Kayak Sailing the ICW on a Hobie Tandem Island

Because of safety considerations, we have a number of tracking devices, satellite messengers, and EPIRBS on our bodies/boat.

We can be tracked on our usual site:

https://www.brianlucido.com/where-are-janet-and-brian-live-tracker/

That link requires that you’re registered.

We can also be tracked via our AIS on sites like Marinetraffic dot com and vesselfinder dot com, however we have not shown up on these sites yet. The brianlucido dot com page is probably the best because I can update it with satellite, whereas we only show up for free users on those other websites when our AIS pings a land based tower. Otherwise, the AIS can ping satellites, but you have to pay to see that. Luckily, Search and Rescue pays 😊

It is warm here in Florida, and I’m excited to tell you you more about the trip and the route, but for now, I figured I would put the safety stuff on day zero. Too bad Strava doesn’t let us post links. Happy new year!!!

🎈🎊🎆

Last night, we camped on a tiny island that was more water than land. Miraculously, there were no bugs, so we left the tent doors open and enjoyed the cool breeze for several hours until midnight. That is when the noises began. There were two noises to keep one awake – first the bang bang of fireworks. Second was the bang bang of a couple having sex on the other side of island – either it was loud, or sound travels far out here. I heard some stuff I didn’t want to hear.

Today’s sailing was fun. Janet got up on the paddle board and relaxed a bit two times. That was good because in order tonenjoy the sailing, I think we need to be able to take rests from pedaling – which we did quite a bit today too.

We saw many flying fish – they magically stand on their tails and flit across the water surface in an upright position as if they are walking on water. Another fish jumped onto the boat. We saw a few large fish in the water and several signs of LARGE lurking creatures. I don’t know what they were.. rays? Crocs? Sharks? All exist here, but usually you would just see the big splash and the sand cloud.

We were approached by John, who initially showed curiosity in our boat. He helped take Janet’s place in sliding it into the water. After that, he explained that he was retired, but he still worked. I didn’t exactly understand what he did, but he described it as “Poking the Bear,”

John used to work in the front-country in Yosemite.

“There is this 8 mile stretch of railway that collapsed in the last hurricane. Now they want to rebuild it; it used to transport 8 coal trains a day, but by the time the hurricane hit, they were down to one. They hardly need this section, but now they want to rebuild it. Since it is closer to quarry river rock, they are using that…. Round….. rock. Guess what happens when there is vibration from trains on round rocks?”

I knew from building patios that there is a special rock shape that locks together, so he was making sense.

“I get in there and then get out so they can sue the right people. I get out before they can sue me. There is standing
In the tent and pissing outside… well I’m standing outside the tent and pissing inside. Actually, I’m taking a dump inside, if you know what I mean.”

John seemed to enjoy talking in metaphors, which made him more entertaining, even if we didn’t totally understand his avocation.

We set sail with following seas and perhaps the best possible sailing conditions you could hope for. This lasted the entire day.

We had a lot of strife, though- all due to shallow waters. We constantly had to clean sea grass out of the pedals and where they had accumulated on the boat (slowing us dramatically). Also, at one point, the rudder cable came loose. At first I thought it had snapped. I was anticipating and hour plus repair, but when I found that it had just slipped, it was a major relief and a quick fix.

Because we were back into a populated area, and camping grounds are tricky and expensive, we pulled into the lee of some mangroves and set a bow and stern anchor. We had a nice evening together, kinda wishing for a glass of wine, and then assembled our tents on top of the paddle boards. It was a super excellent day !

We landed in a private little cove. When I say private, I mean, the public isn’t allowed. But it is hard to get to groceries on foot, so we chanced it. Janet walked to Publix market while I dried the clothes and tents and tried to befriend a kid who was fishing for “Barracuda.”

“Aren’t those big?” I asked.

“No, that is the great barracuda,” the kid schooled me. “See, there is one,” he pointed to what I thought was a needlefish. Later he got one on his line. Pretty good for a 7 year old.

After Janet fetched our food, we sailed off and went outside into the gulf. The bridge was too low for our mast, but because this boat is collapsible, on a minute, I had the mast down. Janet pedaled is under the bridge, and then the mast was back up in seconds.

We were unable to find a place that looked like a reliable camping spot on the satellite. I considered using the drone to find a place, but an idea had been brewing in my head. Last night we slept on the boat. We slept well, but it wasn’t great. The two little tents are so small… my idea was to move our paddle boards together and erect our McMansion tent on top of them.

It went together well, and now we have so much more room – on the water! It is fantastic! I will probably be mailing the single tents home soon. Like I said, we learn something new each day.

Unfortunately, today the winds were blowing straight on the nose of where we wanted to travel… in sailing, this is called “beating into the winds,” and that is how it felt for Janet – like she was taking a beating bouncing up and down. For me in the back, there must be less movement.

My aim is to always maximize the speed of the boat – not because we’re in a hurry, but because sailing is a slow moving activity, and part of the joy is tinkering with this-and-that to minimize your drag in the water and maximize your propulsion without overpowering the vessel. With Janet on board to counterbalance, the boat can accept a lot more power.

It ends up becoming a puzzle of studying winds, tides, currents, landform shapes, satellite imagery and mishmashing that data with intuition, dead reckoning, and keeping your partner happy to get where you want to go.

People have traveled and explored this way for so long; it gives me shivers every time i think about the Polynesian boats that our modern plastic machine is modeled after.

Unfortunately, Janet does not share this passion. She enjoyed the previous days, but even though it is warm here (with warm water), she did not enjoy getting splashed and bumped up and down today. We will need to discuss our future goals for the trip on our rest day tomorrow. Today we got stymied by shallows on the East side of our camping island, and had to backtrack to deeper water. Then, when Janet had enough of the splashing, we retreated into a private dock to collect ourselves and for me to do chores and don my rain gear.

Last night on the “houseboat” went well, but not perfectly. The winds picked up last night..20 mph with gusts to 30. A small craft advisory was announced several times by the coast guard. We had tucked into the mangroves, but with the large tent atop our floating platform, we still had a lot of windage – enough to break our little anchor free. So, at 11:30 AM I paddled us towards the mangroves, hoping to NOT see and Aligator’s gleaming eyes. Doing some acrobatics, I managed to tie the bow to a submerged branch, and then set the stern using the anchor. When the tide bottomed out at 3:30AM, we were resting on mud, which increased our stability for the 4 hours before its return at 7:30 AM. I’m definitely going to continue to use the “big tent” method – and ship home the small tents. It was so much more comfortable by comparison.

From there, Janet got to relax because the rest of the day, we sailed a “broad reach,” which is probably the driest, fastest, and quietest points of sail. We made good time, listened to “the Hail Mary Project” (in Spanish because that is the only version we could get from the library). We listened to some Reggaeton and I boogied on the paddle boards and took a few swims.

At the end of the day, we arrived in Biscayne National Park. Another national park that I hadn’t heard of until starting this trip. The ranger let us stay for free. I think we get a lot of extra leeway being on this boat – which I don’t feel guilty about… we aren’t making lots of engine noise or scaring wildlife with propellers… just our two little flippers under the hull, and the ocasional fluttering sail.

Once the wind had subsided to a reasonable level, we set sail – straight into the wind again. You guys know I’m more of a “human powered” kind of guy, but I feel like the wind kinda owes me something after years of fighting headwinds on a bike. So, guilt free, we tacked and pedaled into the wind as best we could. It took 2 hours to go 5 miles in the intended direction. We covered nearly 8 miles in the process.

Upon arrival at Boca Chita, we were continually amazed. It is this tiny island with no water or electricity, but a great harbor where people come (usually on weekends) to dock and camp. Happily, only 2 boats were here when we arrived. Our diminutive boat attracts attention, and a guy named Sebastian came over saying that he had a folding boat too – a Corsair – except his weighs a few thousand pounds. No hand launching off beaches like we do, but he can go faster than us (under sail). I wish our little boat could go a little faster, but I like that it is small, maneuverable, and exempt from some of the issues encountered by larger boats such as going under bridges, fitting into narrow channels, getting mired in sand, etc. There was a nice catamaran parked in the harbor – surely a million plus buckaroos… but hey, we’re all looking at the same sunset!

Janet waked to the grocery store 1.4 miles each way, while I tended to drying clothes, making sure everything was ship shape, and charging our batteries. Unfortunately, Janet lost her precious prescription sunglasses somewhere during the shopping. 😞

Meanwhile, I paid the anchor fee to the iron ranger. I was plugged into an outlet when a woman drove up in a white pickup.

“You no using the electricity here! Did you pay to be here?” She said.

I said, “yes, I’m paid. I figured it was okay to use this outlet because it is right here and I paid to stay.”

“You all are ‘living the life,’ meanwhile the park has to pay for the electricity!” She said indignantly.

I replied, “I’m charging my phone, what’s that cost – 2 cents? I paid more than that t stay here!”

She kind of made a huff and then answered her phone and drove away.

Bienvenidos a Miami!

As I waited, people came to take photos of the boat – or of themselves with the boat. In spite of that, people were quite matter-of-fact no matter what I told them… that we slept on the boat, or of my dream to sail to the Bahamas.

Janet returned – I had been hoping we could do a romantic dinner out, but we prioritized anchoring in the mangroves because another Northerly is coming in a few hours.

We slept in the harbor and the boat didn’t drift, which was good… but I prefer being in a more natural setting. We did meet a woman named Christin who we geeked out with about boat stuff. I’ve learned a lot recently, but when you talk to people who have been living this life for a long time, you learn quite a bit more – quickly. For example, she informed us about an app called “freebie” – it is basically a free Uber. It is paid for by the local cities and advertising. People use it so they don’t have to walk to the store like Janet did yesterday.

Speaking of yesterday, I went back to all the stores that Janet had visited when she lost her sunglssses. I had no luck finding them.

By the way, people told me they spoke more Spanish in Miami than in Mexico. I thought that was a joke, but it is actually truth. I’ve spoken with several cashiers since the start of this trip, always starting out in English… but they often don’t understand me or speak English themselves… so we go to Spanish instead. In California, we have a lot of Spanish, but people are bilingual, meaning there is really no point to speak Spanish; often their English is perfect.

I ended up buying Janet a $10 pair of sunglasses to replace her prescription reader sunglasses that were “muy caras.” And left my phone number with a few cashiers just in case they turned up.

When we got to Virginia Key, we found a great beach for camping and paddle boarding. I told Janet it was perfect! But then we discovered that this spot is inhabited by ferocious raccoons – who have no fear. I’ve been trying to scare them away for quite a while now. There always has to be some strife in life. 😤

Our other issue, the raccoons, finally abated after I flipped one over inside the trash can and let him do a little penance in there before letting him out. Shhh, don’t tell Janet that I’m mean to raccoons.

We knew today was going to be a great one, and we broad reached/ran with the wind. I had been thinking that a natural setting was my favorite place to sail, but the constant change of the city skyline definitely kept things interesting. Sailing was easy and fun; Janet controlled the boat for a lot of it.

We landed on a “spoil island.” No, this isn’t a place to take your grandkids, it is an artificial land built up from the stuff they dredge to make the channel that we are sailing. The island had lots of coconuts – I spent a lot of time opening several rotten ones, but scored 4 good ones. Janet even partook in the fresh coconut water.

We arrived at Oleta Park, the largest natural area within a city in Florida. It is nice and we continue to feel like we are “in nature” – though I see that ending soon.

Tonight we are at an official campsite for kayakers, meaning hot showers and we treated ourselves to those cheap little plastic bottles of wine; one each.

She replied right away and sent her wife (the actual owner of the bike) to meet us at the Anne Kolbe Nature Preserve – we had been planning to land there anyway to see the nature exhibits.

The woman who arrived was named Tara, and she was from Palo Alto, ironically. We had the same 650 prefix to our phone numbers. She and her wife work delivering boats. For example, say a person wants to sail around the Bahamas, but they don’t want to deal with the crossing. Tara or her wife will take the boat out there for them. They are quite busy doing this boat moving.

And i got my bike! It is HEAVY compared to my Dahon. But the main thing is that it fits on board. Literally – on the paddle board.

In the nature center, Janet told the woman about the Iguanas we have been seeing.

“Yeah, they were in the trees? That’s good. Means it is warm. When it is cold, they just fall out of the trees. That’s our weather report in South Florida- means it’s cold and people pull out their parkas and winter gear.”

She laughed, but Janet and I saw people wearing pretty heavy winter coats (like in a New York winter) when it dropped down to 55F.

This stretch is devoid of legal camping, and since we had just endured a rain squall, I suggested to Janet we camp early – I had seen a place where it looked like the land met the water in a secluded spot on the Satellite. We went down this very shallow and narrow channel – only to find that the boat landing was about 1 or 2 feet of mud. If I had a plank, I could have made a gangway to go from the boat to the great campsite. We struggled to orient the boat in the narrow channel (so it would not get washed away by the tide). In the end, we gave up and found another secluded spot that is much better for us. Camping is hard enough in urban areas when you’re on a bike… trying to find a place to sleep with a boat makes it more challenging!

Thanks for reading. When I talked to Tara, I told her that Janet was worried about the crossing to the Bahamas.

“Go on the summer!” She said. “The water is so flat then, it looks like CGI”

“But aren’t there hurricanes then,” I asked…

“Yeah. Don’t go when there is a hurricane. But they predict those a couple weeks out. We took a boat out there recently, and there was some swell. But in the summer, it is no problem.”

This corroborated with my research. All summer long (even when there were nearby hurricanes) I saw days that met all of my crossing criteria for safety – days that looked easier than even the Catalina crossing we did this fall. However since I have been looking this winter, I’ve only see maybe two days that have met my stringent criteria to cross.

Since Janet doesn’t want to go to the Bahamas (including the option of me sailing there and she flying to meet me and then sail the shallow waters), I’ve decided to postpone the Bahamas trip. In the end, I think that the ICW will be more interesting anyway… but I still dream of long crossing and exploring far away places like the Polynesians did so many years ago on boats that looked quite a bit like the little Red Lobster.

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Why would someone choose to spend money on an enormous yacht that has a little “bat cave” on the side with another boat (larger than ours) tucked away inside at water level? Why would someone spend so much money on a house that is so big, Janet and I keep asking ourselves, “wait… is that a hotel? Or a house?”

Why would someone purchase life-size statues of kids playing in the front yard and a corresponding statue of a dog and a man fishing with his child?

Today we passed by cruise ships with elaborate balconies and dozens of high rise condos, each with their own fancy looking balcony with a bistro set. The perfect place to enjoy a morning cup of coffee.

The only thing is, we can see all 240 balconies on each complex… and each time, there is maybe 1 or 2 people enjoying this decadent view of the waterfront.

Being practical in nature, to me, all of this stuff seems excessive. What I mean is, after you reach a certain point of happiness from life, you can’t get any more happy by having all of these fancy things. Something like a balcony overlooking the waterfront may seem exotic to me, but once you live in a place like that for a while, it probably becomes mundane enough that you end up like the other 238 people who don’t venture out to their balconies any more.

I’m not complaining or judging, but I can’t help but feel like sometimes people have so much money, they ask themselves, “what should I do with all this money?” In these cases, it seems as if the answer is “buy more showy stuff.”

Still fresh in my mind are the scenes I saw last year on the other side of the Atlantic. What would they do if they encountered such wealth? Maybe the same thing. Perhaps the peacock lives inside all of us, waiting for the opportunity to let the feathers fluff out.

🦚

It was an ebb tide and we knew that the exit channel was particularly narrow. Millions of gallons of water were exiting, making it into a fast moving river. The waves were small, but lots of confused water that we used to call “potato patch” back in our kayak days. It’s the kind of water that would have terrified Janet in her kayak, but now that she has gotten more experience in the Hobie TI, she didn’t even scream once.

Out in the ocean, the seas were confused, but I had seen on my weather app that the Gulf Stream comes very close to shore here. In fact, the Stream was moving North at 2kt, meaning that if we simply drifted, we would go almost as fast as pedaling – for free. We aimed for the deeper water and achieved long periods of 5kt – on a relaxing downwind run. We delighted in watching flying fish from every angle, glinting in the angled sun light.

Janet took the controls several times so I could attend to eating and injections. Our rudder controls are unified, so I could feel her adjustments to the rudder, and I noticed that she is naturally getting a feel for how to adjust the rudder subtly to maintain speed while not falling off course. Also, even when 3 feet of chop came at us from every which way, she didn’t scream. Janet may be coming to love the freedom of the sea too now!
💞

Afterwards, I paddled closer to other rocks to see more fish. That turned out to be a bad move. Later, when I was cleaning the paddle board, I heard that noise you hear when you put your inner tube in water to find the hole. quite a bit of air was escaping from a long slit i had cut in the paddleboard when i got caught on rocks. i had foolishly tried to force myself over, somehow forgetting that the paddleboard is not invincible.

we had searched for PVC cement at Walmart near key Largo, but i finally gave up thinking that one of our other adhesives would work. as such, i used the 3M 5000 Marine adhesive. fingers crossed that it can handle the 15 psi i plan to pump in tomorrow. feeling kinda dumb for not getting the proper cement because we rely heavily on these paddle boards!

also, today during our walk, Janet slipped and cut her leg. its cut about as much as the paddleboard, but doesn't require finding a store for the healing to begin.

“The houses between fixed bridges are a lot less expensive than the ones with draw bridges. It’s so people can have their super yachts.”

Indeed, Janet and I had noticed stark contrasts in the neighborhoods; now we knew why.

In South Florida, nearly everyone who operated a cash register spoke Spanish. Now, further North, almost all of the employees in 4 out of the 5 stores were black. It is interesting to see the culture change so quickly when it feels like we are moving so slowly.

And slow it was! Not only were we sailing into a 20kt headwind, but also fighting a magnificent current. It is easier to predict winds than currents in restricted water ways. If I had paid more attention to the tides, I might have figured out that it was going to be a doozie.. but what can you do? It takes 6 hours for the current to change.

We took an “emergency landing” at a marina for non-motorized boats and are camping in a “natural area”. We took several breaks today. The houses aren’t quite as fancy on the East side of the waterfront, and coincidentally, they’re a lot more friendly to people like us with beaches and parks where we can land instead of super yachts and signs warning about surveillance cameras protecting the vacant 30 bedroom, 7,000 sf homes.

A final, more important use of the VHF: A person can issue a “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” call, which means “Help me!!” It’s actually from French, “M’aide” (help me) … and we still use that today.

Anyway, because we monitor, we got to Eavesdrop on 1/2 a conversation yesterday. We can only hear the coast guard side because they broadcast with MEGAWATTS, whereas regular people like us have 5 Watts and little antenna.

Even being able to only hear half the conversation, we learned yesterday that a woman called for help because her husband had fallen overboard their white sailing vessel with blue trim named “Logan Gale”. I could tell that she was panicking by the way the coast guard spoke to her (and the fact that they didn’t have her switch to another channel, suggesting that they didn’t think she knew how to operate the radio very well). They were only about 10 miles North of us, and the concept is that boats in the vicinity should come help first if they can get there before the Coast Guard. Nearby, but too far for us to go help in a reasonable amount of time.

The Coast Guard dispatched a boat (they kept reassuring her). Janet and I were worried that this guy might be a goner. He’s overboard and she can’t seem to do anything about it. I started to imagine them as an older couple, even though I could only hear the coast guard. They did confirm everything she said by repeating it-helping us garner details.

Anyway, after about half an hour of updates, they released a “Pom Pom… to cancel the Pom Pom – the captain is now safe on board.” Janet and I cheered them yesterday And we were happy it all worked out.

This morning, as we continued North, guess what the first boat we saw was? The Logan Gale! On board, an older couple who still looked a little frazzled (they seemed to stumble over each other on deck) – but they managed to wave to us as I was telling Janet, “That’s the boat from yesterday!!” The guy looked like he was OK… but neither of them were wearing life jackets.

Speaking of waving, we wave to people who pass us (unless they “wake” us, in which case I retract 3 fingers and my thumb for the wave as Janet sits silently). Anyway today Janet waved at a guy sitting on the porch. He didn’t wave back. That was because he was another one of those life size, realistic statues that people have put in the yards of their vacant vacation homes. We laughed at that one.

Janet continues to be a toughie. I admire her for putting up with some of the challenges of this new style of travel. For one, we risk getting wet at inopportune moments, such as when a boat is in a hurry to get somewhere, and they decide that we happen to have picked the shortest point between their current position and their destination. Another challenge is the lack of places to easily camp. Tonight we had to really search for a beach that would stay dry with the rising tide. She helps to get the boat far enough out of the water – tonight 3 vertices feet up the beach. She also manages the no-see-ums, which thankfully cannot get inside the tent. I will tell you, though, don’t bother buying Permethrin. We soaked the tent with it on day 1, and that doesn’t change anything.

We are considering shipping home the wheeled cart. The boat is just too heavy for us to really get the cart underneath. I had envisioned portaging in the Bahamas across the narrow islands.. but here it seems best to leave the boat in the water, or drag it short distances on the sand.

Made 17 miles good with 24 miles of sailing (tacking all day).

This is our third day of sailing directly into the wind. That isn’t so bad, though, it’s the current that grinds us to a halt or pushes us into a dock with a moment of inattention. I feel like we’re good at this kind of thing, but we definitely make a lot of mistakes.

Today, Janet’s drive got stuck in reverse. I haven’t been able to fix the complex mechanism, so we just put it aside and she either balanced the boat by sitting out (while we were sailing)… or she paddled when the wind was light.

We saw heavy weather coming on our radar, and sprinted full-bore… about 3.5 mph away from it. We had hoped to camp at various spots, but FINALLY we arrived at a fine drainage pipe in a lee, and that looked like the best place we had seen to camp in several miles.

We are being challenged to find even illegal camping.

We hurried to set up the tent as light sprinkles diluted our salty skin. We dove into the tent, right as the rain picked up. At least we nailed that one!

Inside the big tent, we cooked dinner, drank wine, and looked at our phones for a hotel. We will be needing a hotel soon because 50mph winds are predicted in a few days. That is unsafe for camping, let alone being on the water. The challenge is: how and where to get the boat out of the water within carting proximity of the room? We usually love spontaneously, but we will be working hard on planning for this weather event.

Last night, as Janet read to me in the tent, I began the tedious procedure of disassembling the Hobie Mirage Drive, making a puddle on the floor of the steamy tent. Out plopped an undisclosed number nylon roller bearings; I had no guide on how to repair it, and I was just winging it. I completely disassembled the spline mechanism, and after cleaning the spring that controls the retractor, I pondered how to get the bearings back in there. Some had disappeared into remote parts of the assembly. I counted 27 bearings at one point. That meant at least one was missing (odd number), and then I found two more inside the shaft. That meant there was still one missing! I finally settled on a total of 30 bearings, assuming 15 each side. We used silicone grease to “glue” them to the sides, Janet holding everything just-so as I delicately placed each cylinder using our headlamps. We eventually had a working drive again!! This made me so happy!

Today we hit our fastest speeds ever of 8.4 knots, yet due to the quartering seas, it was relaxing enough that Janet and I took turns reading to each other from Ray Jardine’s travel journals. (P.S. Ray Jardine is the guy who invented rock climbing’s “friends” – camming devices that you put into cracks instead of driving bolts for protection). Ray is an adventurer for sure, and even though he became wealthy from his invention, he continues to travel using modest means. We particularly appreciate the intrepidness of “early” explorers (we are reading his 1977 Baja kayaking reports), as we realize that they didn’t have the benefit of satellite communications, cell phones, AIS, satellite maps, reliable tide app specific to your location, GPS with depth maps, high tech clothing, well designed watercraft, etc).

We made such great time but stopped early to set up camp and dry our stuff. Everything except the toilet paper was soaked from last night.

We are now on a legal for camping spoil island named “IR25”. It is fantastic to attend to our gear and not be worried about getting kicked out on an island where we can knot be found. 😊

In the middle of the night, Janet called out, “BRIAN! Did you just call me?” I had been fast asleep, so I assured her that I hadn’t planned on calling out her name, but maybe I talked in my sleep? Janet was already back asleep before I could work out what had happened with her. Meanwhile, I was up for an hour, fretting about every noise I hear on our little clandestine island. Was someone on the island? No, just us.

We expected a tailwind, but received our wind on the beam instead. That was good enough for us. The amazing thing about sailing is that you want wind. Almost any direction is acceptable except an “on the nose” headwind. After 3 weeks on the boat, Janet walks around confidently on the surface, and rarely screams anymore when the boat heels over during a gust. This has given me the confidence to push the boat a little harder. In spite of that, the gusts were so strong today that this is the first time I furled the sail for my sake, not hers.

When cycling, I tend to think of wind as this monotonous flow of air against me, but in sailing, you quickly realize how fickle this enigmatic force can be. In the span of a minute, you can have a blow so strong that you think your mast might break… only to find yourself completely becalmed and having to work up a sweat by pedaling.

Honestly, I love it. On the water, your mind is constantly engaged, playing this game with the wind. One moment, you’re trying to extract every ounce of energy you can from it. The next, you’re trying to sluff off excess power as quickly as possible. There is no time to be bored or depressed at the fact that even the inside your bellybutton is soaking wet.

Janet had discovered a well rated hotel near the water on Booking. I made a reservation online, but almost canceled it because the public boat ramp was a mile walk away and the listing did not mention that they had laundry.

Since sailing was fast today, we took the chance and sailed to right in front of the hotel. Guess what? They have their own beach/dock! We spent the necessary time to disassemble and fold the boat, load it onto our cart, and ride it over to the hotel, only a few hundred feet away. We rejoiced in the serendipity of it all.

It’s been a hard 3 weeks, but I enjoy these types of challenges. I don’t like challenges because they are hard or suffering, but because I feel like whenever we are faced with adversity, we get a little bit more skilled overcoming problems. This makes us better at handling life in general. Cuz let’s face it, “real” life eventually hands out a lot of challenges. ☔️ …. 🌈

3.5 days of rest before we jump back in!

We knew that today’s weather would be questionable, but we were anxious to get back on the water after spending 5 nights indoors. We started from the beach, unassuming, but as soon as we got past the dock, it became apparent that the frigid North wind was going to blow any fun out of the day. For the previous 3 weeks, I had tromped around with bare feet, happily taking cold water showers. Today, my bare feet were ice cold and we were wearing the wetsuits for the first time on the trip.

I asked Janet if we could land on an atoll and put some plastic bags on my feet. But when we landed, we considered the options. Should we continue? I’m afraid not.

Instead, it seemed like a better idea to just spend another night. We were only just over a mile from where we had started sailing.

But that is how it goes sometimes, and when you consider all of the alternative scenarios in life, this still sounds pretty good. For example, we met “Bob” this morning. He was walking a dog and like so many other people, he couldn’t resist the ice breaker that is our little boat.

Eventually we learned that he is a volunteer dog walker for the “no kill dog shelter” we had walked past several times on our way to the grocery store. He was walking a pit bull. He explained:

“This is a ‘bait dog’ – when they have dog fights, these are the dogs they throw in to get things started.”

“Isn’t that illegal here,” I asked.

“Well, it is supposed to be! These dogs come to the shelter, and guess what, one just got adopted last week! They’re a huge liability, though… you need to have LOTS of land around you with one of these puppies.”

I liked Bob and couldn’t help but notice how well behaved the Pit Bull on the other end of his leash was.

“They give me the bait dogs because they think I can control them, but honestly, I can’t.”

He encouraged us to sail all the way to Annapolis because “it’s the sailing capital of the world.” He had a passion for sailing himself… and now that I too have that passion, I can see how it makes you feel; even if you get squashed by weather day after day.

Given the choice, though, I’d rather be waiting out weather than be reincarnated as a “bait dog” waiting to get adopted. 🐶

Being wet in 49F air isn’t comfortable, but as the day went on, we eventually took off our multiple layers of clothing. I even doffed my wetsuit mid day.

Eager for nautical miles, we decided to pass up the legal campsite we came to at noon. We knew the next legal spot was too far away to reach by evening, so we decided to chance it and use satellite to find places we might be able to hide for the night.

I don’t really enjoy doing that. On a bicycle, we are almost always successful in finding a little hide-a-way – even in fairly urban areas. But trying to find a hiding spot from the water? Nearly impossible with our limited range. We decided to just chance it in a city park. There are people here, but you know how it is when you see homeless people, right? You just walk to the other side of the street or try not to make eye contact, right?

“I gotta take a shi*,” one guy kept calling out to the other guy, who was presumably back on his boat. This yelling was only a few feet from our tent, so it woke us up.

I think he finally gave up on communicating with the guy on the boat and went off to the bathrooms. When guy #2 made it to shore, he was a little grumpy that “take a shi*” guy had left his little dinghy in the way of his beach parking spot.

“F*** it! I’ll walk in the go*dam* water,” he grumbled.

“Hey, where are you?”

He never heard that the other guy was going to go 💩 …

But the rest of today was pretty much the reason you take these kinds of trips.

The morning was saturated with wildlife – birds diving everywhere, and multiple pods of dolphins in their feeding frenzies 360 degrees around us. We stopped and drifted while I stood atop the paddle boards for a better view.

We would also spend most of the day just South of thousands of ducks. Each time we got closer, they would fly a few hundred feet North, land in the water and wait to take off again the next time we tacked by.

Mid-day, we considered ending on Rockledge Island. There we met Matt and Doug who were interested in what we were doing – and offered advice on how to view a SpaceX launch.

“Yeah, 80% of SpaceX launches happen right here!”

I told him that the other 20% must be happening down by where we live, then, because we have seen several out of Vandenburg.

They looked it up: “Yeah, there is a launch tomorrow at 3:30 PM. I heard the Amazon rocket going off. They are making their own competing product with Starlink. It woke me up because there were two sonic booms. It shakes the whole house.”

Guess they have earthquakes in Florida after all. Add that to your list of potential East Coast natural disasters.

We sailed into the headwind all day, but we are listening to Andy Weir’s “Hail Mary Project,” which is turning out to be a really good book. We could not find it for free in English, but managed to get it in Spanish. This makes it additionally engaging, so time on the boat is really enjoyable.

⛵️

Later, as we crossed the bay to pick up groceries, a favorable breeze carried us toward a landing—but not before we passed a looming power plant. It was here that I noticed shadows moving beneath the surface and asked Captain Janet to adjust our course.

Gliding closer, we found ourselves amidst a gathering of manatees, but the encounter was far from serene. Startled by our presence, one manatee’s panic rippled through the group, setting off a chaotic frenzy. The once-still water churned violently, and heavy thuds bumped our boat’s underbelly as the massive creatures collided with the hull. Our vessels weight matches that of an adult manatee, and at that moment it felt like the plastic toy held together by rubber bands that it is. The manatees had been relaxing in the effluvium from the power plant – a manatee jacuzzi.

While thrilling, the experience left me pondering… I couldn’t shake the irony; how we live in an upside down world. We must now seek “wild” animals in the most unnatural places. To see manatees, we follow the outflow of a power plant. To glimpse condors, we scatter carrion. The best place to find a bear? In a dumpster or maybe having broken through a window into someone’s house. The wild has not necessarily disappeared, but so much of it has been displaced. Is it still wild, or is it like much of the rest of our lives – tamed and largely under human control?

We headed straight for Merrit Island National Wildlife Refuge. I had seen a route called “Black Point Wildlife Drive” on the map. Janet would bravely stand atop the folding bike’s rack and hold onto my shoulders as I pedaled us down a few miles of road to the place where we thought we might see an animal we hadn’t seen yet in Florida.

We made it to the trail and we took turns riding / walking / running. It was a great trail, and we continued to see an abundance of wildlife: Great Blue Herons, Killdeer, Snowy Egrets, Spoonbills, Arctic Terns, Pelicans, Ducks, Osprey, and Dolphins… but we still had been missing a sighting of a certain large Florida reptile that we can’t see at home.

Eventually, we had to turn back. We were happy to have done the trail. We hadn’t achieved our objective of seeing that long chomping reptile, but I consoled myself by remembering how I wanted this to “happen organically.” We could certainly go to a place like a zoo where you can see animals that you’re targeting, but “failure” is actually part of the fun! Janet climbed back on top of the bike and we were riding the 2.5 miles of pavement back to the boat when suddenly out of the corner of my eye, i spotted a very long and scaly organism. We had to slow down gradually so Janet wouldn’t fly over my head – and by the time we ran back to the sighting spot, only a tail was visible. But now we were alerted, and next thing you know, I spoted more alligators in a nearby roadside pool! Janet and I headed in on foot, elated to see 4 gators! American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis as identified by ChatGPT using my photo). We got as close as we felt comfortable and were overjoyed to have had the experience. I did note the irony (again). We had spent quite a while at the National Wildlife Refuge… only to spot them along the roadside. But oh well, this is wild life in 2025!

We met some cool people along the way (Deb, Dianne, and Angie (pictured)) who told us that the pink birds we had seen were Roseate Spoonbills. I had been thinking, “they are pink, but don’t look like Flamingos”.

We also met Mike and Sally, a couple in their 60s escaping frozen Michigan for a short vacation. Mike, a farmer, had once taken Sally on a trip to California, which sounds great—until you find out the vacation was to the Central Valley… because you know: Farms. Sally, to her credit, went along with it. Later, Mike redeemed himself a bit: “Well we went to Napa too.” 🍷

The rest of the day was on a high from the fun interactions, great weather, and cool wildlife sightings. A++ !

Everything is flat in Florida, yes, but here is a huge hill now named “Turtle Mound” that was built by the Timucua people, a Native American group that inhabited the region for thousands of years. The mound is made primarily of oyster shells, discarded over centuries, forming a massive shell midden that rises about 50 feet high, making it one of the tallest shell middens in North America. It looks like a turtle from a certain angle, hence the name.

We meet plenty of folks when we come ashore; the typical refrain is them telling us how many feet of snow there are back home. Florida has been introducing us to much of middle-America.

Speaking of ‘Merica, get out your temporary markers, as the “gulf of Mexico” was just renamed to the “gulf of America.” That happened just a few days ago.

Last night, Janet pointed out some possible concerns.

“Mayday! My boat sank in the gulf of America, please come help me,” Janet joked.

“Where the F*** is the gulf of America?” The other person in the tent thought.

Good thing we have made it further North on the “Indian River” – we are almost done with that. Hoping it’s still called “New Mexico” on our drive home, though.

Oh yeah, the quarter…. We decided to splurge and treat ourselves to a shared Diet Coke. Janet went inside the government trinket sales shop to see if she could get some quarters because the machine outside wouldn’t accept paper dollar bills.

“That machine is operated by a concessionaire. We can’t give you change for it.”

Janet said, “if I buy something, can I have change?”

“Yes. If you want, we have cans of water over there that you can buy,” she replied snippily.

They also had one of those fountains with a digital counter that optimistically counts how many bottles of water it has saved, and decided to use that to fill our waterskins instead.

Well the coke machine ended up swallowing our quarter, but like the Fox and the Grapes, I’m sure we feel better now without the Diet Coke in our bloodstreams. So while past-me was disappointed, currrent-me feels better as a result. Thanks, American government!

For example, if you are 6 miles South of an inlet, and your highest tide at your position happens at 9AM, you would THINK that the current also turns around at 9AM… but that isn’t exactly how it works. The water has a sort of inertia, kind of like pushing on a string. A bolus of water is still flowing in – even after the highest tide – even though the water doesn’t rise higher, the flow is still inbound. The same delayed reaction happens on the opposite end.

When you have power (either through pedal, sail, or motor), you can potentially overcome a certain degree of current. In our situation today, though, the speed of the current matched our pedaling ability of about 4mph. We don’t have a motor, and the wind was very light and straight on the nose.

Since we had so little brawn, we had to scrape by on what little brain power we had.

We did a short jaunt from our camp to the nearby park. Janet walked in search of a closed coffee shop while I attended to rudder repair. The sun felt great, and this killed enough time that I could see the boats anchored by their bow just barely starting to turn 180 degrees – in our favor.

The problem was that once we reached the inlet, a favorable current would suddenly be unfavorable as a river of water flowed the opposite direction once we passed the inlet.

We experienced a few shallows as the water went away. I coerced Janet into taking an extended lunch break to wait out the flow. I promised her we would be flying along at 5MPH if we waited until 3:30 PM.

We had an enjoyable lunch and then walked to explore the nearby trails and lighthouse. It was fun. But when we got back to the boat, the river of water was still against us, albeit not as strongly.

I know the water will turn eventually… but now we were jeopardizing the opportunity of finishing before dark. We got in and pedaled, also trying to make the most of a few wisps of wind that drove us towards the planned campsite.

I really enjoy the science and planning of it all. I just wish that nature worked better with the typical diurnal mammals sleep/wake schedule. We landed just before dark. Our routine and teamwork has improved over the past month, so we got our camp set up as efficiently as ever. The good news is that tomorrow, we have power from the South. That means we can make a big leap through a section that is mostly houses again – into a more natural section. Also, there are constrictions in the waterway, and the next inlet isn’t for 48 miles. I predict that this means softening currents and less dramatic tidal ranges (so there won’t be long portages from boat to camp). There is so much to think about each day, it is quite stimulating for the mind.

We stopped twice to check out parks. The first park didn’t have much, but the second was a state park and we briefly wandered on a nature trail. I took a rapid shower too. As we were leaving, a man at the dock next to us was loading his two small dogs onto his Jetski. We watched as he prepared a foam pad for his pets.

He looked at our boat and said, “A Hobie!”

Then he continued, “You know, Mr. Hobie was NOT a dog lover.”

Janet and I must have looked perplexed. Maybe he knew Mr. Hobie personally?

He continued, “Because Hobie Cat!”

Haha, nice “dad joke”….

Janet made a comment about his dogs being cute.

“Yeah, I met these dogs at the laboratory.”

Now we were more confused.

“That was another joke…” he said.

Was this a joke related to Trump saying that immigrants in Ohio ate dogs? My neurons fired on all cylinders an attempt to make sense of this second joke, but I didn’t have time because he fired off ‘sommore self-proclaimed humor before zooming away on his jet ski.

And now I have another reason to keep our distance from jet skis.

Because Janet and I have done so many bike trips, we have practically become “experts.” This applies to every aspect of bicycle touring, but let’s use campsite selection as an example: We know how to select a good campsite to the Nth degree – taking into account every aspect of our surroundings: Is there a limb overhead that might fall? How well does the soil drain, and is there a slope? Which way is the wind blowing? Are there nearby sprinklers that might come in at night? Is there evidence of critters, and if so, which food protection strategy do we need to use? Can you smell water nearby? Where will the sun rise in the morning? All of this comes so naturally now, that we can glance at a spot quickly and assess it’s worth as a place to spend one night. We practically do all of this analysis subconsciously. We don’t always get it right, but we regularly do a lot better than we used to.

The same applies to other elements of touring: bike repair, route planning, route timing, grocery store selection, how to pack stuff, battery charging, water acquisition, etc. a lot has become “instinctual”. The good of that is that we have more good times than ever thanks to our planning. The bad is that it isn’t quite so novel or mentally stimulating.

While there is some overlap with bike touring when you’re traveling on a sailing kayak, there are a lot of new elements at play. We have learned a lot, but even after a month, we are still making adjustments to how we do things and changing our routines slightly each day. It’s a way of finding out what works and what doesn’t.

I love the feeling of “optimization”. For example, it makes me feel really happy to be charging all of our devices “in parallel” and while Janet manages the charging, I ride the bike to grab groceries. It’s like we are making the best of our limited presence on this earth to spend as little time doing the rote stuff… leaving time to do the stuff we want to be doing – like sailing, reading to each other, basking in the sun, eating a take-out lunch together, or sharing a Michelob Ultra inside the tent.

To the same degree that I get happy from optimization, I get saddened by waste. An example of waste is trying to sail upwind, upcurrent in a channel that is barely wide enough to tack with boat wakes coming every few minutes. But here is the deal: It doesn’t HAVE to be that way…

And so we stopped, took a break, and worked with (instead of against) the rhythms of nature. We sat down and ordered cheeseburgers from a BBq joint and sat and waited out the current shift. When we got back on the water, instead of fighting it, we were getting a heavenly lift.

We still learn each day, but we get better at parking the boat, packing our stuff, keeping things dry (and acquiescing to sodden clothes instead of fighting it when the dew point is 70F).

And we are still far from perfect. For example, today we went to launch the boat. As we both heaved and ho’d- dragging the boat DOWN to the water, I said to Janet:

“gee.. I think that all of this dragging has not only increased our boat’s friction in the water (from micro scratches), but also in the sand. We can’t even get this downhill!”

Eventually, the boat wouldn’t budge!

Finally I realized: I had tied the boat to the tent last night as a security measure to prevent it from drifting away. We had uprooted the tent, its stakes, and dragged it a few feet until it was caught, taut, on some roots and branches. DOH!!

Still learning, sometimes good, but yeah, not always!

The hotel rooms are situated on a beach that overlooks the ICW… so we just landed on the beach and parked the boat in front of our room. It was that easy.

The manager was very gracious, cracking jokes with me, and then telling about his own kayak journey across Lake Erie. Then he came back later and handed Janet a bottle of wine “on the house.” We washed everything and Janet kindly washed the laundry.

So we are still having a good time, in spite of being trapped inside of 4 walls!

We started in a decent fog, and I was happy that we had the AIS. In fact, yesterday I had read that while on the ICW, you should monitor channel 13 in addition to channel 16, so I set the VHF to scan an additional channel.

Sure enough, we were privy to more conversations – people calling out to others, “I’m going to pass you,” and maybe some snarky replies like, “ok, I’ll move out of the way for when your wake hits me.”

We even got a call, “Hey Red Lobster, this is Grateful,” as they passed us really close on our starboard side. Like so many other people, the woman was taking photos of our boat. Janet was gleeful that our AIs beacon was working. I was gleefull she she said, “it would be fun to take a class” (as in a radio operators class). Wow, I need to tell Rick Nancy Prier !

Even though we were getting more communication via this additional channel, some people still contacted us the old fashioned way. A party boat with 6 people pulled up alongside us.

“Have you guys been drinking?”

He paused for the punchline…

“Because you’re all over the place!”

Then they zoomed off. It’s true- we were tacking into a headwind and zig-zagging all over the channel.

Speaking of tacking, I want to make something clear: Janet and I are extracting power from our sail about 95% of the time. It turns out that is a lot because I would say that 99% of the sailboats that we see moving are using motor. What this means is that people dream of buying a sailboat, but when they get it, they probably discover how difficult it is to manage the sails. In the end, they have a motorboat with a tall mast that means they have to radio to have all the drawbridges open. It makes me sad to see so many sailboats motoring, but we have seen a few under sail at least… but just a few. This is a big benefit of the small boat; deploying and furlong our sail just take a few seconds.

Today was pretty much perfect conditions. We went from one inlet to another. The it was a flood tide, so we rode that from the first inlet for about 15 miles. Then we hit a bit of tidal doldrums in the middle (the halfway-ish point between the inlets). By this time, the tide was starting to ebb, and as we got closer to the Northern inlet, we got another push out! Besides that, today was a great day for weather and scenery and traffic. Happy times!

When the current reversed on us, we stopped – hoping to rode it as far as it will take us tomorrow as well. It can go really fast in this region. This was good time; we got chores done and had fun working on a surprise for someone.

I feel like Janet and I are getting more accustomed to being we or stepping in mud. Honestly, I don’t think much of it anymore, whereas when we started this trip, I would try to avoid that kind of stuff. I certainly have changed; not sure about Janet.

We decided to try something new: staying in a marina and sleeping on the boat. We had slept at anchor, toed to mooring buoys, and tied to mangroves, but we haven’t tried sleeping tied up to a dock.

It turns out that is a lot more social because other boats are tied up to the same platform. I selected our neighbors based on the size of their boat – hoping we would be in their lee. Dot came out right away to talk to us, and her husband Wolfgang eagerly emerged and told us about his bike trip on Camino Santiago. He had a high quality, old school bike, but you might not know it at first if you saw all of the rust. I got the feeling that they were eager to talk to someone other than each other 😉

I also met a woman named Chris who told us about their trip Southbound on the ICW. They had “fouled their prop” – meaning they got tangled up in those crab traps we showed you a photo of last week. That meant they didn’t have a motor. So they were anchored out and the wind came up at night. This blew them around and they were dragging their anchor. They had to call to come help them for 3 hours in the night. I asked why they didn’t leave, and they couldn’t because the drawbridge didn’t have a person in it… so they were stuck.

Janet and I occasionally get a little jealous of the full size sailboats that pass us, but when you consider the realities, we can take our mast down in 10 seconds, if we get stuck on mud, we push out, our boat can sail as fast (or in these waters, faster) than the other sail boats, if we “foul a prop,” we pull it out and fix it fast, we can maneuver quickly so we are less likely to crash into things… and if we do, it probably wouldn’t harm the other person. Also, we are allowed in places where motors are prohibited.

With all these advantages, we do get some attention. One guy said he wanted to sleep in a tent, and we offered to trade. He kind of disappeared after that. We still have to pay by the foot at this marina. At $2.50 a foot, it’s about $50 for a night, but we had a great shower, Wi-Fi, power, and Janet was eyeing the coffee machine in the air conditioned boater’s lounge. Staying here was Janet’s idea, and it was a good one. Pretty deluxe!!

After coffee and charging in the lounge, we made our way North as the waves picked up. We landed at Clinch State Park to do a short hike. This was the Northern terminus of the Florida Saltwater Circumnavigation Paddling Trail. We did it! Now on to the rest of the ICW.. Georgia.

We saw a sailboat actually sailing on the horizon, and if you’re a cyclist, you probably already know what happens next. You try to race them! Since they were ahead of us, we analyzed their moves and tried to shortcut as much as the wind would allow. We made ground on this Fifty foot boat. But right as we were about to catch them, they turned around. Sly move! It was the rental sailboat that had been parked at the same dock as us last night 😆

Thanks to that boat, though, we had gone down a channel that we had not originally planned. That turned out to be pure serendipity because we landed at Cumberland National Seashore. Wow, a National Park entrance with lots to see. We did a hike together, and because I wanted to see more, I ran further on some other trails. It was exquisite!

We used up the rest of the incoming tide to make it to camp; we were about 45 minutes too late and had to really pump the pedals those last two miles. Excellent campsite once again.

So with that in mind, we set forth on a schedule dictated by the boss. As usual, we are tuned into our VHF, and heard an angry transmission, “you don’t like my wake?! Well if you don’t want to get wet, you shouldn’t have a boat!” When that guy finds out who the real boss is someday, I’m sure he will sound a lot nicer.

We were fortunate to have no wind, so we stopped at another Nature center. This one was run by 4H and oriented towards children, but I called them from the water, asking if it would be fun for adults. The lady on the phone said yes, and that it’s even better if you ask questions (because she loves answering questions). When we arrived, they asked if we were the catamaran that had come into the dock (which was a half mile away). Yes, it was us. After talking to is for a few minutes, she went back into the office and handed us back our entrance fee, “Here. Take this. Spend it somewhere else.”

We made sure to ask lots of questions as they showed us a 5 year old sea turtle in a tank (whom they fed for us to watch). It is sad, but people poach these animals for pets and don’t know how to care for them. Then they need to be rehabilitated so they can (hopefully) be released into the wild.

The feeding was chunks of fish shoved into a conch shell. The turtle repeatedly lifted it and dropped it. After all the fish was out (and eaten), the sea turtle tirelessly continued to play with the shell. A precocious little girl asked, “when he is released into the wild, will he play with empty shells like that?” Good question! Hopefully not!

After that stop, the promised winds were up, and the current would soon turn in our favor. We zoomed to a harbor where they didn’t answer the phone. But it had good reviews on Google.

It looked pretty shady with pretty much no boats there. I went in and found crackers and junk and beer cans strewn about. No one was inside but I later found a man in the parking lot.

“Do you work here?”

“Yes,” he replied. This would be the last time he said that word for a while.

“We are on a sailing kayak, can we spend the night here?”

“No, we don’t do kayaks.”

“Well, it’s kind of a different kind of boat. We can sleep on it.”

“No”

“Can regular boats stay here?”

“No”

“But I saw the sign on the door saying the overnight fees are $20”

“We don’t do overnight. The DNR is all over our ass for that.”

“What is the DNR?”

“Department of Natural Resources”

“Is there anywhere we could camp or sleep near here?”

“No”

“Looks like I’m shit out of luck, huh?”

“Yes.”

I thanked him and headed back to Janet thinking that even though I didn’t have a place for us to sleep tonight, at least I had a story. That ought to be worth something to her, right?

As we were untying the boat, he wandered out and told us we could go around the island and maybe camp. Then he pointed to the public dock at the park just a few hundred feet away.

“You could stay there.”

“Is it legal?”

“Ain’t no one going to come by and monitor that dock.”

So, that’s what we did – parked at the dock and set up camp in the frisbee golf course!

⛳️

The wind was nearly perfect and we had some of our best sailing yet. We stopped over at the Fort Fredericka National Monument. This was just slightly off the panned route.

As the day warmed, I made some last-minute routing decisions, relying on my best guess about how the currents would behave. My predictions were far from perfect, but accurate enough to keep us moving over the currents. Still, I botched one call (there was a possible shortcut across a shallow bay, the tide would have been high enough to sneak through in a straight line). Instead, we followed the deep water channel – the first leg downwind and current, but to get back into the next channel, we had to pedal with everything we had, trying to break free from a brutal headwind and current that felt like climbing a 45 degree ice slope. We’d been using the sail, but the brute-force-head-on-pedal-method turned out to be the only way through.

After that battle, the sailing grew smoother. Eventually, it got so hot, I stripped down and dove in for a swim, something I hadn’t done since the Keys.

Feeling fast and confident, we decided to press on. “If we catch the following current after crossing Sapelo Inlet,” I thought, “we might even reach Saint Catherine’s Beach by 5 p.m.” That would be a huge day, but might as well get it while you can. Janet was up for this ambitious plan.

We cruised along under the warm sun, the tailwind steady and comforting—until suddenly, we spotted dark clouds gathering ahead. The forecast had promised nothing serious, but we didn’t trust it. We suited up: rain gear, life jackets. A thin layer of tension settled over us.

In a moment, it hit. A raging wind slammed into us—straight from the opposite direction. As if on cue, the rudder cable pulled loose, just like it had on day two. The boat careened towards the opposite shore of the narrow channel, the fierce, dark sky shoving us straight toward shore.

We’d already been scouting for a campsite, but around here, “shore” means ankle-deep mud coated with sharp oyster shells. Climb the sharp ridge of shells, and on the other side you find more mud, tangled with stubborn marsh grass. Solid ground that would still be dry at night was an unlikely find.

Janet screamed over the gale, “Let’s stay here!!”

The boat was smashing into the muddy bank with each wave, the hull shuddering under the assault. My instincts screamed back: let’s get out of here—now.

Ignoring Janet’s pleas, I scrambled to the stern, fighting the boat’s wild bucking to repair the rudder. My hands shook from adrenaline—as I wrestled the cable back into place, grateful for the lesson on rudder repair learned on day two.

Next, I jumped to shore half-hoping I could shove us back into open water.

I sank to my crotch in mud.

Panic crept in. I flipped into autopilot. “JANET—CONTROL THE RUDDER!” I shouted, voice raw against the torturous wind. Waist-deep in sucking, sticky mud, I heaved with everything I had. The boat lurched a foot from shore. Turns out, that was all we needed.

Janet held the rudder steady, the sail straining under the force of the 30-knot gusts. She sailed us away from the shore! Oddly enough, the very wind pinning us down was also our only shot at escape.

With a desperate push, I dragged myself onto the boat, a mud-caked mess. I slammed the daggerboard down. “LEFT!” I yelled, and Janet steered us fast into deeper water.

We pedaled like hell.

The boat surged free, slicing into open water once again.

But the fight wasn’t over. Janet wanted to reduce the sail. I didn’t. We argued. I wanted to get to safety as fast as possible. She womanned the rudder, her face fearful but set with determination. I leaned out over the windward side, using my body weight to keep us from capsizing.

We screamed over the water at six knots, battling into a three-knot current. The mast groaned under the strain, but we held our course.

Eventually, Janet won the battle of wills. I reefed the sail—and to my surprise, we didn’t lose speed. In fact, we held strong, racing back toward a beach we’d passed miles earlier.

We aimed for the eastern shore, hoping the lee side would offer shelter. But disappointment met us there: more mud, more shells.

We hauled the boat out, but the work was not done yet. The rising tide demanded attention every twenty minutes, threatening to pull the boat back out to sea.

We tried setting up the tent on a patch or cracked mud, but the wind bullied it flat. Janet wanted to sit inside the collapsed shelter, but finally we agreed to an exploratory tromp across a sticky mud flat to a cluster of trees.

I sloshed through the muck to investigate. The patch of ground was discouraging, but with some effort, I cleared a spot. I hacked away branches, stomped brambles, and yes, kicked a few cactus plants out of the way. (You read that right. Cactus.)

Janet lugged over the food bucket, and we set up camp, both of us exhausted, hungry, and filthy.

Later, I checked the boat—despite dragging it far from the water, it was floating again. I disassembled it even more, wrestling it up onto the shell ridge, positioning it parallel to shore so it wouldn’t slide back down.

Back at the tent, it was a mud-washing extravaganza. Every muscle in my body could feel the day’s effort. Small cuts were found on the bottoms of my feet from walking on shells, and on our shins from walking though the Punji Stick field. Inside, the tent was warm and dry. The wind roared in the trees, but the tent held steady. For the first time all day, we could breathe.

We pulled out our phones, studying maps, searching for a boat ramp near a hotel in Savannah. More bad weather was coming.

To my surprise, there weren’t any hotels close to the ramps.

But that will be a struggle for another day.

We were excited to arrive at the Butter Bean boat ramp where Mike Neil gave us the lock combination so we could store our boat inside his chain link fence… only to find that the tiny area was… already filled with kayaks! In a bit of desperation, before I knew it, Janet was on the stoop of a sinking house with a porch – asking if we could leave the boat there. Janet had met Renee, who reluctantly (at first) considered maybe helping us. As the discussion continued, she warmed up to the idea, making it clear that she couldn’t promise it would be safe. We were pretty desperate, so we agreed to all that (and left several hidden AirTag trackers in various places). We took apart everything; it is easy enough to, but still a big commitment getting everything out of the water. I’m glad that Janet asked Renee right away because she was on the verge of leaving for the day!

Now we had to get to the hotel – 6 miles away. I briefly tried putting everything into the bike bag and balancing it on the rack. Could we carry Janet too? This seemed pretty dangerous- especially considering that the causeway had lots of traffic, narrow lanes, no shoulder, and Southern Drivers who probably aren’t too accustomed to cyclists (I strongly get the feeling that cycling isn’t as popular here as it is out West – mostly due to the lack of safe routes).

I saw a young woman feeding cats in the parking lot and zoomed over to offer her $50 to take Janet to the hotel. Kristen agreed quickly. Janet meanwhile was downloading the Uber App, but she downloaded the “Uber Driver” which would have been a little funny if she started getting ride requests at this point.

I figured Uber would cost about the same as we had offered Kristen, but when we got a chance to download the correct app, I discovered it was only $16.79 for that journey. I’m not too Uber-savvy because we always have enough bikes!! After talking to Janet (who conversed with Kristen on the drive) it ended up sounding like it was money well spent; she was a 20 year old student who was on break from work. She is studying set design and seems to work hard. Plus, she was trying to care for these random cats in the parking lot.

I asked the guy at the hotel, “what is the total price we are going to pay?” (Because they had charged part of it on booking already). He told me a number, and Janet asked me, “is that the right amount?” I told her that I didn’t know, and the guy behind the desk says, “why you askin’ the price when you don’t even know how much it s’posed to be.” You know, Southern Hospitality? 🤷

Then it was off to get quarters and detergent for the laundry. I thought I was so smart. There was a coin-op machine at the hotel. I rode the bike a few blocks away to a laundromat to buy a little box of detergent and get quarters. Only problem is that you need to buy a $20 card – no quarters are used anymore! So after that failure, back to the hotel, only to find that at the bottom of the soda vending machine they sell little boxes of detergent. Doh! Not only learning things at sea, but also on land.

We took an Uber this morning with Shirley. As we drove along, I could see her phone offering her jobs for $6… $10…. I was thinking how it would be difficult to make much money as an Uber driver. She did say that she used to do Uber Eats and Door Dash… but she preferred to pick up people. With the other endeavors, people would say they didn’t get their food. “And you know fo-sho they got it,” she explained. It made me kind of sad that people would rip her off. Then again, this is what happened to me when I had my paper route. Lots of people wouldn’t pay me for the newspaper- though I had to purchase the papers from the Mercury News. I think the people thought they were sticking it to the Newspaper… but in fact, they were ripping off a little kid.

She didn’t have all the bad luck, though. A tornado had come through her Eastern Georgia neighborhood and taken out everyone’s house except her’s. Even though her house was spared, She moved to Savannah after that. “I musta’ dun sometin’ right,” she explained.

The boat was still at Renee’s place and Janet gave her a generous tip which made Renee quite animated by the time I came into her office. We were very grateful that she let us park the boat there.

Sailing today was surprisingly good. We had our share of head-currents… but also some following currents as well. I think we have gotten a little better at squeezing every ounce of energy from the wind that our boat is capable of. If you lose focus, though, the efficiency drops noticeably. We listened to “Yo no soy tu hija Mexicana perfecta” on audiobook, and the day passed quickly and placidly.

We landed on a mud flat in South Carolina. For a week and a half now, it’s the “bad side” of the moon where you arrive and depart on a low tide. It is much more fun to come and go on the high. This meant we had to drag the boat up through quite a long stretch of mud. But now we are in our cozy camp wearing the new (to us) clothes. We look pretty motley with none of our clothes matching… but this ain’t no fashion show.

I felt the ripping in my throat start in the middle of the night. We had a big day planned, and I knew it was going to be entirely contra-current, long, and a low tide start. A tough day to do while sick. Fortunately, we had some rest already planned to avoid this abnormally cold weather here in the South.

In an effort to shorten the day (and to get the current on our side for a bit), I noticed a waterway called “Archer Creek” on the map. It was deep enough for our boat, but designated as military on the map. It would have saved 1.5 miles and also would have allowed us to ride the current – potentially as it changed, giving us a prolonged ride.

Just to be safe, we looked online, and I found that sometimes it is open; other times not. A few phone calls later, and I was talking to someone who knew.

“I’m coming on a kayak and wild like to go through Archer Creek today. Can I do that?”

“It is hot.”

I kind of thought I knew what he meant here, but wanted to be super clear.

“Uh… so is that a yes or a no?”

His voice didn’t betray any condescension at my lack of knowledge, and he replied in measured, deep steps:

He did eventually say that it would be “cold” at 3:00, but that could vary a lot.

You can see from our track that we briefly jetted towards the creek, only to turn around and have to make up ground that we had to fight for (against the current).

Luckily, we got some wind from not the forecasted direction, making the long way around a lot more pleasant. Unlike cycling, you pretty much always want wind because it gives you so much more power than you can muster with your puny human legs.

Trying to emulate Janet’s positivity, I remarked, “well it is so cold and windy, at least there won’t be bugs!”

I swear to you that whatever I say outloud to others, the universe conspires to make my statement flat out wrong, meaning you can’t always trust what I tell you. The good news, at least, is that I’m not doing it on purpose! We got the absolutely most-buggy piece of land we have ever encountered! But land it was, and we trudged our equipment up a tedious compilation of boards and rusted I-beams to a higher portion of earth. This was the first time I agreed to use the headnets that were loaned to us by Deb Bond. Wow, those things really work! Amazingly, about 47 no-see-ums (a nano nibble of the ones outside) managed to make their way inside the net. Interestingly, once inside the net, they seem to change their priorities about pestering humans, and instead focus on escaping- which is good enough for me. Thanks, Deb!

It was such a perfect day that I expected it to continue. Suddenly, I noticed a sort of kink mid way up the mast. I kept my eye on it, and I swear, the angle was getting more pronounced. The mast should have a gentle curve from bottom to top as we were under a decent amount of power on a beam reach. Reluctantly, I told Janet, “I’m going to take down the sail and inspect the mast”. As I was removing the mast, it became more unstable, and before I got it into Janet’s arms, it had folded in half!

Worries surged through my mind. This >$1,000 carbon fiber mast is not available for purchase like so much Hobie stuff right now. Was our trip over?

With great difficulty as we were bouncing in the waves, Janet helped me slide the mast out of the sail. Then, Janet pedaled gently to keep us on course. The mast is two pieces and fits together like tent poles. I imagined splintered carbon fiber inside the sail. Upon inspection, the mast had not been damaged! Instead, what had happened is that the sleeve between the two pieces of the mast had come unglued and slid downward, no longer supporting the upper half of the mast. That was it! A simple matter of temporarily taping the sleeve in place and gluing it later at camp. A brief sense of relief came upon me and the mast was back in service in little time. Just as I erected it, we heard the sickening sound of the boat dragging over shells.

We were far from shore, but had drifted into a dangerous shoal. Knowing that we can do almost nothing with paddle power and our weak arms, combined with the fact that the pedals were out of commission (pinned between the boat and the shells), the best option was going to be to sail out of there. And it was that very moment that the rudder cable broke free again. Remember that safety mechanism that keeps you from breaking the rudder? Now we had no control.

The sail was up and we were being blown into more ridges of shells. We needed to turn the boat the get the sail properly full of wind. Janet had to paddle-break constantly as a way of artificially being a rudder.

I jumped into the water and immediately felt the knife of pain surround my foot. The shells were a sharp as glass. They were slicing into the boat, and now they had sliced my feet in several places. The blood, mixed with salt water drained quickly making a red miasma in my cockpit area every time I reboarded.

Frantically, I jumped from shell shallow duty of grinding the boat over shell piles to trying to sail with Janet “at the helm” (Janet did the steering with her paddle as a strong brake). With her help, we managed to fill the sail with the air we needed to move forward… only once we did, we encountered another ridge of shells and more deep gouging the underside of the boat. I said the “F” word more times than I’d like to admit while Janet patiently endured me instructing, “brake on left!” “Paddle backwards on left!” “Paddle hard on right!” As she managed to steer us from shell pile to shell pile.

I was desperate. Looking at the GPS, we were SO CLOSE to the deeper water, but we couldn’t seem to make it; there were so many of these shell ridges. Then I noticed that we were stuck on shells that we had already been stuck on. I celebrated that moment with several more f-bombs.

Eventually, Janet steered us out into the deeper water and we vowed to watch our depth map like a hawk from now on. I busied with cleaning all the mud and blood out of the boat while Janet sailed us expertly along the channel. I climbed over her head again – this time to secure the rudder line in a clumsy manner. We would camp and fix the rest of the stuff later at camp.

Upon inspection, we found tons of scratches and broken off shells wedged into the plastic. It is definitely the most damage we have done to the boat. It still seems to work, and hopefully none of the gouges are deep enough that they leak, but cosmetically, it is quite a disappointment to have done so much bad on such a perfect day.

Once at camp, I glued the mast using the same marine adhesive that we put on the paddle board. It will be dry by tomorrow and the mast should be OK. My pedal drive got tons of scratches, but seems to still function fine.

Wet and muddy from being in the water, we were in a hurry to find camp. Janet remembered a ramp that she had seen (but initially dismissed) on Satellite view. We ended up pulling out at a boat ramp belonging to an HOA. We just put our tent on the side and since we were feeling pretty desperate, figured we would “plead forgiveness” versus “ask permission.” Looking back, this was unpleasant, but there are worse things that could have happened, that we are grateful for our opportunity to live and be out here. We appreciate these tough moments in honor of those who would rather be out here suffering with us as opposed to the kind of suffering that they didn’t sign up for. ❤️‍🩹

At one point, we were passing a large crane. It seemed like an hour had passed, and when I looked again, the crane had hardly moved. That is partly due to the difficulties in perceiving your relative location, but also largely due to the fact that we were going 0.8 mph through a narrow gap.

But, we can sit there and talk to each other, and I decided to take this opportunity to fly the drone from the boat. Recovery would be easier because we were just pedaling in place as if on a stationary bike. Millions of people voluntarily do that every day on Zwift, so why should I complain?

We discovered a feature on Safari Mobile: “Listen to this page.” Since we now have the solar panel, we don’t have to hoard electrons like Ebenezer Scrooge, meaning our onboard entertainment clicked up a notch. We plan to convert our friend Stan Hooper’s memoir to a web page next so we can use SIRI to listen to the final draft. The Apple voice is far superior to the hack of an MP3 I cobbled together with my Raspberry Pi. Meanwhile, we clicked right over to Ray Jardine’s written account of his round the world sailing adventure with Jenny on SUKA; the stories of other sailors inspires me, though the horror stories of hitting shallows does make me cringe – especially after what happened to us yesterday. No boat is immune.

Speaking of yesterday, my sliced feet are in quite a bit of pain. I have a couple dozen “knife cuts” on the bottoms of my feet. I can feel the deep and narrow crevices spread open and closed like a morbid accordion whenever I apply pressure. On the bright side, I am grateful that I can feel my feet, as diabetics can develop neuropathy that leads to them being unaware of foot injuries – eventually leading to amputation. See, Janet has been wearing off on me; there is a bright side to everything.

Speaking of bright sides, do you remember Peter Frank from yesterday? He managed to make it all the way the Beaufort already, and posted some photos of us to his social media. Apparently, he has quite a massive following, because our inbox suddenly got peppered with lots of love and generosity. Offers of help, encouragement, warm meals, and places to stay. Suddenly, that “Southern Hospitality” refrain actually is starting to hit home.

Speaking of Southern Hospitality: If you saw someone with a folding bike, would you go out of your way to hunt that person down just to tell them:

“I like your bike. That is so cool”

Would you? If you saw someone looking pretty sick at breakfast wearing ugly plaid fleecy pajama pants going for a helping of sausage, would you corral them so you could say, “I like your pants?”

Janet and I have been trying to figure out if people are different here, or if it is just us. The other day at Kroeger, I had my bike in the shopping cart, and I heard a woman calling from way down the aisle, “Excuse me, sir, sir!!” She was far away and behind me, so I pretended to ignore the calls. I knew where this was headed.

She ran over, winded, “Oh, I just wanted to say that I LOVE your bike. That is SO darn cool! It folds up!”

“Thanks! A lot of people say that.”

“Oh, Really?!”

Am I just some cold Californian, or is the South running on a whole different frequency? Either way, I’m starting to suspect that here, the current of kindness is always flowing.

Sailing in the morning was wonderful and placid. Since we were in the big opening on an ebb tide, I took the opportunity to relax and brew a pot of tea atop the paddle board, having my own little tea party, except I endeavored to keep the tea onboard in this rendition.

Janet brilliantly discovered that Fort Moultrie National Park was coming up, and it would be just a little out of the way at a point where we needed to burn an hour for tide optimization.

We arrived at the US government dock, only to find it off limits to civilians. Not to be deterred, we landed on the backside of the floating platform, wedging the stern of the boat in the mud, figuring it ought to stay put for one hour. You might think we are law breakers, in which case, you’d be right! But if sweet little Janet gives it her seal of approval, I’m all in.

Back on the West side of the continent, my notion of National Park equals Nature. On this side of the nation, a different story unfolds. The several national parks have all either been forts, or dedicated to the history of civil rights and the struggles of the enslaved. A foreigner visiting America would come home with two wildly different opinions of our country, depending on which side they visited.

A lot of the signs detail the specifications of the artillery; a 15 pound iron ball can be launched pretty far out to sea. Soldiers must have ogled the constantly improving capabilities like a cyclist who pines for that electronic shifter for his (cog n)+1 cassette.

The fort was fort-ified by palmetto logs (think palm trees). Because they were heavy with moisture, the enemy shells would “just bounce off” them. At least, that is how the park ranger described it. Meanwhile, ammunition from Fort Moultrie cracked the wood of the boats in the harbor, causing them to flee – even though they outnumbered the Fort’s military by 3x. And the Palmetto logs? That is how South Carolina came to be known as “the Palmetto state.”

Without wind, we attended to chores on the boat, but we do need to do a better job of ensuring that SOMEONE is at the helm. Often I will busy myself and think, “we are going 4mph… it’s not like we will hit anything while I root around in this bag. Besides, Janet will steer.”

Meanwhile, Janet might be planning our next stop on her phone when we plow into one of the millions of crab trap buoys!

It is easy to slip into complacency on a calm day like today. And so when I reached for something on the paddle board, I accidentally knocked the mesh bag full of wires into the water!

I reached for it quickly, but did not make the grab as the bag flowed backwards at 4mph. Then that lizard part of the brain said, “this is important!” And instinctively, my arm shot backwards a second time – yanking the bag out of the water. It seemed like a miracle to me because my conscious brain was still in la-la land while some other part took over quickly. That was accompanied by a surge in adrenaline, which left me shaking for the next 10 minutes.

After rinsing all of these electronics with fresh water, I left them to dry in the sun. A cursory test reveals that everything tested still works. 😥

Shortly after this incident, I watched as a Forsters Tern flew above with a fish in its beak. The fish wriggled free – and fell… briefly, only to have the bird adroitly dive and catch it again mid-air. The fish proved its worth, though, wriggling free a second time. The bird let it escape this session.

The wind finally picked up and we had a nice downwind run for several miles. It was blissful. I took the opportunity to stand aboard the paddle board and when you can’t see the plastic contraption held together with rubber bands behind you, you might as well be captaining some mighty ship headed for the next big adventure!

We woke to drips on the tent. Not rain, but a dense fog had precipitated upon the pine trees that usually keep us dry. A bit to our surprise, this had been our best landing to date. Although the shore reeds had initially appeared to be an impediment, the boat slid up the slope easily; I didn’t even need to solicit help from the first mate (who had been occupied swatting invisible insects anyway) 🫥

Also, as the tide rose before we did, the structure provided by the reeds provided additional support for the boat, allowing me to leave it a little lower than I normally would have. By the time we were ready to go, enough water had come along that it was almost as if we were launching from a dock. See? We constantly learn new things.

Pedaling was placid again; we enjoyed it… but where was that Southerly wind we had been pining for? I had warned Janet a few days ago that if the forecast came to fruition, things would get a little spicy on the water.

The forecast came true around 11am – just as we turned the corner from a following current to a massive head current.

There is a phenomenon called “wind over tide” which I’m quite familiar with from my kayaking days in the South SF Bay Area. If you have a strong current going one way, and strong winds going the opposite direction, steep slow waves form. We were sailing downwind, which is still easy enough to control in this boat, but the seas rose to three feet in less than an hour. The bow of our boat plunged below the water’s surface as we surfed the waves at 3.5mph (very slow). I feared taking on water through the submerged hatch – a known defect in these Hobie boats.

By myself, I enjoy “testing the waters.” I like to see how the boat performs in various conditions so I can learn more about maximizing its forward movement in rough seas. But I also find it prudent to pay heed to the screams of the first mate who might not “jump ship” in the very moment, but might find it hard to hold the course and could choose to “heave to” at next landfall. I was implored to reduce sail, and listened while heading the boat closer to shore.

And there was a channel – heading towards a marina. We agreed to enter the harbor, and “oh look, a restaurant that is open!” That sounded fun, so we disembarked and in a moment had gone from the rough sea to being served burgers and Diet Coke by Kevin and Stephanie. Yes, first thing they did was introduce themselves.

They had started this restaurant here fairly recently, and were doing such a good job trying to make sure that we were happy, that I was starting to get a good vibe. Janet and I have been voraciously consuming sailing stories, and a couple of points stand out: Most of the bad things that happen to people don’t HAVE to happen. By that, I mean, if you’re paying attention to your surroundings, the depth maps, and the weather report, and being FLEXIBLE with your plans (as in letting Mother Nature be the boss, not you), then most bad things can be generally evaded.

So, we changed the plan and to kill time, I went shopping by bike from this marina and when I returned, we knew that the current would have reversed (even though the wind had actually crescendoed). Sure enough, as the current began to go the other way, I watched as the whitecaps diminished- even as the wind powered forcefully across the water. It would have been a fun and fast ride North, but we had come to like this spot. Janet had called the marina proprietor (Keith) and he also gave her a good vibe. We decided to stay and pay – and take showers.

Happily clean and having done laundry, we noticed that about 30 feet from our tent there was a Gator lying next to a series of eviscerated fish. Janet mused that since the gator had likely eaten the fish, it wouldn’t be hungry for the two tasty morsels living inside our tent.

As I went to the boat to put some stuff away, I noticed that our boat had been boarded by pirates! Two teens and an 8 year jumped as they saw me approaching. The 8 year old disembarked and then the three walked towards me with darting eyes as if nothing had happened. I didn’t say anything as we walked past each other, but jogged to the ship on my knife-sliced feet to see if anything had been taken. All seemed to be in place, so I told Janet the story.

Independently, she walked towards the boat, but having more cajones, she walked up to the kids and started a conversation with them. She told them how she had come here in a boat, and they asked, “which boat is yours?” Janet replied, “the one that you were on!” Only Janet would have the magical ability to make this an innocent and unassuming comment, so they continued the conversation amicably, the boys noting that the boat was “the new arrival,” and that they “liked the pedals.”

And so endeth the day… well, hopefully the story continues tomorrow, and gator doesn’t get any ideas.

Then I heard the thunder. Within moments, the sky unfurled a tempest, and we were grateful that we had elected to sleep on land instead of our floating lightning rod. Could you imagine lying prone over the hot seat adjacent to the conductive black pole pointed skyward?

The tent proved its worth, deflecting the short but heavy bout of rainfall. And here is a bit of irony for you: the next morning, we woke to a DRY tent. We have only had a dry tent a few nights this trip. Normally, it is saturated with 8 pounds of water… funny that the night we get rained on, the tent was dry. Everything else in life was also more comfortable as a result. I’ll tell you that having damp clothes most of the time isn’t really a joy, and in rainy climates, I’m almost always drier than I am here in the South without a rain.

So here is another surprise from today. I heard the whine of a jet boat traveling at upwards of 60 mph coming towards us. It’s the first we have seen as I assume these kinds of speed are illegal on the ICW. The irony is that this boat produced no wake! The hull of the vessel barely deigning to touch the water like a skipping stone. So once again, we find that you can’t judge a book by its cover.

We were really going up a river today. For the majority of this trip, we have been traveling the brackish waters of the ocean, but today we ventured further and further away from the sea. The tall trees obscured any views and funneled the wind in swirling and frustrating gusts, making it extremely difficult to harness. The area had a sort of “deliverance” feel to it. For many miles, it was just us and the narrow waterway again.

We had picked out a couple marinas as possible places to spend the night. We have been having good luck, but we don’t exactly fit the marina criteria because we are not super enthusiastic about sleeping on our boat. It’s a decent amount of effort to set up the tent aboard, so when I saw the first patch of sand in 9 hours, we steered the boat to shore and set up camp next to a pile of beer can trash and an abandoned smoke cooker.

Maybe it was seeing all the beer cans, but I mentioned to Janet, “gee, I kind of wish we had a beer tonight to reward us for our efforts.” It was a whimsical longing, but then I got the idea that maybe there was an unopened beer in this large pile of empty cans.

Of course there wouldn’t be one.

But sometimes I check for the extremely unlikely scenario… JUST IN CASE. Well, I’ll be darned. There, sitting as if it were a gift to Pachamama was one unopened Miller Lite.

I reveled in the improbability, “Janet! can you believe it? It’s like I summoned a beer. I think they left this, like a gift for the person who comes to clean up this pile of cans!”

Janet was more pragmatic, “I think they just forgot it.”

Well, regardless of whether this was a gift for the gods, or a bygone omission, Janet and I shared the Miller Lite under the watchful indifference of the trees, and it was good. 🍻

We launched into the river, however, my prediction of following currents was… wrong. In spite of us beginning shortly after the turn of the tide, some other factor was in play, so we pedaled against the current until the predicted Southerly began amping up.

You might think that a strong tailwind is a delight for a boat with a sail… however, in this particular situation, we did not have the tools to harness this beast. The correct sail for these conditions would have been a spinnaker, which flies like a kite and is designed for downwind sailing. I opted not to include it on our boat to keep things simple—it adds extra rigging and makes lowering the mast for bridges more complicated. Instead, we relied on our main sail, which usually works for downwind travel. But in the narrow waterway, we had to keep adjusting our angle to the wind by “gybing”—a maneuver that can be risky in strong winds, especially on a larger boat.

Adding to the complexity, it seems that the people of Myrtle Beach like to wake boats like ours. We had been out in big uncrowded water for weeks, where most boaters slowed down and gave us space. Here, though, they blasted past us, sending wakes that rocked our boat violently. It was frustrating. “These people are incredibly rude,” I grumbled. Janet, ever the optimist, replied, “At least that one waved…”

Even with our attempts to control the boat’s angle to the wind, it would often swirl due to the corridor of trees. This would cause the sail to loudly slap over to the other side, catching the main sheet on the posts of our trolley. Janet, meanwhile, was tasked with the tiring job of lifting the taut main sheet over these protruding poles with each jibe.

I longed for the open water.

We decided to take our chances and land at a boat ramp for the night. One of the Good Samaritans who wrote us after seeing Peter Frank’s post (the costumed kayaker we meet last week) was up ahead (Mark and Danielle). If we were going to be able to meet them, we would have to slow it down. We took this time-killing opportunity to get groceries at Walmart.

As I checked out with our food, I prepared for the usual line of questioning about the folding bicycle. My conversation with the massive, wheelchair-bound cashier took a slightly different trajectory today. It began when I told her that I didn’t need a bag because I had a backpack.

“Well, whattami ‘sposed to do with that?”

“Don’t worry, I can put the groceries in there; I do it all the time.”

She began dropping and/or throwing the items. A few she placed into the plastic bag anyway for good measure. I sensed that she was upset.

We talked about the bike anyway, and I had to explain that the reason I had a folding bike was because we need a small bike to fit on our kayak. I explained that we had come a long way.

“Y’all goin’ round the world on that?”

“No,” I laughed, “just doing the intra costal waterway.”

“Whydoncha’ll get a job!?!”

“I have a job!”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

I explained that I work remotely from my tent using my phone. She rolled her eyes.

“Y’all raisin’ money?”

“No.”

She paused, then said, “There’s them hurricane victims in Asheville. You ought to go help ‘em. The church’ll feed y’all three meals a day and give you a place to stay.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. On the outside, I probably seemed like a guy with an easy life—some Californian who didn’t want to use a plastic bag, sailing around for fun. Meanwhile, she was sitting in a wheelchair, thinking about people who had lost everything.

I told Janet the story, and we both sat with that for a moment, unsure what to say. Our journey felt suddenly small, and we weren’t sure if we should feel inspired, ashamed, or just humbled.

When I first began bike touring, I was amazed that strangers would welcome a grubby cyclist into their home. My first taste of this was in Mexico—a country I’d been warned about as a kid. Yet o found myself struggling to communicate with families who, without hesitation, gave up their beds for me. I would always protest, preferring my air mattress (and that the kid wasn’t ousted from their bedroom!)… but in those early days, it became clear that yes, while there are bad people in the world who hog all of the attention, there are also lots of people who are SO caring of other human beings that they would give anything they have to help another person.

Mark turned out to be one of those generous souls. He reached us through our website, offering us to stay at their place. As luck would have it, their HOA was having a get together that night—so we got an invite.

Their community is unique in that it is the only non-profit bar in SC. In fact, this setup is so rare that if they lose their license, they will never get it back. It’s precious, though, because many of the people in the HOA come to the community center to socialize.

“I came here as a single woman knowing no one, and now I have lots of friends and a community,” explained Danielle.

Most of the neighbors were—let’s call it “well-seasoned”—but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have sharp wit. In fact, if you were conducting a study on what it takes to become a (late) octogenarian, you might conclude from this group that it requires plenty of wine, maybe even stealing sips from your neighbor, and a bit of randy humor, such as naming your sailboat “Fourplay” (because, you know, there were four of them) and your dinghy “Quickie.” Which is somehow even funnier when delivered by a 90-year-old sipping Chardonnay.

“You have to remember, these people weren’t always this age,” Danielle quipped after a car full of neighbors drove by saying “Happy Anniversary” to Mark and Danielle—congratulating them on their first year together.

“I lost my bet,” someone yelled from the back seat.

“We didn’t think you’d make it that long!” another joked.

They flipped each other off good-naturedly. Probably the first time I saw an 89-year-old woman do that.

Later at the bar, Mark grinned and said, “You know, I read a story that fits our situation perfectly. It was about a hitchhiker. When he got in the car, he asked the driver, ‘Say, why did you pick me up? I could be anyone—even a bad person!’ The driver replied, ‘I wasn’t worried—because the probability of two serial killers being in one car is so low.’”

But upon getting to know Mark better, we found out he was far from the serial killer joke. In fact, we learned that he and Danielle have generous hearts for lots of people. One example was of a man who worked on the grounds. He had a problem with his teeth.

“Not only was it unsightly, but you could tell that it was a medical problem for him too,” Danielle explained.

They found out from this worker’s friend that the reason he hadn’t gotten the dental work done was a money thing. Mark and Danielle got the idea to help him and went around the community to see if people would contribute. In one day, they had the $5000 needed to help this guy out. He was so overjoyed and accepted their generosity. Funny thing was, we happened to meet this man the next morning, and his teeth were great. He seemed like a pretty happy guy.

Mark confided, “Yeah, he has 8 kids…. Some with different women… and that was before the dental work! So we joked that maybe we should’ve thrown in a vasectomy as part of the package deal.”

All in all, it was a short day on the water, but definitely a great way to end our time in South Carolina with some very fun and friendly people.

It is fun to dream…. This is as fun as cycling, as long as I can have no motor and be able to pedal the boat. Rowing is another option; it probably transfers more energy into the water.. but I always used to be so fatigued after rowing and the idea of being in heavy seas facing backwards does not appeal. The Hobie mirage pedal drive seems pretty klunky, lots of plastic parts… but it appears to be one of the more efficient water-drive mechanisms out there!! Being able to carry the folding bike is another “must”. That way, it is possible to explore new places that couldn’t be explored by bike alone via boat, foot, and bike.

About midway through the day, I noticed that we were suddenly in clear water again. It has been a long time since we were in that beautiful blue Florida Keys water. For some reason, the water in Northern Florida, all the way to here was mostly turbid or dark colored. It is nice to see such clean blue water again – and to be able to see the bottom. One more reason to like North Carolina.

The part of the country that we are sailing right now sticks out into the ocean, meaning that it is subject to more weather. As such, we have another storm coming in 2 more days. We do plan to meet with another kind host; we have been receiving more offers and the last meeting was so much fun, we decided to try and meet someone tomorrow also if she is available when we arrive.

At this point, it’s obvious—this isn’t totally a sailing trip. It’s a kayaking trip. We’re pedaling all the time, burning a ridiculous number of calories. Between the unpredictable inland winds and the overpowering currents, sailing often only adds a little extra speed.

The day got even better when we landed and met Luanne—she had reached out to us, inviting us to stay at her place and meet her dog, Melvin—who, by the way, is a girl pup.

I often feel we don’t deserve this kind of kindness, and it is always so hard to accept, but I am really glad we got the opportunity to meet Luanne. Right away, it was evident that she was very upbeat and easy-going.

“You have lots of choices where you can park your boat. Here in this slip, the day dock, that beach… or on my neighbor’s beach with reeds. I’ve already cleared it with her.”

After this morning’s battle with the reeds, you’d think we’d avoid them. But oddly enough, just like a dog curling up in a tiny crate, we felt a strange comfort parking askew in them again.

Luanne invited us right into her home, eager to show us the small community of Snead’s Ferry. She told us about her kids and family, and then entertained us with stories.

One particularly entertaining story was about fishing.

“Fish and game pulled up while my husband and I were fishing. They asked him for his license, and he carefully pulled it out while looking down. Meanwhile, I kept fishing.”

“Ma’am, we’re going to need to see your license too.”

Luanne, being on her first fishing trip, looked at her husband questioningly. He lowered his head, suddenly very interested in his fishing line. Uh oh.

They wrote her a ticket, and of course, her husband agreed to take care of it… except several weeks later, there was a knock on the door. It was the Sheriff with a warrant for her arrest! She was expected to turn herself in to the magistrate.

Meanwhile, everyone else was having a good old laugh about this—she was going to be arrested for… fishing. Lined up with people in handcuffs, the judge looked at her papers and kind of laughed like, “What are you doing here?” She finally was released after paying fines, but her co-workers had the last laugh by making a “wanted” poster of her behind bars—accompanied by some stuffed animal fish.

Luanne also took us to dinner and refused to let us pay, even though there were two of us and we were staying at her house. She was very generous.

Being around someone so energetic, easygoing, and quick to laugh lifted us up, making this visit a highlight for the trip. I am grateful to be a conduit “news outlet” for all these great people we have met on the other side of America. These stories won’t go viral on Facebook, but this is what we see.

It is a good thing we have a plastic "toy" kayak, because if we had a full size boat, I imagine we would be causing some big problems. For example, we ran aground while crossing the shallow bay to Luanne's house. With the plastic boat, it is pretty bad, but mostly a nuisance. With a larger boat, this could be a real problem (and probably why we see so many abandoned boats every single day in the ICW).

Anther thing that happened was we were pulling the boat out of the water on the boat ramp. Suddenly, when we got to the sidewalk, it got a lot harder to pull. My natural reaction was to pull harder! Oops! Suddenly the AIS beacon crashed to the ground. A sick feeling came to my stomach when i realized that I had hit the power lines with the mast. Doh! Again, it is lucky that this was on a hand pulled cart, because if it had been on a truck trailer, I could have done some real damage.

So, even after 2+ months, still learning how to do this!

A couple weeks ago, a guy named Greg reached out to take us to dinner—an offer Janet and I may have declined in years past – preferring our quiet tent life. But with the AIS beacon letting people track us, we can plan ahead, and I’ve come to see how cool it is to meet energetic folks who cheer on expeditions.

We set up to meet Greg at Southern Salt, a restaurant with a dock that made parking a breeze for me and Janet. Greg, meanwhile, left work early and drove an hour and a half each way just to join us.
We grabbed a table since we arrived early, and when Greg walked in, if you looked up “Southern Hospitality” in the encyclopedia, Greg’s photo would be there. He sat down, locked eyes with me and Janet, and dove right into questions. We swapped adventure stories—Greg owned a 21 foot skiff and he had been eying this 27 footer. One day, God told him he should buy it – and he did! He and his friend Andy took the skiff with a big motor down the entire ICW in 11 days, 9 of them soaking wet from rain, slapping the water as they zoomed over the surface like a skipping stone. He knew the ICW like the back of his hand and shared sage advice for our upcoming stretch. Usually, “local knowledge” is hit-or-miss, but Greg’s was spot on.

When the food arrived, Greg bowed his head for a blessing, and we dug into the delicious meal. I was sad we didn’t have more time, but we got in a couple hours with him. He paid the tab, thanking us for “letting me repay some kindness I got on my skiff trip.” He had pitched that journey on a website called “the hull truth” during the pandemic. At one point during his journey, a crowd of boats even showed up to cheer them on. People took him in and offered kindness.

As Greg said goodbye, I felt a pang—we’d just scratched the surface with a guy who’d given us more than a meal. Greg was the kind of person who Janet and I would be friends with if we lived in the same place. I do hope we meet again.

We listened to Ray and Jenny Jardine’s kayak trip through Nome and Utqiagvik (formerly known as Barrow) Alaska… this made us grateful for our temperate following seas.

The only challenge we were facing was… finding a place to stop! We have lost interest in sleeping aboard because it takes a lot of time to set things up, and there is a risk of dropping stuff in the water. As such, we need land to sleep on. It was late on the day when we finally were back near somewhere you could peg a tent. We found a dock on an island, and from the water, it appeared that we had found an abandoned group of buildings. Perfect for a short night’s stay.

Upon arrival, we noticed that although it looked bushy from afar, someone had done some work on the trees manicuring them and placing compost around them. So even though the building looked like they had been vacant for a while, people had been here. We made no effort to hide, and were visible from a house across the water. After setting up the tent, a boat arrived with a ruffled young man.

“what the HELL are you doing here?”

Janet was outside and told him that we were camping. I came out of the tent and we tried to explain that we were doing the ICW and hadn’t been able to find dry land up until this point.

“I don’t care if you came from Florida or South Africa. You aren’t camping here!”

I offered to pay him money so we could stay.

“Even if you paid me $100,000, it wouldn’t pay for the risk. This is an insurance risk!”

When he said that, I knew to take him seriously. He may have been burned in the past by people like us. Even though we think of ourselves as good people, he was right and we were wrong. I started to pack up.

Janet remained patient but persistent, and reminded him that we had no place to go; the sun was about to set.

“I’m not going to take the sympathy card from you. You’re trespassing. You can go to Oriental!”

We pointed out that Oriental was 6 hours back for us. I continued packing, while Janet talked to him reasonably.

“Look, you’re in BFE North Carolina where you could get shot for this,” he exclaimed.

Janet talked to him a bit more and eventually he conceded that there is land just 700 meters past the channel marker that was owned by a business, but they haven’t been around in a couple of years. This was a big help.

In the end, we were in the wrong, and I’m only telling the story because… well, that is what happened! I’m a bit embarrassed, but this gives you an idea about how tough it is to find legal places to sleep! I imagine that this is probably the biggest impediment to people thinking of doing this waterway in a human powered vessel. There aren’t enough public pullouts to be able to cover the necessary distances legally… at least at a snailboat’s pace!

In the end, we had a nice night, landing at the new spot just as darkness set in. Thankfully, we had the full moon to guide us!

I continue to be enthralled with sailing, though I’m a little disappointed in our speed. I did do some calculations, and ona boat that is so small, the “Sail Area to Displacement Ratio” rapidly decreases as you add weight. The boat by itself would actually be very fast with its existing sail plan, but as soon as you add each person and corresponding gear, you lose knots. Then it is a choice of removing weight or adding sail power… the age old story of non motorized travel.

By the way, up until about 200 years ago, sailing was the fastest way to get around. According to Grok:

“While precise speed logs weren’t common pre-1829, accounts suggest ships like those of Christopher Columbus (1492) averaged 4-8 knots on transatlantic voyages, with bursts up to 11-12 knots in ideal conditions. Faster ships, like Dutch fluyts or English race-built galleons, likely pushed 15 knots in short sprints."

For Reference, our little boat is about the same speed as Columbus'

Grok continues, "Sailing was the fastest method when conditions aligned—outrunning horses over distance and dwarfing human-powered boats. A ship catching a gale could cover 150-200 nautical miles in a day (173-230 statute miles), a feat unmatched by any pre-1829 land travel. By contrast, the best horse relays (e.g., 100 miles/day) or runners (e.g., Inca chasquis at 10-15 miles/day) fell short."

It wasn’t until 1829 that the steam powered locomotive began to show promise of out distancing sailboats.

Sailing is pretty cool, huh? That also explains why we have so many expressions that persist to this day that use sailing terms to describe things in every day life:

1. “Know the ropes” – Be skilled, from mastering a ship’s sail rigging.

2. “All hands on deck” – Everyone’s help is needed, from summoning the crew to manage sails in a crisis.

3. “Batten down the hatches” – Prepare for trouble, from securing hatches before a storm hits the sails.

4. “Three sheets to the wind” – Drunk or unsteady, from loose sail ropes causing erratic motion.

5. “The calm before the storm” – A quiet lull before chaos, from the stillness preceding a squall.

6. “A loose cannon” – Unpredictable, from a cannon rolling free on a sailing ship’s deck.

7. “In the doldrums” – Stagnant, from windless regions stalling sailing ships.

8. “Take the wind out of your sails” – Deflate someone’s momentum, from stealing wind from another ship’s sails.

9. “Smooth sailing” – Smooth and easy, from uneventful sail navigation.

10. “By and large” – Overall, from sailing both into and with the wind.

11. “Show your true colors” – Reveal your real intentions, from sailing ships hoisting their national flags (colors) to identify themselves.

12. “Give a wide berth” – Avoid, from steering clear of another sailing vessel.

13. “Under the weather” – Sick, from sailors sent below during rough seas under sail.

14. “High and dry” – Stranded, like a sailing ship aground without wind or tide.

15. “Cut and run” – Flee quickly, from cutting anchor to sail away.

16. “Full sail ahead” – Full effort, from a ship with all sails deployed.

17. “Trim your sails” – Adapt, from adjusting sails for optimal wind use.

18. “Riding out the storm” – Enduring hardship, from a sailing ship staying afloat through rough weather under reduced sail

19. “Make headway” – Advance, from a sailing ship progressing against wind.

20. “Keel over” – Collapse or die, from a sailing ship tipping over when its keel breaks the surface.

21. “Hand over fist” – Quickly and steadily, from sailors hauling ropes (like sheets or halyards) hand over hand.

22. “At the helm” – In charge, from steering a sailing ship at the wheel or tiller

Today we left with temperatures in the 30s expecting gentle breezes from the North. Instead, we were confronted with some of the strongest winds we have experienced from NNW.

Janet’s hat blew off, and we circled around to grab it. I got my hand on it just before it escaped again. On circling back, we lost sight of it… gone to Davey Jones’ locker.

Soon, we got into a dicey situation as the wind continued to escalate. I believed that the mast was breaking again. So, in the middle of the bay, I took it down… but to what end? It was too rough to take the sail off of the mast. Fighting the wind, I heaved it back into place, hurting my back in the process. The problem is that without the sail, we can only go 2 miles per hour. With the sail… in the right direction… we can go 6 mph. So we sailed with the mast apppearing to have an angular bend in the middle.

The water began to get those while lines of foam sweeping across the surface as foam began to spray into my face. This was a gale and we were not prepared for this! Our only option, though, was to move forward to the shelter of the narrow channel.

When we made it, everything seemed so calm. We landed on a beach to pump out the bilge (the front of the boat had been spending a lot of time submerged). We had taken on some 100 pounds of water.

Next, we took apart the sail, only to find that the glue I had applied after the oyster bed fiasco was still in perfect condition. Maybe k had been imagining that bend.

We went into the channel and fought the currents. This would be an 8 hour fight because the wind (now being deflected by the trees) was coming from all 360 degrees of the compass rose. I trimmed the sails thousands of times in an attempt to glean some power from the wind. Against the current, we could only pedal 2.5 knots, so we did get a little benefit from the shifty winds.

In those 8 hours we saw ONE boat… and the knew us. They pulled their large powerboat up alongside our craft and told us they had hosted Peter Frank. Peter has definitely been the lynchpin in our socialization for this trip! We talked with Terry and John for a while. They had just started their 1 year trip of the “great loop”.

After that we were alone again. We entered into the larger bay, thinking that we would abandon our hopes of making it to our proposed landing.. but with the strong winds at our side again, we sped up. We decided to make a ballsy move and go for it. We raced East, which went well, but then had to tack on huge waves going North. Janet was brave and did not seem afraid, even as the boat kept getting swallowed by the trough between the onslaught of waves. This made it so much easier for me, having her more relaxed.

What a day!

Luckily, the wind occasionally changed directions enough for us to use its power. We did have to pedal a lot. We are cyclists, and even our knees were hurting. Janet has a cold now, but she is a real trooper, questioning if she is actually sick. 😆.

Credit for tonight’s clandestine site goes to Janet. She found this little piece of land on the satellite. I questioned it, but now that we are here, it is a really pretty spot!

Coincidentally, Greg from 8 days ago had been following our AIS beacon and said he would be up in the area. Janet and I had already been talking about how we would like to see him again – we liked him so much… and he suggested meeting up. I wrote back asking if we could go to dinner at the famous Coinjock Marina and Restaurant, and he said yes. All along the way, people had told us about this iconic restaurant, and now we had plans to go! Our airBnB was 150’ away from the restaurant (by boat)… but 3.5 miles by land. Thanks to the storm, Greg came and picked us up in his truck! I had seen a duck cruising by at 10 mph down wind, and assumed that Janet would not appreciate having her first paddle board trip being against that flow!

It was fantastic to see Greg again. We swapped more stories, and he told us how he had been worried about us and that big crossing yesterday. We had crossed a bridge before entering the open water – the bridge was about as high as our mast. Greg said that he has seen days where the water was coming over that bridge 🤢 This further confirms our choice to pedal more by going yesterday.

We now have a tight weather window – two days before the next storm. Janet and I have learned so much along this trip, and meticulously planning each leg is certainly a big part of that. We think we can finish the ICW on Sunday night before that next storm.

There aren’t too many activities when you can get a lot of adrenaline from going 8mph, but that “push you back in your seat” acceleration is often on par with rides I have taken in Teslas for that explicit purpose.

The thrill of speed didn’t last forever, though—soon we were back to dealing with our “inferiority complex” lane-mates. For example, a tug saw us under sail, and rather than take the logical straight line to the next channel marker, they headed straight for us. Also, instead of contacting us on the VHF to tell us what they were doing, a guy came out on deck and made a shoving motion with his arm, indicating that we should get the hell out of his way.

We did.

But not everyone was averse to using the VHF. When the bridge rotated for its scheduled opening at 12:30 pm, we heard the bridge operator on the radio saying to the other sailboat waiting,

“What the hell is that contraption!?”

Later he commented about the “unusual”sailing vessel that had just gone through.

That was us.

Janet helped pilot us around the obstructions in the very narrow waterway. There are stumps and crab traps that can cause us a world of hurt.
“Look out for that gray crab trap!” she exclaimed—only for it to become the first crab trap to avoid US. Turns out, it was a river otter.

We stopped early after turning West, into the wind. Once again, tall trees caused the wind to swirl from 360 different degrees. This made trimming the sail frustrating. Tomorrow, favorable but light winds are predicted for our last day on the water! As we settled in at camp, I couldn’t help but be a little sad that this journey is almost over.

My favorite part of the trip wasn’t even the ICW portion but actually the Everglades loop we did in southern Florida! I liked the nature and warm water down there the best. There were some long natural stretches further north, but they lacked the warmth. One of the best moments was anchoring in a quiet mangrove creek, completely surrounded by wildlife—birds calling, sea creatures below our tent, and not a single human sound except our own.

Janet and I both gained a lot more confidence on the water than we had during our kayak trips in “the old days.” While I don’t think I’ve technically gotten better at trimming the sail, I do have a lot of ideas—both big and small—on how to improve aspects of a sailing next time.

Also, there were a couple of things I got better at (which I think make me better at sailing, even if they aren’t technical skills):

1. Accepting the pace. When we started, the slow speeds felt painfully slow. I’m used to bike touring, where 100 miles in a day is easy, so covering only 30 miles felt frustrating. But at some point, I adjusted—and I started enjoying the slower pace just as much as cycling.

2. Weather waiting. It’s hard to wait out bad weather… and we did it a lot. But I think patience is a skill because it meant most of our time on the water was actually fun time. The forecasts were reliable enough that we could find spots to hide out for a few days. We made the best of the downtime—I did some work, and when I was done, I researched ways to make my boat faster or how to design and build a better hull (which I know contradicts point #1… but we can always dream!).

3. Adjusting to new discomforts. Something I love about new types of travel is adapting to discomforts. Before a trip, I always worry about them. But once I’m in it, I find that what seemed unbearable at the start becomes something I hardly notice later. An example from this trip: launching and landing in mud. Early on, I did everything I could to keep my feet dry—futile, obviously. By the middle of the trip, we stopped resisting. It was just easier to sink into the mud and get on with things. And washing up was easy—there was water everywhere!

4. Accepting hospitality. Janet and I are introverts who like people, but we also enjoy quiet nights in the tent, just the two of us. In the past, we’ve turned down offers of kindness, preferring solitude. On this trip, we made an effort to say yes to three invitations—and ended up meeting some really great people. This isn’t sailing-specific, but it made the trip richer.

I’m excited for the next adventure, though it sounds like Janet might be limiting her future sailing voyages—at least on boats with only six inches of freeboard. She enjoyed the journey but has hinted that she’d prefer something a little less… wet next time. 🤷