Our First Solo Sail

Our first solo sail hap­pened to also be our first sail. It hap­pened before we were ready. It was a fun-filled, and at times fear-filled, adven­ture that def­i­nite­ly changed my mind about sail­ing. I won­der if you would agree after sur­viv­ing our first solo sail. Fol­low along and decide for yourself!

A little background first!

We bought a boat. At the time, it was per­fect for us. But then we found one that bet­ter fit our needs. Then, we found the per­fect boat.

I guess you can see where this sto­ry is going. We did­n’t know real­ly know what we need­ed until we’d meet the next boat. For a while, our boat dat­ing life looked a lot like Tinder.

So, then we real­ly did find the per­fect boat. The boat of our dreams! Final­ly, the fear of com­mit­ment was gone.  Mind you, we still had yet to actu­al­ly sail any­where to see if we even liked sail­ing. We were to find out soon enough though.

We had a dead­line to move our new boat, a Hunter 40′ Leg­end, so out of options, we cre­at­ed our own sail­ing Crash Course dur­ing the two months lead­ing up to mov­ing the boat, and using the sail­ing knowl­edge we had acquired, we shoved off.

Preparations Before Leaving Land

Just gotta have faith!

Since we’d reached the move it or lose it dead­line, we worked to the last minute get­ting the boat ready for our first jour­ney. We had decid­ed to take the boat to Green Cove Springs so we could replace the engine.

We need­ed to make it to the Atlantic Ocean, up past St. Augus­tine, and into the port in Jack­sonville for the first leg of our journey.

Determination (and creativity) overcomes obstacles. Here’s what we did:

1. No Engine. We’d solved the engine issue in a cre­ative way. We decid­ed to use the dinghy to push and pull our boat as needed.

2. No VHF. We bought a VHF off some­one from Craigslist the night before we were going to leave. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we did­n’t have time to set it up before we’d left so that was to be a “to-work-on” while under­way. In the mean­time, we’d have to use our phones to com­mu­ni­cate with bridge operators.

3. No GPS. For nav­i­ga­tion, we bought a wifi-enabled iPad, also from Craigslist, onto which we installed the Navion­ics app. We also installed the app on our phones as back­up. Final­ly, we encased the iPad in a water­proof cover.

In the weeks lead­ing up to our “adven­ture,” I had mapped out our trip, mak­ing sure to note warn­ings about water lev­els and bridge clear­ances, as well as sev­er­al emer­gency stop­ping points, just in case we need­ed to wait for a bridge, for example.

I also wrote down tele­phone num­bers for bridges and made sure we were work­ing with­in a good weath­er window.

Setting Sail

Our weath­er win­dow for the tide we need­ed was start­ing to close, and we were not done with all our tasks. We had to make lit­tle trips back to the store for things like bat­ter­ies, so we were real­ly off sched­ule. Every­thing just took much longer than the time we’d allotted.

At some point, we decid­ed we just need­ed to leave or aban­don the whole thing. I had about a week and a half before I need­ed to return to work. There was­n’t anoth­er time to do move the boat, plus leav­ing it was­n’t possible.

We com­plet­ed our final check­list, mak­ing sure we were water-tight and secured down below. Then, we raised the mainsail.

The size and pow­er of the sail once wind got into it astound­ed me. We start­ed to move for­ward instant­ly. Our adven­ture began- the first real step to becom­ing full-time live­aboard sailors was tak­en- and we were as ready as we could be. I could see peo­ple on their docks fish­ing and watch­ing us.

Then, sud­den­ly, I heard yelling from the dock as we pulled away. For a moment, I thought how nice, he (the guy who helped us rein­stall our sails after the hur­ri­cane) is say­ing good­bye, but the fran­tic wav­ing and point­ing said some­thing else. We were still tied to the dock! 

We’d over­looked one line, one very old, very mat­ted-togeth­er line. My hus­band raced to the line with his knife and start­ed saw­ing away. I’m look­ing from him to the sail pulling us for­ward to the guy still wild­ly ges­tic­u­lat­ing from the dock, and I’m frozen behind the wheel. I had not pre­pared for “what if we are dumb‑a**es and for­get to untie our boat before we leave.”

Lessons Learned

Les­son num­ber one safe­ly behind us, we sailed smooth­ly under our first bridge as the sun was set­ting. Watch­ing the mast clear the bridge was mag­i­cal, breath-tak­ing. It gave me the sense that we could do this.

Not long after, though, our fren­zied con­ver­sa­tion cen­tered on whether to take the far side or the near side of an island that was fast approach­ing. I had plot­ted out for both.

The issue was we’d just watched a sail­ing video where the boat had got­ten stuck on the near side because it was not as deep as report­ed. I want­ed to chance it because it showed much deep­er on the map than the oth­er side, and because there was wig­gle room if we made a mis­take, as it was void of things we could hit.

My hus­band want­ed the much wider side, prob­a­bly also think­ing the open space gave us wig­gle room if we made a mis­take. Final­ly, we picked the wider side. He’d pre­dict­ed that we would lose the wind, but we did­n’t real­ize we would lose steer­ing as well.

Just as he fore­told, the sail luffed. We kept mov­ing for­ward though, straight toward anoth­er boat. My hus­band dropped the sail, jumped in the dinghy, and tried to cor­rect our drift before it was too late.

The peo­ple on the boat we were drift­ing toward and I were try­ing fran­ti­cal­ly to pre­vent a col­li­sion or at least buffer it. At some point, the men hopped aboard our boat to help. The dinghy start­ed tak­ing on water, so now my hus­band is bal­ing it out with his boot, try­ing to keep it from sinking.

Some­one drove out in their boat and helped move our sail­boat clos­er to the island. We put out the anchor and wait­ed for every­one to access dam­ages. In the mean­time, since the tide was going out, our boat grounded.

Then, the Coast Guard arrived. After a long, friend­ly con­ver­sa­tion with them, we even­tu­al­ly were able to get under­way again. Before they left, they sug­gest­ed wait­ing until high tide, but as soon as we came unstuck, we con­tin­ued on.

Thank­ful­ly, no oth­er issues arose and before we knew it, we were clos­ing in on the first bridge we’d have to call for them to open for us. I was very ner­vous about it, but that part of the adven­ture was underwhelming.

I called the bridge ten­der on my cell­phone and explained that we were com­ing in with no motor with only the dinghy push­ing the boat through. He made sure to open the bridge after we reached a cer­tain point so we did­n’t have to stop, but it felt like time was stand­ing still. I was watch­ing the buildup of cars wait­ing for us to go under­neath and think­ing how annoyed I would be sit­ting there, which added to my anxiety.

I did­n’t even know which side of the bridge to head for. That was one of the ques­tions I nev­er thought to ask. “Between the bumpers” is the answer to that ques­tion, in case you’re wondering.

It was eas­i­er nav­i­gat­ing at night by the bright­ly lit buoys and before I knew it, we had reached the Atlantic Ocean.

Unforgettable Memories

We were at sea for three days. Prac­tic­ing adjust­ing the sails here was a breeze. We watched three exquis­ite sun­ris­es and sun­sets from the cock­pit of the boat. It was a life-chang­ing experience.

Get­ting up to eight knots with the ocean to our­selves tempt­ed me to nev­er return to land and the life of the walk­ing dead. And, although I was extreme­ly sea­sick most of the time, I would­n’t have trad­ed that trip for anything.

We had thought about tak­ing a break and sail­ing into the Saint Augus­tine inlet. Two things stopped us: the abun­dance of ships we’d have to maneu­ver through at night and my hus­band’s asser­tion that he heard ghosts call­ing from shore. Have you expe­ri­enced any­thing like that?

Need­less to say, we anchored out­side of the inlet. The entire night, it felt like we were being pulled toward shore, although our elec­tron­ics told us that was not the case.

You Can Never Be Too Prepared

For much of our trip, I was incred­i­ble sea­sick. When I was man­ning the helm, I held the wheel with one hand as I leaned over the edge of the boat vom­it­ing. Drink­ing copi­ous amounts of water kept me hydrat­ed though.

The only food I could keep down were Granny Smith apples and pret­zels. In fact, by the end of the trip, there were pret­zels every­where. My hus­band would lift up a cush­ion, find yet anoth­er pret­zel, and swear under his breath. It was pret­ty fun­ny hear­ing him vow there would be no more pret­zels brought onboard.

Once we made it to Jack­sonville, we were anx­ious to get into the port. We were still sail­ing, so we attempt­ed to sail in. Ini­tial­ly, we planned to wait until morn­ing. We’d passed the port open­ing with the inten­tion of anchor­ing in a spot I had mapped out, not real­iz­ing that anchor­age was­n’t for small sail­boats, but rather giant ships.  So, we made a u‑turn and gunned it at eight knots.

We could­n’t get a clear shot because we were dodg­ing ships that had no inten­tion of wait­ing for us to take our turn. I equate it to walk­ing across the inter­state in rush hour traf­fic. After a few har­row­ing tries, we gave up.

We’d dropped the sail and I steered back south across the chan­nel open­ing the way we’d come, while my hus­band pushed the boat with the dinghy. The night was so black, I could bare­ly see. From the dinghy, he could­n’t see what was in front of us unless he stood up. He told me to aim for a cruise ship as if it were a bea­con. This was the start of our miscommunication.

I could see the ship was for­ward, and we were mov­ing per­pen­dic­u­lar to them. I think his inten­tion was to slip behind it to get out of the very dan­ger­ous inlet and spend the night out­side the jet­ty until morning.

As we closed in on the ship, I mutinied rather than die, which I was con­vinced would hap­pen if I con­tin­ued fol­low­ing his advice. I chose my own path to the oth­er side, but it was impos­si­ble to main­tain a straight line. The wind had picked up and the boom kept shift­ing back and forth. It would swing to one side and I would yank the wheel furi­ous­ly to the oppo­site direc­tion to coun­ter­act the boat turn­ing. Then it would swing back, and I’d rush to turn the wheel all the way to the oth­er side.

My hus­band had con­vinced me it was unnec­es­sary to secure the boom, but after almost dis­lo­cat­ing my shoul­ders try­ing to maneu­ver the boat across, I secured it any­way. I guess I’m a ter­ri­ble first mate. To be fair, we both only had pieces of the puz­zle so we were doing the best with what we had.

Once we final­ly made it around the jet­ty, we found a place to spend the night and dropped anchor, right before a sud­den storm affront­ed us. We’d kept watch care­ful­ly to make sure we did­n’t drift, but instead of leav­ing the next morn­ing, we were trapped for two nights below deck in fear for our lives. The wind and dri­ving rain beat our boat furiously.

At this point, I would have been relieved to have a Coast Guard res­cue. I have to admit I sent a cou­ple of In case you don’t hear from me again texts to my fam­i­ly, prob­a­bly scary the sh** out of them. Then, a mir­a­cle happened.

We woke up to the most beau­ti­ful, peace­ful morn­ing… and decid­ed to try again. My appre­hen­sion was replaced with a sense of calm. My sea­sick­ness aban­doned ship. Uni­ty now restored, we worked togeth­er and made it into the chan­nel. The pre­vi­ous nights seemed like a very bad dream.

Car­go ships and cruise ships passed us, as well as small motor boats. There was no squeez­ing around one anoth­er, no vol­ley­ing for first place. Just a per­fect day! I think what made it so per­fect, though, was the con­trast. The bad makes the good bet­ter (my #life­pro­tip of the day).

Was Our First Sail a Success?

That depends on what you call a suc­cess? We sur­vived, and learned so many valu­able lessons along the way. At this point, I might have said, “Heck yeah it was a suc­cess; we did it,” but do you remem­ber our dinghy inci­dent I men­tioned ear­li­er? Try­ing to pre­vent the col­li­sion had almost caused the dinghy motor to go over­board, while rob­bing us of much of our stored gas.

So, our diesel was dan­ger­ous­ly low. We weren’t sure if we could get to a safe place to anchor and still have enough fuel to get more. We dropped the anchor, and raced to a mari­na, but they did not car­ry fuel. Since we did­n’t have enough fuel at this point to try any­where else, they let us dock our dinghy there, then we walked to a gas sta­tion, filled up our gas can, and car­ried it back to the dock.

We made it back to the boat, noticed we had drift­ed some in the chang­ing tide, and moved a few miles fur­ther to one of the spots I had marked to spend the night.

Tired of sur­vival fare, we went back to shore for din­ner, just to reas­sure our­selves that we were still alive. We had the best piz­za I ever ate!

The next morn­ing, we awoke to the strains of Cyn­di Lau­per’s Girls Just Want to Have Fun com­ing from a shrimp­ing boat pass­ing us by. He was rem­i­nis­cent of the Pied Piper, but instead of lead­ing chil­dren with his music, a squadron of pel­i­cans float­ed behind him. In that small moment, all was right with the world again.

At least until my hus­band found anoth­er pretzel.

So, Have We Changed our Minds About our Dream?

There was a moment after the trip when I would have said trav­el­ing by air­plane will become my rec­om­mend­ed method for future travel.

But, we kept going back to our boat to spend week­ends hang­ing out aboard and time relax­ing on a pri­vate beach only acces­si­ble by boat. The dream grew stronger than ever. My heart yearns for the sea! There’s no going back now.

Final­ly, after sev­er­al more months had passed, we com­plet­ed the trip to Green Cove Springs. We have cement­ed our plans for at year at sea and in a few months, we are off!

Fair seas and fol­low­ing winds.

-Elyza