Start of a journey

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Yesterday I set out on a journey from Destin, Fl to Dry Tortugas, the Keys, and hopefully back. I have been preparing for this trip for the last month, but really I’ve been preparing for the last 7.5 years. It’s been my dream to go cruising on a sailboat of my own since I started reading Cruising world in college, and today is the first day of me actually living it.

I must say, the open waters aren’t quite what I expected; perhaps I had hoped for towering orderly rollers which my boat would sit majestically upon like a bird, never getting its head wet. What I am experiencing are disorganized, sometimes randomly oriented short period waves which make the autopilot work.

Of all the things that would kill this trip for me, it would be the failure of the autopilot. Faced with steering by hand, solo, for 4 days or more, I would most likely duck into the nearest cover and throw my money at the nearest Raymarine man. But I have a brand new autopilot mated up to my excellent chain drive unit, and I have felt confident that it would serve me well. However, as it was myself who was responsible for installation, I shall take all the blame for its failure. Even before this trip had started, and I wasn’t even clear of the Destin jetties, the autopilot screen announced a drive failure. No worries, as I quickly unpacked the lazaret and accessed the drive unit. Indeed the terminal block which mated the drive motor to my wiring to the drive controller had a loose wire, so that should have fixed it, but it was just one problem.

While I had been preparing to install a homebrew rudder reference transducer, I had lost one of the fine pitched machine screws which holds the drive unit’s cover on, and the tension of the screws also holds the wire terminals in place. Faced with insufficient compression, the drive connector had slipped out under motor vibration or shifting loads of the gear in the lazaret. That was 6PM on Thursday, but by Friday morning not 12 hours later the same connector had worked itself loose again causing a cacophony of sail flogging and perhaps I also heard some whispered curses uttered. Once more into the lazaret, and this time I fixed it with my preferred solution to most problems on the boat, a few gobs of butyl tape.  Time will tell the level of foolishness of my repair.

The weather for this journey was incredibly promising, with moderate winds of 12-15 kts at first pushing me from behind and later swinging around to bring me into a reach. After I satisfied myself that I could trust the autopilot last night, I set the large jib out on a pole and also raised the drifter, flying wing and wing almost perfectly downwind. This is a lovely tack, but the weather conspired against me so that by 3AM I was forced to lower the big jib. This left me with insufficient power and speed, and I’m really hoping to keep 6 kts or better, so I spent the next hour raising the main in the dark, dealing with the annoyances of its lovely full battens being one by one hung upon the lazy jacks.  Rather than stress my meager strength, I let the autopilot do my dirty work, and I went through tacks and jibes until the main was standing proud, and I was covered in sweat.

At dawn, after having to hand steer shortly while I fixed the autopilot again, I decided that it was time to bring balance to my rig, making the Ray’s job all that much easier. I raised my baby jib, or stays’l and was immediately disappointed that more surface area actually cut a knot off my speed. Ten minutes of this poor performance and I decided to let sleeping dogs lie, and brought the baby jib back down.

I would like to sing some praise to this lovely invention of the radar. I had never actually bothered to use this wonderful device in previous all-night crossings to Pensacola or Panama City. Instead I opted to torture myself and crew with orders to be on the lookout for lights of passing ships. Not only is this a boring proposition, but it is mostly fruitless as this section of the Gulf is infrequently populated by commercial ships. Add on the additional requirement to stay awake all night, and you have a bad deal.

On the other hand, there are ships out here to be avoided.  Last night as I had finally got my sails set I could be on a collision course a brightly lit boat with a green lamp behind it. It was the tug boat “OJ” towing a 400’ barge on a 1400’ tow line. Behind the barge was an additional 160’ emergency tow bridle and Norwegian orange float, so said the captain. Naturally this is the sort of thing I want to have nothing to do with, so I altered course and passed him safely far away.

So this brings me back to my radar, and the realities of a big boat running me down. Large cargo vessels may stand 100’ or more high, but they move in excess of 20 kts. As such they could be upon me within as little as 15 minutes, and I would have to evade as well as call out on the marine VHF radio. The radar has alarms where I can set it to beep if a vessel comes within a certain range, and it doesn’t have to spin and emit continuously, saving on wear and tear as well as power consumption. This device is my friend singlehanding, allowing me to sleep, if not soundly, then at least more than none.

Thanks to my autopilot and radar, I have already made almost 100 nautical miles towards my intended target of the Dry Tortugas.