Storm Force Keys

Nasty weather provides a curtain call for a memorable cruise

Issue 154: Jan/Feb 2024

I knew the last storm was coming. I’d been checking the forecast daily on my C. Crane pocket weather radio. My wife, Heidi, and I were in Card Sound in the Florida Keys on our 1978 San Juan 21, Intrepid, and I was looking north toward Biscayne Bay. All that open water was really intimidating, and we knew high winds were on the way. Deciding to hightail it back to Blackwater Sound and find cover there seemed like the right move.

The sail down was fun. It began under near-drifting conditions, and we were the only boat sailing. All the other sailboats were motoring along, never leaving the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), probably on autopilot. Aboard Intrepid, we chased the puffs and rippled water down to Little Card Sound and sailed upwind under the bridge into Barnes Sound, out of the ICW channel.

The channel under the bridge is too narrow for tacking and tends to have motorboats blasting through. I took a chance tacking in the shallow water outside the channel — an advantage to having a small boat — and had the boat hook handy to sound with and fend off the concrete bridge pillars if necessary. We made it through with just about four feet from one of the pillars, in light winds. Fine bit of sailing, that.

Barnes Sound had plenty of wind, as it always does. Halfway down the sound, we doused the jib and made much better time under mainsail alone, falling off the wind a bit and making a good 5 knots instead of pinching through the gusts with the jib up. The SJ 21 is a handy little hooker and sails well on all points under mainsail alone. The wind was building as the day progressed and was now blowing about 20 knots. We were taking a little spray over the bow — grand sailing!

We made Thursday Cove and anchored for a late lunch and to await the tide through Jewfish Creek. I thought about staying there, but it’s completely open to the north, so I started our rusty $200 Chinese outboard to cruise the mile-long mangrove channel into Blackwater. The motor ran perfectly, and for once we didn’t have a 2-knot current against us. This was our best run through any of the ICW channels we’d been in. I kept trying to sail these passages and had never succeeded.

Entering Blackwater, we had a strong headwind from the west and I anticipated it would veer to the north as the front came south. There was too much wind for the full mainsail now, and we needed to either anchor or put in a reef. Since the motor was running so well, I decided to keep motoring and round Snake Point into Saxton Cove. This was our 46th day cruising the Keys (see “Cruising Small and Simple” in the September/October 2023 issue of Good Old Boat), and Saxon was one of our most-used anchorages when going ashore for supplies because our car was parked nearby.

By then the wind was a high force 6 with a long fetch, with waves to match and big motorboat wakes from the ICW that didn’t help at all. At times we were standing still with the motor wide open, spray flying over the bow, trying to make the point. Foolish of me — I should have sailed! I’d be cutting the chop at an angle as we tacked upwind under complete control, with all the power from the wind that I’d ever need.

See how motors make us terrible sailors?

We finally made it around the point and anchored, but Saxton Cove was full of chop. We were worried about dragging and were off a lee shore. But why hadn’t the wind shifted north yet? When it did, we could tie off right to the mangroves — a favorite tactic of mine. But conditions didn’t improve, and we were running out of daylight. It was too late to make for Little Blackwater, a favorite bad weather hideout. Heidi suggested Lake Surprise. Of course! We’ve never spent the night there because of traffic noise from the bridge, but it’s a small, sheltered body of water. I refilled the outboard, which had cooled off, and we motored into the lake, which wasn’t far. The motor was getting a real workout. In 46 days, we’d burned only 2 gallons of gas, and now we were well into our third.

Once in Lake Surprise, we set two anchors, a 13-pound Delta and a 10-pound Danforth. We keep the anchors on roller platforms at the bow, each with some chain and 100 feet of ½-inch line stored in pouches lashed to the bow rail. Eventually the wind did swing north, and I had to untangle the anchor lines late in the night. At least there were no mosquitoes.

The next day, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had predicted the winds would blow 30-plus knots. They were, and they had shifted to the east. Worse, the wind was violently shifting. We were bouncing pretty good in a surprising chop for such a small basin. The wind was force 7, and it was interesting to see the characteristic streaks on the water. A fierce squall blew through, hammering Intrepid with heavy rain that at least flattened some of the chop.

When the worst of the rain had passed, I saw we were drifting toward the mangroves. The squall had pulled the anchors loose, and we scrambled into our rain suits and out on deck. Heidi went forward to haul the anchors while I started the motor. With the fore hatch closed, she kneeled on the tiny tip of the foredeck and leaned over to handle the anchors, with no mechanical advantage. She couldn’t do this six weeks ago and now she could. She’d become an excellent deckhand.

We were just 4 feet from the tangled mass of mangroves, keel stuck in the mud and bouncing up and down in the chop. Every bounce drove us farther in. Any second, the rudder would hit bottom and be knocked off its pintles. The motor started and Heidi, still hauling in the anchors, must have helped pull us off because we were able to claw free.

Heidi scrambled aft over the cabin top to pull in the canoe we tow and tried to keep it from swamping as I angled the boat for the passage out into Saxon Cove. The boat was broadside to wind and waves, and was heeled over a good 25 degrees by wind pressure on the bare mast and Heidi’s weight on the lee rail, where she struggled to keep the already half-full canoe afloat.

I found myself wondering if we could be knocked down under a bare mast.

I had to turn dead downwind to go through the mangrove channel and out of the lake. With the outboard idling, I let the wind push us along, but naturally, the canoe immediately swamped and tried to roll. Heidi hauled the bow of the canoe up, and as I goosed the throttle for more speed, dumped some water out.

We made Saxon Cove, dropped anchor, and set the second anchor from the canoe. In strong winds, I do this by sitting forward of center so the bow rides low and the stern up, where it catches the wind and keeps the canoe dead into the wind. It helps that I have decades of canoeing under my belt. Heidi passed me the anchor from the bow roller, fed the rode out, and guided me to where it needed to be set.

After lowering the anchor (it never sets right if I throw it), I held onto the rode and let it slide through my hand as the canoe glided downwind back to the boat. Then Heidi hauled tight on the rode to set the anchor. Simple. Try to fight these high winds in a canoe and you’ll be swimming in a second. You have to trick them into working for you. I’m not sure I could have set that second anchor in a rowboat; I certainly couldn’t in an inflatable boat.

We collected our wits for a few moments, but before long saw that we were dragging into a line of lobster buoys and shallow water. The holding ground there just isn’t very good, and I couldn’t tie off to the mangroves due to the violent wind shifts.

At that point, there was nothing left to do but to start the motor yet again and go back around Snake Point. The wind was mostly easterly and there would be some cover on the other side. Despite the higher winds, it was much easier rounding the point this time because we were off a weather shore. We anchored on the other side near a row of permanently moored boats that I liked to call “Margaritaville.”

As we came in, a big sailboat motored down the ICW from Barnes Sound, eventually rounded upwind across the channel from us, and dropped anchor. All of this was done from inside a tightly zipped-up cockpit — the captain of that boat didn’t get hit by a single drop of rain! Press a button and the anchor drops, reverse the diesel, back down, and set it. Then he went below into a cabin with full standing headroom and probably drank beer and watched TV. That’s cruising for many people, but somehow it seems wrong to me. Maybe I’m just jealous because I could never afford it.

Our anchors held wonderfully, despite fierce wind shifts that yanked the boat side to side all day and all night long. The rain hammered down in the worst deluge I’ve ever seen. The forward starboard port leaked behind the insulation and cedar lining of the cabin wall. We didn’t notice it until the V-berth mattress was soaked and water spilled onto the cabin floor.

The hatches and deck fittings forward of the mast held because I’d reset or replaced them all before the trip, but everything aft dripped water. It hardly mattered anymore. We spread our rain suits out on the soggy mattress, put a blanket over them, and slept.

I was shaken awake at first light by the boat hammering up and down, as in the wake from a large motorboat. No worries; back to sleep. Only the hammering didn’t stop. Huh? Wakes don’t last that long. I groggily wiped condensation from a window and peered out in the dim light. The wind seemed to have shifted dead north and the stern was not far from a lee shore! I scrambled for my rain suit; I had to get out, haul the anchors, and start the motor. Then thunder boomed. I realized a violent thunderstorm, the first we’d been hit with, was passing over us. The winds and boat were swinging all the way around the compass. The waters of the sound were a mass of chop, seemingly tossing in all directions at once. There was nothing for it but to hold on until it passed.

The rain and chop soon lessened and I went out into the cockpit. The canoe was barely afloat behind us, almost completely full of water with maybe four inches of freeboard left. Why hadn’t it rolled? I wondered if the weight of the flooded canoe on its painter behind us had helped hold us up into the wind. In the cockpit was our bucket, and it was brim full and overflowing with fresh rainwater. It had been empty when we went to bed. It couldn’t possibly have rained 12 inches that night, could it?

I needed to bail that canoe immediately and grabbed the bucket to dump it. Unfortunately, its unexpected weight caused it to slip from my hands, and it disappeared into the murky chop of the sound. I stared dumbfounded as our bucket, which we used for so many things, sank into oblivion. After a few moments, I shook myself, dug the bailing scoop out of the lazarette, hauled the canoe alongside, and bailed it out. This got easier as the chop subsided.

By that time, we’d gradually swung around and the bow was facing the shore again. The anchor lines, which must certainly have tangled as we swung right around the compass, had somehow sorted themselves out. They still held. The wind dropped to almost nothing. The rain stopped completely and the sun came out. Dolphins splashed happily nearby, gobbling up fish still dazed by the storm. The morning sun flashed from their fins and bodies as they jumped.

We stood on the cabin top and stared, numb.

That was the day we put Intrepid back on her trailer and headed home to Washington. We’d had enough, and the cabin was soaked. We threw the V-berth mattress away; it was badly mildewed anyway. Besides, we’d lost our bucket, and it was time to go.

Robert Van Putten grew up on Long Island Sound, where he and a buddy sailed a Super Snark to destruction. Eventually he moved to the Pacific Northwest, where he canoed happily for decades. One day on Ross Lake in Washington state, he and his wife were hammering the water as if killing snakes, trying to round a point in a canoe in high wind and waves, when it occurred to him that it might be nice to once again have a boat that could harness the wind.

 

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