Ñandú

Cumberland Island, formerly a Native American settlement, a Spanish settlement, a slavery era plantation, and a winter retreat for the privileged elite, is Georgia’s southernmost and largest barrier island. Most of it is now under the National Park Service management as a National Seashore. A fun fact is that the westernmost point of US shoreline on the Atlantic Ocean lies in Cumberland Island. The only way to access the island is by boat, as there’s no bridge to the mainland. We spent three nights anchored in Cumberland Sound, and accessed the island by means of Gecko, the dinghy.

On our last day we received a tornado warning on our cell phones: “a severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado” would reach us in ten minutes. What do you do to prepare for a tornado in ten minutes, when you are out there anchored? Let’s see… where’s the basement? Oh, we don’t have one. A room with no windows? That would be the engine rooms, but the hatch cannot be locked from inside, not to mention that they are kind of small. Scratch that. Next would be to go to the nearest sturdy building. The dinghy was already in the water, but it would still take us at least twenty minutes to get to the nearest building, which was likely not the nearest sturdy building. So, staying on the boat it was. Now, I know, at least in theory, what to do to prepare the boat for a hurricane, but that would take a full day, if not more.

So what could we do? I came up with an answer: not much. And that’s exactly what we did. Well, I did take some pictures, mind you. And I removed the outboard engine from the dinghy and stowed it in a safer place, as I figured a flying dinghy would be less dangerous without the outboard attached to it, particularly for my wallet.

The storm did not spawn any tornado, so all that meticulous preparation was in vain.

We are on the road again, now with our daughters during their college winter break. It took a whole month, but we finally received a new, uber strong, deluxe edition of the parts we were waiting for (the alternator brackets, in case you have not been following the world news).

Since we arrived in Charleston on Thanksgiving day, it seemed only appropriate to depart on Christmas day. And so we did. On Christmas morning we left what we affectionately called the wailing dock. There was the Quebecois in a monohull that had to be towed after the propeller fell off. Then the Texan couple who hit a reportedly unidentified object at high speed in the middle of the night, with considerable damage to their catamaran’s crossbeam. The marks that such unidentified object left were the same red hue as the navigation buoys’, though. Next on the dock was Ñandú, with an engine out of commission due to a cracked bracket. Then another catamaran, which got pinned against the corner of the slip’s finger when arriving because the skipper didn’t take the current into account. The unpinning maneuver left an ugly and long dent in its otherwise pristine port hull. Further down, a sailboat that hit its motorboat neighbor while docking.

We got back to the Intracoastal Waterway, which in this region follows a maze of rivers and land cuts that connect one river to the next. In just two days we tasted the waters of the Cooper, Ashley, Stono, Wadmalaw, Dawho, South Edisto, Ashepoo, Coosaw, and Beaufort Rivers. That’s about twice as many rivers as I had previously sailed in my entire life.

The usual ICW concerns apply here: narrow waterways, changing shoal areas, large tidal range, potentially strong currents, recreational and commercial boat traffic, and a couple of bridges with barely enough clearance or complicated opening schedules. We survived them all with reasonable composure and decorum, and reached the old town of Beaufort, South Carolina (not to confuse with our North Carolina stop, spelled the same but pronounced differently: BOW-fort for the northern town versus BEW-fort for the southern one).

There was, however, one last obstacle before touchdown. To reach the marina we had to leave the ICW to enter Factory Creek, right before a swing bridge. With the sight of a shoreline ominously dotted with all sorts of shipwrecks, we listened to the dockmaster instructions on the radio: “Enter the channel between the green marker and the bridge. The area around the marker is very shallow, so you have to be as close to the bridge as possible, without getting sucked into it. (And by the way, all those wrecked boats you see are the ones that left without paying)”. Great. Too close to the marker and we’ll run aground, too close to the bridge and we’ll get sucked in, without any indication of how close is too close. Keeping an eye on each of my enemies and another on my ally the depth sounder display (yep, that makes it three eyes), I cautiously entered the channel. The sounder showed the depths getting shallower at an alarming rate, but I was already uncomfortably close to the bridge. Luckily the depth started to increase before I had time to think, react, or panic, and it was a deep channel from there to the marina. The guys that came in a day later, however, didn’t succeed with the last part of the instructions and ended up hitting the bridge, pushed by the current. They managed to avoid disaster by staying on the right side of the bridge, but a beam poked a big hole in their hull. Fortunately, it was above the waterline, so they are still afloat, although with a sizable repair job ahead.

From Beaufort we continued along the Beaufort River where we enjoyed some sailing with the speedometer occasionally displaying 12 knots, only to see it drop to a dismal 2.5 knots, engine and all, once we turned upwind and against the current of yet another river, the Chechessee. We didn’t need to go far to find an anchorage in Hilton Head.

On new year’s eve we had a good weather window so we headed out to the ocean with the goal of making in 24 hours the same progress as we would have made in three days on the ICW. That’s because the days are short and we wouldn’t dare being on the waterway at night. (Sorry, Donna, we passed St. Simons Island offshore and at night). The new year was received by a dark, moonless night, calm seas, smooth sailing and no champagne. Kathy and Ada enjoyed some fireworks during their shift, but they didn’t bother waking me up, even though I told them to!

In the morning, when the seas were turning slightly bumpy, we came back inshore through St. Mary’s River, which separates Georgia from Florida. We headed North for two miles to anchor by the beautiful Cumberland Island. More about Cumberland Island National Seashore soon.

Oliver must have realized that a big change was coming when his house started to get progressively empty. He would just sit there with a puzzled expression looking at us moving thing after thing, big and small. Until we just left, and he remained behind in a completely empty house. If that was shocking, the next thing must have been even more: the new owners, our neighbors, moved in, pets and all. They graciously accepted to take care of our cat while we moved cross country and settled in our new, floating home. Oliver was petted, fed, defleed and very well taken care of. Still, he figured out it was not his place anymore, and soon started to sleep outside.

A few weeks later we picked Oliver up, and we put him through what was without a doubt the most horrifying experience of his long existence. The hour-long drive to the airport was already longer than any of his previous car trips. When going through airport security, they asked us to remove him from his carrier in order to pass the carrier through the scanner. The open space and all the noise terrified him, with bad consequences for Kathy, who had to held Oliver tightly to prevent him from running away. After that it was a six-hour flight, a taxi ride, a night in a strange place (a standard hotel for us humans), a three-hour rental car ride, a long stop at the grocery store, and a dinghy ride to the boat.

Once aboard and freed from the carrier, he hid immediately in the tightest spot he could find. I wouldn’t have guessed he could actually fit in there, but the tightest he was, the safer he felt. We haven’t seen him in that spot lately, which is a sign that he’s getting braver in this new environment. Or gaining weight.

After a couple of days he started to cautiously explore every crevice on the boat, which helped getting rid of the last bits of fiberglass dust. He’d come out all white from the guts of the boat, a feline duster making a contribution to the house domestic chores. His only contribution, I should add, other than eating a fly once.

He’s slowly getting used to a cruising life, but as far as we know, Oliver has left the boat by himself only once. In Delaware, Kathy found him exploring the motor boat docked behind us. I don’t know what he saw in there, but he hasn’t tried to leave Ñandú since then.

When he’s not sleeping he’s asking for food, or doing his daily round on the deck, around the cockpit enclosure. He tolerates sailing in mild conditions, but he abhors rough sailing or anything that involves turning the engines on. On those occasions he hides in our bed, under the sheets, leaving a lovely trail of hair and litter in our most sacred space. He occasionally comes out to perform his biological functions, and to make it very clear that he’s not happy. With his loud and most annoying meowing he shouts “you idiots are ruining my life!” on his way back to the bed. Our bed.

And then there’s the issue with the litter box on those rough conditions. I can’t blame him, though, since I know from my own experience that it’s not easy to fully evacuate when the ground is not steady, even for me having the option of sitting down. Last time Oliver decided to make it only half way inside the litter box. His load fell indeed outside. And I’m talking about solid load. I guess he didn’t get the message right: the point is to think outside the box, not to shit outside the box. I need to find a better solution. Perhaps a gimballed litter box? Maybe not.

Poor guy anyway. Just when he was accepting and even occasionally enjoying his new life, we put him again in his carrier and drove him more than four hours in a rental car to Camp Kitty, a boarding facility, where we left him for almost two weeks while we flew to California. Now the whole family is back on the boat and he’s never been happier to be this close to water.

From Beaufort we continued on the Intracoastal Waterway for a few more days. Transiting the waterway is a lot like driving on a highway, with its advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, the scenery is more dynamic than when you’re in open waters, and you don’t have to go out of the way to find a suitable spot to spend the night. A couple of times we docked right there, in the equivalent of a highway’s shoulder. On the minus side, the long hours of motoring requiring constant focus get tedious and tiring.

Navigation is in theory quite simple: when going South, leave the red buoys and beacons to your right and the green ones to your left, but there are caveats and exceptions. Cross currents can be strong and may push you out of the channel if you’re not paying attention. Sometimes markers are missing. Some areas are prone to shoaling. Hurricane Matthew changed the map and moved some buoys to the wrong place. You better follow locals’ advice—such as preferring one side of the channel or not passing too close to a marker—since you can’t fully trust your GPS, nor the charts, nor the buoys. More than once we had to cut across what the chartplotter claimed to be dry land.

And then there’s the exception to the rule: at the junction of the ICW with other channels, the meaning of red/green may be reversed. At one particularly confusing section where the buoys were not as charted, I may have taken one or two buoys on the wrong side. Luckily, our Ñandú has very short legs.

When we reached Cape Fear River we decided that enough was enough. In spite of the very scary name of the nearby cape, we went offshore to shake the sails and make faster progress by sailing through the night. Actually, Kathy wasn’t really keen on leaving the ICW until she went to buy food for Oliver. The pet store attendant happened to be a local sailor and he convinced her it was a good option.

Once offshore my first mate showed her outstanding seamanship (or is it seewomanship?) at the change of guards. Using all the tools (AIS, radar and binoculars) she was aware of everything around us in the dark, far and near: “There’s a cargo ship on our port but it’s moving away from us. Those lights on starboard seem to be a fishing vessel. Not dangerous, but keep an eye on it. The red light at three o’clock is buoy WR3. There’s still the two sailboats behind us. And there’s something in the radar a mile ahead of us that I haven’t been able to identify. We should change our course a few degrees to starboard to be safe.” Impressively professional. The opposite of me and my sloppy “yeah, there’s some traffic out there” when handing the controls back to her. She also saved us from a collision. When we slowed down to drop the main sail before entering the Charleston Channel, the skipper of one of those sailboats behind us was too sleepy to notice, and not even at the helm, until Kathy woke him up with a radio call. She saw him run to the helm to turn just a few feet from our stern.

This time the wind behaved as forecasted and it took us the expected 26 hours to reach Charleston. We sailed most of the way in fair and light winds. We had some head winds at the end but that was not a surprise either. Even my Android phone got it right when it dutifully notified “Light traffic in your area. Faster than usual.” And at this point I cannot say that what happened in the middle of the night when I briefly fired up one engine was unexpected. Yes. The bracket. Broke. Again. One of the new, supposedly indestructible ones.

The perverse mastermind behind this plot figured that damage would be maximized if the breakage occurred on the eve of thanksgiving. The waiting for a fix starts now with four and half days of holidays with guaranteed zero progress. That’s more than the time lost to the spilled paint fiasco, which makes this new twist extra brilliant. On the other hand, speaking of paint… I’m so glad I didn’t bother painting the new pieces. And on the same hand, there’s also the silly but consoling pleasure of being right. When I expressed doubts regarding the reliability of the new brackets, both the Yanmar and the Mastervolt associates dismissed my concerns. Ha! I told them so!