May 21, 2008

I was up early, the dogs were walked, the dinghy stowed and we were underway by 0630. We figured that we would get as far north as we could since the wind was “supposed” to be from the west southwest at 15 to 25 knots. Best case scenario, I was hoping to do an overnighter and get to Beaufort SC. Surprisingly, for once the forecast was spot on. Yeah baby.

Veranda starts to be a little tender around 18 knots so I put in a double reef before we even hauled the anchor. So with the reefed main and the entire genoa out we were beam reaching between 6.8 and 8.5 knots all day. Since the wind was from the west there was no real fetch so the sea state was virtually calm with just a 2 foot chop. When the winds built to 25 knots we had to roll in some of the genoa to slow ourselves down as the boat was becoming a little squirrelly.

Another quick commercial for AIS. This picture is a perfect example of the value of AIS. Our boat is the black triangle in the middle while all the red ones are ships. The squares with the “C’s” in them are channel markers that mark the channel into Jacksonville. The purple line running vertically up the screen is our proposed route while the fine black line behind our boat is our actual track.

So as we approached from the south I could see on the AIS that we would have 4 contacts to deal with. The one to the right of the purple line was a 400 foot freighter doing 15 knots towards the channel to Jacksonville. The single contact to the left of the line is the pilot boat coming out to put a pilot on the freighter, he was doing 22 knots. If you look closely at the other contact you’ll see that it’s actually a double contact. It was a tugboat towing a huge dredge.

So since I knew the speed at which all of the contacts were traveling I knew that I would cross the paths of the pilot boat and the freighter before they got there. The tug and tow came out the channel and turned right behind us and headed north as we were. The comfort there came from the fact that I knew he was only doing 7 knots while we were actually pulling away at 7.5 knots. Otherwise we would have had to adjust course to get out of his way even though it wasn’t warranted. All the guess work was gone so a potentially tense spot became nothing more than a photo op.

During our day we listened intently to an unfolding drama on the VHF. There was a Navy exercise offshore and one of their helicopters was headed out to join the fleet. He came across a disabled sailboat 65 miles off the coast of Brunswick, Georgia. They had all of their sails shredded in a squall and had run out of fuel trying to make it back to land.

Their only mode of communication was their VHF radio. With our VHF we can count on receiving and transmitting for about 20 miles or so. We routinely make contact with boats 30 miles away and have even had freak contacts (known as a skip) of 50 miles with just the right propagation. Since they were so far offshore the only contact they might make was with another boat that was underway well offshore.

So for a day and a half they were drifting further out to sea to the east. Fortunately for them the Navy helicopter happened upon them. He was able to act as an intermediary and contact the Coast Guard for them. We could hear the Coast Guard and the helicopter but not the sailboat so we followed one side of the conversation as a rescue was coordinated.

After the Coast Guards endless list of questions things went from hopeless to overwhelming for these people. The Coast Guard dispatched a helicopter to lift them off their boat. A cutter was also sent from Charleston and the Navy had a destroyer in the area that could be on scene in an hour and a half. Once the rescuers were on scene they were able to use standard VHF so we were unable to hear anymore of the conversation, so we don’t know the outcome. We don’t know if the people were lifted off and the boat left to drift or if there was some type of tow arranged.

Around 1400 hours we were about to pass the St. Marys Inlet when we noticed a very ugly sky to the west of us. We tuned into NOAA weather which was predicting squalls with micro bursts in the 40 to 60 knot range along with the possibility of golf ball sized hail, loads of “deadly” lightning and tornadoes. They had issued a severe storm warning till 2200 hours that night, when we did the math it looked like we could encounter hours of bad weather while underway. So we made a quick left and headed into the channel which would lead us into the ICW where we could take cover in a secure anchorage off Cumberland Island. Christy was actually glad to stop here, Cumberland Island is a huge tropical state park complete with wild horses and miles of pristine beaches for shelling, so this is definitely not a bad place to be. We got in as quickly as we could and battened everything down as the blackness approached.

We were lucky and watched as the worst of the squall lines swept past us about 4 miles to the north. The worst winds we saw were 25 knots, and only for a couple of minutes. Five minutes after the lightning faded from view the evening turned out to be beautiful and calm. Ahhhhhhhhhhh.