Overdue Update:

So we were pushing hard to get to Cape Canaveral to rendezvous with my mom and step-dad, so we got up to leave St. Augustine before dawn. I had not slept well, and had a Benadryl foggy head (bad allergies)- Kate questioned whether we should wait until I was at 100%, but I was anxious to get on, and didn’t listen to her.  I should have.

Normally I plan meticulously for this stuff, but this day I just fired up the engine and headed for the entrance channel.  I didn’t pre-look at the chart, or the waterway guide, just assuming it would be a cakewalk. Uff-da.

We were moored off the St. Augustine Municipal Marina (green pin), and headed out of the harbor around 5:30 am.  All good until we were in the entrance and saw some unlit channel markers. They weren’t on my charts, so I didn’t realize I was on the wrong side of them.

For some reason (Benadryl, tired, confused, poor judgement) I decided I was going the wrong way, so I turned to port and headed north. By pure chance, I was in a small channel between the sandbars…

I didn’t realize the original heading was taking me straight into the shoals until I saw big waves breaking over them dead ahead.  I thought “I’ve got a bad feeling about this…”

There were heavy seas running outside the shoals, and right then a big wave lifted us up and SLAMMED us into the sand. HARD!

Just before that first slam, I had seen a flashlight play on the boat from the north shore- then immediately after the first slam, my handheld radio went off:

I don’t know how this works, but in an emergency situation, I go into an altered state- total laser focus on getting out of the bad situation.  The unknown radio caller was talking me through where to steer the boat, and I just hung onto the wheel with a death grip while I maneuvered her.

The heavy swell was repeatedly picking us up off the sand, and then SLAMMING us back down into it. We hit the bottom, hard, probably eight or a dozen times. But each time it picked us up, I could drive the boat a little farther back to deeper water. The engine was at wide open throttle, and fortunately the rudder had not hit the sand, so I could still steer the boat.

At one point when we hit bottom, Gabrielle went completely over on her side, throwing me off my feet into the starboard cockpit seat, and a huge wave came over the side and filled the cockpit- water went down the companionway as well.  During all this, Kate had been below stowing gear, and after the first hit, was standing in the companionway, terror in her eyes.  She only asked once “What do we do!?!?”, and all I could answer was “Just hang on!”

We were both soaked after the wave, but I had not lost my death grip on the wheel.  From there on, the swells bounced us along the bottom until we were clear, and we headed out.  All of this had happened in the dark, but now the sun was rising.

The sail from St. Augustine to New Smyrna Beach was uneventful, though boisterous. Fifteen to twenty knot winds, seas 4-6 ft, just on the edge of uncomfortable. We raised the mainsail with a single reef and rolled out the jib halfway.  The wind was blowing directly down our lay line to New Smyrna, so we had to gybe-tack several times along the way.  Some of those gybes were pretty hard, shaking the boat and rigging when the sails crossed over.

I noticed that our lower shrouds, all four of them, were loose- flopping around and taking no load.  The cap-shrouds (from deck to masthead) were tight, and the fore and backstays were still taking their share of the load, although a bit looser than normal.  But we were sailing well, and I could see no movement of the mast.

Approaching New Smyrna, it was time to furl the sails to motor in.  We started with the jib- pulled on the furling line, but nothing happened. Went up to investigate and discovered that the furling drum had spit out all three set screws that affix the drum to the sail foil- the drum was just freewheeling.

OK, so we get to pull the jib down in 15 kn wind and 5 ft seas. Joy!  It was actually easier than we expected, as the autopilot (Otto Mann) was sober and behaving himself, and kept us pointing bow-to-wind .  Got the sail down and secured, and I had the thought that, while I was up on the bowsprit,  I should take a look at the forestay fittings.  What I saw made me want to cry and vomit at the same time:

This photo was taken after we had shoved  the pin back into the fitting, but we had been out there with 1/8th inch of metal-to-metal contact holding up our entire mast and rigging- one more hard gybe would’ve probably brought the whole thing down on our heads.

We rigged the jib halyard as a temporary forestay and made it into New Smyrna.  Motored down the ICW on Thursday to Merritt Island.  Took a day off to chill, and then investigated why the rigging is loose.  Found this:

That’s the base of our mast, where it is attached to the keel. The waves pounding us into the sand compressed and shattered the base, and so the mast was now about 1-2 inches shorter than it needed to be.

OK, this story is dragging on too long. Shorter version is, we consulted with a rigger, discussed repair strategies, went to another marina where we pulled the mast off the boat, cut out the broken mast base and built a support block and epoxied it into place. When we return, we will replace the mast, and have the rigger give it a professional tune-up before we take off for Puerto Rico.

Gabrielle is a lucky ship, and we sailed with benevolent gods and angels that day. We will be rested up, and with a boat in even better shape now than if this whole thing had not happened. Not too shabby!

I’ve been typing away upstairs for too long, and so now there’s a cute baby downstairs to go visit…