It was our intention to leave Aquarius in storage at Fish Island Marina in St. Augustine for the winter, but I got a call in December from the dockmaster telling me that the marina owner had a buddy with an 80' boat coming in, and we would have to move Aquarius at the end of the month.
New Year's eve brought a severe storm to the Florida east coast, with winds >45nm and 9 inches of rain in three hours. It had mostly died out by midnight and we lit off a few fireworks to ring in the new year.
The new alarm clock woke me up 0630 on New Year's day. I let Eugene sleep in a bit as I got dressed and started off the propane heater. I woke him up and made a small breakfast for us while he dressed. We tied the dinghy to the stern and pulled the power and dock lines before we motored away from the dock at 7:45.
I hailed the Bridge of Lions at 7:58 as we rounded the bend at the south anchorage where we had run aground a month before, but the bridge tender told us we weren't going to make it for his 0800 opening and we'd have to wait untill 0830. I circled back south on the ICW to kill a half an hour. Just as we aproached the bridge again at 0825 the engine died. I went below and very quickly bled the fuel pump again. The engine started right up again for us, and we made the 830 opening with no problem.
We raised our sails as we motored out the channel to sea, making the St. Augustine sea bouy at 0950 with winds from the west at 10-15nm pushing us along. The boat was already doing ~6nm and we decided to raise the jib. We were soon making way at 7-8nm with 4' seas on the beam. Winds started picking up more at noon and we lowered the jib again, given that I could see the bow sprit flexing and we didn't want to stress we didn't want to stress the forward sprit bracket. The wind continued to build through the afternoon with gusts over 20nm and seas of 5-6' on the beam so we decided to reef the staysail. Aquarius continued north at 7nm average through the afternoon with winds gusting >25nm from the west. Fortunately the off shore wind didn't have a chance to build the seas up any higher as a strong onshore wind would have. By 1600 we were past Nassau Sound and 5nm off shore from Amelia Island, about 9nm from our turn in point to Cumberland Sound.
Eugene had been seasick all day and went below to lie down for a while. He missed some of the best sailing of the day as the winds started gusting to 30nm resulting in recorded top speeds >9nm as we heeled over to the gunwales at times ! Seas of 7' were slapping the port side and sending a lot spray over the deck soaking me in the cockpit. I woke Eugene up at 1700 to take the wheel so I could go below and change into dry foul weather gear and then had him do the same.
We made the sea channel for Cumberland sound at 1800 and started the engine. Eugene stayed on the wheel as I lowered our sails, canvas wasn't going to help at all heading up the river. The wind had died down to a gentle 10nm and we made it into the sound by 1840 doing our best to make out bouys for the river. Cumberland sound is very well marked given the submarine base there, but the St. Mary's river is not. It was pitch black dark with no moon out as we worked our way slowly up the river to Lang's Marina. We had three soft groundings on the sand bars going around the bend in the river to the town of St. Mary's but managed to back off again quickly each time. We could have been stuck hard very easily with the outgoing tide.
We finaly made it to Lang's at 2300 but couldn't find enough clear dock space so we came up to what turned out to be a city park dock and tied up at 2330. We flagged down a police officer who said he'd let us stay for the night, then we made ourselves a quick beef stew dinner aboard before turning in to our bunks for the night...
(c)Copyright 2003 by Eugene Kashpureff