Where the hell are my ruby slippers?
The storm dropped a house out in the anchorage?
by Christine Kling
I’m back home in the USA, but I swear, it feels like Oz to me. Seriously.
I left Green Turtle Cay late in the afternoon on Saturday, July 6 and motored the ten miles up to Powell Cay. The wind was blowing hard, but the anchorage was well protected, so I rowed the Yorkshire Terror ashore. We walked the white sand beach and met some folks off a giant motor yacht, who were very nice to us and gave us an ice cold bottle of Fiji water. The weird thing was, Barney became obsessed with this one lady’s toes. She was floating in a water chair and as he brightly painted toes bobbed to the surface he kept trying to bite them. She was giggling so loud it sounded like she was cackling. She made jokes about taking Barney with her. I’ll bet she had a bicycle with a basket on it hidden on that island somewhere – along with her red-striped leggings.
Let’s go this way – or maybe this way?
–From the film The Wizard of Oz, MGM (1939)
The next day the wind was blowing fairly strong again and my stalwart guide, my little autopilot friend lost his brain. He wobbled all over and pointed this way, then that way. Then he tried to go both ways at once. It was hopeless. He was done in. So, I was hand steering for the next four hours of sailing 5.5 knots under headsail alone to the anchorage at Great Sale Cay.
Though I had intended to sail from there to Cape Canaveral in the company of my friends Matt and Cindy on Mikaya, I told them I’d changed my plans. I didn’t want to hand steer for 24 to 36 hours due to the osteoarthritis I have in my neck, so I was headed to West End the following morning. Though the trip would be much longer, I would break it up into manageable bits and be able to get to Fort Lauderdale to take care of my business there.
I had a nice trip across the banks, motorsailing and sailing. I arrived around 4:30 in the afternoon, tied up in the marina, and had a nice hot shower. While I was registering in the office, I met an acquaintance. He told me I shouldn’t go the next day because a low had developed to the south of us. He had seen it on satellite weather, he said, and I should be prepared to be stuck in West End waiting with him for a break in the weather. I went back to the boat and looked at the Internet, and found what he was looking at was just a cell of thunderstorms. An hour later it had disappeared. It was just normal summer weather. I wonder if the cowardly lion is still waiting in West End for the summer squalls to end.
As it turned out, I made it through the first forty miles of my crossing without problems. I was motorsailing with headsail only in 10-15 knots of wind off my aft quarter, rocking and rolling and doing my best to keep my sail from backing. My shoulders and neck were burning from the exertion of trying to hold a course in the very moderate swell, but I was considering myself lucky that it was so quiet. The rolling was enough that the Terror wanted to sit on my lap all the time, and I was trying to balance keeping myself upright, holding a dog on my lap and steering one armed using all my strength to turn the wheel. I finally put him into his box down below around 11:00 a.m. I had to use both arms to steer.
The last twenty miles just about did me in. The Gulf Stream current was so strong, it seemed like the bow was pointed towards Miami and the boat was still being pushed north. I had sailed a course that took me well south of the rhumb line before hitting the stream to build in room so that I wouldn’t lose speed by heading directly into the current. It almost worked.
But then I got hit by a line of squalls that just kept coming one after the other. I had to roll up my headsail in the 30 knot winds and the seas grew bigger and more confused. We rolled rail to rail and I heard things crashing and banging and breaking down below. I saw two waterspouts form and snake down to the surface so close to my boat I could see the white spume at the surface where the powerful cyclonic winds pick up the water and turn it into a white vapor storm. I called out to the Terror, “Hang on Todo! We might go airborne soon!” I decided if the waterspouts came any closer, I was going to go below, put in the drop boards and climb into the box with Barney. I kept clicking my bare heels together, trying to sight land and saying to myself, “There’s no place like home.”
In the end, it wasn’t until I motored through the breakwaters that I finally made it out of that relentless current. I never did go north of my rhumb line and I made the 53 mile crossing in 11.5 hours in spite of numerous course changes to dodge waterspouts and covering a route that was more of an arc than a line. I was beat and the pain was pretty intense. I dropped my anchor, but not before looking out across the water and seeing that somehow a house had been dropped in the middle of the anchorage. I wondered if Barney would find shriveled toes sticking out underneath it.
The last couple of days, I’ve spent with a rental car doing all the errands I needed to do in Fort Lauderdale, so tomorrow morning I will start north up then Yellow Brick Road (aka the ICW). I’m going to break it up into three shorter days and try to go easy on my neck and shoulders. Eventually, I will replace the brain on the autopilot, but I don’t want to pay transient marina rates here and waste time when I am on a deadline. This way I can motor up the road, and still be able to lift my arms to write in the evenings. That’s the plan anyway.
So, in the morning Todo and I will be off to see the wizard. Remember how Dorothy got that makeover in the Emerald City? I wonder if those munchkins could shave a few years off this tired old body.
Fair winds!
Christine
Want more sea stories? My nautical novels are available here.
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