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Underway Again!
Tuesday, March 24, 0730, Underway in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida Coast, Onboard Griffin.

When our last update ended, we were enjoying a peaceful afternoon inport at the Lighthouse Boatyard. Tom was off roller blading and making friends. He returned to the boat with Bob, the boat broker from Palmer-Johnson of Savannah. Bob was down here with a lifelong friend and newly converted powerboater/client Jack. Jack just bought a beautiful 37' Tiara with twin 465 hp Cat diesels. Tom and I thought she was brand new, straight out of the box, but actually she was a couple years old. They were having minor engine problems with air in their fuel lines and pulled in to sort things out. Tom used our rental car to take Bob on a provision run, that Bob and Jack reciprocated with an invitation to have "cocktails" on their boat. We love this yachting stuff!

Griffin in the travel lift with the gleaming, reconditioned props. Her modified V hull gives her a smooth ride in choppy conditions.

After a couple of beers, we decided to all head out for dinner. We spent a very pleasant evening comparing the rate of change and outside pressures on the Carpet Business (Jack), Boat Brokerage (Bob), and Real Estate (Jon and Tom). It's amazing how similar business people's reactions to change are, whatever their business. The boat brokers are looking at their own equivalent of REALTOR.com, and the Carpet entrepreneurs have their own Realty Alliance type co-operative idea exchange group.

We returned to the pier, and after loaning a wrench to Bob and Jack, with the promise of double Krispy Kreme donut rations and our wrench back at Palmer Johnson in Thunderbolt, Georgia, we returned to Griffin. If you followed our adventures on the southbound trip, you might remember that Palmer-Johnson is famous for every morning giving a box of Krispy Kreme donuts and the Savannah paper to every boat in port. You wake up with a little bag with your allotment hanging on your life lines.

Mike, the owner of Jacksonville Propellers, is a great guy. A fellow pilot and easy person to like. He gave us an education on Props and loaned us two spares for the rest of our trip for the time "when, not if" we run aground or hit a submerged object again in the ditch. His shop reconditions 5,000 props a year so we aren't alone.

After we got to Griffin, Tom proposed a little nocturnal adventure. On the other side of the pier from us was a very unusual boat. A 100' steel sailing schooner. She was built at the turn of the century in France as a Yacht for Mr. Renault of the car company. Built in 1903, she was launched 4 years before Titanic, and the building materials, methods and opulence of the era were still apparent. In the early 30's, an Italian Count bought her. The Count was briefly the son-in-law of Mussolini before he was executed. The yacht was used in the 60's for three movies, most notably Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Unfortunately, those glory days were long gone. Being made of steel, without an aggressive corrosion control program, the ravages of rust had taken there toll. We could see straight through her deck in a number of places, and it was obvious the current owners were fighting a losing battle that was near the end.

We had been watching her all day. There were a quite a gaggle of people parading on and off. There were two ways inside. Forward there was a wood deck house. The varnish was faded, but you could see inside one window into the galley with tile counters and brass fixtures. Aft there was an elaborate barrel sliding hatch that led below. Tom tried to chat-up the owner to get a tour, but she seemed pretty tired and wasn't interested in inviting us onboard.

After we returned to Griffin from dinner, Tom looked at me with a devilish look in his eye. "It's now or never." He went to his luggage and pulled out a small flashlight. Out he went with me in cautious pursuit with a flashlight of my own. We casually walked up the deserted pier towards the yacht. At 10:00pm, with no wind, you could hear a pin drop. All was quiet. Nobody onboard. Tom and I quietly slipped over the rail and approached the galley door to the deck house. During the day, we had seen people go in there and turn aft down a staircase to the opulent interior below. Tom tried the door. It opened. Everything was dark inside. We slipped in.

Tom shut the door and turned on his little light. It cast a small, eerie glow across the galley. We went forward in the deck house first, before heading down the staircase. The forward two thirds of the deck house held what had formerly been the main salon for the owner. The walls were paneled in Mahogany. There was what looked like a faded oriental carpet on the deck. Forward were two facing sofas with the remains of a marble fireplace at the forward end of the cabin. We were surprised and saddened. The inside was decaying as fast as the exterior. We went aft. We apprehensively went down the steep staircase to the owners quarters below. The staircase went deep into the hull. We came out at the bottom, eight feet below the waterline. We turned forward and passed through a door. To port and starboard the bulkheads had been ripped out to get to the inside skin of the hull. We could see the rotting steel frames in our flashlight beams. Red rust was everywhere. Little pockets of water collected in every angle. Signs of an attempt to halt the inevitable were there. Sump pumps worked valiantly to keep her afloat. Fiberglass cloth and resin had been slathered on to stop the thinnest plating from giving in to the pressure from the sea outside.

With foreboding, we walked further forward, checking out the staterooms and sail locker. We both felt it at the same time. A soul at unrest. The overpowering feeling that we were in a coffin. This vessel was dead and her tortured spirit wouldn't rest until she joined the Titanic on the bottom. We beat feet out of there and got back on deck. We went aft and opened the barrel hatch, but neither wanted to venture below so we peeked in, and shut her back up.

We returned to our comfortable, safe, fiberglass Griffin and turned in for our 4:45am wake-up call.

Monday we got up at 4:45am and jumped in the rental car for the 2 hour drive to Jacksonville. We got to the prop shop at 7:15am. With nobody there we drove off in search of breakfast. We returned to the prop shop and at 7:30 the first employee showed up. Robert is a gentle giant. He has worked at the prop shop for 15 years. As he went about opening the shop he gave us a tour of the machinery and processes used to repair propellers. We got quite an education, as he went to work repairing and tuning our props. Much of the repair involved Robert swinging an assortment of huge hammers with all his might on to different parts of the blades to get them to conform to special steel blocks set to the correct angle.

Happiness is seeing Lighthouse Boatyard over the fantail. Note the 100' Chitty Chitty Bang Bang yacht in the foreground.

About half an hour later, Mike, the prop shop owner showed up. He continued our education on propellers as Robert finished the work on our props. One blade was bent and a little chunk was missing from the leading edge. Robert unbent the blade and trued everything up, welded up the missing piece and ground and polished everything to a smooth finish.

I have been trying to determine what props would be optimal for Griffin since I got her. At the Miami Boat Show I met Tony Morgan from Peters Port Fairline in England. We have been exchanging e-mail regarding props, but haven't quite figured out what I should go with, based on the weight of the boat with her current equipment, and a number of other unknown variables. One big factor that is holding things up is that I'm not sure the engines are running at their peak. I spoke with Tony in England from my cellular phone on the way to Jacksonville and we both decided that reconditioning what I've got until I get the engines sorted out is the wisest course.

We put the reconditioned props in the trunk and headed out. Three blocks from the prop shop, Tom and I decided that we really should have a spare set of props just in case. The umbrella theory. If you have one, it never rains. We went back. Mike offered to lend us a pair of used props for the journey home. We'll ship them back to him when we get to Annapolis. With the theory that "'From Service Comes Commitment", you can bet that I will buy the new props I intend to get from Mike and Jacksonville Propeller.

Jack and Bob from the 37' Tiara Adieu II tried to reach us on our cell phone to tell us about the severe shoaling at the Manatzas River. Unable to reach us, they called Connie at Champion in Severna Park. She e-mailed the warning and we received it before we got there. Here we are taking Jack and Bob's approved route right up against the shoreline. You can see a sand dune 20' beyond Tom's head!

We got back to Lighthouse Boatyard at 11:00am. John at the yard had us scheduled for haul-out at 12:00, and back in before 1:30. In the interim, we would have the opportunity to scrape the prop shafts and trim tabs, the only place where barnacles were growing.

On went the props, off came the barnacles, back in the water, refueled and underway by 2:15pm. The damage! $431.19. Could have been allot worse, and we did get to see some neat things and meet some neat people that we wouldn't have, if this little side adventure hadn't happened.

We re-entered the waterway on pins and needles. We were both very edgy about staying smack-dab in the exact center of the channel. We discovered we had a new instrument we had barely noticed before. One of us drove, while the other stared intently at the depthsounder. After about an hour of this we relaxed.

I went out to check e-mail and picked up a message from Connie at Champion. She had received a call from Jack. Bob and Jack had encountered an unexpectedly shallow portion of the waterway and wanted us to know the way through. Stay well to the left at the Manatzas River. We followed their advice, watching the depthsounder like hawks. We made it through without a problem and kicked Griffin back up on plane.

We decided to push on to sunset and make it to St. Augustine for the night. A run for today of 64 miles. We are now about 180 miles, or 1 1/2 days, behind our pace to get home next Sunday. If we can make it to Thunderbolt, Georgia, a run of almost 200 miles today, then we will only be one day behind.

Dawn at Sea! Open Ocean Tom wanted to punch out into the Atlantic and blast north up the coast, so we headed out of St. Augustine Inlet into the deep blue. 10 fathoms under the keel!

We pulled into the municipal marina at St. Augustine, fueled, pumped out our holding tank and cleaned and serviced our boat. We went off to the showers at 7:30pm, tired but happy with our progress. As we were leaving the boat, Tom suggested we take a couple of beers with us.

We got to the bath house. The combination that the dock master gave us wouldn't open the door to the men's showers. We tried it numerous times. I tried the combo on the laundry room door and it worked so we knew we had the right number. Tom tried the combo on the ladies showers. It worked. Faced with a very long walk to the dockmaster's office and uncertain repairs to the men's shower lock, or using the ladies showers at this off-peak time, we decided to go right in and borrow the ladies facilities.

Tom and I showered uneventfully and he finished quickly. Tom wanted to return to the boat to call Deb, so I lingered over my shower to give him a little privacy on the boat to make the call. I stepped out of the shower and stood drinking my beer. It suddenly hit me. If I got caught standing naked, dripping wet, drinking a beer in the ladies showers of the Municipal Marina in St. Augustine, Florida, I was going to have some serious explaining to do. I dove into my clothes and hit the door in 8.3 seconds. I got back to the boat still dripping, heart pounding, and dried off and changed there.

Cruising on Griffin is anything but dull! We are heading for Thunderbolt, Georgia and the Palmer-Johnson yard today. It's a long haul but we think we can make it. The first half is an offshore run. We'll refuel at Jeckyll Island and see what happens from there.

We are having fun!

Warm Regards,

The Griffin Crew, Jon & Tom

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