Our Wings is a beautiful ketch, a Morgan 41-foot Out-Islander,
docked in Dania, Florida. She came well equipped with electronics and all
the pertinent gear, but her most delightful feature, keeping the heat and
humidity of summer-days’ Florida in mind, is the fact that the salon and
the cabins are air-conditioned. Now, there’s a pleasant concept for the
spoiled outdoorsman!
We enjoyed this feature on many occasions, particularly while waiting for
some last-minute maintenance to be performed before our maiden voyage was
to take place.
Eventually, everything was checked out, and the time to cast off came.
Leaving the comfortable docking was an adventure in itself—a prophecy of
things to come? The waters around this particular docking are a bit
treacherous, with currents and an undertow, which, if not known or ignored,
could set the yacht against a low bridge—a situation that obviously for a
sailing yacht with a tall mast and mizzen-mast could prove not only
painful but embarrassing. But we managed to keep our cool and our masts.
Grateful for little things, we continued our course toward the
Intra-coastal Waterway, a narrow passage between the continent and the
ocean separated by a narrow strip of land, running from the Florida
panhandle to Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. The inland waters are deep
enough for confident boating, but narrow enough to keep the confidence
tempered. Soon, slipping through an opening in the narrow rivulet, we
ploughed our frothy furrow towards the wide open seas.
Our destination for this afternoon’s sail was the Miami Marina, pinned
between the city and Biscayne Bay. The longer be sailed, the more anxious
we became to arrive. Our anxiety heightened as we realized that we were
literally being chased by a thunderous front, blown over from the mainland.
Our Wings was no match for the adamant advance of the storm; it
soon overtook us, and we found ourselves smack in the middle of the very
eye. By now it was dark, and only the distant lights of Ft. Lauderdale
and Miami gave us flickering courage. We kept looking for the channel
markers in the distance, trying to line them up, green on the port and red
on the starboard. “Red, right, returning”—a bit of sailors’ jargon—came
in handy.
The wind was beating on us, scooping the cold ocean water on to the
forward deck and into the cockpit as the boat bopped up and down, side to
side. We were all soaked to the skin, concerned about the black unknown
that seemed to us like the great ne plus ultra that even Columbus
had feared. We discussed the possible damage lightning could cause the
boat. The picture was not pretty: it would be messy and expensive. We
recited old seaman’s stories about boats that had been attacked by freak
storms and their masts filéed and their Lorans fried by lightning. Yes,
we had a Loran, that wonderful contraption that gives your exact
coordinates of locations anywhere in the world. (By now that device has
been replaced by the all-knowing, portable little gadget called GPS.)
But all the electronics aboard did not tell us where the channel was to
Miami.
Eventually, the storm subsided, the dismal clouds thinned out, and we
found the channel. But as the last bit of excitement—a total anticlimax
as it may have been—we put our untested knowledge of the channel to the
ultimate trial. It was dark and the markers were not lit, so we kind of
missed a jagged turn along the way. The depth gage kept warning us with
its heart-fluttering high-pitched beeping, but what could we do? It was
shallow everywhere. Very fortunately, we passed over the bank
uneventfully, and breathed easy as the channel seemed to find us! On
arrival to the marina, we were praised for our “local knowledge,” which we
accepted very quietly and graciously . . . and somewhat hesitantly prepared
for the coming week of sailing in the Florida Cays.
The Cays consist of countless islands and rocky promontories that run the
length of the Florida panhandle. Leaving Miami, the first visible cay is
Cay Biscayne, known for its most famous resident, former US president
Richard Nixon. We passed this posh island neighborhood and found a little
cove named No-Name Harbor for well-protected anchorage. Again we were
chased by a storm front, and arrived just in time to batten up, and , this
time, to enjoy the electric storm from the air-conditioned comfort in the
salon down below.
The next morning we were greeted by a wonderful revue put on by a porpoise
and a couple of flying fish. Those fish really do fly! It was amazing.
But apparently our porpoise friend was too well fed by the cove’s
residents since he did not seem too keen on catching the fish. Oh, he did
chase them, jumping out of the water after them and nipping them at their
tails in mid-flight, but obviously it was all for show. Here was a
porpoise with a purpose: to steal the center stage—or pond.
We considered sailing all the way to Cay (Key) Largo, but then decided to
linger in this neighborhood a little longer to enjoy the beauty of the
shallower waters and the colors they afforded. One morning we purposed to
take our little dinghy through a cut in the cays to the oceanside for some
purportedly magnificent snorkeling. We had heard the story of the little
engine that said “I think I can, I think I can.” Well, our dinghy that
lacked all the power we thought it had, could not fight the current from
the ocean, and started losing ground, singing: “I thought I could, I
though I could.” It couldn’t. The snorkeling expedition returned,
disappointed, and vowed to add more horses to the motor. But snorkeling
was fulfilling even around out boat.
So continued our sailing days on Biscayne Bay: setting sail during the
day, and settling down and anchoring by the late afternoon to avoid being
caught in another storm. The storms came every afternoon like clockwork:
by dinner the sky turned black, and lightning flashed against the vast
darkness, followed by echoing thunderous claps in the clouds. The winds
were furious and unpredictable; we had to cast two anchors to secure our
position even in these protected bay waters. When the storm let up and
the clouds withdrew, the sky was bathed in some of the most incredible
colors, turning the water of the bay into brilliant hues of turquoise,
lilac and carmine.
They say that it is bad luck to change the name
of a second-hand boat, so we did not, although we could have thought of
more descriptive names than Wings of Eagles for our new used yacht.
Thus the name—obviously inspired by Ken Follett’s novel—remained on the
stern of our sailing vessel.
Local knowledge and all, we survived another sailing odyssey, grateful for the opportunity to see the beauties of this world close-up, and added another “s” to our annual boating vocabulary. We knew all about sun, sea, sail and sand; now we know a bit more about storms as well.
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This page was created on March 2, 1998
Most recent revision: February 2, 2007