St. Simon Island Lighthouse
It’s raining today, cloudy and cool. We’re sitting at Brunswick Landing Marine ($2/ft. plus $4 for electricity per day transient rate) just north of the shrimp docks where a fleet of colorful shrimpers with their nets high up on their outriggers are rafted up three deep at the quay. We came in two days ago from Murrells Landing, SC where we spent a long weekend with Betty and Byrl Raper, our (hopefully sooner than later) partners to be. We had planned to refinish the salon sole floor by sanding as the wood was at least ¼” thick. Well, it turns out that the maple strips are at best 1/32” thick and we quickly ground through one as proof. So, now we need to put in a new sole over the old, but the maple cove base was glued on and will only be destroyed if we try to take it off with our experience, actually lack thereof. We need to find some one with the requisite experience to do the job once we get back to Titusville. I wonder of Don Thomas, our friend and resident guru, knows about this delicate “cabinet” work?
Ops, just got hit with another (it’s a boat after all) problem: the mechanic we hired (all I’d do is get oil all over everything) to install our new hydraulic autopilot steering pump went home sick after he found out that the parts he hadn’t ordered arrived. Yes, the supplier didn’t fill the ordered correctly, so the right ones will be here Monday. Hopefully West Marine will have our new main halyard ready to I can go up the mast and replace the original one which lost (ripped) its outer casing. Boy, that was exciting as we tried to bring down the sail in the Brunswick channel with a huge, green RoRo Swedish freighter bearing down on us at about three times our speed. The pilot was very pleasant to Linda who was on the helm (and radio) asking her to keep to the green (port) side of the channel so they could pass. The casing scrunched up as it went through the rope clutch (why “rope” as a sail boat has only one rope which is associated with the sail?) and prevented the halyard and then the hole in the mast from passing through until we pulled it back, straightened the casing out, and then rethreaded it through. All in a days work for a sailor!Out of the blue last night our Canadian friends, Paula and John Godfrey of Our Way called and said they had just entered Georgia on their way back to Titusville. An hour and 20 minutes later we were all having drinks with James and Roni Redman on Harlequinn (yes, two “n’s” ‘cause it is their son Quinn’s name) and being regaled by John and his story of being “attacked” (shooting antimissile flairs) by USAF fighter jets at 8,500 feet over Pittsburg, PA. Seems he had been misdirected into restricted airspace and was perceived as a threat to the G20 Conference going on there. He was commanded (by the USCG who were the first people he was able to communicate with: the USAF wouldn’t/couldn’t find the emergency frequency he was transmitting on) to land at an airport in OH where he was escorted by a USCG helicopter with machine gunner at the ready. On landing and pulling off the runway he was surrounded by the FBI, Homeland Security, FAA, State and local troopers and ordered to stick his hands out the window to show he was unarmed. He was taken off the plane after telling them at their request that he did have a pocket knife in his carry on bag and interrogated by each branch for four hours. After the Secret Service interrogation (yes, they arrived late) telling him they’d check his story of being misdirected, they let him take off, fly north away from Pittsburg, and then turn north for Toronto where he arrived in the rain after dark with almost no fuel due to headwinds and the unexpected landing. On Monday, the FAA investigator called and told him his story checked out, that the threatened fines and incarceration (and black mark in his record) would not happen, and that he hoped there would be no hard feelings. He even went so far as to give John his telephone number and tell him to call (to shoot the breeze) if he needed anything. They spent the night aboard with their cat, Faye (named after the hurricane she was born it at Titusville), and got back on the road to Florida this morning.
Tomorrow-week we take off for San Francisco, CA with our daughters Marnie and Aimee for my Step-mother’s memorial service on Monday the 26th. She died last month at Villa Marin in San Rafael. She was 94 and led a remarkable and excitingly long life. She married my Dad back in 1983 and we had kept in touch over the years. From there, we’ll visit my 95 year old Aunty Sally Lowrey in Honolulu and then fly back to Orlando (?). That presupposes we get out of here Monday noon-ish and head straight back to Titusville (a 35 hour trip with an overnight at Port Canaveral). If that’s not doable, then we’ll drive back leaving the boat here until our return from Honolulu. We’ll know Monday about the pump installation and the weather.
Monday dawned a cold, at least for us Floridians, 55°with fog swirling off the warmer water. James came by with a friend of his who spliced the thimble into the new 7/16 Sta-Set polyester braid mail halyard. We sent him up the mast in the boson’s chair (yup, I’ve given into hiring out the dangerous stuff whenever I can) to re-thread the line. After that Wayne from the boat yard came by with the correct parts and put in the new (and improved) hydraulic auto steering pump. Now it’s 3:00 pm and we’re getting fueled up: should have been out of here by noon to get to Cape Canaveral by 5 pm (and still light) according to the chart plotter if we maintained 6.5 knots. Well, we did and then some. With 15 to 19 knot winds and a following sea of 3-5 ft. we made great time and got in just at last light. We anchored on the west side of the Florida Barge Canal lock and went to bed. Next morning we motor/sailed (jib only) to the Inter-Coastal Waterway, set all the sails for the NNE 18-24 knot wind, and sailed back to Titusville arriving “home” to E dock (28°37.167N; 80° 48.464W: Remember I am giving you the coordinates so you can go to Google Earth and plug them to see exactly where of I speak.) and a wonderful reception by our old friends and the Westland Marina staff.
