02/23/2025 ICW Day 54 : Dismasted!

We got off to a great start today. I felt so happy - the sun was on us, and even though it was chilly, we felt great and were making good progress. The solar panel - under its first “real” test had charged both of our phones to full (and the cache battery) by noon. We met a kayaker (technically canoe-r) who was reenacting a historical canoe voyage, starting from Michigan and going to Florida with the hopes of paddling UP the Mississippi River. Something, he believes only one other person has done. His name was Peter Frank and I’ll add a screenshot of his blog since we can’t post links to Strava any more 😡

It was such a perfect day that I expected it to continue. Suddenly, I noticed a sort of kink mid way up the mast. I kept my eye on it, and I swear, the angle was getting more pronounced. The mast should have a gentle curve from bottom to top as we were under a decent amount of power on a beam reach. Reluctantly, I told Janet, “I’m going to take down the sail and inspect the mast”. As I was removing the mast, it became more unstable, and before I got it into Janet’s arms, it had folded in half!

Worries surged through my mind. This >$1,000 carbon fiber mast is not available for purchase like so much Hobie stuff right now. Was our trip over?

With great difficulty as we were bouncing in the waves, Janet helped me slide the mast out of the sail. Then, Janet pedaled gently to keep us on course. The mast is two pieces and fits together like tent poles. I imagined splintered carbon fiber inside the sail. Upon inspection, the mast had not been damaged! Instead, what had happened is that the sleeve between the two pieces of the mast had come unglued and slid downward, no longer supporting the upper half of the mast. That was it! A simple matter of temporarily taping the sleeve in place and gluing it later at camp. A brief sense of relief came upon me and the mast was back in service in little time. Just as I erected it, we heard the sickening sound of the boat dragging over shells.

We were far from shore, but had drifted into a dangerous shoal. Knowing that we can do almost nothing with paddle power and our weak arms, combined with the fact that the pedals were out of commission (pinned between the boat and the shells), the best option was going to be to sail out of there. And it was that very moment that the rudder cable broke free again. Remember that safety mechanism that keeps you from breaking the rudder? Now we had no control.

The sail was up and we were being blown into more ridges of shells. We needed to turn the boat the get the sail properly full of wind. Janet had to paddle-break constantly as a way of artificially being a rudder.

I jumped into the water and immediately felt the knife of pain surround my foot. The shells were a sharp as glass. They were slicing into the boat, and now they had sliced my feet in several places. The blood, mixed with salt water drained quickly making a red miasma in my cockpit area every time I reboarded.

Frantically, I jumped from shell shallow duty of grinding the boat over shell piles to trying to sail with Janet “at the helm” (Janet did the steering with her paddle as a strong brake). With her help, we managed to fill the sail with the air we needed to move forward… only once we did, we encountered another ridge of shells and more deep gouging the underside of the boat. I said the “F” word more times than I’d like to admit while Janet patiently endured me instructing, “brake on left!” “Paddle backwards on left!” “Paddle hard on right!” As she managed to steer us from shell pile to shell pile.

I was desperate. Looking at the GPS, we were SO CLOSE to the deeper water, but we couldn’t seem to make it; there were so many of these shell ridges. Then I noticed that we were stuck on shells that we had already been stuck on. I celebrated that moment with several more f-bombs.

Eventually, Janet steered us out into the deeper water and we vowed to watch our depth map like a hawk from now on. I busied with cleaning all the mud and blood out of the boat while Janet sailed us expertly along the channel. I climbed over her head again - this time to secure the rudder line in a clumsy manner. We would camp and fix the rest of the stuff later at camp.

Upon inspection, we found tons of scratches and broken off shells wedged into the plastic. It is definitely the most damage we have done to the boat. It still seems to work, and hopefully none of the gouges are deep enough that they leak, but cosmetically, it is quite a disappointment to have done so much bad on such a perfect day.

Once at camp, I glued the mast using the same marine adhesive that we put on the paddle board. It will be dry by tomorrow and the mast should be OK. My pedal drive got tons of scratches, but seems to still function fine.

Wet and muddy from being in the water, we were in a hurry to find camp. Janet remembered a ramp that she had seen (but initially dismissed) on Satellite view. We ended up pulling out at a boat ramp belonging to an HOA. We just put our tent on the side and since we were feeling pretty desperate, figured we would “plead forgiveness” versus “ask permission.” Looking back, this was unpleasant, but there are worse things that could have happened, that we are grateful for our opportunity to live and be out here. We appreciate these tough moments in honor of those who would rather be out here suffering with us as opposed to the kind of suffering that they didn’t sign up for. ❤️‍🩹