I was very apprehensive about this anchorage being comfortable in southern wind but it turned out to be my future anchorage of choice on the L.A. coast. The water is clean, clear and most importantly flat. We had 2' to 3' waves in the ship channel coming in but Pellican Island totally protected us. I flat lined from 8pm till 7:15 am this morning but still feel like a zombie and since we left before the boat (or us) was ready I will borrow from Lahowind, "cruising is just fixing the boat in exotic places" and deem this anchorage exotic!
I spent the day getting the boat seaworthy. Everyone that saw us off had the look (and saying to themselves) that they hoped God would really take care of fools this time and they would never go to sea on a boat with such a haphazard deck and to tell the truth I would have said the same thing only out loud! We just had to get away from being able to go to Ace or Home Depot and just concentrate on safeing up the boat. We may head out tomorrow morning
I did not take pictures today, only worked but promise to take some tomorrow. All we saw were pelicans, blue herons and fishermen. Hundreds of helicopters flew over training or supplying the oil rigs, we even had a low level pass by 3 homebuilt ultralights in sorta formation.
Debbie Badelamenti, a director at the Grand Hotel, our friend and neighbor, wrote that when she heard we had departed, she scrambled the "Joshua" their schooner that I sent a picture of yesterday. She had taken every roll of toilet paper the hotel had and was sending out to us. When the captain saw how low we are in the water he turned back saying we couldn't put one more roll on board!
4-24-2015
We are almost shipshape but too many people are asking if we found home that close to Fairhope, so I will finish underway. All that is left is minor stuff, like attaching the chain to the spare anchor, tying the dingy on board, you know those minor little things.
One of the ultralights from yesterday came by just past sunrise and circled us once for a kodak moment. We had dolphins before sunup and several pods before we got past Ft Morgan, Sally says it is a good omen.
Sailing past the lighthouse was a treat cause I didn't even know it was there, we have always taken the ICW east or west, not through the ship channel. I was also not aware of the large number of oil platforms in L.A.
Holy mackerel Andy, I remembered to put out a hook and caught supper, a 4 or 5 lb king mackerel. Tomorrow's supper.
We had light winds, almost enough for a good sail and had decided to go into big lagoon for the night but changed our mind and going to sail overnight. About out the time we changed course a pod of dolphins came up to play with us. I will try to send more pictures of them after this. It was quite a show.
4-25-2015
The good winds that were forecasted through the weekend, 10 knots out of the SE with 1 ft waves were only to be a few hours. About midnight, Zeus must have gotten a little perturbed with us and awoke King Neptune so two of them battered us like a badminton birdie for about 30 hours. The winds were 18 to 24 with waves 4 to 6 with an occasional 8. We could not think of holding any course, just kept pointed as close to the wind as we could. We could not even go to Cuba, maybe Mexico!
Just after daylight, Friday morning a freak wave broadsided us so hard it broke the brazing holding the autopilot arm to the rudder quadrant. We lost all steering so I tore the bed apart to get to the rudder shaft, the autopilot arm was blocking the rudder from turning, once I disconnected the arm the rudder could move. Now, steering was akin to riding a bronco while wearing a blindfold. I searched my garbage bins for several hours looking for ideas on what to do, while also trying to relieve Sally at the helm every so often cause her arms and shoulders were on fire from being so overworked. We tried tacking to go to Panama City but could only head back where we had come from. I finally got a brain fart, took an old genoa track, cut it down, and with two "c" clamps, was able to hold the broken part in place so we could use the auto sparingly. That really helped but by this time Sally was through with sailing after hand steering most of the day in these conditions.
Friday around 1800hrs we tacked to the East and it looked like we might be able to make it 60 miles to Port St. Joe to rest up, clean up all the stuff that was dumped into the floor from the bucking bull. As soon as we turned a family of cliff swallows (?) landed on the boat and found a place to get out of the wind, the pic of the bird on the vent has the others huddled in the upper left. After midnight the wind died so I started the engine so we could make it into St Joe by the weekend. After a couple of hours the engine decided it had enough and quit. The wind picked back up and we sailed in to St Joe Bay dropped the hook around 10 am. Spent the day in caskets cause we just died. One of the birds died in the night so we had a burial at sea, took me forever to make a little flag to wrap it in. The others left at daybreak, leaving us with thoughts of avian flu!
Look at the pic of the waves breaking over the bow and notice how much Sally is enjoying this. Ah. . . Sailing!
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