On Thursday evening, 30 hours into our trip, the sun prepared to set and we drew within a mile of the coast of Palm Beach, near the Lake Worth inlet. We tacked a course dead east, out to sea, so that we could slowly cut back SSW during the night (as the breeze becomes offshore and gives us a fairly consistent sailing angle). Phil figured he could go east about 2 hours (while I napped) and then I could sail us back in at a steep angle (so he could get 4 hours sleep before we had to tack back out again).
So after I fixed “dinner” of turkey sandwiches, canned fruit and cookies, I settled in for my nap.
Midnight Gulf Stream/Lake Worth
Unfortunately, we forgot to take the Gulf Stream current into our calculations. When Phil woke me to tack it was only an hour later. Although Our Tern was headed due east, the current was actually pushing us north and we had “lost ground.” As the saying goes, “we were sailing backwards.” To further complicate things, the currents did their voodoo and ruined our tack again. Phil was frustrated with me (thinking it was my poor piloting), so when we tried again I put him at the helm. With his stronger muscle and years more experience we were finally able to successfully tack (on the third try). The trick was finding that sweet spot where the boat’s fat beamy shape, the wind and current converged. Normally it is 100 degrees from start, but with the current so strong it was way off norm. It took his years of sailing skills to find that sweet spot.
Once we were headed back to shore, I settled into my last little nap. When Phil woke me around midnight we were about 2 miles north of where we had been at 6pm… and the wind was dead. Instead of tacking, we were pulling in the sails.
It turned out to be a good thing that the wind died. This meant that we had to fire-up the engine and motor until the wind returned. Thus motoring at four knots, just a mile from shore, Phil was finally able to relax enough to fall asleep. For the first time in three days (since excitement had kept him awake Tuesday evening), Phil was finally sleeping deeply.
Throughout the night the wind did not return. For six hours I motored along at four knots. There were plenty of fishing boats for me to watch along the way. A few were checking crab traps. There were even a couple sailboats anchored off shore for the night. But most of the time I just watched the high-rises along the shore and shooting stars up in the sky. Ironic was the thought that although the high-rises along shore seemed to be sturdy and stationary (what we associate with longevity) they would be just blinks in the timeline of the asteroids (which were shooting through our atmosphere in split seconds).
About 5 am I noticed a bright white light to port, just above the horizon. Too bright to be a star, and too high to be an anchored fishing boat, I kept checking it. Surely it was a sailboat at anchor with just the light atop the mast burning. And as I watched it, the light grew brighter and stayed in the same spot. Sure sign I was on a collision course. I tapped the autopilot toward shore a bit, but the light continued to grow brighter and stay in the same place. Now I was getting worried… was it really under motor and not lit correctly? Would I have to wake Phil (who really needed his sleep)? And that is when I saw a second light… starting to trace exactly the same course. And then I heard the noise of the first light’s engines... and realized it was a commercial airplane flying into Ft Lauderdale airport! I laughed aloud. I have been on those planes so many times… they circle us into a big loop out over the ocean (almost to the Bahamas) and then bring us in from the ocean. I looked around and started to count….seven planes I could see at one time… all in a perfect loop… starting high in the north sky, looping east and downward, then south and finally back west to land at the airport.
Since about 3 am, I had been cruising along behind a boat with several bright lights astern. The majority of boats I had passed at night were single men fishing in boats with lots of light in the cockpit. I had assumed this boat I followed was just another 25-30’ fishing boat, trolling just inside the Gulf Stream. But as we neared Port Lauderdale about 5:30am it slowed, turned toward shore and stopped. That was when I realized it was actually a very large container ship. From the distance and direction I had, it looked like the Egyptian Sphinx was sitting on the bow. Waiting outside for Port Lauderdale to let it in… like a Trojan Horse!