rudderless

Fernandina Beach

We left Saturday from Lake Worth with every intention of jumping into the Gulf Stream and riding it to Beaufort, NC. It was a wild ride to get out there, but once we got in and had our sails set, we were making 9-10 knots, 11.2 was our high! Then the ocean set about teaching us, once again, that things rarely go as planned.

Rosy got sick. I managed to get some Dramamine into Sophie in time, but Rosy had a long day. It take me most of a day to get past my own seasickness, so it shouldn’t have surprised me. The adrenaline, and the easterly swell kept both John and I up most of the first night. Then, on Sunday morning, we lost the wind. It totally, and completely died. We never intended to motor for four days. We don’t carry enough fuel to make that kind of passage under power alone (we do have sails, afterall), and we had no desire to sit and be rocked by the swells while waiting for wind. So, on to Plan B.

By Sunday afternoon, the day felt very normal. Just like motoring up the ICW. I did the dishes, the ladies played with Playdough. Their appetites returned. John took a nap while I took my turn in the sun (oh my, it was HOT). The wind picked up around sunset and we were in for an entirely different ride. We still haven’t figured out quite why- the moon tides, we think- but those last eight hours into St. Mary’s inlet were a rollercoaster down quartering seas. We took turns sleeping (and having been up the night before, we SLEPT despite the rollers). The girls slept in their leecloth like rocks (thank you, Dramamine). The highlight was seeing a pod of tiny porpoises jumping through the waves around us, chasing flying fish, their black bodies all lit up by the moon. Somehow the wind subsided just in time for us to make our grand entrance, past the shrimpers headed out at 5AM. We dropped the hook in the Amelia River just as the moon set.

We’ve spent the last few days in our favorite town in Florida, trying to make sense of the randomness of the weather, and the unexpected swells. We’ve gone back and forth about whether to go inside to Charleston and Beaufort, or to travel up the coast. Whatever we decide, I try to keep John’s mantra of , “Every option is on the table,” handy in my mind. As the ocean clearly abides by that philosophy as well.

You just never know. You plan, you adjust, and you take what you can get. For us, that’s been a nice sojourn in Fernandina Beach. And that’s not much to complain about.