A Real Offshore Passage

     We are now at Fort Pierce, FL visiting good friends, resupplying, doing maintenance and upgrades. We've had to find a new anchoring spot because of new islands being built in our usual spot off the City Marina of Ft Pierce. Building islands? Yep. Hey, it's Florida.

     How did we get here? Well, that's interesting.

     Our last stop had us in Charleston, SC and Ft Pierce was the next stop. That's right, no stops in between. In a (mostly) straight line, Ft Pierce is about 350 nautical miles from Charleston.

     We stayed an extra night in Charleston to allow the seas to die down a bit after the long term offshore storm we'd been dealing with and also to do a little tourist stuff. We love Charleston.

     Then we got underway. 0630. Still mostly dark, clear and cool. We leave the Ashley River, get into the main harbor and then exit by going around historic Fort Sumter. The main shipping channel is about 10nm long in order to get clear of the breakwaters and the shoals. This often a very lumpy trip and this year was no exception. Not as bad as last year but rough enough. About 3/4 down the length of the channel we can turn south. This put the seas (about 4') and the wind directly on our stern and this is not too uncomfortable for us. A straight line to Florida puts us about 50nm off the coast of Georgia and as the day went on conditions improved. Lower seas and wind. During the first day we had a very large pod of dolphins join us again and stay quite a while. Really stunning.

     Our first night at sea was pretty nice, too. Reasonably calm, not too cold. I keep referring to our first day or first night. Yep. Normally it's about 24 hours to the Florida border from Charleston or 30 hours to St Augustine but conditions were good and forecast to remain that way so we decided to keep going and spend a second night at sea and continue on to Ft Pierce inlet, the next Class A inlet available to us. Class A means 'safe' in nearly all conditions. St John's River Inlet and St Mary's River Inlet are both Class A but St Augustine Inlet is not.

     We passed by St Augustine and headed for Cape Canaveral. Things went well... until about 2300, about 10nm from the cape. It got much windier and choppier, right on the nose. Not the favorite conditions for a catamaran. Not conducive to sleeping either. We had about 8 hours of uncomfortable bouncing around. Not dangerous. Just not much fun. And very tiring.

     Our third day at sea was okay overall. Better later in the day than earlier and we were around Cape Canaveral. We arrived at Ft Pierce late in the day, checked our 'normal' anchorage and then moved to our current spot outside of Faber Cove across the ICW from downtown Ft Pierce. It's nice and protected but it's about a mile from a spot to tie up the dinghy. Not too bad a trade off.

     We got to sleep well for the first time in a few days, shower at our friends home and enjoy mostly upper 70 degree days. Hatches open at night, too. It's been way too long since the last time for that. We are looking forward to a month or two of similar days. We can only hope.

     So that's the story of of 350nm and 58 hour passage offshore. At times we were about 50nm offshore and at others just a mile or two. Carol got really into it and was willing to keep going. Maybe someday. Maybe not.

     Oh, did I mention our encounter at sea with a Chilean Navy submarine? No? Maybe next time ;>))