Another Day Of Firsts
Watch Episode 43 here! Don’t forget to give it a thumbs up and leave a comment!
With the release of Episode 43, we are sharing another bout of firsts. We sailed into another new anchorage (yay us), sailed under a huge bridge and then go into the lock at Cape Canaveral where we then had to raft up to the wall on our own. I, again, was quite nervous about doing all of theses things. Bridges make me nervous because I don’t want to have to sit in front of a bridge and wait while fighting current with small boats zooming around us. That sounds like an accident waiting to happen… As for the lock, well we’ve never done that before and again, to say I was nervous is an understatement. I don’t want to repeat myself 1,000 times saying how nervous and anxious I am to do new things and go to new places with Dauntless; doing those things is kind of the whole point of the adventure (plus, me saying it over and over is annoying… like come on girl, we get it already). Getting through the lock to the anchorage ended up being relatively uneventful, but in a good way. There were no crashes, the current and wind were in agreement and we didn’t rise several feet in the lock and have to manage moving fenders to be able to keep the paint from getting scuffed or anything like that. But, just as we were exiting the lock it started to POUR on us. Right outside the lock there are pretty much only 2 options for anchoring-directly to the left or right of the lock opening-and the depth according to our charts gets very shallow very quickly in the anchorages. Not to mention that we could only go to the anchorage on the left, which was more crowded, because there were power lines between the channel and the anchorage that our mast will absolutely not clear. Like you see in the video, we find a spot, after getting completely soaked from the waist down, that we stick with for the night. We originally planned on staying in Cape Canaveral for maybe a day or two because the weather was going to be slightly less than ideal, but the next morning, after checking and double checking the weather of course, we decided that we were going to be okay with being a little it uncomfortable and that we should head out towards our next stop. Let me just tell you, the weatherman is a liar.
We thought that the seas were going to be uncomfortable for sure, but nothing unbearable. We were not prepared for what we sailed into at all. We were sailing up and back down 15 ft (4.57 m) waves on about 4 second intervals. Absolutely miserable, not to mention a little scary considering we had yet to sail in any sort of unfavorable conditions on Dauntless before, let alone done it on our own. With that being said, Dauntless handled the seas beautifully, and we could have sailed through those seas if we really wanted to. And to be completely honest with you guys, Mom and I told Dad that we should just keep going and that we didn't want to turn back. Dad, as the Capitan, vetoed that idea and I was actually so glad he did. We would have been sailing those conditions for somewhere between 17 and 20 hours, and just as soon as we turned around we were with the wind and the waves and it was surprisingly very pleasant.
Now, the seas weren’t even the really scary part of the whole experience. A couple weeks prior, Dad installed new lifting anchors in the dinghy so that the lines wouldn’t chafe as much when we hauled her in and out of the water. About half way through our little outing, the anchor points that we hook the davit lines into ripped straight through the bottom of our fiberglass dinghy. If it weren’t for the fact that we decided to tie off the bow and stern to cleats back on the boat we would have lost our dinghy. Now, imagine 15 ft seas and your dinghy is hanging on with everything it has and your dad has to climb off of the boat and down in to attach the davit lines to the original anchor points so that we can haul the dinghy back up. I was pooping my pants! I tried to hold on to dad as he climbed down for as long as I could, while also holding the dinghy as best as I could, while also trying not to cry from a panic attack so that I was able to see what was going on to help if needed. Talk about stress. Needless to say, we ratchet strap our dinghy on passage and tie her bow and stern from now on. And to reiterate, I am glad that after all that, Dad vetoed our vote and turned back.
Once we were back to the mouth of the channel we were calling all of the marinas and boatyards that we could to see if they had any transient dock space open for a couple of days so that we could fix the dinghy and wait out the weather. Thankfully, there was a marina that had a portion of their fuel dock available for a couple days that we could take. What was super convenient was that it was right next door to the boat yard that was able to haul the dinghy out for our repairs. For those of you who are curious, we were docked at Ocean Club Marina and hauled out at Scorpion Marine. Everyone at both places was super nice and we would recommend them for anyone in the area needing their services. Now that we were safe and sound we were able to relax a little. We couldn't haul out til the next day and we were all coming off of our adrenaline high so we were thankful for some down time.
We took the next couple days to fix the dinghy and beak out the scooters for some cruising around. I thought that it was going to be really loud and busy in that stretch before the bridge and lock, but it was actually really pleasant. We got to see dolphins every day, and a turtle was even eating the soft growth on the bottom of Dauntless which was pretty cool. And don’t worry, we had the bottom scrapped while we were docked there so we were clean and smooth for our next leg of the trip.
Overall, it wasn't a terrible experience. I don’t think I will ever recommend going out in the conditions that we did, but we definitely learned a thing or two and we didn’t lose the dinghy. I would count that a a win.
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Thanks,
Syd