Tag: Dinner Key Marina FL

We left New Bern on November 2, 2023, with Savannah, GA as our next destination. Savannah wasn’t our original plan though. We had planned to stop at Lady’s Island Marina, where we had stayed on our way north, but they didn’t have any space for us in late November. After much research, I was able to book a slip at Bull River Marina near Savannah, cementing our plans that Savannah was where we would stop for a couple of weeks. This change was good, as neither of us had ever been to Savannah.

Lynette’s daughter was coming to visit us for five days, arriving on November 25^th, so we took our time slowly working our way to Savannah. With a lot of time on our hands, we kept our passages very short going down the ICW. We anchored in new places we hadn’t anchored on the way north, for the change of scenery.

Our only incident during our trek to Savannah was in Myrtle Beach where we got hung up on a rock and couldn’t get off. I called TowBoatUS to pull us off the rock. I’m glad we have full towing service with BoatUS. It made the process quite simple. They were in the area on their way to another incident, so they did a quick detour to pull us off the rock. It took all of 10 minutes and there was no damage we could detect, a bonus.

Our first marina stop was in Charleston, SC at St John’s Yacht Harbor for two nights. We arrived in the afternoon of the 9^th and settled in for the evening. The marina had a courtesy car we could use for 2 hours, so we took advantage of the car and went to lunch and grocery shopping. We fueled up on the morning of the 11^th and headed for our next anchorage.

We now had way too much time to kill between the 11^th and the 20^th with only 132nm to go, so we stopped and anchored every 10-15nm along the way. It was nice to not be on a fast schedule to anywhere for a change. We relaxed and meandered down the ICW at a very leisurely pace, weighing anchor late in the mornings and anchoring mid-afternoon each day.

Of course, the passage didn’t go without incident. Our port engine started overheating, so I spent some time troubleshooting the issue. It appeared that the thermostat was sticking closed and not allowing the engine to cool, even though I had recently tested the thermostat in a pan of hot water on the stove. Normally we alternate engines to maintain consistent hours on them. Due to the overheating problem on the port engine, we went the rest of the way to Savannah only using the starboard engine for power. As soon as I figured out it was the thermostat, I placed an order, and a new thermostat was waiting for us at Bull River Marina. I installed it after we arrived on the 20^th and ran some tests to be sure the new thermostat solved the overheating issue. The port engine was back in business.

Lynette’s daughter rented a car, so we were mobile while she was visiting. We went grocery shopping, out for meals, and explored Savannah. We walked around downtown Savannah, found a famous ice cream parlor (Leopold’s), and watched two canons being fired at Old Fort Jackson. I also needed to get one of our alternators rebuilt and buy a new TV, so we accomplished those as well. It was a fun visit and I felt like we got to explore Savannah a bit.

We left Savannah on the morning of December 1^st and decided to take the outside route along the coast as the weather was favorable and we didn’t want to meander through the Georgia ICW. Much of the ICW through Georgia winds through barren marshlands, a bit on the boring side. Once back inside following the ICW, after a night’s rest at Dog Hammock, we kept hitting fog. It would lift from time to time and then get thick again. On our second day out of Savannah, the fog was very thick. This was a bit unnerving as we couldn’t see more than a boat length ahead, so we slowed down to improve our reaction time if something did appear out of the fog in our way. Many boats were trying to get into the marina in Brunswick, GA. I assume to get out of the fog. We could hear them all hailing the marina on the radio, but we kept going in the fog to our next anchorage at Terrapin Cove. It was just a wide spot in the ICW, but a nice place to drop the hook for the night. The next morning it was beautiful and sunny, but as the day went on, the fog rolled in again.

I have stayed in contact with the new owner of No Regrets, our previous sailboat. We chat from time to time and during a recent chat, I mentioned we would be coming through the Jacksonville area on the ICW. He had hired someone to add air conditioners and a diesel generator to No Regrets, now renamed Sweet Caroline, and they botched up the job. I offered to talk to a surveyor and troubleshoot some of what had been messed up while we were in the area.

We entered Jacksonville on the 4th of December. I had no idea it was about 5 hours west of the ICW, which is a long way when you are going only 5 knots against the current. Sadler Point Marina has a very shallow slip they rarely rent out as it is only about 4′ deep at low tide. We tied up there with no problem and stayed for 3 days. I helped the owner with some wiring issues and talked with the surveyor about the systems on the boat so he could write up a scathing document about how unprofessional the upgrades had been. Many things were not to ABYC specs and when we started one air conditioner unit and the generator a lot of raw cooling water was leaking into the boat. It was a very sad sight to see the boat I had spent so many years putting my all into, just get ruined in such a short time. Lynette wouldn’t even go to the boat, as she didn’t want to see the damage. When we bought No Regrets, we had a similar experience with promises made and damages done and not fixed at our first boatyard in Oregon. Unfortunately, his was much more extensive. Live and learn.

The weather looked reasonable for a passage outside to Lake Worth Inlet at West Palm Beach, FL, so we left Sadler Point Marina for West Palm Beach mid-morning on December 7th. This was a 48-hour passage of 261nm, our first 2-day passage on Cerca Trova. We motored the whole way as most of the time the wind was on our nose. The seas were reasonable for about ¾ of the trip, but the last 12 hours were brutal. Catamarans don’t have a pleasant motion in seas forward of the beam, and this was one of those times. The seas weren’t huge, but the ride was rough and uncomfortable. We made it to Lake Worth and anchored mid-morning on the 9^th, near our friends’ boat and almost in the same spot we anchored on the way north.

When we anchored in Lake Worth, we got hit by front after front with sustained winds in the 30-knot range and gusts up to 50 knots. Lake Worth is not a protected anchorage. It’s a wide area in the ICW in the West Palm Beach area, and when the winds pick up from the north or south, there is a lot of fetch. Add 3′ tides to this and you can wind up with whitecaps in the anchorage. Very unpleasant. During this time our outboard motor decided to stop running and then our watermaker stopped working. We were fortunate that our friends were close by. They took us to shore for groceries and we were able to get packages delivered to his work.

This was when Lynette decided she was done with the sailing life. It had been building for a time, with the lightning near hit, the tropical storm hit, and all the repairs. We were both discouraged with the money going out for repairs and the time I was taking doing those repairs. It seemed like all I had been doing was fixing things that broke on Cerca Trova, and as I was losing confidence in the boat, that lack of confidence was affecting Lynette.

The watermaker issue appeared to be several things breaking at the same time. The feed pump was making an awful sound, so we decided to replace the head of the pump. We were also getting an error message that we weren’t getting any water flow, so I needed to replace the flow meter that counts the gallons of water produced. When I opened the electrical panel on the watermaker I found several wires that were burnt, so I made up some new wires with crimp connectors to replace the burned ones. I was able to buy a new feed pump head and I had all the other parts needed for the watermaker. After two days, the watermaker was making water again.

I spent quite a bit of time diagnosing the outboard problem, with some help from the diver who cleaned our bottom. I had suspected the issue was fuel, but after rebuilding the carburetor the engine still wouldn’t run. Not even a cough. I turned my attention to the issue being an electrical problem. That didn’t pan out, so I replaced the gas with fresh gas with no luck. I then purchased a new carburetor and finally, the engine started running. I’m not sure why cleaning the carburetor and replacing parts with a rebuild kit didn’t work, but it didn’t. After 4 weeks at anchor in Lake Worth, we finally had no more urgent issues.

We left Lake Worth on January 17^th in the morning for Coconut Grove, FL, a suburb just south of Miami. This was a 2-day passage with one stop in Ft Lauderdale to anchor overnight. We arrived at Dinner Key Marina on the afternoon of the 18^th. No slips or mooring balls were available, so we found a spot to anchor. I went exploring in the dinghy to find the dinghy dock, as my daughter and her husband were coming on the 20^th for a week, and I needed a place to pick them up. I found the dinghy dock near the park, so we were all set for the 20^th.

We originally planned to meet my daughter and her husband in Puerto Rico and take them to the Virgin Islands for a week. With all the problems we were having with Cerca Trova, I didn’t have confidence in her to make it to Puerto Rico without something major breaking down, so we decided to have them fly to the Bahamas instead. That also didn’t pan out as there were no timely weather windows to cross the Gulf Stream for the Bahamas. The final decision was to have them fly to Miami and we would sail to the northeastern Florida Keys. They say cruising plans are made in the sand at low tide. That couldn’t be a truer statement.

We had a wonderful time with my daughter and her husband. The weather wasn’t that good, but we did get some good sailing in while they were aboard. Plus, there were no major breakdowns while they were here. We made it as far as Key Largo with a couple of anchorages along the way. We didn’t find any clear water, so we didn’t do any snorkeling. They were disappointed in that, but we did go out for dinner a couple of times and played cards in the evenings. They left on the 27^th and we started to prepare the boat and get provisions for the next weather window to cross over to the Bahamas.

Next up, unexpected breakdowns take us back to Lake Worth for repairs.