fetchinketch

In the deep ocean water around Hawai’i there are a number of buoys anchored. The have no navigation purpose, they are there solely to attract fish. They are referred to as “FADs,” Fish Attracting Devices. In the open ocean anything floating on the surface can quickly become a FAD. Logs, rafts of seaweed, boats…

We had been motoring for a bit, and came across a dramatic current line in the Gulf Stream. The water temperature was 79 degrees on one side, one hundred feet to the northeast it was 76. Lots of weed and small fish. The sonar was crowded with small fish arches from the surface down to 200 feet. Standard fishing advice is to always “fish the edges,” and there wasn’t going to be any better edge out here than this! We stopped, and I got out my jigging rod.

In no time Harmonie’s shadow attracted lots of baby bar jack, bite sized tidbits for anything we’d be interested in. The variety of small fish that accumulate at a place like this is staggering.

A few minutes later a school of a dozen mahi-mahi come cruising down the line. They were active, and feeding, lit up bright green and neon blue. They circled the boat, just drifting there like that we were quite the fishy FAD. I hooked a nice one on my first drop of the jig—and after a great fight, the hook pulled out boat side. By the time we got recombobulated we had lost the temperature break, and the fish.

We headed in closer to shore, and tried some deep jigging without any luck. Toward sunset, the wind picked up again, and we were off.

We will be entering the Chesapeake Bay tomorrow morning. It looks like we be dropping anchor at Norfolk for 24 hours to let a north wind blow out and make our passage up the bay more pleasant.

Harmonie took off from Fort Lauderdale like a race horse out of the barn. Perfect winds, and a fast running Gulf Stream had us running 10, 11, even 12 knots over ground. In the first 24 hours we covered more that 250 nautical miles, a new best for us.

Overnight the weather gods decided to punish us a bit for the fun we had. What was forecast to be a spot of rain, turned out to be 6 hours of winds between 30 and 40 knots. While it kept our speed up, it was a bit more than we consider comfortable.

The winds brought us a small visitor, a tiny yellow and black Cape May Warbler who sought refugee status on board at the height of the storm. This is pretty common offshore, but this little guy has made himself at home. He darted into the cabin, and after exploring a bit, decided that our bananas are just the perfect thing to refuel with after 200 miles of flying. Every once in a while, he pops up on deck, decides he doesn’t like all that water, and goes back to the bananas. Since these guys migrate from the Caribbean to Canada, he might be less a refugee than a hitchhiker, even so we haven’t found the heart to kick him off.

After too many months of landlocked life, we are once again in what feels like our natural element. The sun is shining, the sky and the water are blue, the breeze is blowing, the flying fish are flying, and we are making 8 knots in the direction we want to go.

We are off Palm Beach, Florida just entering the Gulf Steam and from here, all looks good in the world.

This afternoon we left the world of large crewed superyachts, and made our way down the New River to an anchorage in Hollywood, Florida. This is a trip we have made a number of times, and it was surprisingly busy, given everything that is going on. Something is always new to see on this bustling waterway.

A Boat of Boats

As we were passing by Port Everglades, the main shipping terminal in Fort Lauderdale, we noticed this strange scene being played out.

For people who have a boat HERE who need or want it THERE and the boat is unsuitable for making the trip itself, you can have it shipped. In this case literally loaded on a ship to cross the ocean. The ship is a bulk cargo carrier that is loaded with something like grain, or ore, or coal, and then yachts and other “stuff” is loaded onto the flat deck after the cargo holds are closed. I am not sure where this one was going, but it has deck cargo of construction equipment as well as these trawlers and sportfishers.

We are now comfortably at anchor, and it is a delight to feel the boat moving that little bit under foot as she comes to life away from the dock.

The wind today is still from the north, but that will be changing over night, and bright and early tomorrow we should be seeing a nice breeze from the southeast carrying us in the direction we want to go.

This one certainly surprised me. In our enforced isolation and idleness I am sure you have all come across some piece of information in your web browsing that surprised or amazed you. Well, here is mine…

The picture here is of the Astoria. She wouldn’t have attracted much of my attention if we crossed each other at sea, except maybe for a comment on her design, so much more stylish than modern cruise ships.

She is actually a very famous ship, although you’d likely not know it. She is currently in service (or at least was until the current troubles started) as a cruise ship, and her most recent routes were in Baja, Mexico. Yet in an earlier incarnation she played a key roll in one of the most infamous nautical events of the 20th century.

She is an older ship, originally launched in 1946. To be still sailing almost 75 years later is remarkable, but that is not what makes her special.

She was originally the pride of the Swedish America Line and was one of the great romantic Atlantic Ocean liners of the 1950’s when ocean travel still was competitive with the upstart airlines. But that is not why she is special.

She served under many names for many companies, and countries, as a liner, and then reconfigured as a cruise ship. Some of her names were: Völkerfreundschaft, Volker, Fridtjof Nansen, Italia I, Italia Prima, Valtur Prima, Caribe, Athena, and Azores. But that is not why she is noteworthy.

Here is a picture of the Astoria when she was first launched. Anybody with even a passing interest in matters nautical might be a step ahead of me now. If you look closely at her bow, you will see her original name, and the one with which she entered the history books for all the wrong reasons: The Astoria began life over 70 years ago as the Stockholm.

Here is the most famous picture of the vessel known as the Stockholm:

This photo was taken while she was limping back into New York Harbor after putting her re-enforced ice-breaking bow to unfortunate use: Accidentally ramming, and sinking, the great Italian liner Andrea Doria off Nantucket in thick fog on the night of July 25, 1956. Fifty-one lives were lost.

I was amazed to find out she was still sailing.

On the home front, we are going to be moving tomorrow! We’ll be getting out of the boatyard as soon as we complete our last preparations. We’ll be anchoring down close to the ocean overnight. It looks like we have an outstanding weather window for our passage north with a Thursday departure.

We are both very excited about first, sailing, and second getting further north where we can enjoy at least a few weeks of weather cooler than we have been suffering with here in sunny Florida! Our next landfall will be in the town of Deal, Maryland. Halfway up the Chesapeake Bay.

One of the rules in the city of Fort Lauderdale is that when you in an “essential” business, you have to wear a face mask. Since this is Florida, marinas are “essential” so anytime we are out and about in the boat yard, we are masked up.

We are more than ready to get out of Dodge. We have been here way too long, and need to stretch our sealegs again. We are ready, and we have Harmonie ready too. Before the end of next week, we expect we will start sailing north. We have a couple of marinas in the Chesapeake Bay who will take us in. It’s about a five or six day trip for us from here to there. It has been amazingly hot and humid here for days now. The prospect of cool ocean breezes is really, really appealing.

When we get to Maryland, our expectation is within days we will be on an airplane, heading–right back to Florida to pick up another boat to deliver–right back to Maryland!

Except for sweating a lot, we are comfortable, happy and healthy. We sincerely hope all of you are too!

In the traditional sailor’s flag code a plain yellow flag represents the letter “Q” and is flow by a ship entering harbor to show that they are “healthy” and wish to be cleared in to enter the country. We fly ours every time we enter a new country until we have been cleared in by customs.

Interesting how a few weeks change perspective. It wasn’t that long ago we were sitting right here fussing and fretting over how long we had been stuck in port. We wanted to go SOMEWHERE. Now… we are really happy we stayed put!

We have a number of sailing friends who are in various stages of being stuck somewhere. The worst difficulties are faced by people who left one port, heading for another; then at the end of the trip, are told they can’t enter the country–go away.

Right now, we are comfortable and reasonably isolated here in Fort Lauderdale. We have been keeping busy by working on other boats, some recently sold, others being prepped for market. Ironically, this situation has turned into a minor financial surplus for us, while a disaster for most others.

We have a boat full of food, and in a place we can comfortably stay for the foreseeable future. We are good.

As bad as this first wave might be, I worry that the damage to the economy around the world, like the second wave of an ocean tsunami, will prove a bigger, and more dangerous problem in the long run. But time will tell…