On the Road Again

A post by Mark

Hi all –
It has been a while since I wrote – I’ll catch you up with the latest.

Last I wrote, we had just gotten to Mobile.  Interesting part of that day… on the way towards the marina, we hear the following on the radio “Catamaran leaving the Mobile River, this is the US Navy – Over”.  Yikes…. Way on the horizon, we see a big grey mass.  Turns out, its a Navy ship on the way into the river.  After a quick conversation, we agree with the US Navy that we’d go to the right side of the channel – staying clear of the ship.  Here’s what we saw going passing by…   It was pretty cool.

So, we ended up in Mobile much longer than we planned…  In Mobile, we needed to get the mast put back-up on our boat.  We thought we were scheduled to have it installed a day or two after we arrived.  Turns out, we weren’t scheduled until 6 days later.  The delay is especially bad because we wanted to be in Naples FL the weekend before Thanksgiving to spend the week with Julie’s parents, my mom, and Julie’s sister and kids (aka – the cousins).  During the delay, we did a bunch of small jobs on the boat – the biggest of which was to try to get the fresh water in our tanks tasting better.  By the end of the trip down the river, our water tasted downright bad!  This job seemed relatively straightforward – but has turned into an ongoing debacle which is still not fully fixed – as it seems that every time I fix one part, another issue pops up.  Two things are making this particularly challenging… 1) its a boat – and everything is just harder to fix on a boat.  It’s as if the designers try to put the things that break most often in the most difficult places to reach. 2)  We only have access to a car for an hour or two every day or so (sometimes less often).  Oh well – its all part of the adventure! (I need to keep reminding myself of this – especially when I’m in the middle of the job.  As I side note, I think I have created a few new swear words while contorted into ungodly positions on the boat – or at least created unique combinations of the oldies but goodies).

Anyway – back to the story….  Our plan was to get the mast up and pull the boat of the water to change the anodes – pieces of zinc under the boat that protect the engine and propellers from corrosion.  The folks at the marina told us that they could pull boats out up to 22 1/2 feet wide – which is good – since we are 22 ft 2” wide.  Turns out, they can only pull boats 22’ wide, which we found out when we got stuck pulling the boat into the lift bay.  Ugh….  Time for plan B (note – after a few tries, we’re now on plan D or E – we are fixed for now).

After we got the mast up and sails on the boat, we tied it up good and rented a car and headed to Naples.  We spent a good week in Naples – it was really nice to see everybody and relax for a few days (or try – sometimes – as it was a sometimes hard to relax knowing that there was still a bunch of work to do on the boat 10 hrs away).  Thanks to everybody for a good visit!

As Heidi mentioned in her post, she and I drove to Tallahassee for a day to see the Jimmy Buffett / Kenny Chesney / Toby Kieth / Jake Owens Hurricane Relief concert.  It was pretty cool – a lot of fun seeing all these together in various combinations.

In Naples, we ordered a satellite hotspot for our boat – a device that will allow us to get weather on passage and turns our phone into a satellite phone.  It was supposed to ship overnight – so it should have gotten to our boat by Monday – or Tuesday the latest.  It showed up Friday – further extending our stay in Mobile.   On Saturday, we finally left Mobile.

We headed out towards Naples – which is a 4-day passage.  We knew this was an ambitious goal – but we planned our path so that we’d be pretty close to shore and could head in to one of several ports along the way if we wanted to shorten our journey.

The girls are writing about the passage in depth – but here’s the synopsis… it was a bit rough.

The first day was nice and calm – as forecasted – until about midnight – when the wind and waves decided to kick-up.  It calmed down again in the morning – and again,  got really windy and wavy around 11 PM.  It also shifted – bringing us parallel to the Florida peninsula (instead of towards it like we wanted to). In the morning, we decided to head upwind towards shore – which added extra time to the journey.  We also lost one of our engines.  About this time, we decide to head to Clearwater FL instead of all the way to Naples.  We arrived in Clearwater around 10 PM – tired, but in one piece.  The next morning, we learned that our engine issue was just a line wrapped around our prop – so it was an easy fix.  The past few days, I fixed a few minor things that broke on the passage and spent way too much time trying to get our fresh water system fixed (still no luck – I’m going to have to replace the entire system when we get to Naples – ugh).  We’re in Clearwater for another few days while we wait for some storms to roll through.   Then – off to Naples.

I’ll try to be better about writing more regularly…

Until then –

Mark