Seeing an old friend

Thursday, April 26, 2007
Log: 1828
Clearwater, Florida 

When I last spoke to you, dear reader, George Broughton and I had run into rough seas trying to cross the Gulf from Appalachicola to Clearwater and we had turned back, leaving the boat in Carabelle, Florida and coming home to regroup. The lovely Laura Lee herself volunteered to try the Gulf crossing with me and we came back to Carabelle last Sunday to give it a try.

It looked like the best weather for the crossing was going to be Tuesday, so we developed a plan to “stage” our departure by leaving the marina Monday afternoon and anchoring out near the pass so we could get an early start for a long day Tuesday. All was well until we tried to leave and the engine wouldn’t start. I was convinced that it was not getting fuel so I changed the two fuel filters but still had no luck. On a whim, I pressed and released the “engine stop” button and, bingo, the engine roared to life. The stop button apparently had stuck and not allowed the engine to start.

After finally getting away, our plan was great except that we followed the advice of a marina employee as to where to anchor and ended up in a very exposed and rolly place just as the sun was setting Monday night. As we sat and tried to avoid getting seasick, the lovely Laura Lee tried to adjust the dining table which doesn’t fit its stand and ended up badly pinching her finger. She sat with it on ice the remainder of the evening.

The swell slowly got better and we had a good dinner and turned in for the short night’s rest. I got up at 3:30 a.m. and at 4 a.m. began carefully navigating out of our anchorage in the dark. It was tense going until I began to get first light around 5:45.

Our read on the weather turned out to be perfect and we only dealt with one to two-foot seas all day. The only problem was that Steel Magnolia is incredibly slow. Normally, the speed thing has not been a problem for me. I enjoy cruising and we simply plan to go 50 or 60 nautical miles in seven or eight hours a day and enjoy the ride. But a crossing of about 135 nautical miles makes for a very long day. We averaged about 7.5 knots and took just over 18 hours, arriving at an anchorage outside Tarpon Springs at 10 p.m. Tuesday night. Whew!

We ate a late dinner and went to sleep and got up Wednesday morning and moved about three hours south to Clearwater. As we came around the corner entering Clearwater Municipal Marina, I looked out to my left and saw a very familiar old friend…it was the Fleming 55’ which I owned for seven years from 1993 to 2000. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I first recognized the distinctive lines of a Fleming and then gradually began to notice things that only my boat had…a custom hard top over the bridge, six antennae for the various communications systems on board, etc. etc. I sold the boat in 2000 to an old friend Sam Dixon who enjoyed it for many years. He then sold it to someone who moved it down to Puerto Rico and later back to the Chesapeake Bay. Apparently, it was bought fairly recently by someone who keeps it here in Clearwater. 

So here I sit tonight, looking out the back door at a boat from the past. Laura Lee and I have a lot of great memories on that boat, but I wouldn’t want it back. We could never sleep well with the master bedroom setup it had. The engine room required acrobatics that are impossible at my age now. And my recollection is that she ran at 15 to 16 knots burning 32 gallons per hour. We go much slower now at eight knots, but we only burn five or six gallons per hour. One half the speed and one sixth the fuel. With diesel fuel now running close to $3.00 per gallon compared to 50 cents per gallon back then, I’m happy to putter along on Steel Magnolia.

The lovely Laura Lee headed home today, obviously frustrated at some of the difficulties of a long delivery trip on what is still a “fixer-upper”. But she was a trooper to help out with this difficult part of the trip. I’ll move the boat on alone to Sarasota tomorrow and Saturday, and Early Uncle Randy joins me Sunday in Sarasota to head on down to the Florida keys.

I’ll keep you posted. Stay tuned as Steel Magnolia completes her epic voyage from Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin to Savannah, Georgia. 

Messing About in Boats

Friday, April 13, 2007 

Log: 1654

Carabelle, Florida 

”Believe me, my young friend, said the water rat solemnly, there is nothing…absolutely nothing…half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing…nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular”

                                                                    From The Wind in the Willows

   Traveling east on the Intracoastal Waterway, when you arrive at Carrabelle, Florida, near Apalachicola, the Waterway simply comes to an end, and starts back up in Clearwater, about 145 nautical miles southeast across the open Gulf. The worst Gulf crossing I’ve ever had in this area was on my friend James Abele’s boat several years ago. We departed Clearwater around noon expecting to reach Apalachicola around 10 pm. However, the wind and seas picked up unexpectedly. Heading directly into six to eight foot seas, the bow of the boat would rise up on a wave and slam down on the other side, forcing us to slow down to idle speed and turning a 10-hour pleasure cruise into a 16-hour miserable trip.

   Today I am traveling on a much slower boat, meaning that the crossing should take about 24 hours. We departed this morning about 7 am expecting to arrive in Clearwater tomorrow morning. However, the seas were rough. Wave heights were only about four feet, but they were very steep wind-driven waves as opposed to swells, and we were heading almost directly into them. We were quite safe, and the boat was performing perfectly, especially with her new stabilizers. But the ride was miserable, and I knew it would not get any more comfortable. I didn’t think we wanted to have a ride like that for 24 hours. Reluctantly, after about an hour at sea, we turned back, coming in the pass at Apalachicola and moving about 15 miles east on the Waterway to Carrabelle. With a strong cold front on the way this weekend, and with my crew member George Broughton due back at work Monday, we’re headed home Sunday. I’ll come back soon and pick up where I left off.

   So we spent the day “Messing About in Boats”. We didn’t arrive at our destination, but we arrived somewhere else, and we were always busy. We had been having leak problems with the new watermaker and George found an O ring at the hardware store here to fix the leak. Our “black water” (sewage) pump was broken and we found Jim of “Jim’s Mobile Repair” right here in the marina with a spare pump on his truck, and he quickly replaced ours. We got the dingy down from the upper deck, charged it up, and ran it around a bit because it had been sitting up since November.

All-in-all, a good day messing about. We’re planning on cooking up a good dinner in a few minutes. We’ll spend tomorrow and Sunday cleaning up the boat and straightening things out. And I’ll be back down in a week or two to mess about some more.
 

Writer's Block

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Log: 1548

Bay Point Marina, Panama City, Florida

Either I’m suffering from writer’s block or there’s simply not much to write about, but I don’t want to bore anyone so I’ll just give you a quick report and get back to you when I have something to say.

We moved from Lulu’s in Gulf Shores to the “Legendary Marina” in Ft. Walton on Tuesday. It is the most expensive marina I’ve stayed in short of a resort like Key West. They charged $3.00 a foot to tie up for the night while most marinas average one or two dollars. Perhaps it is because they are within walking distance of Sammy’s and “Club 10”, two of the finer establishments of Ft. Walton Beach. Today we moved on to Panama City to Bay Point Marina. We are traveling “inside” on the Intracoastal Waterway since winds and seas have been high.

Tomorrow, we’ll move on to Apalachicola where we have to leave the Intracoastal and travel about 150 nautical miles across the “Big Bend” of Florida to Clearwater. We’re hoping for a brief window of calm weather because winds and seas are forecast to be rough this weekend.

Someone asked me what the “Log” entry means at the top of each entry. It is simply an odometer of nautical miles traveled since I bought the boat. When we left Mobile, the Log was at 1398. Now it’s at 1548. You can do the math.

I’ll keep you posted on our whereabouts…and if I have anything worthwhile to report, I’ll certainly do so.

Lulu's

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Log: 1428 Nautical Miles

Lulu’s at Homeport Marina

If you go to the southeast corner of Mobile Bay, there is a little inlet at Bon Secour leading to the intracoastal waterway eastbound, a dredged out ditch leading to Perdido Bay. When I had a boat in this area in the nineties, the ditch had a few houses alongside, a trailer park, a tugboat loading and refueling dock, and a dilapidated shrimp dock. It was a thoroughly ugly part of the trip from Orange Beach to Mobile.

When we entered the canal yesterday afternoon, parts of it looked familiar. But we soon came upon gigantic cleared areas and scattered high-rise condominiums. Signs announced the names of various developments going up alongside the ditch. We passed a new private marina being built and soon we saw the beginnings of a town going up in the middle of nowhere. The Baldwin County web site told me the following:

A Birmingham developer is looking for Alabama contractors, subcontractors, vendors and suppliers to help build a $500 million resort community near Gulf Shores.

Near the tiny Baldwin County fishing hamlet of Bon Secour, made famous by legendary Meme's seafood restaurant, Bon Secour Village is a huge endeavor that will feature retail, homes, condos, a marina, a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course, resort hotel and conference center. It will be tucked into a 1,000-acre parcel of land, just east of where the Alabama Highway 59 bridge traverses the Intracoastal Waterway and leads into Gulf Shores.

The first phase, totaling $75 million to $80 million and projected for completion by mid-2006, includes a town center with 100,000 square feet of retail space, 400 condos and lofts, 200 houses and a 60-slip marina. The timetable for the community stretches over the next 20 years.

Whew! And then we came upon the Homeport Marina, totally new, huge, and obviously financed with some of Jimmy Buffet’s capital. It’s the home of Lulu’s Restaurant, owned by Jimmy’s sister Lucy. The restaurant was mobbed, even on a Monday night, and we cooked on the boat after learning that it would take an hour and a half to get a table.

A few miles to the east, also in the ditch, is The Wharf, another new development which promises:

• Resort-style shopping with national retailers, boutique-style shops and your favorite beach stores
• Great places to dine – restaurants, cafés and eateries
• 10,000 seat amphitheater with top national acts and legend bands
• RAVE’s 15-screen state-of-the-art movie theater
• Southeast’s tallest Ferris Wheel made in Italy
• Year-round activities and seasonal entertainment
• 208-slip marina and half-mile long boardwalk
• Condominium homes that make every day a vacation day!

So the ditch just ain’t what it used to be. Some are calling it progress, but I kind-of liked the ditch the way it was.

Anyway, we got away from Dog River about 1:30 pm yesterday and went about 30 miles to Lulu’s. Today, with fairly high wind and rain, we’re planning to stay in the waterway and we’re shooting for Destin tonight. The boat’s running well and all the new systems seem to be working. We’ll keep you posted on our progress.