02/04/2025 ICW Day 35 : Tidal Hitchhiking

We departed the hotel early; our wonderful host Rick showed us photos of his own custom sailing rowboat - named for his wife who had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Our other host, Sue, was equally welcoming. The hotel looked a little shabby on the outside, but inside, the staff made it great - even having a “happy hour.” I kind of don’t like these types of mingling events, but we ended up meeting the other hotel guests, each with their own stories. One woman (also named Sue) had recently almost died from sepsis, and had to have a poop bag attached to her for several months. Now she decided to retire early and move to a mobile home in Florida and live on the cheap. That way she would have more time to spend with her grandkids. She looked to be about my age.

We started in a decent fog, and I was happy that we had the AIS. In fact, yesterday I had read that while on the ICW, you should monitor channel 13 in addition to channel 16, so I set the VHF to scan an additional channel.

Sure enough, we were privy to more conversations - people calling out to others, “I’m going to pass you,” and maybe some snarky replies like, “ok, I’ll move out of the way for when your wake hits me.”

We even got a call, “Hey Red Lobster, this is Grateful,” as they passed us really close on our starboard side. Like so many other people, the woman was taking photos of our boat. Janet was gleeful that our AIs beacon was working. I was gleefull she she said, “it would be fun to take a class” (as in a radio operators class). Wow, I need to tell Rick Nancy Prier !

Even though we were getting more communication via this additional channel, some people still contacted us the old fashioned way. A party boat with 6 people pulled up alongside us.

“Have you guys been drinking?”

He paused for the punchline…

“Because you’re all over the place!”

Then they zoomed off. It’s true- we were tacking into a headwind and zig-zagging all over the channel.

Speaking of tacking, I want to make something clear: Janet and I are extracting power from our sail about 95% of the time. It turns out that is a lot because I would say that 99% of the sailboats that we see moving are using motor. What this means is that people dream of buying a sailboat, but when they get it, they probably discover how difficult it is to manage the sails. In the end, they have a motorboat with a tall mast that means they have to radio to have all the drawbridges open. It makes me sad to see so many sailboats motoring, but we have seen a few under sail at least… but just a few. This is a big benefit of the small boat; deploying and furlong our sail just take a few seconds.

Today was pretty much perfect conditions. We went from one inlet to another. The it was a flood tide, so we rode that from the first inlet for about 15 miles. Then we hit a bit of tidal doldrums in the middle (the halfway-ish point between the inlets). By this time, the tide was starting to ebb, and as we got closer to the Northern inlet, we got another push out! Besides that, today was a great day for weather and scenery and traffic. Happy times!