Still Getting Ready to Sail

Yesterday I awoke and got ready for the day, which on a boat at this time of year in southeast Florida means donning a swimsuit and slathering on sunscreen! This is one of the things I love about living aboard in tropical and subtropical climates.

It was another busy day, with more cleaning for me and boat work for Peter. Peter took the dinghy to the Stuart Causeway Bridge at the morning low tide to see if it would be possible to pass under without any special preparation to avoid a collision of the top of the mast (the instruments up there, actually) with the road bed. He returned with a negative report. After deliberation, he decided not to remove the instruments from the top of the mast, one of two alternatives. We need to heel the boat by weighing her over on one side.

By sunset, the main cabin and the saloon (the room that serves as the social space on a boat) were thoroughly cleaned and everything we had brought with us was stowed away. We made two attempts to put the genoa on the rolling furler mechanism on the forestay, but the wind was too strong. Before dinner, we took our first outdoor showers on the swim platform on the stern, another pleasure of living aboard. After dinner, we played a new game, Tic Tac Chec, a modified chess game designed and produced by our friend Don in (dreadful) Deltaville, Virginia. It was fun and challenging.

The foredeck with towels drying in the sunshine the genoa furled.

We managed to attach the genoa earlier this morning. The wind is building but we are going to attempt to attach the mainsail to the mast with the battcars soon. (I always think of "To the bat car, Robin!" every time Peter uses the term.) The battcars are sliding hardware with ball bearings that affix the mainsail to the mast along a track that allows the sail to be raised, lowered and reefed.

The battcars and Peter preparing to use them to attach the mainsail

BREAK

Well, the mainsail attempt was a fail. We had to abort just after we secured the first batten, removing it quickly and re-rolling the sail in a rather haphazard manner as the wind began to howl. It is a steady 20-25 knots now with higher gusts up to 40 knots.

Our next major task is putting as much weight as possible on one side of the boat so that we can motor under the bridge at the lowest tide possible, heeled over enough not to hit to the bottom of the bridge. We are aiming at 10 a.m. Monday morning, when the wind prediction is for NW at 10-15 knots with gusts to 20. Mainsail or not, we will leave the Intracoastal Waterway and get out on the open sea through the Saint Lucie Inlet. 

Then it is on to Pompano Beach to visit our good friends Enis and Ula and provision for months in the Bahamas. It's time for me to start perusing the Bahamas chart books, which have been stored away since the spring of 2019.