Passage From Apalachicola to Clearwater FL.

By Capt. Scott Buckley

Position: 27 57' 59'N, 082 48' 20'W

Progress towards destination: 768.0 nm

In the last post we planned to take advantage of some favorable sailing wind and transit from White City FL to Tampa Bay.  We had not worked out exactly where in Tampa Bay we were headed and after some research we hit upon Clearwater FL.  This happens to be the City where our boat Kooky Dance was made in 2009.  It was a little closer and the entrance looked easy.  We had planned to leave in the AM and be in the Gulf of Mexico by noon the same day.  We planned to arrive in Clearwater between 1 and 4PM the next day.  If it was too late to get a slip we had scoped out some anchorages we could wait for daylight.

The Voyage

We arose early on Sunday and prepped the boat and ourselves for departure and left the White City dock a 7AM as the sun came up.  There was ICE on the sails.  It was cold.
We traveled down from White City to Apalachicola and sailed thru Government Cut and got into the Gulf of Mexico by 12:30PM the same day.
According to plan we were a little late due to slower than planned progress due some shallowing in Wimico Lake and running hard aground coming into Government cut.  On both our paper charts and the electronic charts a sand bar just east of the channel is not shown.  The sand bar stopped Kooky Dance cold.  Fortunately we were able to get her off under her own power.
Once we were on the Gulf we turned east and put the sails out.  The winds were light so I kept the motor running.  But 5:30 that evening the winds had increased and we were able to shutdown the engine and just sail, however with the increasing winds came increasing seas.  We were getting tossed about pretty good as it got dark and without the sun it was also getting cold.  With the increasing wind and sea we also started getting pelted with spray.  Did I mention it was cold.  Getting spray in the face did not do a great deal to make the cold bearable. 

How plans change.

I had planned to make enough easting until Clearwater was at a bearing of 160 degrees magnetic however the wind were clocking to the east earlier than predicted and with the strengthening breeze I had to turn to the south earlier than planned.  I had one reef in the main and reefed in the headsail about 50%.  The head sail is a roller reefed jib and once reefed the sail no longer points well to windward.  With the winds shifting and clocking the head sail would flog and I was loosing speed and easting every time.  Did I mention it was cold and rough.  The boat was being tossed about and trying to do any task became a major effort.  On the plus side any task would warm you up quickly but the wind and the sweat soon had you shivering again in a short time.  The first mate was not have a good time but kept her misery to herself the whole time. 

The cold.

Sailing at night can be magical but sailing at night in sloppy rough conditions in the cold with salt spray pelting you and everything getting wet is not what you would call magical.  It is called something else usually not shared in polite company.  I remember the 1st mate said she just wanted it to be over.  I felt the same way but there was little I could do but sail the best speed and course to get to Clearwater.  Then it occurred to me there may be a way to get some of the wind and spray off of us. 

Some Protection That Stunk

Due to the clocking of the wind and the flogging of the head sail I furled it all the way in.  This meant we were sailing with just the reefed main sail and thus decreased our speed to 3.5 knots.  At this speed we would not make Clearwater in the daylight so I started the engine and bumped the speed back up to 5.5 knots and then it hit me.  We had spent all this time making a dodger for the boat and we made some dodger extensions.

The dodger is a strong hooded structure on the forward part of the cockpit that keeps boarding seas from the bow from washing all the way back to the cockpit.  The biminis is a cover over the cockpit to keep the sun off the helmsman.  There is a mid span panel that connect the dodger to the biminis.   The dodger extension extend the dodger the length of the mid span panel.

The center window on the front of the dodger had been removed for better breezes in the cockpit and the extensions had been stowed.  I went below and rounded up the panels from storage.  This sounds easy except the entire time you are being thrown from one bulkhead to the other as the boat pitches about and it is dark.  I strapped a light to my head because it was impossible to carry a flashlight, keep a handhold onto something solid and pull materials from their hiding places.   But I located all of it and got it on deck.  I had to install the mid span panel between the dodger and the biminis and also install the center window panel in the dodger.  The idiot that made the dodger was well...... an idiot.  His name is Joe Comer and we affectionately refer to him as Joe F@cking Comer.  The dodger panels are zipped in and there is only one sequence of zipper pulls that will work to get this installed and even then requires a great deal OF TUGGING AND PREFECT ALIGNMENT to get the thing together.  It is usually during the tugging and attempts at the perfect alignment that you start saying “Joe F@cking Comer”. 
Ever try to get perfect alignment in the dark on a wildly pitch boat when you are cold and the spray that is hitting you every 6 seconds makes it hard to see.  Not that easy.  Of the three zippers that secure the center panel of the dodger I managed to get two of them closed.  Not perfect but good enough.  As I got the second zipper closed a bunch of spray tried to hit me in the face but got stopped by the center dodger panel that was only 67% installed.  I giggle like a loon.  Things were already looking better.  Then I installed the mid panel section and while zipping it in the boat took a wild lurch and I did not have a grip on anything but the zipper and the panel and I went flying to the deck.  The light I had strapped to my head briefly showed I was headed with great speed towards one of the winches.  I was afraid I was going to lose some teeth on this one but a last minute lurch from the boat put the winch firmly into my breast bone.  I think I said; “that’s going to hurt” and got back up to continue installing the mid span panel.  Once done I started installing the extension on the windward side of the boat.  The panels are about 4’ x 4’ and at the dock were not too difficult to install.  I had never tried to install them in a 20 knot breeze in the dark on a pitching boat.  Well it was easier at the dock.  I know; SHOCKER.  Of the 2 zippers and 4 snaps I got 1 zipper and 2 snaps closed.  Not perfect but good enough. 
The protection from the breeze was immediate however by now I was sweating and actually would have liked the breeze but the 1st mate who had been standing watch while I did the worst installation EVER was appreciative of the protection that is until the diesel fumes started coming into the cockpit.  The position of the wind and the dodger and extension created and wind vortex that swept up the exhaust from the diesel engine and wafted it around in the cockpit.    Nothing and I mean nothing brings on a bout of seasickness like rough seas and diesel fumes.  So in my effort to try to ease the suffering of the 1st mate I had now managed to get her seasick.  If she went to the windward side to get out of the fumes she got a face full of spray.  If she got out of the wind and spray she was assaulted by the fumes.  After a couple of hours of fighting it she just curled up in a tiny little ball in the cockpit sole and suffered her retching misery in silence.  I only heard her say once that “I think I want to quit”.  I felt so bad for her but out here a 100 miles from land there is no quitting so I drove the boat onward towards Clearwater.  It seemed like it took days for the sun to come up and in the dark it was becoming more difficult to see.  The fumes and the spray had played hell with my contact lenses and they were coated with eye snot to the point my vision was so blurry I could see very little.  I could not read the time so I had no idea what time it was or how much longer this fun was going to last.  I think I checked my position and distance from the destination every hour but was actually checking it every few seconds because nothing indicated progress.  I had finally discovered what hell was.  We had been out of sight of land for hours and I never saw another ship during the entire crossing.

Things Were Looking Brighter

Sun finally did come up in the east after a couple of months.  The winds veered a little back to the NE so I was able to unfurl the jib and kill the engine.  1st mate came out of her tiny ball of misery and soldered on. 
I cannot say enough how impressed I am with the bravery of the 1st mate.  I know of few men that have taken on the challenges this women has and not come unglued during the process.  I really got lucky with my chosen crewmate.

I See Land

Few phrases have inspired hope like the phrase “I see land”.   After years at sea with little hope of ever finding home I might have teared up a little but I would never admit it was anything other than a little salt in my eye.  We actually pulled into the Clearwater channel a little before 3PM which was about on the original schedule.  Kooky Dance, despite the rough conditions, had sailed well offshore.  I would venture to say she may have done better with the conditions than did her crew.  We opted for the Clearwater marina near the beach but when we saw the condition of the docks we waved off the line handler and went farther upstream to the Clearwater Harbor marina and tied up there.

A Deep Sleep.

It is amazing how exhausting that sort of voyage can be.  We got the boat tied up, went up to go thru the paper work with the dockmaster, took showers to wash the salt off, ate a little dinner and then slept for 10 hours straight.  It was such a wonderful sleep that I told the 1st mate that if I had not been already happily married and the bed had proposed that I would have accepted.
The next morning we cleaned up the boat, washed off the salt and did 3 loads of laundry.  I called the owner of Caliber Yachts and told him we were in town if he wanted to stop by.  He did and it was a good visit.  Kooky Dance was one of the last Caliber 40 LRC that Caliber built.  In true George McCrery fashion he went around inspecting the boat, poking a flashlight into all the corners and asked questions.  He thought we have done a pretty good job on the boat and her equipment.  He even got me in touch with someone that had the Nexus wind instrument I needed to fix mine.

Next Destination

There are three cold fronts headed our way and dockage in Florida can be expensive so we are looking at options for the next 5 days and we will have to see how this will play out tomorrow.  More about planning and logistics in the next post.