Friends Across The Water

We (Janice and I) departed from Fort Myers Beach, aboard Friend Ship, on Thursday, October 30th around 4:00 pm. Traveling with us were Bob and Tonya Gould on their boat (Nakhodka). Many of our friends from Beach Baptist Church came by the dock to see us off. They brought fresh fruit, financial donations from the Children’s Sunday School, and much love.

For the next two nights, we experienced rough and confused seas along with a consistent 25 knots of wind. This made for a very tough trip with much bouncing around. Bob Gould became very sick and then, just to top things off, they blew out their mainsail on Nakhodka.

Late on Friday night, we decided to head for Key West. We all could use a respite – especially Bob Gould. Of course, they also needed to see what could be done for their sails. Around 1:30 am on Saturday morning, Janice and I tied up at a fuel dock in Key West.

Later Saturday morning (after about 4 hours sleep), we refueled the boat and proceeded to dock at the Key West Bight Marina. Upon checking the weather, we determined that the fierce winds and seas would settle down to a much more calm state by Monday. Therefore we decided to spend the weekend in Key West.

We ate lunch at Alonzo’s on Saturday and experienced a good meal along with an island power outage. They got the power back on within about half an hour. On Sunday, we walked to Glad Tidings Community Church. Pastor Ernie DeLoach, a former missionary, welcomed us. Janice and I felt a real connection to Pastor Ernie. The church had a dynamic praise and worship time followed by a guest missionary speaker from Ecuador. The missionary was very good and we very much enjoyed the service.

On Monday morning, about 7:00 am, Janice and I departed from Key West to continue our trip to Isla Mujeres, Mexico. Bob and Tonya decided that they would head back to Fort Myers Beach to heal up and to see about repairs. We will sorely miss Bob and Tonya. They have been good friends and a real blessing to us.

As forecasted, the winds and seas were much calmer. If anything, they were too calm and we made only about 2 knots of speed as we headed south towards the coast of Cuba. It took us twice as long to cross as we had anticipated. One positive aspect was crossing the Gulf Stream. We had heard many tales about crossing the Gulf Stream and how difficult and rough it could be. Praise God; our crossing was completely uneventful. In fact, the seas were so calm that we could hardly even tell when we were crossing the Stream.

We then proceeded along the north coast of Cuba. The winds remained light and correspondingly our speed remained low. It was at this point, that we decided to try out our spinnaker. For those of you who are not familiar, a spinnaker is an extra large sail that is flown forward of the boat. It is an ideal sail for light winds due, in part, to its size. We had never flown our spinnaker and were not completely sure we knew how. However we managed and next thing you knew, we were flying it.

The spinnaker almost doubled our speed so that we were now doing about 4 knots – still slower than the 5 knots average that I used in planning the trip. We flew the spinnaker for the next day and half at which point the shackle holding the top of the spinnaker separated from the line holding it. The spinnaker fell overboard (still attached by the tack line) and became wrapped up in the propeller.

We stopped the boat and I had to dive overboard (and under the boat) to free the spinnaker from the prop. After doing so, Janice and I had to wrestle to haul the spinnaker back on board before we could continue. Finally after our unscheduled stop, we continued albeit at a slower speed – about 3 knots at this time. We will have to repair the line and rerun it up the mast prior to being able to use the spinnaker again.

We left Cuba behind and began the next leg – the crossing to Mexico. We experienced more wind and waves as we crossed the Yucatan Channel than we had since the first two nights out of Fort Myers Beach. The wind was with us but the current was against us. We ran into a storm around 4:00 am on Friday morning. We were getting thrown around pretty good for a few hours. This was probably an outer band for Hurricane Paloma.

We ultimately arrived in Isla Mujeres on Friday, November 7th around 8:30 pm – more than a week after we had originally set out. We were ready to finally get there and bring this part of our journey to a close. We will spend a short time here and then continue our trip further south on toward Guatemala.

God blessed us with an enjoyable sail. It was quiet and calm – for the most part. The moonlight over the water was something to see and who can describe the sunrises and sunsets. Much of the time the water depth under the boat was more than a mile and the water was a beautiful deep dark blue.

We occasionally shared the seas with large container ships and even on a couple of occasions with cruise liners. Often the dolphins would come out to play around the boat. They would jump and dive, running alongside the boat. Sometimes they would dive under and start all over again on the other side.

Well – that is enough for now. God blessed us on our first voyage – our Gulf crossing.