New Friends, Old Friends

It's quite different being back in Florida. First, we've had a hard time remembering we're actually back in the States. We get and can make phone calls! We don't have to check in with Customs or Immigration every time we move from port to port. We also have lots of friends and relatives here and have received all sorts of “welcome back” messages and opportunities to get together. It's good to be back. We met up with Doug, one of our oldest cruising friends. We met him in Charleston back in 2000 when we were just starting out. Lots of things have changed throughout the last 16 years, but our friendship has endured. He drove up from Lake Worth and stayed the night on the boat. We haven't seen him since 2012 when he visited us for New Year's in Sydney, but we picked up as if it was yesterday. There was not a minute that we weren't chatting and catching up. Doug was most noted for receiving, consolidating and sending or toting boat parts to Nine of Cups wherever we were in the world.

We were in the dinghy heading back to Cups one afternoon when we heard a hail from shore “Hey, Nine of Cups”. Kurt and Pamela from “Big Frisky” had been following our blog for some time. Embarrassingly, they knew way too much about us, but in the few minutes we had to chat, we learned a bit about them as well. We have the cruising life in common and we're all SSCA members. They're heading north, too. We hope to meet up with them again along the way.

We got an email from Zack who had read David's article about Dyneema lifelines in Good Old Boat. He recognized our boat name and sent us an email letting us know that we were neighbors in the mooring field. His ketch, Moonlight, is moored just in front of us. We'll get together with him before we leave.

Cheryl and Dave aboard Renaissance have been following our blog, too and we've had lots of emails back and forth over the years as they prepared to throw off the docklines and embrace the cruising life. And they did! They're here in St. Augustine. Getting together with them was like meeting up with old friends, though we'd never met before other than through internet correspondence.

Our niece, Jill, and her family made the 3-hour trek from Florida's west coast just to visit with us for a few hours one evening. We hadn't seen her since 2007, but after lots of hugs and kisses, it didn't take us long to begin catching up over dinner at the pub. What a fine, enjoyable reunion.

Then, out of the blue, we got a call from Stephan, one of the marina employees. Uh-oh … what did we do wrong? Nothing. Our friends Alyson & Mara from the Boston area follow our blog and are friends with Stephan. He called to welcome us on their behalf and offered us the use of his Jeep! Wow … wheels in St. Augustine. Awesome!

The world of cruisers has always been a friendly one. Though the passages may be long sometimes and sailboats are notoriously slow, we prove time and time again that the world is small. Meeting up with relatives and old and new friends is one of the wonderful aspects of cruising. Being back in the USA means we're all more accessible to one another. We're hoping this trend of meeting new folks, old friends and relatives continues as Nine of Cups and crew sail north in familiar home waters.

Culebra to St. Augustine - Arrival

By all calculations, we should have reached our destination by early this morning, but we haven't. The sea gods, in their ongoing quest for amusement, had some tricks up their proverbial sleeves and provided a few challenges before allowing us to reach St. Augustine.

First of all, the weather forecast (all of them) has been all over the place. The predicted light S/SW winds were in fact northerly and right on the nose. We were concerned that crossing the Gulf Stream, wind against current, would pose some problems. We opted to motor due west across the strongest part of the current.

We noticed the intermittent “racing” of the engine at the same moment … just after dinner. It only happened a couple of times and we figured perhaps the wave action might be causing it (wishful thinking), but to be prudent, we killed the engine and David checked out the transmission fluid, previously checked just before leaving Culebra. The level barely registered on the dipstick. Why? He prodded and poked and checked and narrowed it down to the heat exchanger which was overdue for replacement. He had, of course, a spare aboard. We hove-to while he located it, removed the old and installed the new and wiped down the engine … all in a record 90 minutes. We topped up the fluid and resumed motoring for an hour.

We killed the engine once again to check the transmission. The fluid was down more than half. A more careful examination of every hose and clamp and he found some oil and a tiny split on the back side of the prop brake hydraulic hose. We've got at least 10 spare hydraulic hoses aboard, but none that would fit. Luckily, this was one we could do without and David fashioned a plug that worked like a charm. We resumed motoring and stopped in an hour to check the fluid. Still down some, but not as much as before. We topped up and motored another hour. There was no sleep to be had.

Another hour … another stop. The fluid level was down a tiny bit, however, the engine sump was filled with water! Just as David commented on the water situation, the hi-water alarm sounded. This was concurrent, of course, with lightning and an increase in wind to 25+ knots on the nose. I put the bilge pump on and commenced working the manual pump while David bailed in the engine room to find the source of the leak. He found it, corrected the problem and we continued to trudge on. At 0600, we were still 40+ nm out and exhausted.

Ah, but there's a happy ending. By Noon, the wind and sea began to calm. The transmission fluid was holding steady. There was much jubilation when the St. Augustine sea buoy came into view.

We followed the well-marked channel through the St. Augustine Inlet and into the Matanzas River. We hailed the bridgekeeper and passed through the Bridge of Lions bascule bridge at the 1430 opening.

Mooring #35 was waiting for us. Another safe landing … what more can you ask for? A nap and a cold beer!

Total passage miles: 1131 nm

Culebra to St. Augustine - Days 7-8

Day 7 - 278 nm to go

Thick clouds on the horizon made for a blazing, orange-pink sunrise this morning. The sun only peeked through a small hole of the dense clouds to check out the day, then disappeared altogether, as if deciding whether or not he would shine today … evidently not. He left us with a grey, overcast day.

The wind god is on holiday. I watched he wind indicator needle trying hopelessly to settle on a wind direction, but with 0 knots, it plays spin the bottle with the compass directions, but finds no direction to kiss.

We've been motoring the past 24 ours with nary a breath of breeze other than what wind we're generating ourselves. The mighty Atlantic is as calm and benign as a duck pond and Cups cuts through the water like the metaphorical hot knife through butter.

A white-tailed tropic bird, its long, graceful single white-feathered tail distinguishing it from all other sea birds, circled the boat several times. I was hoping it might land (versus a poop-filled noddy), but after careful surveillance of Cups, it flew off looking for a better ride.

The moon is full now and she's glowing brilliantly when we can see her. There have been showers and some lightning to the west of us and the clouds obscure our view.

Day 8 – 126 nm to go

We've been checking the tide tables for entering the St. Augustine Inlet which tends toward shoaling. With the full moon, the high will be higher and the low will be lower. We're hoping it will be calm for entry. We have two different tide predictors and they disagree significantly … by about 6 hours. We had to email a cruising friend in Florida to verify which tide table was correct.

I won't bore you with too many Day 8 details, other than to say “Only 126 miles to go – Hooray”. We alternated motoring and sailing throughout the night and day with fickle winds that blew and stopped as if on a timetable. There were squalls during the night and lightning cut through the skies all around us. Our days begin and end at 1000 when we consult our log and calculate the daily mileage. I usually collect our thoughts and impressions on the past 24 hours and those become our passage notes. Little did we know that the last day of this pleasant passage would be the most challenging. Stay tuned!