PRE DISASTER MOON  

              FLORIDA STRAITS NOVEMBER 30, 2006

On Sunday February 10, 2008 while looking for my calculator on one of the shelves next to the chart/dining/computer/everything table on NEREIS, my 29 foot sailboat home for the past fifteen years, I came across a much creased piece of paper folded into a small packet.  Opening it I found a five-day weather forecast for the Gulf of Mexico dated 11/29/06 which I had copied from November Mike November, the Coast Guard radio station that broadcasts reports on several frequencies throughout the day for mariners. I had made this list in preparation for a voyage from Isla Mujeres, Mexico to Florida which I began at dawn on that day. 

Turning the water stained paper over I discovered the following note dated 11/30/06, 20:50 hrs Central Time:
 
                   "Nereis I'm taking on water, I don't know where." 

                                    "Give me your position."  

                                    "23.16 north, 86.08 west."   

                                           Silence...............

The frantic voice was from my sailing friend Tommy Poppell who had left on his 34-foot sloop Dream Weaver an hour after Nereis and I the previous morning. For a day and a half we had sailed within ten miles of one another.

Nereis was racing hull speed into eight-foot seas when I received Tommy's call,
laboring close hauled into a northeasterly breeze close to 20 knots which was kicking up onerous square-shaped waves against the northerly flow of the Yucatan current that splits in the Florida Straits, some to continue westward to become the Gulf Stream, the remainder flowing north into the Gulf Of Mexico.  

Tommy was about seven miles away to the west.  Coming about I began motor sailing as fast as I could towards his way point, marked X on the above chart. 

Cuba is directly south of that position, Key West to the east and our destination the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River can be seen as the dark line leading west from Lake Okeechobee in south central Florida. Isla Mujeres is the second small dark line off the northeast tip of the Yucatan Peninsula, that jut of land opposite Cuba, Cozumel is the larger island to the south. 

Then there's Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama and its canal to the Pacific.  Finally there's Antarctica at Earth's bottom.  Sounds like an literary doesn't it.

There was a nearly full moon in a partly cloudy sky which intermittently illuminated tumultuous seas.  After about half an hour I suggested he shoot off
a red flare and saw it to the right of my course as a tiny arc just above the horizon.  Those shotgun shell things just don't go very far and this is why I carry a supply of parachute flares that travel much higher. 

No boats were within a hundred miles of us, as far as I know.  During our radio transmissions no one called in to help and I heard no radio chatter from others for the entire voyage.  We were as alone as two men can be on this hugely over-populated planet.  

Twenty minutes later I asked for another flare which traveled higher over the curving edge of the horizon than the first.  Offshore you can actually visualize a round Earth.  When within a few hundred yards of his now visible running lights I dropped sails and motored on toward his tiny boat, which was heaving about unmanned in the moon-lit seas.  Where was Tommy?

                UNTHINKABLE IS AN OXYMORON

I always drag a hundred foot buoyed line offshore with loops tied every eighteen inches in case I fall overboard, and planned to use it to pick him up from the water, as there was no possibility of approaching closer than fifty feet of his heaving boat. 

I began circling aft of DREAM WEAVER frantically searching for signs of life with my spotlight.  All I saw was a wildly swinging bow lurching up and down ten feet scooping up bathtub fulls of dark, wet water;  wave tops illuminated by moonlight, spray splattering into straining eyes.  Where is he?

When I came within haling distance I slowed and prepared to take him on board with my towed line, which with artful swings of Nereis I could easily place at his fingertips.  Tow boats pick up fallen water skiers in the same manner.  There's a ladder aft on Nereis tied in an upright position with a slip knotted line whose end hangs within six inches of the water's surface.  Single handers have such devices/plans as there is no one to save us but ourselves, and the preparations we've made during the countless hours of pondering the what-ifs.  

I finally saw a dimly moonlit figure lurching about the cockpit and shouted out my plan to take him aboard, thinking his boat was about to slip beneath  turbulent seas.  He told me he was head down in four feet of water trying to find the leak and to wait.  Fifteen agonizing minutes later he discovered the problem, rewired his bilge pump and was pumping out.  

As below deck water gushed he got on his satellite phone and canceled the SOS he had made earlier to the Coast Guard, informing them that another sailboat was on scene in case the unthinkable happened.  Except that's all we were thinking at the time. 

Unthinkable is an oxymoron.  How can you not think of looming disaster when staring it in the face.

                         NEREIS AS HERD BOAT

For the next three days we were joined at the hip as Tommy solved problem after problem on the voyage to the Sanibel Sea Buoy, the gateway to the Caloosahatchee River in Florida. 

He had inadvertently closed the sea cock to his engine's water pump while searching for the leak and when starting his engine burned out its impeller, and had to shut it down due to immediate overheating.  We sailed within hailing distance the rest of the night, thankful for sailboats. 

We don't need no stinking engines!  Remember that movie line?  No.  I'll tell you about it later.

Tommy installed another impeller the next morning, which although already worn was still serviceable.  Then his electronic self-steering gear failed and he solved that problem too with a wire jumble, bypassing the short. He never found the leak but close hauled into a turbulent sea can allow ocean's entry into an imperfect hull-deck joint. 

An impatient bilge alarm, coupled with inches of water on the cockpit floor could have induced near panic, or so it seems.  Hey don't judge if you haven't been there.  Alone, hundreds of miles alone, bumpy wet seasick inducing movement.  You do what you have to do to save yourself.

We were within sight of one another for the rest of the voyage which lasted exactly four days and one hour from Isla Mujeres to the Sanibel Sea Buoy, as I recall a distance of about 500 nautical miles.  We made excellent time the first forty eight hours because of the northerly flowing Yucatan Current, making over twelve knots over the bottom for much of that time.  Current is as important as a fair breeze in planning and executing an ocean passage. 

Not bad for a 29-foot boat with a top speed of about seven knots.  Nature cooperated and we rarely had to deviate from the rhumb line (bee line, as the crow flies, straight line from A to B, well you know) for the entire trip.  

Planning and luck are the watchwords for successful voyages, luck equally important in that equation.  Perhaps we should also mention pluck, which got us there in the first place, and incidentally back as well.

We finally arrived at the Cape Coral Yacht Basin from where I had left three and a half years previously for the Northwest Caribbean.  If you've perused this site you know something of those adventures.  Check out the stories page for more words and pictures.  Read the excerpts for the e-books TILLER TALES  and CAFE NEWS.  A vicarious life can be a full life.  We all do it one time or the other.


     

               DREAM WEAVER ON THE THIRD DAY

The above pic was taken on the morning of the third day just after Tommy fixed his electronic self-steering gear.  It's out of focus due to distance, but its historical value overshadows any need for perfection.


     

                  MARINA DEL SOL, ISLA MUJERES

Tommy and I met at aptly named Marina Del Sol and were dock mates there for several months in this idyllic setting.  This is a sunset, you're looking west toward Cancun eight miles across Bahia Mujeres easily reached by high speed ferry in twenty minutes. 

           

                                                            BROWN PELICAN 

This pelican roosted eight feet over my cockpit for months during my stay at Marina Del Sol.  All along the mangrove covered shore flocks of birds spent the night in the sheltered inner lagoon of Isla Mujeres.  You can see a map of the island in the CAFE NEWS excerpts elsewhere on this site.


   

               ANOTHER VIEW OF THE SAME BIRD

They always seemed to roost in the same spots, it was their home I guess, although others often dive bombed favored positions in hope of improving their status.  I was entertained daily with this bird-theater, often while sipping a sundowner in the cockpit.  There are different ways to spend your evening but none better.  Try it, you know you want to.  Ay?

     
     

                 SUNSET 100 MILES FROM LANDFALL


     

                    SAME SUNSET MINUTES LATER


     

                             STOWAWAY GECKO

You can see my boarding ladder with slip-line to the right.  The braided line is for my wind-vane self-steering gear.  Nereis needed a bath.  Me too. 

When the guys from Homeland Security came to the Cape Coral Yacht Club on the evening of our arrival to check us out they asked what color my boat was for their report.  I replied, "White hull, dirt trim."  You had to be there I guess.  


    

             FROM LEFT, TOMMY, FRED AND JOHN

The above pic was taken a week or two after arrival.  We're seated on Dream Weaver at the Cape Coral Yacht Club.  Fred's boat was moored at Marina Del Sol next to Nereis during my stay there and he traveled over from Fort Lauderdale to visit.


    

                                SELF PORTRAIT 

I took this pic on the last night out at the time of the sunset pics above.  That crazed look is the result of four long days and longer nights alone at sea.  There's nothing like single handing to bring out the best, or worse.  

I'm wearing my So-Spenders life vest which is always tethered to an artfully placed pad-eye on the aft cabin bulkhead.  I don't like falling overboard and if I do I'm going to float.  In my pocket I carry a personal Epirb (GPS locater device), whistle, strobe light and a waterproof hand-held radio.  Can't be overly careful.  Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.  Almost a Pascal's Wager proposition when you think of it.  Ay?

Isn't it amazing how a scrap of water-stained paper can evoke memories.  For the last several hours I've been reliving my time as herd boat over hundreds of miles of water.  I'm glad I was there, wouldn't have it any other way. 

Do unto others as............................  Well, you know.  Perhaps you've been there too.

That's that for this.  Enjoy Frannie my watchflamingo. 


    

                 ALWAYS WATCHING OUT FOR YOU

                       TAKE CARE,  

                              JB