Logbook Tales – Cumberland Key to Nassau, crossing the daunting Gulf Stream

• By Michael Smart
• July 3, 2014
• 2 Comments

December 21st, 1981

After a week of dockside preparations, stowing cargo, eight supermarket carts of groceries, rewiring the ship’s radio, compass, and interior lights, and waiting for favorable tides, we departed Cumberland Key, Florida.

Ship’s complement includes Joe, the skipper, who also home built our ship, the Dugong, a fifty five foot steel hulled gaff rigged schooner. Joe’s girlfriend Susan, listed as first mate; myself, listed as mate and engineer; my girlfriend Joni, listed as deckhand and cook; Charlie, listed as deck hand; and Gypsy, a golden retriever listed as ship’s mascot.

A friend of Joe and Susan, experienced in the shallow channels of the Florida Keys, piloted us out of the Gulf. Although we’d departed at high tide Joe feared Dugong, drawing five and a half feet with the centerboard raised, might run aground. Which we promptly did. Fortunately Joe’s friend was able to push Dugong through the muddy bottom with his powerboat.

On the Atlantic side we set sail at 1530 hours, paralleling the Florida coastline under jib, staysail, foresail and main, the first time any of us, with the exception of Joe and Susan, had experienced Dugong under sail. The schooner a wonderful sight fully dressed, a light north east wind filling the sails.

I relieved Joe at the helm as the sun sank below the waves in the distance, disappearing from an apricot sky as darkness swept in from the east. The helm is housed in a raised deckhouse at the stern Joe calls the doghouse. It resembles a doghouse, with two four by two foot entrances facing forward, sliding wood ports on either side, and portholes facing aft. Two steering wheels, the one inside the doghouse from some old Chevy model, the one outside from an International Harvester truck, both connected by a common steering column.

The sea is rough, or so I though before my first encounter with the Gulf Stream. Dugong is handling the choppy rollers well, rising over the crests and ploughing through the troughs. The crew faring less well, except for Joe and Susan, seasoned sailors who appear unaffected by the schooner’s motion. A nauseous queasiness forms and rises in my gullet, but I fight it, not allowing myself to become incapacitated at the helm. Joni is also nauseous, and a bit frightened by the dark night and ocean surrounding us, a new experience for both of us, but she too overcomes it. Charlie has been heaving since we made sail, and is curled up in his bunk.

Dec 22nd, 0130 hrs. – I have the watch again. Joe, Susan, and I have been relieving each other at two hour intervals. I’m alone on deck sitting in the doghouse, all hands asleep below. A comforting solitude envelops me as I guide Dugong through a dark opaque night, the only light the star speckled canopy above, Orion the hunter directly overhead. I stick my head through the doghouse’s aft porthole to be instantly confronted by the awe inspiring immensity and power of the ocean. The sea I’d earlier considered rough, now seemed placid compared to the tumultuous, confused ferocity of the heaving Gulf Stream. The stars disappear as Dugong slides into deep troughs between towering walls of ocean sweeping up unseen from the black night, the pinpoints of light reappearing as the schooner soars high on the white speckled crests, seawater gushing from the scuppers. Quotes I’d memorized from classical novels about sailing and the ocean no longer mere literary flourishes. Gazing out the porthole I’m initiated into Melville’s panting, snorting, aboriginal awfulness of the sea, and I gain a visceral understanding of George Herbert’s ‘he who will learn to pray, let him go to sea’.

Pt. 2 – Cumberland Key to Nassau – The Florida Straits

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More Logbook Tales – true stories from the author’s flying and sailing logbooks.

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