Georgia to Florida
In all, we spent five months back in Georgia at our hurricane hole marina at Brunswick Landing. It was time well-spent doing the finishing touches on our refit, while still isolating as much as possible because… 2020… It really was the best feeling to move from a construction zone to a home inside and out. Mark certainly outdid himself on getting Reach in top shape.
During the summer, my favorite daily activity ~ being immersed in nature ~ could continue in full force, being ideal for isolation. This time I really concentrated on my eBird lists and challenged myself to improve on bird ID in the field, as opposed to relying on a photo for ID. Let’s just say that it’s a work in progress…
I decided to pursue a fun challenge to see if I could identify and list over 100 bird species in September, which I did in both September (109) and October (101). Being here for fall migration was also a treat.
This is such a wonderful and diverse birding area and I continue to learn a lot from my birding friends, especially shorebirds that were quite a mystery to me before my frequent beach walks on Jekyll Island.
Socially, we had a very small number of friends that we chose to interact with using caution in a “bubble”. There were times when I’d run into people birding and other times when we’d have dinners with other cruisers or share provisioning trips.
These infrequent visits certainly helped to keep our sense of sanity and humanity in many ways. It was bittersweet to be here and not be able to do more, especially when you don’t know if/when you’ll see each other again. I missed opportunities for photos of some of you… Lydia, Cilla, Barbara, Carrie, Sadie… Xx
My other self-challenge this fall has been to improve my photography by learning and using manual camera settings. By studying others’ images and their settings, I started to try some new things and better develop my understanding of the exposure triangle (shutter, aperture, ISO) in practice. It is a steep learning curve yet starting to feel more organic, which is how I like to work.
I’m also starting to make full use of the new Adobe Creative Cloud suite that I purchased to keep using Lightroom and now includes Photoshop. Another learning curve. I’m used to dense, intense processing software from my data processing days so not necessarily intimidated by it. I’ve recently found some online live classes (perfect venue for 2020) that have been a tremendous help and quite fun.
The Adobe suite also comes with a photo album publishing application called Portfolio. This allowed me to very easily publish some of my Lightroom photo albums from the past (all the way back to 2011).
The Portfolio is now attached to this website in the navigation menu and can be seen here: micheleannkelly.myportfolio.com.
We prepared to leave Georgia at the end of hurricane season, technically (for matters of insurance) on Nov 1st. The usual hiccups and late orders delayed us sufficiently to make our departure a few weeks later than intended.
Knowing that the weather would turn colder after a nice, mild fall, and knowing that the opportunities to head south would continue to get squeezed out by winter cold fronts followed by set-in easterly “Christmas” winds, we took the first decent window we could get to take a big jump to south Florida.
There was a weak cold front coming through, bringing light NW to N winds to leave with, clocking around to the East and building as usual. These fronts often keep clocking farther to the SE to S before settling back into the East, we know the drill.
This forecast called for moderate N winds to start, shifting to higher E to SE winds by the end of our trip. Knowing it was a decent but not ideal window, we decided to go for it to get to warmer weather before the next freezing cold front came through next week.
The first day was a lovely downwind sail, flying our new sails (more on these to come in the Boat Blog) wing-on-wing.
It was a great birthday present to be back at sea… AND we had a brilliant green flash at sunset!
As we always do, the 1st reef went in the main at night. Winds built to 20+ kts right on cue and we were sailing very well on a broad reach through the night and into the next day.
As the winds moved E and picked up, the seas became more and more confused as we closed the Florida coast. In order to avoid the swift, northerly flowing Gulf Stream currents, we have to snuggle up to the shoreline and sail in shallow depths of 50 feet or so.
This does what you expect to see at the beach where you watch waves build as the bottoms gets shallow, ultimately breaking on the beach. Only this time as the winds built, these waves started building and breaking right on those shallow ledges that we were sailing on.
The next night saw winds continue to build and when night fell again the switch went back on, taking the winds to 25kts gusting to 30 kts and moving slightly above the beam, adding more apparent wind to that amount.
Still with the 1st reef in the main sail, we rolled in the genoa to the 1st and immediately thereafter the 2nd reef point. This is normally not a big deal for us and we enjoy a sporty sail with boat speeds over 10 kts; however, our position near the shoreline and the increasingly bad sea state with 6-8’ breaking seas starting causing us grief.
We were sailing so fast that with the breaking waves, slowing down was one way to reduce the beating we were taking. Waves were crashing over the bows, yes. Then over the cabin top, okay. Then some would sneak up on the beam, crashing over our hardtop, um wow. Others would do all of the above and crash up to our helm windshield.
All we could think was how thankful we were to have a full enclosure to keep us dry or we would have been soaked from head to toe! As it was, the cockpit stayed dry with the exception of the floor, where crashing waves leaked in through the walkthroughs to the sterns on each side. So, we did have quite the salty boat at this point.
I had already been feeling ill on Day 2 in the washing machine waves. It was a full-body workout. By nighttime we both realized that the normal watches wouldn’t suffice and we each caught naps when possible,
One highlight is that we saw the Space X Falcon rocket launch as we passed Canaveral earlier that day and then watched it launch at 9:13 pm that night. It was cool to see and even better in the binoculars. Seeing the contrail in the binocs reminded me of the MTV intro... (yes, dating myself). This Falcon launch was deploying another batch of Starlink satellites on the path to global internet.
The best part of the night was witnessing our boat perform and knowing that it was handling this weather without a hitch. In that sense, it was a great shakedown sail. The Dolphin 460 is an extremely solid boat and you can feel its strength under you at times like this. There is little to no hobby horsing due to the sharp bows piercing through the waves. There is barely any creaking at all of bulkheads or cabinetry. The Navico/Simrad, 9-axis rate-gyro autopilot performed excellently, anticipating the waves and surfing with skill.
The 2nd best part of the night was knowing that in just 10 hours or so we would be entering Miami. It was a speedy trip! Our last 24 hours we traveled 220 nm, which is a 9.2 kt average boat speed. In general that night, we were seeing 10-12 kts while trying to slow the boat down to 9 kts or under for comfort. The highest speed recorded was 14.0 kts, which must have been one good surf on a wave. Again, this might have even been fun if it weren’t for the shallow, confused seas. It beat the alternative of sailing against a 3-5 kt countercurrent out in deeper waters.
Coming into Miami the winds were a steady 30kts. The tide was coming out of the inlet (eye roll), making standing waves. Obviously, not the best condition to enter in. We were surprised to see a few fishing boats venturing out. The total passage was just a short 48 hours and 350 nm to get us where we wanted to be, quickly.
Once in, we were immediately becalmed and all was peaceful again. We passed a lone cruise ship in port and proceeded under our first bridge with this boat.
Our Dolphin 460 has the ICW rig, a shorter option for going under fixed bridges. Having a 64’ mast and going under 65’ bridges was still a butt-clenching experience. The tide was going out and read 66’ at the bridge. I watched, holding my breath as the 3’ VHF antenna scraped under each cement beam as we passed under.
Now at anchor in Miami Beach, we enjoy the beautiful lighted city scape and get used to the boat traffic and jet skis. On a holiday weekend, the wakes are likely to be as bad as the sea state out there! Welcome to Miami!
But really, we are thrilled to be back “out here” at anchor and living life on the hook.