Thanksgiving in St. Augustine

It was a good shakedown sail.

I wrote last week about the beginning of the sailing trip from Stuart to St. Augustine and having to avoid a NASA / SpaceX security zone for a rocket launch that ended up being canceled due to weather and then finally blasted off last night after multiple target dates and times.

In the last post, I told the story of how we had to reroute further East into the Atlantic, and then the launch was canceled, but Avemar got caught in the predicted strong northerlies at the edge of the Gulf Stream.

It was not a pleasant sail as the clock approached midnight on the Friday before Thanksgiving, and April was seasick. I had been on watch too long, and ships seemed to pop up on the AIS from every direction. I continued North for a few more hours, finally had to say “Uncle” and turn to the shore and enter the ICW at Port Canaveral.

In the morning on Saturday, we went through a drawbridge and then through a lock, and we were then in a channel about 5 miles from the ICW. We anchored in more open water than I prefer, but we were at anchor. It turned out to be a very restful night.

The next day, we turned north in the ICW and had a great ride up to New Smyrna Beach, a familiar anchorage where I sailed an O’Day and my Laser in my early 20s while dreaming of dropping the hook in that spot on a blue water boat.

The next day, we motored further north and stopped for the night in a very calm anchorage next to the Fort Matanzas National Monument. The charts read 5.6 feet, and Avemar draws 5, but we saw at least 12 feet going in and out. I highly recommend this spot to other sailors who can’t quite make it to St. Augustine and need a tranquil place to sleep. Anchor in the middle of the river just off of the fort. It is a beautiful spot.

On Tuesday, we slept late, enjoyed our coffee, and then motored for a couple of hours, perfectly timing our arrival in the southern mooring field at St. Augustine. April caught the second mooring pennant of her sailing career like a pro.

The trip took two days longer than expected, but we would have Thanksgiving in St. Augustine, just as planned!

This time of year, the city is decorated and lit up for Christmas. It’s beautiful. People were everywhere, primarily tourists, just like us.

The following day, after a short Uber ride, Avemar was again full of supplies from West Marine and groceries for Thanksgiving day.

April’s oldest daughter and her friend drove up and stayed in an Air B&B on Wednesday night, and on Thursday, we met for a fantastic breakfast at a restaurant about two miles off the beaten path but frequented by the locals. The two-mile walk back to the marina helped me overcome the one too many sausage biscuits with gravy I ate!

April’s daughter and friend headed home, and we headed to the boat. Later that evening, we cooked the most fantastic boat Thanksgiving meal. It was so good that we put that specific meal on our cruising menu! We fell into the berth, exhausted and full.

On Friday, we slipped the lines on the ball and headed out of the inlet and into the ocean. It was a crisp morning, but we had a favorable wind to head south… for a few hours.

About 20 miles into our southbound sail, the wind died. I turned on the diesel, expecting the wind to return from a new direction in an hour or so. April was at the helm, and I went below to cat nap. As soon as I fell asleep, I was awaked with an unusual engine whirr. It had revved higher than normal but the boat was slowing down. As I stood up, April was looking down from above.

After a minute of diagnosing the problem, it was evident that we had lost our transmission. We turned off the engine, put the boat in neutral, and sailed. The wind picked up, and we were southbound again… until Saturday morning.

On Saturday, at about lunchtime, the wind died. The sails were flogging, but there was a hint of a northern breeze in the air, so I dropped the main, thinking we would make headway with only the genoa. For the conditions, it worked.

The wind returned after a few hours, and I went forward to hoist the main. I wasn’t looking up when the main stopped going up. When I did, I saw that the halyard was fouled above the forestay before the mast.

When I had dropped the main a few hours earlier, I forgot to take out the slack, and the swells causing the boat to rock had pushed the main halyard in front of the mast, above the spreaders, and they had tangled and caught on the steaming light and the radar reflector.

After several tries at freeing the line from below, I donned my climbing gear and headed up the rig. I climb with a single-line system and rarely use a safety line, but with April fearing for my life, I asked her to man the spinnaker pole topping lift I rigged up to make her feel better about the situation.

I was climbing a rotten spinnaker halyard, as the new one I ordered hadn’t arrived yet, so I guess in hindsight that second line made both of us feel better, although you would not have seen it on her face.

With a couple of bruises on my chest and cuts on my ankles later, the main halyard back in its place, we hoisted the sail and continued toward our West Palm Beach destination.

Around midnight on Saturday, we were approaching the St. Lucie Inlet, and the wind dropped to 2 knots, and the boat speed went to 0.6 knots. We were under full sail but drifting towards shore and in 18 feet of water.

It started raining.

I bore off in almost zero wind and headed out into the ocean on a broad reach, but every time I turned South, the boat would drift back to the same shallow spot.

I did this three times.

Six hours later, around 6 a.m., I decided to use my “Tow Boat US Gold Plan Get Out Of Jail Free App”, and call for a tow.

By 7 a.m., we were on a mooring in Manatee Pocket, back where our trip had started a little over a week earlier.

All in all, it was a fantastic trip. Boat projects were completed. New boat projects popped up on the to-do list. We saw friends and family. We did have some great sailing, and most of all, we shook out some of the bugs in the boat and rig so we can continue south for a Christmas in the Keys!