Back in JAX

Ready to Splash!

A Tight Fit

Phew. Seems hard to believe that we arrived back here in Jacksonville last Sunday morning. After living on board Carry On on the paved lot of Spencer Boat for 16 days, we finally splashed down Friday, a week ago, at exactly 10:30 am, the time promised by Mike, the yard manager. We'd been watching the weather, knowing we needed to get moving to be back up here by April 9 for Paul's surgery scheduled for April 10. The weather window looked perfect for an off shore trip, so at 3 pm the same afternoon we took off for at least Ft Pierce, maybe Port Canaveral if the crew was happy, and maybe even Jacksonville. By evening we committed to go for the whole enchilada— conditions were nearly ideal, we all felt well and rested, and even Bubba, after an initial glitch, seemed as if he'd been at sea for weeks already.
We were moving along quickly, with the Gulf Stream pushing us at well over 10 knots up the Florida coast, at one point 75 miles off shore. Well worth the ride to the east and back in at the other end of the trip.

We took turns on watch, both getting a few hours of sleep at a stretch, both of us feeling good that we were avoiding days on the ICW, navigating over 4 dozen bridges and endless manatee and no wake zones. All was fine until late Saturday morning when the seas and wind began to kick up. Time to drop the paravanes overboard. Our practice is to deploy our outriggers before an off shore passage, so even with the confused seas, it is fairly easy to drop the paravanes off each side—and we could immediately feel the roll relief.

Unfortunately for us, the conditions continued to deteriorate as a large squall sat over us, pounding us for  several hours Saturday afternoon. Finally it cleared and we heard warnings for dangerous squalls over a large portion of the eastern coastal waters—yes, another one on its way. Luckily, this time, we were just south of the storm and it passed us by with just rain and wind. The rest of the night was calm and even starry as we approached Jacksonville. We were surprised by the amount of commercial traffic coming out of the port of Jacksonville early on a Sunday morning, as we had been by the traffic we saw all during the night Friday near Miami, including at least half a dozen cruise ships, and thankful, once again, for our AIS (Automatic Identification System).

We were disappointed to see that the Ortega River Bridge work was still not finished and once again had only one span open. We've gone through it twice before and the narrowness does give the skipper pause. We passed through easily and managed to rouse friends on the dock, who finally emerged to help tie us up. We were/are very happy to be here and have rapidly settled back in to our old neighborhood!

You've probably guessed already that our SPOT ran out of batteries about mid trip and you would be right. So rest assured, we are not still floating off Titusville, and when new batteries arrive from Amazon, you'll see us right here at the Marina at Ortega Landing—literally. We were here long enough over the winter that Carry On's image is on Google Earth, which feels like some kind of achievement. We're actually in a different slip at the end of the dock, where we're enjoying views of the Ortega River.