Just to end the story.. Perrovida is now with her new owner in South Carolina. Could not believe the new owner took me up on my ridicules offer to deliver within " a thousand miles or so". Man did I feel like a sailor when I wrote that. " a thousand miles, whatever". Lol
The new owner wrote up a nice
contract to cover the details and we had a deal. The new owner took me up on my offer to install a couple of items. After all in my ad I said how easy it would be to do, Hell ,a six pack and a afternoon was all it would take. Well we all know how
boat projects go so after a week of pretty hard labor . Perrovida had a alder Barbour refer/
freezer. 4 6 volts from SAMs and and nice
inverter charger installed.
I think the trip from
fort myers to SC is about 700 miles. I was going solo so I temp installed my matrix
ais VHF radio, put a whole bunch of must haves on board just in case junk ! Filled the
water tanks, 5 lbs of bacon and enough
food for a month. Just two days before departure a sail buddy asked to join me for the trip, he'll yes!
We departed my back yard in
fort myers beach August 8 on the am high tide. Stopped at the gas
dock and loaded 80 gallons into the boat and fifteen more in 5 gallon jugs. I have done the trip to marathon from here many times, almost always lots of motoring. Off we went, there was enough
wind to fill the
sails and dampen the motion which was nice. My goal was to maintain 5 knots for the trip. We pushed that and stayed at 5.3. 5.6. Most the time. Late afternoon found the towering condos of Naples in our wake ten miles distant. There was a squall line of to port that looked menacing so we kept a eye on it. It slid past but we got caught with the main up when the edge of the storm gave us a sudden 25
knot sustained breeze with those 35
knot gusts.. I backed down the
engine rpms to idle and let the main out a bit to lesson the heel a bit, I did not want to stress things. The big genny was furled at the time. If that had been out then things would have taken on a bit of urgency but all was under control. As usual with this type of
weather the
wind gradually abated back down to its previous ten knots or so and the rpms were increased.
My co
captain made a nice dinner under way on the
stove, forget what it was but it started with garlic onions and olive
oil in a skillit, smelled good. We held a very easy going watch schedule, who ever was up was on watch, This worked well for the whole trip. We sailed through the night not seeing any other
boats till early am as we approached marathon.
Fishing vessels out doing there thing. We made our way under the 7 mile bridge around the shoal and into boot key. At the
fuel dock we. Refilled the main tank with 17 gallons of
diesel. So that's how much we used for the 150 mile trip. A little more than a 1/2 gallon a hour as a pushed the rpms above the max
cruise 5 knot speed. All we did was get
diesel. And we headed back out. We debated heading straight south for the
Gulf Stream some 30 miles away or east and get into the stream off
Miami. I can't remember exactly what we did but we did get outside the reef sometime after breakfast and picked up a
current later in the day.
Things start to blend together at this point. We were hauling ass once in the axis of the stream which was shown on the chart plotter with arrows. Once in the stream we were making over 8 knots all of the time, well almost. We tried getting cell signals as we went by
Miami , managed to get a text out. The next day we came across another squal line. We spotted a water spout in the distance. We could clearly see the water on the surface in a frenzy. It did not look to be a threat but suddenly I thought it a good idea to look up. Uh-oh. More were forming around us. At one point there were 5 in view at one time. Heard someone on the
VHF. Mention Kansas and Dorothy. None seemed headed for us but as you would imagine we were on alert. As the
weather does this time of year soon enough it was again smooth sailing with enough to fill the main and the Kubota pushing us along at 5 knots and the
current adding another 3. Nice!
The first 24 hours on the Atlantic side had a lot of tanker traffic. We seemed to be east of the south bound ships. The
AIS gave us all the data we needed to feel comfortable. The
shipping traffic slowly dwindled over the next 48 hours as we traveled north. Day 3 brought a weather change. We were at all times of this trip getting weather off the VHF. Severe weather was pounding the coast to our west and was coming our way. We could see it coming for hours. As the black wall approached we could see
lighting as well. The closer it got the more menacing it looked . All
sails down and secured, all hatches dogged down. Loose items secured. Many folks have experienced the instantaneous wind gust, but it is always stunning to me. 10 to 40 knots in 30 seconds. Just before it hit I unplugged the
gps and ais. The wind was on our nose, a steady 35 knots gusting higher. The rain in increased untill we had a hundred feet visibility and I suddenly became very concerned about tankers. I neglected to check the ais before I unplugged it so I had no idea of traffic in the area. . I went below and reconnected the matrix receiver and saw no traffic ( later I realized I had not reconnected the
antenna, so it was not really working). I had also put my
epirb and spot in the
oven and thought that might not be such a good idea if we were about to be run down by a tanker. The GO bag was inside as well.
Of course as the the wind blew the waves increased. A very steep chop developed and the bow began plunging deeply into them, I backed the rpms down a bit. The waves built into a very very steep chop 5 feet? Not that big but coming every 5 second All headway was stopped . I could see the the water next to the boat and we were stationary.
I was thinking these were very much like the shallow
Gulf of Mexico type of waves. The water here was deep and I thought the wave action would be larger more spaced out. Then my co
captain, having the same thoughts said " the wind is out of the north". Right against a 3 knot current. The light bulb went off and I got it. This is why you stay out of the stream when winds are out of the north. The wind and rain continued for a hour, or so it seemed. First it lightened a bit ,vis increased and then the wind slacked a bit. The plunging of the bow and no headway was starting to bug me so I turned the ap control to starboard a little, this helped. I carefully let out a little headsail as this has helped steady things in the past. This time it did not so I pulled it back in. I headed off to starboard a bit more a,more improvement. We were off the rumb line but that was ok. The front passed but the wind remained brisk and began to swing behind us which allowed us to raise sails and shut down the diesel. I took the opportunity to check the kubota over, checking fluids and generally inspecting things. No problems found. The wind was us up, the sea was alive with waves and we were sailing along at over 8 knots over the ground often into the 9 ,s. From then on if I had the diesel running it was just above idle. The last evening out just before dark found me sitting in the
cockpit and co cap making dinner. With out warning a very large dolphin shot out of the water not 5 feet from were I sat, straight up, no
arc just straight up to a amazing height. Then with a duck of its
head straight down. It did this 4 more times each time farther from the boat. I was excitedly yelling to co cap and asked. " why would it do that? He answered. " to here you scream"
We approached SC during the night. Slowed a bit for a squall line and to arrive in the light. I have never been to SC , as the landscape came into view and we picked up the channel makers I felt like this was a special place. Hard to explain. As we worked our way in we picked up cell
service. I called the new owner to let him know we had arrived. He let the marina know so that they would expect us. It had taken exactly 120 hours to cover the distance, just love that
Gulf Stream current. In the next few days the deal was done and as I walked away from Perrovida for what I knew was the last time I was sad, felt like I was abandoning her. Often during the trip north I asked myself why I was selling this beautiful boat . I had leaned to sail on her, she took me to some amazing places, took care of me. The
gps odometer reads over 6000 miles.The new old boat was bigger, would offer more comforts but she was not a looker, would not sail as well. But I had put this course in play and had to see it through, no way I could own two
boats, did not want too. I did not look back.
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