and covered the sand that was right adjacent to my boat. Since I was far away from everything, the stars were very bright and the phosphorescence in the water was quite impressive.

Ocean Passage to Jacksonville

6/13/07 – I had to get up extra early this morning because the Bridge of Lions was under construction so they only open a couple times per day. I wanted to make the 7:00am opening so I had my anchor up and was waiting in the channel by 6:45am. I made it out and decided to go out on the ocean for the trip up to Jacksonville because it was a nice day with very good wind and the tidal currents in the Intracoastal Waterway would be against me the whole time. The waves were much larger than when I went out the Ponce de Leon inlet with my father and sister the other day. The radio said that they were 2-4 foot seas. I made pretty good time; I had a nice northeast wind so I was on a broad reach the entire time. I made it to Jacksonville in the early afternoon passed a large military seaport with an aircraft carrier and several other navy ships. I reentered the Intracoastal Waterway for a leisurely trip up to an anchorage about five miles north of Jacksonville. As soon as I got back into the Intracoastal Waterway, it began raining very hard. I was soaking wet by the time I had set the anchor and gone below for some dinner. I realized that in the rainstorm, all of my matches had gotten wet so I had to eat my soup cold.

Solo Again

6/11/07 – The sun woke me up this morning and I walked over to West Marine to buy a new latch for the hatch that had been broken the day before. I stayed in the store for as long as I could, knowing that this would be the last air conditioned building I would be in for a while. I walked over to a place that I had found the night before where I could steal some wireless internet. I walked back to the marina and cast off. I had to stop at the gas dock to return my marina key so I filled up my gas tanks while I was there. I got going in the late morning and continued northward. There was a line of thunderstorms directly to my west and I heard very loud thunder for several hours as it slid south, just missing me. I only got about a half hour of light rain that was very refreshing. I continued all day until sunset and dropped my anchor about ten miles south of Saint Augustine.

First Ocean Sailing

6/10/07 – After a night of being periodically woken up by dolphins surfacing in the marina, we were suddenly woken in the morning by some fisherman and their very large motor. We got up and ate some of the grocery store powdered donuts for breakfast and left at around 11:00am. Until this morning, I have sailed exclusively on the Intracoastal Waterway, but we decided that it would be a good idea to go out on the ocean. The Intracoastal Waterway is a channel that is maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers that is sheltered by land from the actual ocean. There are inlets periodically that allow boats to get from the ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway. We left the waterway at the Ponce de Leon Inlet and shut off our motor. The wind was acceptable for a short time before it completely died. We decided to go swimming with the exception of my sister, who thought that the many dolphins that we were seeing would mistake her fingers for the fish that consist of their diet. She eventually jumped in, only to hurriedly climb in about ten seconds later. The wind eventually came up and we sailed around for a couple of hours. We were sailing back to the inlet and my sister was down in the galley making some peanut butter sandwiches. My dad and I just happened to be looking when a big shark jumped way out of the water in a spiraling motion about 100 feet off our port bow. We estimated that it was about 6-7 feet long and its tail was about 2 feet out of the water at the height of its jump. We began to think that Shannon may have been right to be afraid of swimming in the water. We continued into the inlet just outside the edge of a thunderstorm that we had been watching brewing before heading up to Daytona Beach. We docked in a marina and took showers to wash all the ocean salt off of us before going to dinner at what appeared to be a very nice place. As we walked in the door, I was worried that they would frown upon my t-shirt and shorts until I saw a guy at the bar with a giant grey beard, a tank top on, and a big tattoo covering his bald head. It ended up being very good food. We walked back to the boat after dinner and my dad and sister packed their things and got a taxi to the airport.

note: I have been informed that what we saw was almost certainly not a shark. It was, however, very large and ferocious looking.

New Smyrna Beach

6/9/07 – My dad, my sister, and I took a shower at the marina (a luxury that I have taken for granted for a long time) and went to a local bakery before departing Titusville in the morning. There was very little wind in the morning again so we motor sailed for a good portion of the day. We went about thirty five miles north to New Smyrna Beach. We called a marina and the guy working let us stay on one of their service docks but this marina had no bathroom or shower facilities. We walked over to a restaurant a short distance away and had some bad tasting fried food. We walked back over to the boat before going to bed.

Space Shuttle

6/8/07 – My dad and sister arrived this morning. They flew into Orlando and rented a car to drive to Titusville. We went to the grocery store when they arrived to get some things to eat during their visit since they were not too excited about the prospect of eating canned food for every meal. We went back to the marina and put some of their stuff away. My passing through Titusville and their visit coincided perfectly with the space shuttle launch which was very lucky so we motored out into the body of water separating Titusville from the Kennedy Space Center where the launch pad is located. We waited around for about an hour and my dad called a local restaurant to see if we could get reservations. He was told two very disappointing things: that all of the restaurants in Titusville were booked because of the shuttle crowd and that the launch had just been scrubbed. We were very disappointed to hear the news but decided to stick around just in case. We had no radio or television to confirm anything, plus the bridge to get back to the marina was closed so we had to just sit around anyway. Much to our relief and excitement, it blasted off right on time. It was very bright and very loud. The bridge didn’t open for ninety minutes after the launch so we decided to go for an evening sail which ended up being the best sailing of their short trip.

Titusville

6/7/07 – I motored into Titusville Municipal Marina this morning and tied up in a slip. As soon as I was finished tying up, I saw three manatees sitting behind my boat. I had seen signs warning of them ever since I had left Palm Beach but had not seen one yet. They are very strange creatures. I spent a couple of hours cleaning the love bug carcasses out of every nook and cranny of the boat. I went to take a very refreshing shower and then walked over to Burger King. Gross fast food never tasted so good after eating canned soup for a week. Next, I walked to West Marine to pick up some parts that I had ordered earlier in the week and then went over to a local bread shop where they had wireless internet. They didn’t have any electricity plug-ins so I went next door to a cigar shop where they also had wireless internet. I bought a cigar and went to sit in their smoking lounge where they have giant leather chairs, a 50 inch plasma screen TV, and a Bose sound system to check my email and update the blog. I walked around the area a bit more in the evening and got to the park where all the locals told me was a really good place to watch the space shuttle launches. I began to walk back to the marina and came across a group of people sailing remote controlled sailboats on a pond. I stopped and talked to them for a little while and one of them let me race his boat in a race. I got second out of three boats on my first try. I finally left and did some laundry at the marina and read a book in the evening.

Lots of Wildlife

6/4/07 – I left my anchorage in Jupiter this morning and continued my way north through the Intracoastal Waterway. I made about fifty miles in about 10 hours of sailing. I just put my jib up in the morning because I had to go through a few bridges so putting up the main would be impractical. I passed the last low bridge in the late morning and put up both sails. I had a fair wind so I turned off the motor and continued for several hours under sail alone. I arrived in Vero Beach in the evening and the area that was marked as an anchorage on the map had been taken over by the local marina and turned into a mooring field. I did not like this because it usually costs money to tie up to a mooring. I knew that the tide was rising so I felt comfortable searching around the area for a good anchorage but I suddenly came to a halt as I was motoring around. I had run aground on an uncharted mud mound. Luckily, I was able to back out of my situation and came to the conclusion that it might be best to just tie up to a mooring for the night.

6/5/07 – I got up and made myself a good breakfast of oatmeal. I had to make it watery so I could drink it from a cup since I still had no spoon. I got going in the morning but there was again very little wind. I put up both sails but had to keep the motor going to continue along at about 3 knots. At around noon, the wind picked up and I turned off the engine again. I began hearing noises that sounded like a cross between a shrieking child and a giant rodent squeaking. I was really confused as the noises continued to slowly increase in volume until I saw a fin and an air spout. All of the sudden, many more fins and spouts popped up all around me as a school of dolphins surfaced around me. I tried to get photographs but the shutter delay on my camera was just long enough for them to dive again before I could get any pictures. I continued to sail for the day until I got to another anchorage. I came to the designated anchorage and realized that it was not protected at all from the waves since the wind was from the east rather than from the west. I found a place on the chart that on the other side of a bridge that looked better and saw that I was not the only one to have the same idea when I arrived at the location. There were about five other boats anchored in the same spot. I dropped the hook and ate another canned soup dinner before bed.

6/6/07 – I left the anchorage this morning and there was again very little wind. I didn’t even bother putting up the sails because the wind was variable and just motored at a leisurely rate. For the previous two nights, I had seen what I later learned were “love bugs.” They are about ½ inch long and do not bite or sting. This morning, they were particularly bad, with dozens crawling all over the boat. They slowly increased in number until there were several hundred crawling over the boat and swarming in the air all around me. I saw a boat coming through a bridge that I was heading towards and everyone aboard was swatting furiously. I thought that they must just be wimps because I had the bugs as well and they were annoying but not overly so. Once I got up to the bridge, it became apparent why they were more worried about the bugs than I was. Suddenly, a new wave of them appeared in the thickest concentration of bugs I have ever seen. Thousands upon thousands were crawling over the boat and swarming all over everything, including me. They were so thick that I killed at least 30 in one single swat of my hand against the seat. They slowly decreased over the afternoon until there were just a few hundred crawling around by the time I arrived in Titusville in the afternoon. I noticed that none of the other boats at anchor in Titusville had the thick blanket of dead bugs that my boat had. I spent the next several hours killing bugs while I set the anchor and ate a canned soup dinner.

Finally Sailing

6/3/07 – I woke up in the hotel this morning and took a shower in the bathroom across the hallway. I packed my few clothes and went to check out. I had to walk through a kitchen to the office and found that it was locked. Confused, I turned to the people in the kitchen and they explained that the owner of the hotel had run off to get everyone breakfast. I was happy about this and sat down to wait with them. It quickly became apparent that I was by far the most normal one in the room. One fellow kept shouting sentences that didn’t really make sense regarding cops showing up to the hotel last night. There was a lady there that was also saying strange things and kept saying that some of her money was missing. After a few minutes of this, the man left and I was left alone in the kitchen with this woman. I tried to make small talk with her and she kept talking about what a horrible day she had yesterday. She proceeded to tell me how she has been living in her car and this hotel for some time and some complicated mumbo-jumbo regarding an ex stealing her money. I really wanted to leave but had no place to turn in my key. She talked about how the cops showed up last night. I said something like, “I hope it wasn’t too serious.” She then told me about how everyone thinks that she’s crazy and that the cops kept trying to put her back in the mental institution. Apparently they showed up after some “crack head” showed up to her room and stole a bunch of her money. She kept going with no prompting from me and gave me an in-depth history of her mental problems. This conversation kept going on for far longer than I would have liked and culminated with her standing up, walking over to me, grasping my right hand with both of hers very tightly, looking into my eyes, and saying, “Do you think I’m crazy?” One of the housekeepers finally walked through the kitchen and I hurriedly gave him my key and left.

I spent the next couple of hours buying a few last-minute things for the boat and doing a few last minute fixes. I drove the rental car down to the office and took a cab back up to the North Palm Beach Marina. I got everything stowed and untied from the dock. I pushed off and motored over to the gas dock and tied up. I told the attendant that I just needed to fill up with water and was absolutely shocked when I was told that it would cost me fifteen dollars to fill my twenty gallon water tank. I argued with him for a minute and told him that I could fill my tank with bottled water from the store for les money. He argued that Florida is experiencing one of the worst droughts in modern history right now and that I was more than welcome to go to the store and buy bottled water if I chose. I finally gave in and paid the ridiculous price for the water since I had no real alternative. I waited for the bridge to open and then cast off from the dock. I had a headwind for the beginning of my journey so I motored for a couple of miles. I went through several bridges and saw plenty of people coming in from a Sunday fishing trip on the ocean. I picked out a spot in the evening to anchor and dropped the hook.

I was a bit hungry so I got out the stove and a can of soup. I opened up the can and reached for a spoon to scoop the paste into the pot. It then dawned upon me that as well prepared as I was, there was one thing that I forgot: silverware. I reached into the can with my finger to empty its contents into the pot. As I was swirling my finger around to get all the soup off the can walls, I sliced my finger on the sharp edge of the can. I started bleeding immediately. I wiped it off with a paper towel and went to the sink to get the rest of the water to mix into the condensed soup. My sink is a hand pumped faucet that is connected directly to the water tank. Its gasket is leaky so you have to pump furiously until you get the water up the tube and into the faucet. This furious pumping aggravated my finger wound and so the leftover noodles mixed with my blood and this mixture was shot all over the inside of the cabin by the extreme hand motions. I finally got water and cleaned everything up. I stirred my soup with one of the wrenches from my tool kit and drank it out of a cup. I ate some canned fruit by hand but being very careful to keep my fingers away from the edge. I then used my fingers to eat some chocolate pudding for dessert.

First Encounter With the Law

6/2/07 – I woke up in the v-berth of my new boat this morning. I would have slept in one of the aft-berths but since I was tied up to a dock, the wind was blowing the rain towards the stern of the boat and making it drip in through the hatch and right where my head would have been. I made sure that nobody was walking by when I climbed out and walked to my car because it is this yacht club’s policy that nobody is allowed to sleep on their boats. I thought that this was a dumb rule and figured that nobody would notice if I showed up very quietly yesterday evening and went to bed without even turning a reading light on. I went to West Marine and Wal Mart again to buy more supplies to install a fresh water tank and hook the starting battery and thus the alternator on the engine to the house battery system. These improvements will give me fresh water and allow me to charge the house battery (which runs all the lights, radio, and 110v alternator) by running the engine rather than having to plug into shore power at a marina.

As I was crawling around in the bilge under the cockpit, I heard footsteps approach the boat. This was the first human that walked past my boat since the evening before. He told me to come out so I could talk to him. He asked me tons of questions and didn’t believe that the boat was mine so we had to walk through the rain to my rental car and go through the paperwork that I had gotten the previous day at the closing. He finally became satisfied that the boat was mine and then told me that the reason he was here was that he had received a complaint that someone had been sleeping on a boat in the marina. I tried to contain my shock since I had not seen a single other person walking around that could have even seen me. He instructed me to tell anyone else who asked that I worked on the boat all night and perhaps just had a little nap when I was overwhelmed with the work. He said that he wouldn’t do anything about it this time but made me promise to find lodging elsewhere in the future otherwise he would be forced to take action.

I did a bunch more work installing an autopilot and grocery shopping before I went to a cheap hotel in Lake Worth to sleep.

Buying the Boat

6/1/07

I called the broker as soon as I woke up to see what the deal was with the paperwork. He said that it should be here by the afternoon but he had said that for the past several days so I was a bit skeptical. I went to eat lunch and got a call from him saying that he had finally got the papers in the mail. I spoke with my dad over the phone and then headed over there. We made the transaction and I drove straight to the boat. I dropped a bunch of stuff off and then went to Wal Mart and West Marine to get a bunch of supplies. I am very relieved to finally have a boat after over a week of uncertainty.

Today is also the official start of the hurricane season. The rain from tropical storm Barry is pouring down and should continue through tomorrow.

Killing Time

5/31/07

Today was just another day of killing time while waiting to get possession of the boat. I was talking with the park ranger and she was telling me that as long as I was here, I should explore the Loxahatchee River that runs through the state park. They rent boats there but I asked her if any alligators or other ferocious wildlife would bite my rubber dinghy that I bought yesterday if I took that on the river. She said that she could not guarantee anything but that it was rather unlikely that anything too bad would happen to me. This was obviously good enough for me so I inflated the raft and carried it down to the river. I was hoping to see all sorts of interesting critters but unfortunately I did not see anything except a few birds. I got several strange looks as I was coming back to the boat launch but I just smiled and waved to the folks in their fishing boats.