Devante’s Dream arrived at Key West Thursday December 29th at 12:30 PM. Eric Sr., Jane, Eric Jr and Elizabeth Langley were on board after an overnight passage from Miami Beach having departed the previous day at 3:00 PM. We had a foul (against us) wind and current (but thankfully clear skies and no rain) just about the whole way, eventually facing 20 knots on the nose and 4 to 6 foot seas for the last five hours. Yuck! We had to motor that entire segment of the passage.
We had begun our portion of the delivery at Cape Canaveral on Tuesday December 26 at 0745. An offshore wind of 10-15 knots was called for in the forecast which meant that the waves would somewhat lessened as we were sticking close to the Florida coast to stay out of the Gulf Stream. The day started with flat calm seas and DD motoring out of Port Canaveral past the Disney cruise ships gleaming in the rising sun on a crisp clear (read cold) winter day. Elizabeth and Jane liked
the calm seas. But before long the wind kicked in and we raised the sails. 10 knots, 15 knots, 20 knots, higher gusts. “Eric (to my son Eric Jr.) do you think we should reef the main?” “No we’re doing fine”, he flatly replied. Then 25 knots steady for quite a while.I tried my hand at hand steering the boat and took the auto-helm off. We immediately headed to wind under a heavy weather helm. I put the auto-helm back on and reefed the head sail three notches. A little while later I let everyone know that I was going to head to wind and reef the main. It was then that we realized that the seas had gotten quite a bit bigger as I started the motor to head into the wind and lower the main to the first reefing point.
Bearing off the weather the helm was much better. We ran at about 120 degrees off the wind in just about a perfect following sea. We were surfing! Once in a while I checked the peak wind gust and boat speed readings; 35 knots and 8.5 knots respectively. We’re making great time. I ran the watches for most of the day while Eric Jr. and Elizabeth slept.
That evening we broke into two hour watches. Jane got the 0100 to 0300 watch. She glanced over her shoulder at the following seas and said to herself, “Oh my. Those are really big waves. But we appear to be all right!” Everyone else was asleep at the time. She did a great job for her first overnight watch at sea!
When I took my watch and checked the max speeds we had had 9.1 knots of boat speed through the water and 40.5 knots of peak winds. Wow, this might have been more than we bargained for but we were doing fine. That was a special passage for me. I was able to watch the sun set, the moon rise and then the sunrise. We made Miami Beach in just over 25 hours at 0930 covering about 180 miles.
Devante’s Dream started her passage to Key West from Annapolis MD. Here’s some notes from the other segments of the passage.
My father, Captain Elbert Errol Langley II, passed away on Saturday December 3rd at 7:10 PM. I was holding his hand. I had spent the previous few weeks visiting him regularly and the last few days at his bedside so I was unable to set a departure date from Annapolis for Devante’s Dream, which was originally planned for October 11th. Eventually I determined to have a friend of mine, Paul Warner, who I race with on Lake Lanier in GA, skipper the passage without me.
Since Devante’s Dream left Annapolis Sunday December 4th at 5:00 PM it took a total of 25 days to get to Key West. The passage was started by Paul Warner, Bob Bumgardner and Kevin Sullivan. Paul and Bob are both from GA and longtime friends, Kevin Sullivan was a local crew member added from a local Maryland crew listing.
Snow was in the forecast so they started with a night passage to try and get ahead of the storm. They were doing well until Kevin Sullivan was on watch at 0500 and Devante’s Dream was driven into Smith’s Point shoal, hard and fast in the mud. While Paul and Bob were trying get free from the mud Kevin was down below calling for a tow boat! Later he was trying to get the dinghy off the deck so he could row to shore! Then, when the tow boat arrived, Kevin tried to jump on the tow boat with all of his gear, in other words abandoning the ship and his crewmates. Needless to say the tow boat captain would not allow him to do this until they had at least tried to free the boat from the shoal.This was impossible as the tide had gone out since the boat ran aground so the had to wait until the tide came back in, at 2:00 PM, in order to pull her off and get a tow back to the marina - in freezing rain (are you getting the gist of this?). The next day Kevin actually came back down to boat at the marina and asked to get back on board. Paul and Bob said no thanks. Kevin also sent me an email but I would not read it.
So the first 24 hours had a grounding and desertion. That left Paul and Bob to continue the passage. That meant no offshore sailing which was in the passage plan. When I found out what was happening I told Paul that I would come down to the boat after my father’s funeral which was on Friday December 9th (in a snowstorm in Hampton NH). I scheduled my flight on Saturday to go to Wilmington NC from Boston MA hoping that the boat might be able to make it there by then.
That didn’t happen as Paul and Bob had terrible weather for several days (although not all in a
row) and only made it to Oriental NC. It was just as well. I rented a car from Wilmington NC on Sunday (not Saturday because I missed my connecting flight on Saturday) and stayed at the Inn at Oriental Sunday night (very nice). Monday afternoon DD pulled into Oriental (after a pit stop on the bar at Whittaker Creek – Tow Boat US again) and we hauled her out to check for damage to the rudder prior to going to sea. The GPS and stern light were also out so we needed to get repairs anyway.The rudder had minor damage which was easily repaired. The GPS needed to be replaced and the stern light was disconnected during the installation of the generator. We had to run wiring for both of these which took several hours. Many thanks to SailCraft Marina for their excellent service! We pulled out of Oriental at 3:00 PM on Tuesday and headed out to sea via Beaufort NC inlet. We planned to sail to Cape Canaveral, hopefully in 2-3 days.
We started with a beautiful night of sailing out towards Cape Fear and Frying Pan Shoals with a northerly tail wind. Next day we had a dolphin show for two hours. Either the dolphins were trained (two of them jumped into a barrel roll at the same time) or dolphin trainers don’t have much to do. Later in the day I was listening to the VHF weather radio and was hearing words like “gale” and “9 to 11 waves” and “40 knots” forecast for the next night and I decided that we should seek shelter.
We were pretty far from shore and the best option was Charleston SC, which was in the direction we were going, but it was still 120 miles away. We should start the engine to get out of the Gulf Stream current that we were fighting a little bit. Turn the key, rrrrr, rrrrr, rrrrr. NOT STARTING! Okay, we need to sail as fast as we can towards Charleston. Oh and by the way we need to turn off all the unnecessary electronics to conserve battery power, so no coffee!
Not more than an hour or two later the weather turned nasty with biting cold north wind and whipped up seas. Since we were surfing a quartering sea the auto-helm was not working correctly. We had to manually steer and the best we could maintain was 230 – 270 while trying to steer 240.
We made it to within a few hours of Charleston and figured we’d give the engine another try. RRMMM, started right up. YES! So we motored into Charleston (although still very cold and now wet) at around 0200. Stay that night, get breakfast and wait out the weather that day and then dinner that night. Watch out for the 9.5’ tide at Charleston. We almost ending up hanging by our dock lines on the non-floating dock!
That night we decided we would keep going down the Intracoastal to Beaufort SC and then on to Savannah GA, where Bob Bumgardner’s son lives. So the next morning at dawn we cast off and headed south for the ICW entrance right next to the marina. Not ¼ mile up the river is our first bridge and he won’t open until 9:00 AM but we got lucky as a commercial tug boat was coming north bound that requested an opening, so we went through after him.
We navigated the ICW past lushly landscaped plantation style homes on the water with sweeping vistas and stately trees, absolutely smooth water but still pretty chilly at about 40 degrees. We ran on the main drag and eventually spotted a lot of dolphin, both fishing and following us. Then the waterway widened and there were beaches along the shore. Beaches? Why would there be beaches on the ICW. The answer, we were not on the ICW anymore. We missed the turn back there a while ago. It must have been that little unmarked creek bend.
We were in the St. Helena inlet! Now what? Turn around? No, that would waste time. I guess we are going to sea. Let’s get our foulies on. More dolphins and an absolutely beautiful inlet. So we ran offshore with a very light following breeze. We tried to put up sails but the boat speed was faster than the wind. We aimed for Savannah.
There are quite a few shoals off the SC and GA coast so we had to stay offshore quite a ways. It was in the afternoon when we hit the ocean so most of the passage was at night. We made landfall at the Savannah River at about 0130 and spent two hours going up the Savannah River and a section of the ICW to Thunderbolt GA. Luckily we had a fair current and made good time for the 14 miles we needed to traverse to get to the marina.
At one point we were on the ICW and looking for markers and I figured it would be a good idea to have the search light on deck. I had installed a 12 volt outlet for the light in the anchor locker so that someone could plug it in at the bow and shine the light forward. Bob hooked up the light and tested it. It was working. I asked him to shine it forward to test it. When he did there was an unlit (it was supposed to be) marker not 15 feet in front of the bow. Quick! Turn left and avoid the marker! Unreal.
Then we got a little messed up in a tricky section of the river and needed to shine the light to find the shore. Yup, that’s grass. We can’t go that way. How about we go towards the lights down the river. Okay, lets. We pulled into Thunderbolt at 0330. Why are we always pulling into port at 3AM?
The next day and for the next few days the weather was going to be bad. It was Sunday the 18th. We would not be able to depart until Tuesday. Even if we went 24/7 we would not arrive in Key West until Christmas Eve. We’re not going to make it. We’re getting off the boat. I rented a car and the three of us drove back to Atlanta, pretty dejected that we did not make Key West, but we tried hard. Paul and Bob had been on the boat for two weeks and we only made Savannah. There were a lot of down days for weather (to be expected in December) and repairs.
I spoke with Florida Yacht Charters and they arranged for a delivery captain to get on board and keep the boat moving, even if only on the ICW. Russ Snyder came on board on the 20th and made Cape Canaveral in 5 days of mostly running on the ICW. That’s were I got back on board with my family to complete the delivery.
So complete's the passage to Key West for Devante's Dream originally planned for Oct 9th throug the 23rd!
11/17/05 Update - Upgrades finished! Generator (30 amps of AC power), chart plotter at the helm, shore water hook-up, salon table to a bed conversion, dinghy motor lift and more!
11/10/05 Update - New proposed departure date is Saturday December 3rd. We're skipping the Bahamas so we can get to Key West quicker, taking the Gulf Stream counter current offshore from Beaufort to Cape Canaveral FL then skirting the coast to Key West. Estimating about 10 days to Key West from Annapolis
10/23/05 Update - Due to annual maintenance and upgrades being performed on Devante's Dream in Annapolis MD the October passage to Key West has been delayed. Good thing!
We'd have been going right into the teeth of Hurricane Wilma this week.
Devante’s Dream will make a passage from Annapolis MD to Key West FL in October of 2005 with four legs:
Annapolis MD to Beaufort NC (5 days), October 9th – 14th
Beaufort NC to Marsh Harbor Bahamas (4 days), October 15th – 18th
Marsh Harbor to Bimini Bahamas (4-7 days), October 19th – 24th
Bimini to Key West FL (2-3 days, plus 2-3 layover days), October 25th – 29th
Scheduled to be on board from Beaufort NC to Key West are Eric Langley, Paul Warner and Bob Bumgardner.
