Happy Veterans Day.
With a prayer for those who serve so we can be free to go cruising, we
left the dock at 8:00am, got fuel, paid our marina bill, and caught the falling
tide to ride out the St Simon inlet to the Atlantic Ocean.
Destination: Overnight to Cape Canaveral Inlet or Ft Pierce Inlet
Beautiful day. Perfect day to leave as the sun is out and
the sky is crystal blue after several days of clouds and rain. No wind. But that’s OK as the sea is calm and
dolphins are everywhere.
All good until around 4pm, when I asked Dan … “what’s that
noise”? Yeah, that intermittent
whine. It comes and goes, maybe it’s …… normal? By 8pm,, the whine was persistent. Not loud.
But there. Changing RPMs made the noise
go away, so that was going to be our plan.
Throttle up. Throttle down. Wait for the whine to build
from intermittent to persistent and then throttle up/down again. It was dark. What choice did we have? Sleep wasn’t really an option because who can
rest when you are counting the duration of each intermittent whine?
About 1:00 in the morning, Dan said we had to divert from
our original heading towards Cape Canaveral as we were not moving fast enough
to arrive in daylight. The noise
couldn’t be ignored so our top priority was now finding a marina with a
mechanic, and then finding a way to navigate from offshore, through a FL inlet,
along the ICW to where that marina/mechanic is located! So yes, here we are, 20 miles offshore, 2:00
a.m, and I’m researching cruising guides and inlet navigation while Dan sets a
new course towards the FL coast. We basically had 3 choices: St Johns River/Jacksonville, which was behind
us; the St Augustine Inlet, which is dicey; and the Ponce Inlet to Daytona
Beach/Titusville which is also dicey but it’s an inlet we have navigated
before.
The decision was made when I found Daytona Marina and Boat
Works in the cruising guide. They have a
mechanic on site and are open 24hrs.
Something we had to test as soon as we were in cell phone range … what a
surprise when a real person answered the phone at 2:30 a.m.! Done. We have a new destination.
Thursday, November
12
Dawn is always my favorite part of an overnight sail. Today, it lasted for about 1 minute before a
dense fog settled over the ocean bringing us back to “dusk”. Fog, but of course. Our first trip down the coast w/o radar, and
we are socked in with fog. A little
after sunrise, the wind shifted to the south east so we were able to put up the
sails and float along with light winds until fog started to burn off around
8:00 a.m.
Another beautiful day. 
That's what we call flat, calm seas!
Around 3 pm, we entered the Ponce Inlet which was an easy passage due to the mild wind and sea conditions. We snaked around to find the ICW and then headed north 10 miles to Daytona Beach, where we arrived just before 5 p.m. Nothing beats the stillness that courses through your body when the diesel engine is turned off after 36 hours and you step onto a dock that isn’t moving. Also, nothing beats having the mechanic waiting for you at the dock when you arrive!
A number of reasons for our engine whine were discussed;
some easy fixes, others not so much. All
would wait until 8:00 am tomorrow. For
now, a hot shower and a quiet night’s sleep were all we cared about.
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