Mother Nature counsels patience

The big day finally came - we left Bayou Chico for good on New Year's Day at 3:00. We didn't make it far, but I was very happy to finally be "underway". We made it to Pensacola Beach and anchored behind Pensacola Beach Yacht Club in Sabine Bay. Ironically, that is where we tied up when we first brought the boat to Pensacola.

The next day, Friday, turned out to be one of the most fabulous sail days we've had. Morgan commented that it was probably one of the better sail days he's had in his life! We hoisted the sails as we entered Santa Rosa Sound at about 10:15 and were able to sail averaging 5 knots until we docked in Ft. Walton Beach late in the afternoon. Morgan cautioned me to appreciate the day because days like this were rare. Little did I know his point would be proven over the next couple of days.

In the morning, due to forecasts of extremely nasty weather in the Panhandle in the coming days, we made the fateful decision to pop out in the Gulf and head straight for St. Pete instead of taking the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW) to Apalachicola first. All the forecasts called for winds to shift to S, SW by early afternoon. They were a little off base. We covered 111 miles with the winds dead on the nose from the East. On a monohull, that is not a big deal. However, our catamaran, a PDQ 36, does not like to head into the weather. Couple that with the heavy weight due to a newbie (that's me!) going overboard with provisions and a having full fuel tank and we had an overweight, oversized rocking horse in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico going up and down the ever increasing swells. Not a pleasant afternoon, evening and morning. Nyla (our normally cooperative border collie) refused to do her business on the trampoline (the front of the boat which is made of webbing) and Koki (our normally near feral kitty) refused to leave the port stateroom where she remained motionless until we were safely at dock again 21 hours later.

Morgan and I took turns standing watch throughout the night. While we are fortunate enough to have a full cockpit enclosure (beautifully done by Linda Schreck of Schrecks Canvass and Sails), trying to do a 360 degree view in the middle of the Gulf in the middle of several thunderstorms is challenging at best. For awhile the only bad weather on the radar was directly over our boat. I felt like Schleprock from the Flintstones! It finally started to get light around 5 am. When Captain Morgan poked his head into the cockpit at 6, the Admiral made the best suggestion of the trip - head due north to Port St. Joe. Morgan quickly agreed and we pulled into Port St. Joe Marina at noon today. We will head to Apalachicola and possibly Carabelle and hang out until the weather is more favorable to cross the "Big Bend" to the St. Pete area.

I learned a very valuable lesson - Mother Nature and Neptune do not care how long we've been in the Bayou working on our boat to get her ready to go. They do not care about any deadline or timetable we set. In short, we can sail to a schedule (or motor as the case may be) and suffer the consequences, or we can chill out, remember what goal we've worked so hard to achieve and just relax. The weather window will open when it opens. Until then, there are plenty of places to go and plenty of things to do enroute to our ultimate destination.