We have left the bright blue waters of the Bahamas behind for the good ole fashioned mud water of North America. We made landfall in St. Augustine, Florida after a short and uneventful passage; unfortunately, our arrival in Florida was not so benign.
We arrived only to discover that the Border Protection and Customs office in St. Augustine is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. In case you missed the humour in that sentence: Homeland Security is closed in St. Augustine on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I can only infer that after careful study, the US government determined that local threats to national security drop dramatically around mid-week. So the mighty Zenobia slipped into the country unseen and floated on American water for a day, her captain and crew, technically, illegal aliens. The marina suggested we call the Miami office – apparently it’s still dangerous on Tuesdays and Wednesdays there - and we were instructed to report to the next port of call within 24 hours, no exceptions. To accommodate this demand we had to rent a car and drive 40 minutes to Jacksonville to present ourselves. These plans were finalized via payphone, which was possibly the most difficult part to arrange. The first person that I approached for directions was a man who looked to be between the ages of 90 and 100 - ageism at work or simply a calculated guess? Either way, said gentleman laughed in my face and suggested that he remembered one being in the central plaza, but that was 4 or 5 years ago. We made our way to the plaza and did find, probably, the last payphone in town. I called around while Adam stood at the ready with correct change and we tried to hear the instructions over the din of young tourists pointing and screeching in surprise at their first sighting of a real payphone. The life of a jet setting sailor is often fraught with these intense border crossing situations but somehow we muddle through.
A few days after our road trip to Jacksonville we visited again on Zenobia after discovering some pressing engine trouble. We spent nearly a week at a boat yard getting the problem sorted out and we both agree that the issue is not worse than it was before we fixed it – over time we’ve learned to accept this as the gold standard of boat repair.
Since then we’ve been trying to sail but mostly motoring up the Intra Coastal Waterway (ICW). We’ve watched as the grassy swamps of Florida and Georgia turned into the dense, forest swamps of South Carolina which, in turn, gave way to the busy tourist swamps of North Carolina. We’ve seen a great deal of swamp in the last few weeks but it’s been a nice change. It’s great to see green things again after three months in the Bahamas, and everything smells like flower blossoms and fir trees here. Adam informs me that this is really the smell of sneezing and itchy eyes but we’ve agreed to disagree and I dole out the Claritin at regular intervals. Aside from being very green and muddy, swamps are loud places - the edges of the water practically vibrate with an angry hum. We’ve been under regular attack by unrelenting horseflies and we recently fashioned a driving ensemble for Adam after he lost a piece of his arm. He looks a bit like a Puerto Rican gangster but he’s been bite free for three days. Pleasantly we’ve also discovered that the small rivers and estuaries of the ICW are dolphin nurseries and we’ve seen some adorable baby dolphins, including a small pink one that the mother seemed to be lifting to the surface of the water in order to breathe. We haven’t seen any alligators or poisonous water snakes yet but we’ve heard some pretty harrowing tales from a very reliable taxi driver in Florida who fought off a giant, swimming rattlesnake trying to attack his boat. Adam wants me to point out that his skin was a startling shade of blue, but should a blue man be less credible than any other?
We have run into a few glitches along the way. We got stuck in the mud in South Carolina during low tide but a helpful boater pulled us off and then we got stuck again about 20 metres after that. We got ourselves unstuck and then stuck for good a few metres further. Apparently there isn’t as much water in the ICW as advertised. While we waited for the rising tide to lift us off we watched two other sailboats get stuck around us and then we all cursed the catamaran that glided by without so much as a bump. We also lost our ability to shift gears at about the same time due to aging gear shifting cables. As a temporary measure we’ve taken apart the pedestal and pulled out the mechanism to shift manually. This isn’t exactly precise but it will enable us to get to a town where we can get the parts that we need. At this point we can put the boat into forward and reverse but neutral seems to elude us – you can’t have everything I guess. Yesterday morning we left the anchorage in reverse and struggled for a while before being able to change to forward. The uneasy thought of reversing up the ICW for the next several weeks really puts things into perspective!
We arrived only to discover that the Border Protection and Customs office in St. Augustine is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. In case you missed the humour in that sentence: Homeland Security is closed in St. Augustine on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I can only infer that after careful study, the US government determined that local threats to national security drop dramatically around mid-week. So the mighty Zenobia slipped into the country unseen and floated on American water for a day, her captain and crew, technically, illegal aliens. The marina suggested we call the Miami office – apparently it’s still dangerous on Tuesdays and Wednesdays there - and we were instructed to report to the next port of call within 24 hours, no exceptions. To accommodate this demand we had to rent a car and drive 40 minutes to Jacksonville to present ourselves. These plans were finalized via payphone, which was possibly the most difficult part to arrange. The first person that I approached for directions was a man who looked to be between the ages of 90 and 100 - ageism at work or simply a calculated guess? Either way, said gentleman laughed in my face and suggested that he remembered one being in the central plaza, but that was 4 or 5 years ago. We made our way to the plaza and did find, probably, the last payphone in town. I called around while Adam stood at the ready with correct change and we tried to hear the instructions over the din of young tourists pointing and screeching in surprise at their first sighting of a real payphone. The life of a jet setting sailor is often fraught with these intense border crossing situations but somehow we muddle through.
A few days after our road trip to Jacksonville we visited again on Zenobia after discovering some pressing engine trouble. We spent nearly a week at a boat yard getting the problem sorted out and we both agree that the issue is not worse than it was before we fixed it – over time we’ve learned to accept this as the gold standard of boat repair.
Since then we’ve been trying to sail but mostly motoring up the Intra Coastal Waterway (ICW). We’ve watched as the grassy swamps of Florida and Georgia turned into the dense, forest swamps of South Carolina which, in turn, gave way to the busy tourist swamps of North Carolina. We’ve seen a great deal of swamp in the last few weeks but it’s been a nice change. It’s great to see green things again after three months in the Bahamas, and everything smells like flower blossoms and fir trees here. Adam informs me that this is really the smell of sneezing and itchy eyes but we’ve agreed to disagree and I dole out the Claritin at regular intervals. Aside from being very green and muddy, swamps are loud places - the edges of the water practically vibrate with an angry hum. We’ve been under regular attack by unrelenting horseflies and we recently fashioned a driving ensemble for Adam after he lost a piece of his arm. He looks a bit like a Puerto Rican gangster but he’s been bite free for three days. Pleasantly we’ve also discovered that the small rivers and estuaries of the ICW are dolphin nurseries and we’ve seen some adorable baby dolphins, including a small pink one that the mother seemed to be lifting to the surface of the water in order to breathe. We haven’t seen any alligators or poisonous water snakes yet but we’ve heard some pretty harrowing tales from a very reliable taxi driver in Florida who fought off a giant, swimming rattlesnake trying to attack his boat. Adam wants me to point out that his skin was a startling shade of blue, but should a blue man be less credible than any other?
We have run into a few glitches along the way. We got stuck in the mud in South Carolina during low tide but a helpful boater pulled us off and then we got stuck again about 20 metres after that. We got ourselves unstuck and then stuck for good a few metres further. Apparently there isn’t as much water in the ICW as advertised. While we waited for the rising tide to lift us off we watched two other sailboats get stuck around us and then we all cursed the catamaran that glided by without so much as a bump. We also lost our ability to shift gears at about the same time due to aging gear shifting cables. As a temporary measure we’ve taken apart the pedestal and pulled out the mechanism to shift manually. This isn’t exactly precise but it will enable us to get to a town where we can get the parts that we need. At this point we can put the boat into forward and reverse but neutral seems to elude us – you can’t have everything I guess. Yesterday morning we left the anchorage in reverse and struggled for a while before being able to change to forward. The uneasy thought of reversing up the ICW for the next several weeks really puts things into perspective!