…and consequently when not to.
I will be the first to admit that I have cursed our boat countless times for its shortcomings and all of the work that Illusion has demanded of us (due to past neglect), but I have also grown to appreciate and love my little floating home. I enjoy life at anchor. The boat feels so much bigger now that we are on the open water, and after all of the work we’ve put into her, Illusion is quite comfortable both inside and out. Brian is putting together a post on his blog, Chasing the Illusion, about all of the projects that we’ve done on the boat over the past five months.
Since we’ve been at anchor, Brian has hooked up the wind generator and solar panel to help charge the batteries. With the wind blowing 10 knots and the sun shining, we are fully powered, refrigerator and all. Brian bought a used Kiss generator last year and it is extremely quiet. There is barely even a hum inside the boat and, instead of making that loud whirring or hissing sound that is so characteristic of other wind generators, it makes a soft whooshing sound. We run the generator once or twice a day or crank up the engine to recharge the batteries, but we are more than happy with amount of energy we are getting from the wind and sun right now.
One major perk about about staying in the anchorage is that we have plenty of neighbors. I’m not just talking about other sailors, but also the sea life. I have seen several a big sea turtles swimming around the boat, and we are starting to recognize the different pods of dolphins that swim by. It’s fun to take the dingy to shore (when it isn’t raining), and every trip feels like a new mini-adventure. However, there are times when depending on an anchor can be quite stressful. For instance, with competing currents and winds in the creek, the boat swings from one position on the anchor to another, and sometimes it can be quite rocky.
On Thursday, Illusion made her second attempt at leaving Hilton Head Island. Brian and I got a late start but had a pleasant sail around the backside of the island and across Port Royal Sound. We reached the other side of the Sound and decided to anchor in the Beaufort River around 10 pm. We planned to sail out of the Sound in the morning and continue offshore to Charleston. In the morning, Brian tinkered with the engine for a few hours, and then we made preparations to leave. About an hour before Brian went to pull the anchor, we heard a loud pop! but never located the source. We heard another pop! about 30 minutes later, but again we could not find any problems.
We started the engine shortly thereafter and Brian went to pull the anchor up, only to find that the rode (rope) had snapped a little way below the waterline. The boat hadn’t moved away from the anchorage, which led us to believe that it was the source of the strange pop we had just heard. We are uncertain about the reason for the break, but we have two theories. Either the rope had chafed on something (possibly a wreck?), or the rope was just too old. All in all, it didn’t bode well for Illusion, traveling with only one anchor (and the same rope rode) so we turned around and sailed back to Palmetto Bay. We can look at this incident as bad luck, or take it as good luck, which I am trying to do. We were quite lucky that the line didn’t break in the middle of the night, when we might have run aground or been pushed into a dock or another boat.
Because of all these further setbacks to our departure schedule, Brian and I are re-evaluating our original plan. Hurricane season starts in a month, which leaves us little cruising time in the Caribbean, and all predictions indicate that it is going to be a bad one. At this point in the season, it makes sense to sail north rather than south. It will be easier to find transient work over the summer in the states, we can live on the boat rent-free at anchor, will be more-or-less out of the storm path for hurricane season, we will have plenty of blue water sailing between here and there, and a plethora of new places to explore along the way. One thing is clear: we just need to sail the boat! So we are now planning to sail NORTH for the summer, then go south again next fall. Rest assured, a modified adventure is still on the horizon for Illusion.
Yay for sea turtles and dolphins. So by NORTH, do you mean BOSTON?!
If we can make it that far, yes. We are looking at few places up your way, such as bar harbour, Maine, long island, and the nantuket/marthas vineyard areas. We need to do a lot of sailing over the summer, so maybe we will do a trip to Boston at some point!
I think it must be good luck, if anything. I love that you are so adaptive to changes in circumstances, even when it must be disappointing is some ways to change your plans. Or perhaps I’m just projecting…I am working on my flexibility!
It isn’t always easy, that’s for sure, but it can be fun to do things that are unexpected. At first I was disappointed that we weren’t able to go south this season, but the more I think about it, the more excited I am. I’ve always wanted to explore the Northeast in the summertime and it will give us more time to get to know the boat and make sure that she is sound after all of our work. We are finding that we need to replace some of the sailing gear now – ugh!