Out in Cayenne’s cockpit, we’re more likely to be listening to the marine radio than the stereo. Back when we sailed on Puget Sound, that was the case for both Brian’s Nereid and our Northern Crow, but what heard there and what we hear here are very, very different.

Radio communications in Puget Sound are pretty limited, for recreational boaters. We make short, clearly enunciated calls to friends or marinas on Channel 16, move our brief conversations to a “working channel,” and then sign off. We make jokes about the yahoos on powerboats whose conversations go, “Vessel ahead, this is vessel astern! Is that you?” “Vessel astern, this is vessel ahead! Yeah, it’s me! Is that you?” But at least the yahoos do their chattering on working channels, rather than on 16.

Down here, the yahoos are known as “Bubbas.” And they do their chattering right on Channel 16. “Hey Bubba! This is Bubba Bubba! I’m over here, and the fish are pretty bad! How are the fish over there?” Once, I heard a guy out of the blue on Channel 16 ask the world, “Does anybody know what the weather’s going to be in the (Gulf) Stream tomorrow?” Not a word of identification, and who the heck was going to answer him at midnight, anyway?

Since we don’t know anyone on other boats around here, it was a bit of a surprise when someone hailed us by name on the Intracoastal Waterway in Florida. Turned out it was the big ugly powerboat behind us, just telling us to slow down so he could pass us quicker. That’s like those people who get behind you on the Interstate and flash their lights at you to get over. I once had a idiot who did that to me when I was in the right lane already — did he think I should be on the shoulder, or just not allowed on the road at all?

Some of our more interesting interactions by radio have been with bridge tenders. When we took the boat out for the first time from Seabrook into Lake Pontchartrain, we discovered that we had to call the bridge tender on the radio, rather than using a horn to get his attention. That was a problem, because we didn’t know what channel he was monitoring, and the chart didn’t indicate what the bridge was called. You can’t just turn on the radio and say, “Hey, you on the bridge up there!”

Once we figured out that it was the “Seabrook Highway Bridge,” we were able to call him. Using proper radio protocol, we hailed him with “This is the sailing vessel Cayenne, approaching from the waterway, and we’d like to request an opening.” His answer, spoken in a Cajun patois, was “Jest a minute, and I git dis bridge open fuh yew!”

When we left New Orleans and headed for Florida, bridge communications got weirder. The next time we went through a bridge, we were behind a couple of other boats. Obviously, they’d already contacted the bridge tender, so we thought there was no need for additional radio chatter. Wrong! As we passed under the open bridge, he blew his horn five times (the signal for “What the hell do you think you’re doing?! I’m closing the bridge on you!”) and on his loudspeaker, demanded to know if we had a VHF radio. When we responded via the radio, he gave us a talking-to. So much for avoiding idle chatter, Puget Sound style.

In Venice, Florida, there were three bridges, and we had to figure out which was which. We called the “Venice Street Bridge,” and the bridge tender responded, a bit huffily, “This is the MAGNIFICENT Venice AVENUE Bridge.” When we were under that one, I swept off my hat and gave him a formal bow, rather than just the customary small wave of the hand.

A few bridges later, the friendly bridge tender called us on the radio after we went through. “Have a nice day, Cap’n (on this side of the country, they call anybody with a boat “Cap’n.”). Your next bridge is the Mmmmfffa Mmmmmfffa.” Now, I should have responded with, “Did not copy. Please say again all after ‘next bridge.'” But I assumed he said, “Palm Avenue,” so I pulled up Microsoft Streets and Trips to confirm it. There was no Palm Avenue anywhere on this side of the state! I was panicking as we approached the bridge, about to resort to, “Hey, you on the bridge up there!” Suddenly reading my mind, the bridge tender called us on the radio. “Red sailboat approaching from the north, this is the Tom Adams bridge.” Oh! That’s what he meant!

The truth is, these bridge tenders probably get a little wacky, locked up in a little booth all day, watching us free spirits steaming by on our boats. The ones on the swing bridges probably suffer from a fear that the bridge will get stuck in the open position and they won’t even be able to get off. And yesterday’s fellow on an old pontoon bridge in North Carolina took the cake. He’d been unable to open the bridge due to low tide for a couple of hours, and there were a half dozen boats anchored in front of him, waiting. A boat called ahead to say he was coming down the waterway, and could the bridge stay open until he got there. “Aw, shoot, Cap’n, I can’t hold the bridge open unless I can see you. Can you put another log on the fire?” After we passed through the open bridge, I saw one last sailboat make it through. I guess he found another log after all.

Buddy boating is a concept I had read about, but never done. It normally consists of finding a friend who has another boat and leaving one anchorage together to move on to the next one where you meet up again. I suppose you could also sail together, but usually one boat is faster so you end up separating, especially if your passages are several days long. It is sort of like going on a cruise to a destination together but a bit less organized. Interesting idea perhaps, but probably not what I would end up doing, or at least not anytime soon….all those books that I read were probably doing it in the South Pacific, and we won’t be there for months or perhaps years.

Little did I know! We tried to start out in Key West, except that we didn’t plan our stay well enough for Hank Schulte (Margaret’ dad) to meet up with us, so we missed the first leg. We arrived in Vero Beach and hung out with him for over a week; The crew (Margaret, Barry AND Prussia) even moved onto land in his new condo. Margaret’s brother Steve was also visiting her dad, so it was a mini-reunion. It was a wonderful time, and after visiting, doing a few boat projects, and celebrating a big birthday we headed back out to sea. Three or so days later we arrived near Harbor Island, South Carolina.

A few hours later, our buddy boat arrived: Hank’s Toyota Camry! And despite a minor snafu about which rest area to meet at before heading in, Steve’s Toyota Camry arrived as well. We connected up the next morning, and then we stayed around for a few days. Margaret’ family has been going to Harbor Island for twenty years with first a vacation condo, and then a beach house at retirement. It was always a wonderful, almost magical place, especially when Margaret and I got married there. Hank had sold his places on the Island a few years ago, and we hadn’t been back since. We had a wonderful visit, with more time visiting with Hank and Steve, plus checking out how the Island had changed (mostly more development) and how it had stayed the same (the beautiful beaches and marshes, and the remoteness). This visit also included a boat project: Borrow Hank’s “boat” and drive our sail in need of repair to Charleston.

Then we departed. This time we shanghaied Hank and took him with us in the boat, leaving his Camry behind. Steve drove his Camry back to Spartanburg, shrinking the flotilla by one. We had two nice days (with a bit of intense navigation) going up the ICW to Charleston. Once we arrived we met a friend of Hank’s and after a very brief visit said goodbye. Hank got a ride back to Harbor Island that afternoon, and the next morning we headed North.

It may never be like this again, but I think buddy boating is fun!

After our struggles to make it down the west coast of Florida and around to Key West, our travels north have been far easier. We’ve made it the length of Florida in just two hops: Key West to Vero Beach and Vero Beach to Beaufort, South Carolina. On those two passages, we also started using a watch schedule, which has helped us get better rest — so my time on watch has been more relaxing, with more time to notice things on the water.

Growing up vacationing on the Atlantic coast, at places like Hilton Head, Chincoteague, Sandy Hook, and tiny Harbor Island, South Carolina. I’ve known about the effects of the Gulf Stream as long as I can remember. But the Stream, as it’s known, was always abstract, always “out there,” never something you could touch.

When Cayenne was sailing north from Key West, with Miami’s high rises in the distance, the knotmeter showed us traveling through the water at 6 knots. But Barry, standing behind the wheel, noted excitedly that the GPS showed us going almost 10 knots!

That’s when I looked at the water temperature. What had been 82 degrees Fahrenheit was now 85 degrees: We had found the Gulf Stream, the warm water that flows north along the U.S. east coast and then makes its way across the Atlantic to England. The water was not a different color, and there was nothing visible to indicate that we were in it. But finally, after all these years, I could reach out and touch the invisible river.

We’ve discovered another amazing thing on our last two passages up the coast. With all the water and sky around us, we notice every bird that goes by. But these were strange birds; they would appear as if out of nowhere, flying close to the water and then disappearing into the waves.

They weren’t birds at all, but flying fish! Sometimes we’d see one or two, but the most exhilarating thing was a whole school — or is that f lock? — of them, their silvery white bodies skimming the sky and then vanishing together into the deep blue waves. One of them missed the water and accidentally landed on Cayenne’s deck, but he managed to wiggle down to the low side of the boat and then back into the water.

My new game is timing them. It’s hard to do, because they never appear right where I am looking. By the time I catch one out of the corner of my eye, he’s been airborne for a second or two, and the longest I’ve counted is a thousand one – a thousand two – a thousand three. It seems like they fly forever, but really they’re just covering many yards of distance in a few seconds.

I’ve been told by sailors that there are three kinds of wind: Too much wind, too little wind, and just the right amount of wind in exactly the wrong direction.

We’ve spent nearly a week dealing with too much wind, staying inside the ICW, sometimes in marginal anchorages, and not being able to sail out toward the Dry Tortugas. Last night the winds abated and shifted around toward the North, which is as they should be for going on our way. We got the Sanibel Causeway bridge to open for us at Eleven and headed out into the Gulf.

Now we have another kind of wind: So little that we can barely make progress. In fact, we were drifting down on a crab pot and Brian had to run the engine to get steerage back. It has dropped down to below anything our wind instrument can measure, probably zero to three knots. There is a long gentle swell, only one or two feet, but I was finding that if it went by the boat in the wrong direction, it was enough to keep the sails from behaving well. At this rate, we should have 15 knots on the nose after a week of this.

I finished typing, shut the computer down, then decided to take a bit of a nap. The boat was now moving through the water a little over two knots, which was probably twice as fast, but I hadn’t paid any real attention. After napping for at most an hour and a half, I woke to remember another old saying: If you don’t like the weather, wait an hour. The boat is heeling a bit, and I’m hearing the sound of it plunging through the waves just outside my bunk in the forward cabin, and as I glance up sleepily I see the poor cat trying to walk along the boat, and every few steps we lurch and heel a little more, and she slides sideways along the floor, then stops and starts walking again. I am reminded that the cabin sole is varnished and fairly slippery, especially if you have fuzzy wiffles between your toes. Maybe we’ll have to sand some of that varnish off when we feel like working on the boat again.

The sea is still an amazing shade of light green and the sky is still blue. Now the boat is moving at five or six knots, the wind blowing about ten. We are still heading out from San Carlos Pass and Sanibel Island, after about four hours the depths are getting close to fifty feet, which means we shouldn’t be seeing any more crab pots. Sailing sure isn’t that certain or predictable, but it feels pretty good right now.

We watched the sunset out in the cockpit, and slowly the stars came out as the daylight faded. I very seldom take the time to be out watching something like this, but today I was just steering the boat and didn’t have anyplace else to be or “important” things to distract me. The process was much slower than I was somehow expecting. The sky stayed orange and eventually almost brown. First a bright planet and a few stars started to appear. Eventually the sunset was gone and stars started growing brighter. After that the border between sea and sky became harder to distinguish; I could find it clearly in some directions, but it was nearly invisible in others. And the stars started coming out. Orion was out very clear, not very high off to the west. I wished I could identify something other than the dippers and Orion on that night. One of the planets (I would guess it was Venus) was up in the West, and it was bright enough that it had a really clear trail of reflections below it in the water.

As it got later, I just had to steer and watch for the occasional traffic, mostly shrimpers. I was getting sleepy, and decided I would wake up Brian for his watch when Orion set. As I kept steering, Orion was going down, but I was losing alertness faster. I never looked at the time during the entire watch, so it was sort of timeless, but couldn’t have been that long–When I gave up and woke Brian, it was only 11pm.

It has now been a day and a half since we arrived, and my memories from the night watches are getting more vague and fuzzy as time goes on. As I was writing this, I had to ask Meps when it was that I got up and when I went down to nap, and when she was steering the boat. I took another shift hand steering later in the morning–I had missed the moonrise, but the sliver of moon was still low in the East. I also remember not quite winning another contest with myself to stay alert and on duty; this time until we were one mile from our first waypoint going into the Dry Tortugas. I remember trying to steer downwind and keep our course pretty accurate, and make sure that the sails didn’t bang and crash as we rolled with a swell passing under us. As got sleepy again, my world contracted; I was focused on the steering compass, or looking in front of the boat and keeping that unidentified constellation that was just to the right of the masts where it should be, occasionally risking a glance at the wind instrument.

While the steering was not physically difficult, it took all the concentration I could muster to keep the boat on course as we rolled and yawed with each swell. If there was a light or a boat on the horizon and I tried to figure out what it was, I found myself off course, and had to correct. When I looked at the mizzen sail because it seemed to be fluttering too much, I went off course. When I thought I saw the lighthouse tower in the Dry Tortugas, perhaps both of them, I didn’t take time to look and try to figure it out because I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep the boat on course. I did have just enough extra mental energy to decide that when we got to the waypoint we would have to turn the boat onto a new course and even adjust the sails. I decided that there was no way I would trust myself to make those decisions, I was just too groggy. Despite this, I think I was still doing a reasonable job of steering Cayenne on her course as long as I didn’t try and think about anything else.

Finally I decided it was as close to that waypoint as I was going to get (I think it was two miles) I woke Brian again, told him what was going on, and went down below for another nap. A bit later Brian and Meps woke me in time to take the sails down and we motored around behind Garden Key to anchor in the Dry Tortugas.