Ship's Log

Log: 4,350

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Location: The Ford Plantation, Richmond Hill, Georgia

Distance Travelled Today: 76 Nautical Miles

Total Trip Distance:1,710 Nautical Miles

This is just a final post to say that the 2008 Bahamas Trip is over. After an 11-hour day, I finally pulled into The Ford Plantation marina at 7 pm this evening. This will be Steel Magnolia’s home at least until next winter when we may set out on another journey south. We are here this summer not only because we are members here and use a house belonging to my mother, but also because it’s very convenient to be able to go tinker with the boat while staying here. Also, the water here in the Ogeechee River is almost entirely fresh water, which prevents the bottom of the boat from getting covered with scum and barnacles as it did last summer.

An interesting note: I always update the page on this site called “where’s the boat”. You can click it on the left of this page and see a Google map of the boat’s location. While updating it tonight, I noticed that if you choose to view the satellite photo view rather than the map, you can zoom in to the marina here and see my old boat Suladan tied at the end of the marina dock. The picture must be a couple of years old so we’ll have to wait for an updated satellite photo for Steel Magnolia to actually appear in the satellite view.

Anyway, it’s been a great trip. The journey down to the Exumas was long and arduous as was the trip home. I enjoy travelling at seven knots but i never realized the time it would take for such a journey. It may be awhile before we tackle anything this ambitious again. Meanwhile, there will be lots of short trips and nights out at anchor to enjoy the boat.

Tune in next time. And, as my daughter Suzanne says, “Thanks for clicking on us.” 

We met Jack and Ruth Livingstone in Long Island in the Bahamas, an intrepid couple who crossed the Gulf Stream in their 25-foot sailboat and cruised around happily for the last six months. Sunday, they tried to cross back to the U.S., at least a 12-hour trip in their little boat. Half-way across, they were boarded by the Coast Guard and sent back to Bimini for an expired fire extinguisher. They explained that they had looked for one in the Bahamas and couldn’t find one. They also explained that, half-way across, it would be safer to let them sail on rather than go all the way back and have to cross again. However, the stupid Coast Guard would not listen to reason.

I thought I had a good story about bureaucracy dealing with Customs and Immigration in Ft. Lauderdale, but this one takes the cake. Ok, they should have had the proper fire extinguisher. But when U.S. citizens are half way between Bimini and Florida in a 25-foot boat, they should not be sent to Bimini to get in compliance. This is a case of endangering lives of U.S. citizens to make a point. Why not issue them a citation and send them home to get a fire extinguisher?

You can read about their experience here, and you can read about all their other experiences on their blog.

Anyway, they were supposed to try again Monday but I haven’t heard from them yet. They either got further delayed or crossed over and haven’t gotten to internet access yet. Keep checking their blog to see how the trip turned out.

Log: 4274

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Location: Anchored in “Wailey’s Leg” just off the Mackay River, near Sea Island, Georgia

Distance Traveled Last Five Days: 286 nautical miles

Total Trip Distance: 1,634 nautical miles

One of the things you just don’t realize until you’ve been in boating awhile is just how expensive marinas are. For overnight stays on a trip, they charge by the foot with usually an extra charge for electricity or cable TV or wireless internet. The lower priced spots usually charge around $1.00 per foot while I’ve seen some resort marinas as high as $4.00 per foot. A typical rate is $2.00 per foot. So on a trip in my 52–foot boat, it’s not unusual to spend $104 for dockage plus another say $15 or so for power. Once you are docked, of course, you tend to be tired and elect to eat dinner off the boat, especially if there is a restaurant at the dock or nearby. With wine, even traveling alone, that can add another $50 or more to the evening. While you have to buy groceries to eat aboard, the simple fact is that staying at a marina adds a minimum of $150 per night to the cost of cruising. Take a 90–day trip as this one has been, stay at a marina every night, and there goes $13,500. Far more than the fuel or any other normal maintenance along the way.

So thrifty boaters have learned the value of anchoring out. It’s not only peaceful and quiet and usually beautiful, but you can save thousands of dollars a year by doing it. Tonight, I’m anchored in a lovely spot in perfect weather. My feet are propped up. I’m watching the evening news as I blog. And I’m looking forward to preparing a fine feast of canned sardines with crackers and a glass or two of chardonnay. I am reveling in the knowledge that I’m saving, or at least not spending, at least $150 by doing this. It’s like being paid to do this, and I’m thinking of taking it up as a full-time job.

If you are to anchor out, a few equipment items become absolutely essential. One is the anchor itself and the windlass that is used to lower and raise it. I planned to anchor out every night of this six-day trip but the first night, at sunset, I prepared to drop the anchor and the windlass simply did nothing. It turned out that while work was being done in the boatyard, a breaker had been tripped which is located under the forward bed. To figure that out and correct it, I limped into a marina in the dark and spent $136 for dockage just to have the leisure of taking the bed apart and getting to the breaker.

Another crucial thing is electrical power. The boat has a generator which must be run to cook or run the air conditioning. But you can’t run the generator all the time without having to change the oil every week so when running or enjoying a quiet evening, the boat needs an adequate inverter and enough battery power to run it for hours at a time. This was one of the great problems with this Bahamas trip in that I discovered the batteries were wearing out and I could not survive on the inverter for more than a few hours at a time. This situation not only cost me in dockage charges but I also had to buy seven new giant batteries when I got back to Florida.

Anyway, you get the picture. I can travel about 50 miles a day on this boat using 25 gallons of fuel at a cost of about $100. Anchoring out, I can avoid spending another $150 a day, making an enormous difference in the cost of cruising.

So, I’m almost finished with this journey. Tomorrow, I plan to reach the mouth of the Ogeechee River south of Savannah late in the afternoon, just in time to ride the high tide 17 miles up to the Ford Plantation where I will keep the boat this summer. I’ll log in tomorrow night to wrap up the trip. Meanwhile, here are a few pictures along the way. Not as interesting as the south Florida snapshots, but just a little typical scenery along the waterways:

One of my friends who swam along with me today

The girl in the background was walking on water

My next boat

Le Grand Bleue, a boat we first saw in Maine, in Drydock in Jacksonville

The Submarine Base near Cumberland Island

A few of the wild horses on the beach at Cumberland Island

Later.

Log: 3988

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Location: Hobe Sound, Florida

Distance travelled today: 22 nautical miles

Total Trip Distance: 1348 nautical miles

Well, I’m back on the boat after a month and more repairs than I ever imagined at the Riviera Beach Yacht Center just north of Palm Beach. I was told the boat would be finished last Friday with maybe a little final cleanup Monday morning. So I came down Sunday afternoon to find it was nowhere near finished. I won’t go into it because it’s depressing, but I will say that the guy who sold me the boat, the people who built it, and the surveyor should all be shot. My only consolation now is that so many things have been fixed, there’s very little else that can be wrong.

In the middle of lamenting all this, Perfect Deckhand James Abele called to tell me the most unique boat story I’ve heard yet. He couldn’t get his pontoon boat at Lake Martin to start and nothing electrical worked at all. Upon taking apart the steering console, he found that muskrats had eaten all of the wiring behind the instrument panel. And yes James, it did make me feel better to hear of your misery. I feel your pain. Must be muskrat love.

Anyway, after the final work was finished today at about 4 pm, I finally got underway. I couldn’t go far that late in the day but I had to get out of there. I’m traveling alone, which is not a bad thing at all. While I always enjoy the help and good company of friends on these trips, there’s something delightfully free about travel alone. I’m not on any schedule. I go to bed when I want and get up when I wake up and pretty much do as I please. Meals are nowhere near as good as when a good cook is with me, but I’m free at the end of a long day to just open a can of sardines and drink a little wine, without worrying about being a host. I’m kind of enjoying it.

For safety, I'll be mostly traveling in the waterway. It’s shallow enough so that if the boat sinks, the majority of the boat will still be above water. In the event of a fire, I’ll just jump off and swim ashore. I may take a short dash out in the ocean on a calm day, but there will be no long trips at sea around Cape Canaveral. The Intracoastal is more difficult because you must constantly be alert and steer manually all day. However, the scenery is sometimes quite interesting.

Which brings me to the point of this entry, scenery. Whoever thinks south Florida is only populated with retirees needs to come down and check out the waterways down here. It’s No Country for Old Men. I leave you with a few of my snapshots along the way: 

Even though it’s spring, it’s never too early to think about football:

I yelled to this girl that it was time to turn but she wouldn’t go for it.

Where else to dance but the back of the boat?

As I said, it’s no country for old men:

Log: 3965

Monday, March 17, 2008

Location: Riviera Beach, Florida

Distance Traveled Yesterday and Today: 42 Nautical Miles

Total Trip Distance:  1326 Nautical Miles

Well, just to prove that the yachting life is always glamorous, I had one final episode with the sewage system on the boat last night. Perfect Deckhand and I continued to notice the distinct odor of sewage at the bottom of the steps during our trip. I assured him that the venting system was not working well and that things were stirred up by our open ocean days. However, after he left and I was only cruising the Intracoastal Waterway, the odor continued. So last night I took up the floor above the black water tank to discover that sewage had filled the bilge and was almost up to the floorboards under the staterooms. I’m estimating that it was 200 gallons or more of sewage sloshing around under us.

Using the emergency bilge pump system, I emptied the bilge at sea and tried everything to see if I could find a leak. I flushed toilets, overfilled the black water tank with clean water, etc. But I cannot find a leak. I poured bilge cleaner into the area today, filled it with the water hose, and pumped it out again. Everything appears clean and smells good but i can’t figure out where the leak came from.

So I’m going home. I’m leaving the boat at a boat yard here to let them try to sniff out the problem. They’re also going to fix the bow thruster, replace all of my seven batteries, fix the spotlight, and have the watermaker serviced. Ahh, the glamorous life of a yachtsman. I’m going home to see my dogs and wait for my wife to get back in town and sleep in a great bed and not worry about batteries or inverters or sewage.

But I’ll be back. I have 366 nautical miles to travel back to Savannah. Despite the constant worries and repairs, I really do love this game.

Log: 3923

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Location: Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

Distance Traveled Yesterday: 54 Nautical Miles

Total Trip Distance:  1284 Nautical Miles

I think I have been too hard on the Bahamas as a parallel universe. They are not alone. Many of my conservative friends feel that the federal government should stay out of things because it is so incompetent, and if Homeland Security and Customs practices in Ft. Lauderdale are any example, they are right.

I didn’t know whether to write about this sarcastically or seriously, so I’ll just tell you what happened and let you draw your own conclusions. First, a little history. Years ago, before I started boating in the Bahamas, boats returning to the U.S. from foreign ports were required to stop at certain designated spots to clear customs. The customs and immigration people either had their own dock or used one marina in each area. You would come into port, tie up at the designated spot, and they would have you fill out immigration forms, check passports, and board the boat for a search if they wanted to. They would look for Cuban cigars, check your purchases abroad, sniff out drugs, or whatever else they needed to do. It was just like arriving by plane from anywhere outside the country.

Around the time I first went to the Bahamas by boat, they instituted a much easier procedure. You could come in at any marina. All passengers except the captain were required to stay on board until the captain called a local customs office number and reported in. He had to give them everyone’s name and passport number, give them the boat documentation number and the number of the customs decal that had to be purchased for each calendar year. They would then either give you a clearance number and tell you that was it, or they could require everyone to stay aboard until they sent an agent out. The procedure was convenient but also rather stupid. You could pull up to the dock, unload the drugs or illegal immigrants or terrorists or weapons of mass destruction, call the appropriate number, and be cleared to go. For law-abiding citizens such as myself, I loved the convenience but marveled at the lack of security. Corporate jets had to land, take all the luggage inside a customs office, let the dogs sniff out the plane, etc. Boats could land anywhere with any cargo without a care in the world.

Anyway, with Homeland Security taking over customs, someone thought the procedure was too lax and decided that, after the telephone check-in, everyone on the boat had to appear in person at the customs office within 24 hours. You don’t have to bring your luggage or fill out immigration forms or anything else. You just have to appear in person. What this accomplishes, I have no idea. You can stop at a marina, let Osama Bin Laden and his weapons off, along with six of his accomplices, call the number and tell them there were only two on board, and then appear at their offices. The formal announcement of this said:

If you check in at Ft. Lauderdale or Miami, the procedure should not be too difficult. However, if you land at a remote spot in the Florida Keys or somewhere else out of the way, I have heard of people having to rent a car and drive 40 miles with seven passengers to go through this absurd exercise.

While the whole process has created any number of scofflaws who simply come back to the U.S. and don’t bother to call or go through any of the stupid process, I decided to do my best to comply yesterday. The rule is you call within 15 minutes of docking. So when we pulled in to Bahia Mar Marina, I called the number, only to get a recording saying calls would be answered in the order received. I put the cell on speakerphone, went to the office to check in with the marina, walked to the Hertz office to find they had no cars, went back to the marina office to call a remote car agency that would pick us up, came back to the boat for James, all while being told my call would be answered in the order received. After 55 minutes, with my phone battery going dead, I finally hung up and went to pick up a rental car.

After picking up our car, we went to the customs office to try to check in in person. But no, they would not let us present ourselves until we had reported in by phone. There was another boater there on hold who had been trying to get through for two or three hours. We left, came back to the boat, cleaned up, and went out to dinner. Throughout the afternoon and evening, I tried the number repeatedly, holding for five or 10 minutes each time with no results. I had decided to ignore the unreasonable procedure but at about 10:30 last night, I gave one last try and…they answered. The gentleman’s first question was what time did we arrive and I told him 3:00 pm. What did he do? Of course he told me I had violated the law by not calling in within 15 minutes.

Suffice it to say, after hours of calling without getting through, I simply lost it. “What are you going to do about it?” I asked. This made him mad and he told me this was a fineable offense etc. etc. I finally calmed down and told him what we had been through and, after getting some information, he gave me a 19–digit clearance number and told us to report back to the customs office.

So this morning, while taking James to the airport to head home, we again went to the customs office. He looked us up on the computer, saw that we had checked in last night, took a quick look at our passports, and told us we were free to go.

I can’t even begin to express how stupid this whole process is. If the Bahamas is a parallel universe, this is a perpendicular one. Republicans opposed to big stupid government and waste should be having a field day with this one. Thank God William Buckley passed away before having to go through this after one of his transatlantic crossings. He would roll over in his grave if he heard about it.

Boat U.S. Magazine had this to report:

South Florida boaters, particularly those who think nothing about hopping over to the Bahamas for the weekend, are not a bunch of happy campers.

The first shoe fell a few months ago when the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection required boaters returning from the Bahamas to physically check in with an immigration officer at a U.S. port-of-entry upon their return. Previously, they had only been required to clear in with Customs upon their arrival. This can be a major inconvenience. For example, a boater arriving at Miami Beach Marina must travel 20 miles to check in at the Port of Miami and may have to take a Monday morning off from work if they arrive after the immigration office closes on Sunday.

Boaters raised a howl that drew the attention of U.S. Congressmen Mark Foley (R-FL) and Clay Shaw (R-FL) who held a press conference on the docks in Ft. Lauderdale and promised to see if there wasn't a simpler way to screen returning boaters. "Osama bin Laden isn't going to check in after coming ashore. This isn't smart homeland security--it's a bureaucratic nightmare," said Rep. Foley at the press conference. "While the good guys are being burdened, those with in intent are ignoring the rules. We want boaters to know they are not alone and someone does care. We've been listening, and now we're taking action," he added.

Anyway, we made it back to the good old USA. We were illegal aliens for awhile during dinner last night, but now we’re in full compliance. Perfect Deckhand flew home this morning and I laid over a day in Ft. Lauderdale getting a few errands done. Tomorrow, I’ll head up toward Palm Beach where I plan to leave the boat for some needed repairs, particularly the broken bow thruster. I should be back in Birmingham Tuesday.

Log: 3869

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Location: Bimini, Bahamas

Distance Traveled Yesterday and Today: 95 Nautical Miles

Total Trip Distance:  1230 Nautical Miles

Perfect Deckhand James and I have had a perfect trip. Beautiful weather, interesting stops, good food, good company, and we now reach the last leg of our trip together, crossing the Gulf Stream to Florida tomorrow morning.

We departed Nassau Tuesday morning in calm seas for the 40–mile, 5–hour crossing to the southern berry islands. We headed up what is known as the Northwest Channel to Frazier’s Hog Cay, just east of Chub Cay. Our mission was to see if the Berry Island Club still existed. It had been a somewhat wild joint run by two Cajun brothers when I last saw it and we had read that it was closed. We had to check for ourselves. The club was open and we were welcomed at their dock. The two crazy Cajuns sold it a few years back and returned to the states. Now it is owned by a Bahamian man who is busily fixing up the place. Three new rental rooms have been added in a new building out back and the general appearance of the place is greatly improved. Unfortunately, the Cajun food is gone but we enjoyed a mediocre Bahamian dinner of lobster tails.

Yesterday, we departed early for the long run across the Banks to Bimini. We covered some 83 nautical miles and anchored just before dark on the east side of Bimini, as it was too close to dark to attempt coming around the island and into the harbor. We thought we had found a perfect anchorage off a beautiful beach but it became very rough when the wind moved around to northwest during the night and swells came around the island, hitting us from the north. The boat rolled and doors rattled, and our anchor dragged slightly. But we made it through the night. This morning, we came around into the harbor and tied up at Brown’s Hotel and Marina, right next to the famous “End of the World Bar”, which we’ll check out tonight.

Bimini has seen some improvement since last I was here. A gigantic development is going on at the north end of the island called “Bimini Bay”. We checked it out by golf cart today and it is going to be very nice. Unfortunately, the Compleat Angler Hotel, hangout of Earnest Hemingway, had a fire and may be gone for good. The outside walls are still standing but we don’t know if it will be salvaged or torn down. The remainder of Alicetown is still pretty rundown, but there are signs of improvement, including the new docks at Brown’s where we are staying.

The crossing tomorrow is just 47 miles to Ft. Lauderdale. I plan to leave the boat near Palm Beach for awhile and head home but that is 75 miles and a much longer day at sea. We’ll probably cross to Ft. Lauderdale tomorrow, send James home on a flight Saturday, and I’ll mess about up the waterway over the weekend and get to the boatyard near Palm Beach Sunday afternoon.

Update on Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 05:05PM by John Samford

Ok. So my daughter Laura is complaining that she failed to receive a nickname on the blog. Sorry Laura! She is lovely but there’s already the Lovely Laura Lee so that would be confusing. She did such a good job handling the dock lines perhaps she should be called Linehandler Laura.

As you may recall, I started this trip out with my friend Pete Sloss on his sailboat Snowhawk. Pete stopped at Stuart, Florida and went home for a social engagement while he had a few repairs done on his boat. He was supposed to come on down and meet up in the Exumas but I never heard back from him. Pete doesn’t do email, so I wrote his friend Steve Coleman who was due to join him on the next leg to find out what happened.

Steve replied today:

“Hi, John,

“We’re victims of various disasters. I am recovering from pneumonia. Pete’s plane is still being painted over in Georgia. I hope we’re headed south soon, but nothing is definite.

“Snowhawk is in Stuart, FL at the Hinkley yard.

“I hope you’re having a good time.

“Why come home?

Steve”

Well, for Pete’s sake. You don’t need the airplane fixed to get back to Stuart, Florida. And Steve would have never gotten pneumonia if he had gone south for the winter.

Oh well. We’ve missed having them along. Perhaps we’ll meet up in Florida as I head back that way. Let me hear from you Pete. Get your daughter or someone to drop me an email. Better yet, post a comment on the blog and let us know where you’ve been.