We left Oriental, NC on January 10th and have been moving south for about three weeks now (took 5 days off to fly back to Baltimore for a family event) so I thought it would be a good time to capture some of my observations and ruminations along the way before we cross over to the Bahamas. These are in no particular order….
The Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) is much more pleasant in January than in the summer because there is literally no boat traffic until you get to FL. Most of it is undeveloped with an incredible amount of birdlife and dolphins! We see dolphins every day. One completely jumped out of the water right next to the boat yesterday!
On the other hand, the ICW in January is not very pleasant because of the strong northerly winds and cold temperatures. I am so glad we have a cockpit enclosure (I made it last spring. It’s not beautiful, but so functional). It’s like a little plastic greenhouse and when the sun is out it warms up nicely. We have passed several boats without one and the people look absolutely frozen. We passed one guy who never turned to wave or answer his radio when we tried to hail him; he just sat looking straight ahead, unmoving. We decided he was frozen in place holding onto his tiller!
We have seen so many boats damaged and apparently abandoned. I don't know if this is from recent storms or they have been there for years, but it hurts my heart to see them.
We typically don’t stay in marinas. We like the privacy of being at anchor and we are basically cheap! During our 2016-2017 trip to the Bahamas, the only times we stayed in one was when we had to make a bunch of repairs early in the trip and when we returned to the states after an overnight passage. Staying in marinas can get pricey-it’s equivalent to staying in cheap hotels every night. BUT, when you are moving south in January, marinas can be a necessity. We don’t have heat onboard unless we can plug into shore power and run our heat pump. Some boats carry a generator and run that all night to run their heater, but in keeping with our keep it simple approach to cruising we opted not to get one. Of the 21 days we have been gone, we have stayed in a marina 15 nights! (Eight of those were when we left the boat near Charleston to fly home for the family event.) Now that we have gotten further south, we usually anchor. It stays surprisingly warm in our cabin. The propane stove heats it up while I cook dinner which helps. BUT the mornings are tough. It’s very hard to force ourselves to crawl out from under our warm massive layers of blankets. If the sun is out though, the cockpit warms up quickly. On the other hand, when it is overcast like today, it never seems to get warm and we have lots of layers on all day.
There have been a million birds! Mostly pelicans, cormorants and seagulls, but also lots of different egrets and herons. Pelicans are so funny to watch. They are so big and awkward. One dropped down right next to the boat today while we were anchoring. He stayed right next to the boat looking at me saying “Feed me, feed me!” He flew off when it was obvious I wasn’t going to oblige.
Cruising in January is not for the faint of heart. Besides the cold temperatures, the winds are typically strong cold northerlies. We have been surprised at the strength of the winds here in the relatively protected ICW. One night our anchor dragged twice in 40 knot (about 44 mph) winds and driving rain. I was a bit concerned that I might lose David off the bow when he went forward to reset the anchor twice while I manned the helm. At one point his head light disappeared and I thought he may have gone overboard, but it turns out he had stuck his head down in the anchor locker to fix a tangled line so I couldn’t see the light. We were awake from 4am until 7:30am when the winds died down a bit and the anchor was holding. A long night. Another night spent in a marina in St Augustine, the wind was gusting over 35 knots and we were rocking and rolling all night in the slip.
We have made only one overnight ocean passage because of weather. For the most part it was not bad, but the 5-6 foot seas at the end were slapping us around pretty good. David described it as “being smacked back and forth across the face like being in a boxing ring”. We plan to cross to the Bahamas from Fort Pierce on Saturday and luckily the waves are supposed to be only about a meter. However, we’ve learned forecasts can change quickly and dramatically this time of year.
We have only run aground once in the notoriously shallow ICW. We have great crowd-sourced notations on our charts where other boaters have reported shoaling and other hazards. That has helped so much as the chart depths are not always up to date and there are constant changes from shoaling and dredging. Today we ran hard aground smack in the middle of the channel in less than five feet of water where there is supposed to be ten feet. We had 20 knot wind and waves hitting us broadside and didn’t have any success in powering off so we called a towing service. They said it would take them an hour to get to us! I kept trying and finally was able to maneuver off the shoal without the towing assistance thank goodness. We had been planning on going out to the ocean through the Cape Canaveral inlet, but knew the seas were going to be higher than we really would be comfortable with. We decided this was God’s way of telling us to turn around and continue south on the ICW and go out into the ocean another day! We listened!
The tides are crazy in some places along the ICW with water depth changing as much as 8 feet in a tide cycle. We are used to the water depth changing by a couple feet in NC. In FL the tide is only a couple feet, but in areas of SC the current from the big tide swings was just crazy. Our normal motoring cruising speed is about 6.5 knots. Depending on if we are fighting the tide or going with it, our speed varied wildly from less than 5 knots to 9 knots! You can be flying along and then go by an inlet and suddenly it’s like the brakes are on.
There are so many bridges along the ICW. A lot of them are “fixed” and provide the standard clearance of 64 ft, but this can vary depending on the level of the water from flooding or tides. Our tallest antenna at the top of the mast is at about 61 feet, so the bridges that are showing 62 feet of clearance cause us to hold our breath when we go under them. Many of the bridges, however, are low and open on a schedule, either on the hour or the half hour and hour. Some open on request from individual boats. Some of the charts don’t have up-to-date info on the bridge openings so we have been surprised a couple times and had to wait an hour or more for a bridge opening. You just have to slowly circle and try to hold your boat in place while you wait. There aren’t usually any places to tie up and wait. How you time your bridge openings impacts how many miles you can do each day quite significantly.
Even with the cold temps and blustery winds, I feel blessed that we can experience this adventure together, be outside in nature and live on our boat! So maybe I am a little bit crazy!