48 days afloat

[Etdbob]

So I'm sitting in a motel in Montana, almost done driving back from Florida to Washington state where we just spent 48 days afloat in a San Juan 21.

Yep, we drove a 17 year old Jeep liberty diagonally across the country towing a 44 year old fiberglass boat not once but twice this winter...

Sorry, it ain't a wooden boat, but I thought I'd let ya all know what we've been up to this winter, and it's all the wood work I did inside the boat that made it livable.

The voyage down was fun. We took our time and spent a few days around kenab, Utah and in Tennessee visiting friends.

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We launched at Key Largo on Dec 22. The jeep and trailer were stored at a local boat yard for $560.35 for two months, which is quite reasonable, especially for down there.
Getting the boat ready to go took two hours and I was soaked through with sweat by the time we were done, thanks to the unaccustomed heat and humidity. Eager to begin we motored out, dropped anchor and made ready to sail. But, the 400 pound keel was jammed, and would not descend below the boat. I dove under the boat, wrapped arms and legs around the keel and tried pulling it down, then tried hammering it down through a scupper to no avail. Finally we gave up, motored back to the marina and put the boat back on the trailer and bounced it up and down on the rough concrete ramp until the keel came loose. Back on the water we were finally sailing! We headed across Blackwater sound and ghosted to an anchorage as day descended to tranquil night...

Which is right when the mosquitoes descended upon us in blood-thirsty hordes!

Thankfully I'd fitted the boat with good screens for the hatches! We learned that we had to have the boat sealed up tight at sunset every single evening. So much for our dreams of sleeping on the cockpit benches under the stars!



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At first we sweltered in the heat and high humidity but very shortly froze our butts off and broke out the down and propane heater! It was a bad winter everywhere. We spent Christmas tied to the mangroves trying not to be blown away. Dinner that night featured spam...

[Etdbob]

We towed a canoe for a tender, which was both a very good idea and a very bad one!

It was the perfect vessel for resupply missions ashore and for exploring the innumerable backwater channels of the keys. We had manatee swim calmly under the canoe not six inches below us, and drifted right over sleeping sharks. Going ashore for supplies I could land anywhere, pick it up and stash it behind a handy dumpster or just on the side of a parking lot. No one ever bothered it.

We always anchored out, and often had to paddle a mile or more to go ashore for re-supply. The effortless glide and 6 mph hull speed of the canoe made this easy, compared to the usual 8 foot tubby rowboat or worse, trying to row an inflatable.

On the downside, the 16 foot canoe almost doubled what it would cost us to tie up at a marina (about $150 a night!) so we never did. Also, a canoe is the worst possible type of dingy to tow, and simply cannot be towed downwind. In any strength of wind it will roll and swamp going downwind, unless tied tight alongside the boat, where it can be bashed to splinters by rough seas. We dealt with this by never, ever, unless absolutely necessary, sailing downwind. When we did one of us had to bring the canoe alongside and tend it constantly.



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[Etdbob]

On the water we learned an awful lot pretty fast, such as;

Just because we had a car stored at a marina did not give us the right to leave our boat tied to the dock all day as we went to shore for supplies, that marinas charge transients not only by the length of the boat but also by the length of the dingy too, and that there is no place to dump a porta potty in the Florida keys.

No one but us ever seemed to use an anchor light. No sailboat but ours ever seemed to actually sail anywhere! We used about 2-1/2 gallons of gas in our little 3.5 h.p. outboard during this trip, (half a gallon in our last 24 hours, but that's a different story) and sailed the rest of the time.

I was very glad I'd gotten a second, bigger anchor and fitted the bow with two anchor rollers and bags for the rodes. One is a ten pound Danforth, the other a 13 pound delta. Both have chain and at least 100 feet of 1/2 inch line. That size line is overkill, 5/16th would do, but the thicker line is much easier to handle. I quite often used both anchors, and sometimes would drag even then. When I could, I'd tie directly to the mangrove trees when riding out a gale.

I'm ashamed to say we'd never had this boat out in any kind of high winds or whitecaps before this trip!

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[Etdbob]

We always handled the boat by paddle, sail and kedge rather than motor. For us the motor is a last resort because in the past it’s been notoriously unreliable, and it’s painfully noisy! I tell people I love my 200 dollar Hangkia, it’s made me a better sailor! The San Juan 21 paddles surprisingly well for such a big boat. One person with a canoe paddle can easily maintain 3 mph in still water.

Once we paddled off a dock and down a narrow mangrove channel on a cold and drizzly evening. We were both wearing our tan oilskins, I was standing at the rudder and Heidi was paddling kneeling, and folks came out of a dockside restaurant to take our photograph! Probably never saw a sailboat handled like that before.

Grounding in the shallow Florida waters became routine. Often we’d run aground several times a day! Thankfully no damage was done to the keel. We draw about 3-1/2 feet with the keel locked in it’s “halfway down” position, and could sail almost anywhere while the bigger cruisers didn’t dare leave the Inter-coastal Waterway.

The water is so shallow we didn’t need a lead line, we sounded with our boat hook, which has a pencil line on it for minimum depth. I learned to sail with one hand on the tiller and the other hand swinging the boat hook over the side taking soundings! We’d routinely anchor for the night in 45 inches of water. Florida doesn’t have much tidal range.

The first time we ran aground we had a regular panic party – dropping sails, trying to figure out how to get off and all that. Eventually it became quite routine.

When we run aground we’d;

1) Heidi would jump into the canoe. This reduction in boat weight would sometimes be enough to let us to sail off.

2) Heidi would stand on the fore deck holding onto the mast and rock the boat side to side. This always stirred up clouds of mud and sometimes allowed us to sail off.

3) If we came to a full stop we’d paddle an anchor out with the canoe and try to pull the boat off with that.

4) Failing all else we’d unbolt the keel and crank it up ( which took some time and is a bit of a pain to do).

5) Once in a blue moon I’d start the motor and try to push us off with that.

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We used the "Herreshoff method"

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Shade is a necessity but one thing I hadn't gotten around to before the trip was making a good boom tent.


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I've never seen such rainbows anywhere else!

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Our canoe on a re-supply mission. That's nine gallons of water, a weeks supply of food and clean laundry!

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Only once did the canoe get away from us. I could have sworn it was tied off!
Thankfully we were anchored off a lee shore and it didn't go far.
I stripped of my clothes and swam for it while my wife helpfully snapped pictures...

[Etdbob]

Sailing -

The San Juan 21, being a one design race boat, sails very well and (for it's size) seems quite fast. ( it's hull speed is a bit over six miles an hour, and it reaches that speed easily).
It seemed we could easily outpace larger cruising sailboats. Many of the slightly bigger cruisers sail like station wagons, so perhaps it isn’t surprising that we see them motoring most of the time.

It's also very easy to handle and sails like a big dingy. It will sail on all points with only the main sail, or just a reefed main sail. We sailed in force seven winds under one reef once or twice when we had to and were in complete control and not heavily heeled.

The first time we tried sailing in heavy winds under reefed mainsail we ripped the clew and reef lines right out of our best mainsail, when we unintentionally jibed not once but several times. The sail was not well setup. We dropped anchor to wait for the winds to moderate but conditions worsened, we were pitching wildly in big motorboat wakes, and we started dragging the anchor so we fired up the trusty 200 dollar Chinese Hangkia motor and got out of there. Several times we were almost at a standstill with the motor wide open, and we bashed a hole in the canoe, but we did make it back to the marina where our car (and a spare mainsail) was.


It is closer winded with the jib up of course, but when overpowered (Force 5 bordering on Force 6, I’d say) It’s best to drop the jib as a big first reef and carry on under mainsail alone. I’ve beat upwind through wind and chop this way for many miles. Instead of luffing or pinching through the gusts with the jib up I find I get where I’m going faster if I drop the jib, and sail fast and upright a little further off the wind.

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I built a compartment inside one quarterberth which held a surprising amount of food, and four more gallons of water.
Bulk foods - Sugar, oats, cracked wheat, milk powder, rice and dehydrated beans, instant potatoes and pancake mix were stored in 2 quart bottles.

The bottles were scrounged up over many months from Heidis folks, who buy bottled juice and may have bought more than usual when they learned what we were going to do with them!

The rest of the unused space inside the quarterberths and under the V-berth was filled with expanding floatation foam. The San Juan 21 will sink like a stone if it ever fills with water (one of the disadvantages of fiberglass boats!).

All the foam and wood I added might help, but the best bet is to keep the hatches shut in heavy weather!


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I sure don't claim to be a good cabinet maker but this locker was the cats meow. Way better than the fiberglass box it replaced, which is usually just used to hold a battery.

One gallon of water and more food were stored here. The top was particularly suited for bread and vegetables. We always bought eggs, bread, celery, tomatoes, carrots and what fruit struck our fancy, which greatly supplemented the diet of dried and canned foods.

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Water was mostly stored here in 2 quart bottles. About seven gallons would fit under the bed. We carried 17 gallons max, which let us stay away from land for up to seven days.
Showers were done in the cockpit (which is self-draining) with a water bag hanging from the boom. That's the crank for the keel holding the lid up - The crank was usually removed and stowed elsewhere to make going forward to the V-berth easier.

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Pancakes and eggs for breakfast!

[cstevens]

Following. It sounds like a great adventure!

[Woxbox]

Yep. That's the way to do it.

[Etdbob]

More of my amateur wood work -

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An early shot showing the hatch and anchor rollers I made.

I'd never actually seen an anchor roller platform before in real life, so sadly i made mine rather narrow....

Someone gave me an oak desktop see, and I knew I needed more anchors than I could hold in the lazarette
Shown with 5 and 10 pound danforths, the 5 pounder moved to the lazarette and a 13 pound delta was added forward.

[Hallam]

Fantastic! It's always encouraging to see someone else do a cruise in a small boat.

[Hugh MacD]

Great story and a great refit on the ol' boat! Thanks for sharing that!

[Boatsbgood]

I'll add my thanks for sharing the voyage, really appreciate how you adapted the boat, material notwithstanding. Please continue, I'll be reading...
BQ

[J.Madison]

Cool adventure.

Next year, maybe head south to the Sea of Cortez, its a shorter drive!

[WI-Tom]

48 days. I'm jealous. The best kind of jealous.

Tom

[johngsandusky]

Great report, thanks! It reminds me when I used to cruise locally in a 20' sloop, later a 26' yawl. Neither had power, I rowed when necessary. I daydream a little about towing a trailer boat everywhere.

[Rich Jones]

Thanks for taking us along!

[AJZimm]

Great story so far!
Thanks for sharing

[Bobcat]

Thanks for posting

[Hwyl]

Great report. What did Heidi think of it?

[Jack Loudon]

Yes Thanks! Great reading and very instructive.

[stromborg]

Thank you for sharing.

We need more of this around here, especially now in the tail end of a northern hemisphere winter as cabin fever starts setting in. Certainly got me looking at boat, trailer and map. Priest Lake ID isn't that far away... I've a hankering to go sailing someplace where I don't have to constantly take the state of tide and current into account.

Did you use the boat as a camper along the way? I would think you could pull into a campground and get treated like any other tow-behind trailer, but maybe not? (People do get weird about others coloring outside lines sometimes).

[Andrew2]

Delightfull story. Makes me want to get out on the water. My boats are similar. A 20ft quickish GRP sloop, not far from yours, an Oughtred fearing and a Bolger in the shed (nearly finished).

[jpatrick]

That sure is a long way to pull a sailboat for winter sailing. But certainly warmer than Washington in the winter! Great trip. Thank you for sharing.

Jeff

[John Meachen]

Excellent account of an epic trip,thanks for sharing it.

[Woody Jones]

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Nice trip report. Thanks for sharing!

[Garret]

Thank you for sharing.

We need more of this around here, especially now in the tail end of a northern hemisphere winter as cabin fever starts setting in. Certainly got me looking at boat, trailer and map. Priest Lake ID isn't that far away... I've a hankering to go sailing someplace where I don't have to constantly take the state of tide and current into account.

Did you use the boat as a camper along the way? I would think you could pull into a campground and get treated like any other tow-behind trailer, but maybe not? (People do get weird about others coloring outside lines sometimes).

This - though cabin fever has already set in here

[Liberty53]

Awesome trip, thanks for posting!

Did you catch any fish?

-Derek

[Robbie 2]

Wonderful.....thank you for sharing your adventure with us.