Leg 2: Port St. Joe, FL to St. Petersburg, FL
On Thanksgiving day, the wind and sea granted us a window to our next destination, St. Petersburg, FL. While most of our friends and family were honoring tradition through obligatory reunion and communion around the television watching football, at approximately 3:00pm we rounded St. Joseph Point as we made our way back into the gulf. The waters were calm, the wind was light, the sky was partly cloudy. We were anticipating a 46-hour sail to St. Pete.
The first 20 hours were calm. In this calm, I sometimes think about what’s happening on land. I think about what some of my friends may be doing while I’m cradled in the cockpit on my night watch. I felt some grief around not sharing a meal with friends or family at Thanksgiving but also some relief. The last couple of Thanksgivings were shared at anchor in Offatts Bayou with Kelly-boy and Kelly-girl Waterhouse. They circumnavigated the world, about 15 years ago, in their Dufour 35, and have been our mentors as we prepared for this voyage. They were two of the first people we spoke to on the phone when we made it to Port St. Joe. I don’t know what this experience would like for us without their guidance.
At midnight, at the end of Blake’s watch, he called me up to the cockpit. There was another sailboat approximately 200 yards away just to our port (left) side, unlit, with no AIS, motoring very slowly, with sail covers on. At first, he thought he was hallucinating. He looked down into the cockpit, rubbed his eyes and checked again. The sailboat silhouette was still there. He again looked away to try and refresh his eyesight. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, but after the second time, he was sure it was another boat. The half-moon had just revealed itself, to offer some light, in the vast darkness. Blake was on the fence as to whether to hail them on the VHF. Suddenly their running lights came on and we decided not to hail them and just keep moving. Within an hour they were out of sight.
Around 3am, the wind had clocked around to 120 degrees true, almost at our stern, blowing about 10-12 knots. It was time to sail. With 2 reefs in the mainsail and a full jib, we were cruising along nice at about 6.5 knots. For some, the speed of knots may not be familiar, but to put it in perspective, 6.5 knots is 7.5 mph. We try to keep our speed above 5.5 knots and if we can sail at 6 knots or above, we are happy sailors. One way to look at it is, if we can average a half a knot faster through a 24-hour period, that comes out to 12 more miles sailed each day. Over a multi-day passage, that can mean the difference of arriving at port in the daylight hours, or even arriving before a storm or an unfavorable wind shift.
We were both feeling extremely grateful for this gentle journey the past 17 hours and were are hoping it continues, but alas, all is temporary and around 10am the sky turned gray and the rain began. With no shift in winds and minor increase in the sea state, we checked the AIS and there were no boats within 48 miles of us so we went down below to stay dry and catch up on sleep. Well, I caught up on sleep while Blake recorded some video footage of the rain shower. The rain was short lived and the shower ended at noon. The wind had shifted so we rolled in the headsail and Blake rigged up a preventer for the main sail. The first line he rigged up wasn’t long enough so he had to re-rig it so that he could make adjustments from the cockpit. The seas were rolling which means we were rocking back and forth pretty good. I don’t like Blake on deck in these conditions; despite him being clipped in, the thought of him falling overboard puts my stomach in absolute knots.
Once we were settled, I made us grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. After our lunch, I attempted to switch on the water pressure to clean the dishes but the boat rolled just so that I accidentally switched off the auto pilot. Luckily, I said something immediately and Blake swiftly reset it. While resetting it, Blake noticed the winds were shifting again and decided to disassemble the preventer only to then realize the winds were not in fact shifting. At this point, I’m frustrated because, in my opinion, Blake was being impulsive, first with not taking the time to select the right line then being reactionary and unnecessarily having to go on deck in waves that were increasing in size and therefore decreasing our stability. Tension was high and Blake decided to finally get some rest, which I was both grateful and relieved by.
At approximately 8:15pm, I observed that the sky was unusually dark. It was like when you were a child and hiding in a dark closet. I couldn’t see anything except the slight contrast of darkness in the clouds. We appeared to be surrounded by storm clouds then the winds picked up to 19 knots at our stern. Thoughts of our first night leaving Galveston rushed to my mind, a night neither of us wanted to relive any time soon. I woke Blake to see if anything needed to be adjusted. He sat up there for about an hour waiting for weather but it never rained and the winds began to calm down a bit though the seas became more unsettled.
The sky was now clear over our heads but we were surrounded by the clouds. In this darkness, the stars seemed so vibrant and bright in the space where the clouds had cleared. Blake went back down below to get as much sleep as he could before we would have to navigate the channel. We were averaging about 5.6 knots which meant we would be reaching the channel markers of the bustling shipping channel of Tampa Bay. It’s not ideal to navigate coming into a new port at night. It can be extremely disorienting, especially if there are other lights, for example a bridge lit up like blue and green festival of lights. Because of this, I stayed on watch with Blake from 3am onward.
At 6:00am, we went under the Skyway Bridge, and by 8:30am we dropped the hook in Tampa Bay, inside the breakwater and outside the St. Pete Municipal Marina. Exhausted doesn’t seem to capture how tired we both felt. So 231 nautical miles and 41.5 hours later, we made it! We let our loved ones know we arrived and went down below where we slept for about three and a half hours before cleaning up and heading to land.
As we reflect on the journey thus far, we see that we have already encountered quite the sampling of sailing conditions. It’s almost like Mother Ocean is giving us a taste and in doing so asking, “Are you sure? Are you sure you want to do this?” And the only answer that seems to come forward, is, “Hell fucking yes!” Neither one of us can explain why but here we are, saying yes to God knows what.