February, 1995        

Aboard 'JABBERWOCKY', Captiva/Sanibel Islands, Florida

Dear Family and Friends,

Getting our repairs done to JABBERWOCKY while in Mobile took over four weeks although only 4 days of that were actually needed to do the repairs.  Painting the trim required a couple of days that were warm and dry; we had lots of both but seemingly never at the same time.   In many places this might seem to have been an intolerable situation but our stay in Mobile was far, far from intolerable.   In addition to going to Houston for Christmas with my sister and her family, we also took advantage of the courtesy car that Turner Marine maintains for transient boaters.   (although it was an older Maxima, it's overall condition was very reminiscent of the old Fiesta I drove for an eternity. )  Mobile is an extremely interesting city and we spent many enjoyable hours visiting the USS Alabama battleship park (where the movie 'Under Siege" was filmed), the submarine USS Drum, civil war Forts Saines and Morgan and exploring the beaches of Dauphin Island. Old timers of the marina and now our friends, Prince and Dolly Turner, took us under their wings and made us feel right at home, taking us out several nights and introducing us to the joys of eating crayfish.

Finally, on January 12, JABBERWOCKY was lifted from her jack-standed perch and restored to her natural element.  Unfortunately, a weather front moved in and so it was January 20th before we felt comfortable venturing out into the shallow waters of Mobile Bay for the 20 mile run south to pick up the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW) going east.  Over the next several days we traveled through the ICW getting into the Florida panhandle.  Along the ICW we anchored out and hiked the ruins of the old civil war Fort McRae and the adjacent beaches, finding numerous sand dollars and other interesting gifts from the gulf.

Traveling along on the ICW allows for an ever-changing environment. Ft. Walton Beach and Destin are heavily invested in attracting tourist and sport fishing dollars while only a few miles away, Panama City is a port of commercial fishing and shrimping.  One afternoon, with only a couple hours of daylight left, we anchored in the narrow but deep Saul Creek, a tributary of the Apalachicola and St Marks River.  Scarcely a boat length (25 feet) wide, the mangroves and cypress formed an impenetrable corridor of foliage.  A 2-knot current kept JABBERWOCKY in the middle of the stream and her mast out of the overhanging greenery and Spanish moss.  After the sun went down, and after the kids were in bed, I sat out in the cockpit for some time.  With no moon, the blackness of the night was eerily complete.   I sat there, being unable to see my own hand in front of my face and listened to the nighttime sounds in an area which has truly remained unchanged since before Juan Ponce de Leon stepped ashore in south Florida in 1513.

We arrived in Apalachicola on January 25.  It is a small town with equal emphasis placed on tourism and commercial fishing and oystering. Being the type of people we are, we chose a slip adjacent to a 45 foot 'long-liner' fishing boat (owned and worked by a wonderful husband and wife team) and surrounded by other boats owned by locals.   I know it's hard for most of you to believe this but as a family, we' re not very shy.   To the local people working around the docks,  "What'cha doing?"  "Who in town has the best cheeseburger and coldest beer?"  and "What should we not miss while we're here in town?" are standard questions.  It took us about a day to be on a first name basis with a handful of colorful people who made our visit to their town most memorable.  They still referred to this area as "Ol' Florida" and were obviously proud of their southern heritage and traditions.  One afternoon a man named Chip took us on a blistering high-speed boat ride through the bayou that had all the adrenaline thrills comparable to The Demon Drop at Cedar Point.  Other people would stop by the boat and insist that Belinda and I go to happy hour at the Inn about one block away from where JABBERWOCKY gently tugged at her dock lines.   Their free appetizers were all the fresh (netted locally that day).  All the steamed shrimp you could eat.  Sean and I watched the Superbowl in that same bar, cheering for no team in particular just enjoying the evening together.

Between frivolities, our stay at Apalachicola was deliberate and thoughtful because, for all practical purposes, the ICW ends there and doesn't resume again until on the western shore at Tarpon Springs.  To continue our journey meant that we needed to cross the Gulf of Mexico.   It is interesting how your perspective changes when cruising in a small boat.  In a car, 15 miles means, at most, a pleasant hour trip.  But an average of 5 MPH, our crossing would take at least 3-hours.   In case of trouble, the panhandle 'corner' of Florida is very inhospitable.  There are no ports, no harbors and with extremely shallow water (1 - 4 foot deep), extending out miles from shore.  Once we headed out, there would be no stopping, no rest areas and no tow trucks.   In fact, for much of the trip we would be out of range of our VHF marine radio.

There was no temerity in our preparations to cross the gulf.  Belinda and I studied weather patterns, consulted with the locals and called the weather center of the local airport.  We plotted our course on the charts and then checked and rechecked our calculations.  After much soul-searching, we decided to deflate our dinghy, the JUB-JUB, and carry it on deck, gaining about 1/2 knot in speed versus it's potential as a life raft in the event of a catastrophe.

At dawn on February 1, with a perfect 2-day weather forecast, we crossed Apalachicola Bay and passed between the barrier islands into the Gulf of Mexico.  With only a light breeze to help us, we motor-sailed along hoping to make best possible time for the entire crossing.  Beside our mainsail, I had raised our 150% genoa jib (the largest headsail, besides our spinnaker, that we carry) in order to get maximum assist from the wind.  The day was warm, sunny and brilliant and by 10 a.m., we had turned off our 9.9 HP outboard as the breeze picked up nicely.  The first few hours passed by rapidly as we sat on the deck and traveled through miles and miles of widely dispersed Portuguese Man-of-Wars, their translucent bodies bobbing high on top the water and their cobalt blue tentacles extending many feet down into the clear water.  Although we have seen dolphins often since Mobile, I don't think you ever really grow accustomed to them, appearing out of nowhere, playing and splashing around the boat, and then simply diving under and not being seen again.   It is easy to understand how people become enamored with dolphins; when one rolls to the top of the water they actually look at you, with eye contact that is as real as I have encountered.  By mid-afternoon, I pulled the Genoa down and set our working jib.  Although not worrisome yet, wind speed already was exceeding the predicted 5 to 10 knots.

As dusk approached, Belinda and 1 re-affirmed our 2 paramount nighttime sailing rules:  1.  Everybody out of the cabin wears a safety harness.  2.  Nobody travels out of the cockpit, even in a harness, without somebody else in the cockpit.  As the winds continued to increase and whitecaps form on top of the ever - building waves, my last action before dark was to change our jib again to our tiny, heavy - duty storm jib and put a reef (make smaller) in the mainsail.  We also considered our options, but the winds had moved from being on our beam (the side of the boat) to slightly behind us.  Not only were we nearing the halfway point of our crossing, but also to return now would mean going against the wind and waves.   I read one time that most good sea stories are the result of poor decision making.  As JABBERWOCKY 'freight trained' along under reduced sail I wondered what Belinda and I could have done differently to avoid being out in obviously deteriorating weather conditions.

Only the tiniest sliver of a moon made it's way onto the horizon, otherwise the sky was clear with a million pinpoints marking the stars. As the wind continued to move more and more behind us, the benefit of our storm jib decreased and became a liability, with it pulling us along faster and faster.  JABBERWOCKY was now often exceeding her hull speed of about 6.5 knots.   (The speed that a boat must exceed in order to make it plane on top of the water.  Like JABBERWOCKY, most cruising sailboats are not designed to plane due to high-speed control difficulties.)  We needed to slow the boat down.  This is usually done by reducing the amount of sail, and, if needed, dragging ropes or drogues behind the boat.   I called Belinda out to the cockpit and crawled forward to lower the storm jib.  Between waves, I lowered the jib and lashed it off to the lifelines to be dried and stowed properly later.  While at the bow, sitting on the deck, I took a moment to observe, almost casually, how JABBERWOCKY was doing.

One hundred years ago this year, a man named Joshua Slocum became the first man to circumnavigate the earth solo.  In his book, "Sailing Around the World Alone", Slocum often refers to his 30-foot sloop, the SPRAY, as sailing along,   . . .with a bone in her teeth.    This is his description of the bow wake made by a boat rapidly pushing through, not on top of, the water.   I simply accepted his writing style and never really thought much about it.  But on the night of February 1 JABBERWOCKY, too, sailed 'with a bone in her teeth'.  Her bow wake was very iridescent and was colored pastel red on the left side and green on the right side from the bow-mounted running lights.  With the storm jib down, JABBERWOCKY settled into a groove, charging, lifting her stern to the overtaking waves which came out of the darkness but never got a drop into the cockpit.  Belinda and I simply do not agree on wave height and to tell you how big they were that night would just give us fuel for debates for decades to come (Just ask me personally.).

By 4 a.m. as quietly as the winds had come up, they started to drop off, and by midmorning the weather forecast became true again and we found ourselves short of wind power again and motor-sailing to the next visible landmark marking the river which leads upstream to Tarpon Springs.  Tarpon Springs bills itself as the 'Sponge-diving Capital" due to the early Greek settlers who came here to continue their sponge-diving heritage.  We spent several days there enjoying the sponge-diving museum, beautiful Greek Orthodox architecture, and cuisine native to this area.

Western Florida also changes some of the laid-back cruising lifestyle that we enjoy immensely.  There are a lot of boats here, and a lot of big boats.  Now back in the ICW, we have entered an area I refer to as the 'Teal and Pink. Stucco' part of Florida.  The St. Petersburg, Tampa Bay and Sarasota areas are all so highly developed and commercial it was comforting to leave all that behind us and spend a few days at the primitive island of Cay Costa state park.  Since we've been there, we've joined the ranks of the 'hunchbacks', people who walk the beaches for hours stooped over and picking up seashells.

We are currently anchored out by Captive Island, close to the larger Sanibel Island.  We've been here for a couple of weeks, enjoying an incredibly good deal that allows boaters to anchor out and dinghy in to use the resort facilities for $5.00 /day.  I can hardly get Maggie and Belinda out of the pool.  Since we've been here Belinda's parents have come over from Vero Beach to visit for a few days and we've had time to consider our options. Although our original intentions were to head straight away to the Bahamas, we are reconsidering an alternate route of going to the Dry Tortugas, lower Keys, and then back up the west coast to catch the Okeechobee Waterway to the east coast before heading north on the Atlantic ICW.  There is much to consider; the length of time needed to go to the Bahamas versus having that time on the east coast, our boat insurance is invalid in the Bahamas, going to the Bahamas would mean that we would miss the Okeechobee, we DO want to miss the Miami-Dade county area, the Tortugas are farther offshore than Bimini, etc., etc. The one thing which we do like is traveling in a manner that requires no schedules and no reservations.

It's a great life.

The crew of the JABBERWOCKY,

Mike, Belinda, Sean and Maggie Hetzman

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