We turn our thoughts to heading further south in Florida and prepping to head over to the Bahamas. Along the way, we solve a three-year-old electrical mystery.
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The start of 2024 found us still in St. Augustine, FL. After our steady march from Norfolk and with the seasonal festivities over,we took the typical deep breath everyone takes after the frenetic happenings of the holidays, redirecting our attention to ‘the rest of winter.’ And that new direction would be to the south.
St. Augustine, FL
Jan 1 - 16, 2024
But first we still had a couple weeks to really enjoy Old St. Augustine with the crowds greatly diminished. We took in a museums, saw the Tiffany windows of the dining hall at Flagler College, and enjoyed many Roxy wlks around the 500-year old Spanish Fort (Castillo de San Marcos) and along the many cobble-stone streets of surrounding neighborhoods. St. Augustine is way up there on my long list of places I recommend people visit. Whether it’s a few days of highlights or snowbirding for a few months, you can’t go wrong here.
One thing we’ve observed about the cruising world: if you stay in one place for more than a couple weeks, you eventually see people you know passing through. In St. Augustine we saw good friends from Crew Lounge and True North, and also a couple who we had spent six days trapped at The Big Chute on Canada’s Trent Severn Waterway – a nice surprise. St. Augustine is a must-stop for ICW cruisers, so we also met lots of new people passing through; it’s always amazing the things you can find in common with other boaters.
Northern Florida can be a bit chilly in the early winter, and by mid-January we were ready for a little more traditional Sunshine State winter. Plus the holiday Nights of Lights continues through January, and the wreaths and pirate ship lit up like a sleigh were getting a little old.
South to Ft. Pierce
Jan 17 - 19
Daytona
Titusville
Eau Gallie
Our next lengthy stay would be Ft. Pierce, and we did a speed run down the coast, staying at familiar stops the next four nights. Daytona was first, and it continues to look better and better with the city investing heavily in the historic downtown. An easy walk from the marina, the main drag continues to come alive and now has a beautiful park along the river running its length. We are considering spending a whole month there next winter when we make our way south again.
We had a perfect travel day to Titusville, with glassy seas and abundant dolphins and shore birds the order of the day. Cape Canaveral appeared on the horizon with SpaceX rocket visible on one of the launchpads. We arrived at the marina in time to watch the launch – an unplanned treat. The following day’s cruise to Eau Gallie was another beautiful travel day and many dolphin sightings. (No manitees, though, as the water is still too cold for them.) Eau Gallie is a small, old Florida style town with an artsy vibe and the small marina has many long term liveaboards. With each stop south it had been noticeably warmer, and we started stashing our hats, gloves, and extra layers.
Ft. Pierce, FL
Jan 21 - Feb 13
The final leg was to Ft. Pierce – a short hop from Eau Gallie. We timed it to arrive at slack current because it is another place where docking can be tricky in current. The dockhand helped us get tied up and plugged in our power cord at the pedestal – and click! we tripped the breaker. And with the next try. And the next. Uh oh.
Tripping the power pedestal breaker was a bit of an old thorn in our side, the source of which Dave has been trying to track down since 2021. It’s a known throughout the cruising world that newer power pedestals are much more sensitive to even tiny amounts of electrical current ‘leaking’ from boats into the water (we all know electricity and water don’t play well together). On any boat, there are lots of places where this could happen that doesn’t effect the boat performance at all – a slightly loose wire, something not grounded correctly, or many other possibilities. The hard part is tracking it down, because there’s no simple test. There’s no simple test, and one can hardly examine every wire and connection on the boat. Dave – who is really good at troubleshooting anything mechanical – had systematically turned everything off and back on one at a time trying to locate the general circuit that was problematic since the first time it happened in Charleston after we had bought the boat. He had replaced the power cord and a couple other things that were potentially the source. This time at Ft. Pierce would be only the fourth time it had happened in over 250 marina stops, and ironically we spent a month at this marina less than a year ago with no problem at all.
So they moved us to a spot at one of their docks with older pedestal that didn’t have this lower tripping threshold and put us in touch with Rick the Electrician. Two days later, he spends all morning poking around and checking things and finds no smoking gun. After a lunch break, he returns with his mentor Mike the Retired Electrician, who says,“You know the marina has a portable test pedestal with a leak fault meter that would make this easier” and off they went to find it, eventually locating it in the dockmasters office who was unaware this was a Magic Testing Box. So now there’s three guys on the dock with this mini-pedestal, and through a systematic series of disconnecting various things (Dave said to use the term ‘half-splitting’ for the Navy and mechanical types) finally trace it back to…THE FREAKIN’ PLUG ON THE CORD!!! They take the cover off, and lo and behold you can actually see a small heat-damaged area — the smoking gun. Or at least the smoked prong. There’s a longer detailed description involving volts and phases and the need for a connector that left the plug more exposed to moisture, but since I have already far exceed my electrical knowledge with no capacity to expand it and is why I was a biology major rather than engineering, I’m going to leave it at ‘they changed out the plug’ so as to no longer need the connector. The Magic Testing Box blinked its approval, there were high fives all around, and everything worked just fine when we moved back to our original slip. That’s one nagging worry gone that’s been dogging us for almost three years.
Ft. Pierce is well known to us, and we had booked a month here to prep for the Bahamas. We did some final boat projects (re-commissioning our water maker, for example) and provisioned for the six weeks we would be over there. Things are very expensive over there and supply variable as everything must be shipped in, so you try to take as much as you can of non-perishables, sundries, etc. We thought we had to think ahead when we might not be able to get to a grocery store in a week, but planning for a couple months was daunting. How much granola do we go through each week on our yogurt? Wait – are we even going to be able to find yogurt there regularly? Prioritizing freezer space — can butter be frozen? How many rolls of paper towels can be crammed under the sink? (Okay, I know all Dave’s fellow submariners are laughing at my angst at planning for two people for six weeks when they do 130 people for three months. Tap dancing on #10 tin cans anyone?). Ultimately my shopping list was pretty long, and we would have to make several trips so that I could adjust up or down based on how much more stowage space I had left.
Jim and Tammy to the rescue! Dave’s brother Jim and his wife Tammy are now living the nomadic RV lifestyle, and they pulled into Ft. Pierce a week after we arrived. They took us on errands and mega-grocery runs with their BAT (Big Ass Truck). During the two plus weeks we were there together, we also enjoyed dinners and dominos, spent Saturday mornings at the magnificent Ft. Pierce Farmer’s Market, watched the Super Bowl, and just enjoyed hanging out with no agenda; it was really nice to have this extended time together. We did turn them on to the guava & cheese pastries at our favorite bakery Importico’s.
As mentioned, we will be buddy boating in the Bahamas with No Worries. We met Patty and Ciaran almost exactly a year ago when we were in Marathon We stayed in touch, and since we both wanted to go to the Bahamas this winter coordinated planning and meeting up in Ft. Pierce. Once they arrived, we started fine-tuning the planning we had been conducting by email up to now. In actuality, ‘fine-tuning’ is a relative term, because everything is weather dependent. So in actuality we were developing Plans A, B, and C and then tweaking them as we started the Weather Vigil. We follow a couple different apps, which each show the various weather ‘models’, which are updated twice a day. When you get within 48 hours, they should all come together and are pretty accurate. Between 2-7 days, it can be a tease. As our desired departure grew closer, we would see a window of light winds and seas on the horizon and we would start planning, only to have it collapse as it drew closer. This winter so far even the weather forecasters agree has been challenging with more frequent cold fronts than typical, producing high winds coming from the wrong direction. We are keeping our itinerary flexible; our initial plan was to stay north, crossing to West End and staying in the Abacos chain of islands. But they can have worse weather until later in the season. So we also had a plan to head more south, crossing over to Bimini and then doing the Exumas before making our way north later in our stay when hopefully there will be longer periods of good weather. It can wear you down mentally, but we focused on the ultimate goal of getting over into the pristine waters and beauty of the islands of the Bahamas. (Though I have to admit that Plan D was to just head to the Keys and skip the Bahamas if the Weather Vigil continued on too long.)
Even Further South to Ft Lauderdale
Feb 14 - 15
West Palm Beach
Ft. Lauderdale
Finally a brief weather window materialized and the forecast held. It looked like our best bet was going to be to stay south and cross to Bimini, and from there we could ride the weather forecast to wherever the best travel was (probably starting in the south). The closest straight line to Bimini is from Ft. Lauderdale, about 90 miles south of Ft. Pierce, and a route was planned. We did final preps, a last minute grocery run for fresh fruits and veggies, and got Roxy and Ella (No Worries canine crewmember) to a nearby vet for the required health certification.
First stop: West Palm Beach. The trip down became more and more congested as we got closer to our destination. Marinas there are ridiculously expensive, catering to the mega-yacht crowd, so the average cruiser like us chooses to anchor out – especially since this was just a quick overnight. We found a couple spots right across from the nice downtown day docks. We dinghied in for the evening dog run and did a quick walk through the main drag with its numerous restaurants and bars. Only discovery of note was the World’s Strangest Chocolate Shop, with stuffed animals lining the walls like a carnival midway, 8’ tall plaster palm tree floor lamps for sale, and a middle aged proprietor with her little Yorkie at her feet and who finished every sentence with ‘my darling.’ But there was indeed a tiny case of ‘fine’ chocolates in the back corner between the costume jewelry and a stack of large gold-framed jungle prints.
First stop: West Palm Beach. The trip down became more and more congested as we got closer to our destination. Marinas there are ridiculously expensive, catering to the mega-yacht crowd, so the average cruiser like us chooses to anchor out – especially since this was just a quick overnight. We found a couple spots right across from the nice downtown day docks. We dinghied in for the evening dog run and did a quick walk through the main drag with its numerous restaurants and bars. Only discovery of note was the World’s Strangest Chocolate Shop, with stuffed animals lining the walls like a carnival midway, 8’ tall plaster palm tree floor lamps for sale, and a middle aged proprietor with her little Yorkie at her feet and who finished every sentence with ‘my darling.’ But there was indeed a tiny case of ‘fine’ chocolates in the back corner between the costume jewelry and a stack of large gold-framed jungle prints.
The transit to Ft. Lauderdale was only about 35 nm, but it was a total slog all the way and why southern Florida is my least favorite stretch of the ICW. Numerous bridges, high traffic even on a week day, and many no wake zones kept us at an average speed of only 5-6 knots. Plus the waterway is narrow, and many in small boats ignored the no wake zones, resulting in their wakes bouncing off the seawalls and creating a continuous washing machine effect on the water that had us bouncing around. The expensive houses along the way were fun to look at, but the well-manicured properties looked uninhabited.
By the time we arrived at Sunrise Bay anchorage in the early afternoon we were all ready to escape the ICW madness. This is a lovely little cutout right off the ICW, surrounded by lavish homes and a yacht club, with room for over a dozen boats. The docks at the state park across the way were being renovated, which meant we would have to dinghy 2.5 miles around to a city park that was a short three blocks away as the crow flies to get the dogs off. But it’s a nice ride, and the four humans and two dogs enjoyed sandwiches in the park before returning to the boats at sunset.
The evening was spent prepping for the open water crossing. A final weather check showed it was still a ‘go’ for an early morning departure. We will be able to go fast at 15 kn for almost all of the 50 mile distance, and honestly don’t know what kind of rolling action to expect with the predicted 3’ seas on our port beam. Then we recalled that our niece did the Bimini to Ft. Lauderdale trip on a standup paddleboard, and our worries felt more like whining from this new perspective so we set them aside.
So bring on the breezes and clear turquoise waters! See Level is Bahamas bound, Baby!
Pops’ Stats Corner*
- No of Days: 46
- Travel Days: 6
- Miles Traveled: 318.9 (251.7 nm)
- No of guava cheese pastries consumed while in Ft. Pierce: 3, maybe 4. OK, 5 or more. But we always split them and it was over a whole month.
*Pops is the family’s affectionate name for Dave’s dad. He had a mind for sports statistics, earning him the nickname Numbers from the coaches of several Stillwater teams with whom he worked. This regular section of the blog is in his honor, because it’s the kind of thing he would love.
Great work Navy getting that electrical bug resolved and cheaply! Enjoy the Bahamas