My First Mooring Ball

(June 23 & 24)

Distance: 0.5 nm/Time: 0.5 hrs

Set my alarm to wake up at 8 am so that I could prep the boat and be off the dock by 10 am-ish. Slack current was around 11 am, and I wanted to be out at the mooring field making my first attempt to capture a mooring ball then. Also, on the dock I was facing north with port side to. I was going to have to swing my bow around 180 degrees to exit the marina to the south before turning north to the mooring field. If I left while the current was still coming in (flowing south), it would hopefully help swing my nose around. I used the same technique to get off the dock which had seemed to work in St. Augustine and it worked great again!¹

After exiting the marina, I turned north toward the mooring field, put the boat at clutch speed with the autopilot engaged, and began cleaning up the boat from docking while prepping it for a mooring while I slowly motored the half-mile to the mooring field. When I arrived, I could see a number of open balls so I picked one that seemed to have the least current effect on it.

My plan, from the research I had done, was to tie a long dock line to a bow cleat, then run it back to along the port side of the boat to my lifeline gate. I would pull alongside the ball, grab the pendant with a boat hook, run the dock line through the pendant eye, then take in the line as I walked forward to the bow cleat, eventually bringing the pendant eye right up to the bow cleat. If the forces started getting too strong at any point, I could just tie off the bitter (loose) end of the line also to the bow cleat and clean things up later; at least I would be secure to the ball.

As it turned out, it took me three tries to figure out the best way to approach the ball with the existing current and winds, but three is the charm, as they say, and everything eventually worked as planned. After getting the pendant eye up to the port bow cleat, I ran another dock line from the starboard bow cleat under the bow, through the pendant eye, and back to the starboard bow cleat. Then I loosened both sides’ dock lines about 10 feet, and voila, hanging very nicely off the mooring ball, nice and secure for two days!

Once I got all the fenders and dock lines put away, I decided to hang some “awnings” (tarps, sun shades) since I was going to be here for two days. Shade is always nice. I was completely settled in by 11:00, planning to just hang here until Tuesday morning.

It’s ironic. When I had been in the marina for three days, the temperature had been about 80 degrees during the day with a steady breeze. I didn’t need the air conditioner, but took the time to install it because had we gotten all the rain the was forecast, for the length it was forecast, I would have had to close up the boat, and it would quickly have become very hot and stuffy without air conditioning. But, it only rained once for about 30 minutes in those entire three days!

Now that I was out here without shore power to run the air conditioner, the forecast was for 96 degrees, a very slight chance of rain with little wind! Just can’t win! Lol As it turns out, the forecast was wrong again, as we had little rain showers coming through about every hour most of the day. I spent a large amount of time closing up all the windows and hatches as the rain fell, (very hot and stuffy!) then opening them all back up again to get some breeze through the boat. I had to do this probably five times throughout the day. The good thing was that the rain kept the temperature from getting above 88 degrees, so we never saw that forecast 96.

I started the two-day rest period with a big omelette brunch, then a nap. Did some blogging, read some more of my John Paul Jones biography, made a phone call to a friend, and eventually did yoga and a core workout. As I was on deck doing that, late afternoon, a series of boats came into the mooring field and took most of the remaining balls. I was glad I had grabbed one early.

It felt good to be on a mooring ball. There was the privacy, peace and quiet, and gentle movements that I loved while being at anchor, but with none of the associated stress of wondering how the anchor was doing, checking the anchor alarm, etc. While grabbing the ball was probably more challenging than setting an anchor (and definitely would be if the winds or current were strong), releasing from the ball will be as simple as untying two lines from the two bow cleats and pulling them in–way easier than weighing anchor.

The bad part, however, is that for about two hours around each slack current, when the boat is lallygagging around trying to decide which way to go, the big, plastic, 2-foot-diameter mooring ball will sometimes bang (and sometimes bang very loudly) against the hull. I noticed that the boat next to me had put a big inner tube around their ball to cushion this. Great idea, but mooring balls are all different sizes; I suspect they had been on the ball for an extended period of time and bought the inner tube just for that ball.

One thing about Fernandina Beach that I had forgotten since passing by this way on Nicholay’s boat seven months ago, was how industrialized Fernandina Beach was, but that you sort of didn’t notice it from inside the town itself. But from the water, it was very obvious.

There were two large pulp factories, one on either end of the town. Not pretty–especially for what everyone considered such a quaint little tourist town. And, not only did they look unattractive, when the wind was from the right direction, the smell was quite unpleasant. And, since getting on the mooring ball, the wind had been from the “right” direction. 🙁

The other part of this, and again what I hadn’t noticed being inside the boat with the AC running, was how often trains came right through town en route to the mills. Blasting their horns. All hours of the day and night. But, it was very obvious on the mooring field. 🙁

I was a bit perplexed about why there would be two factories way out at the end of the road, as it were, on Amelia Island. So, of course, I Googled it. Turns out they were built in the 1930’s after the town solicited industry to come to bolster its greatly suffering economy during the Great Depression. There is an interesting story about it here: https://fernandinaobserver.com/general/rayonier-and-container-in-fernandina-a-brief-history-and-reflection/

I ended yesterday with a nice, refreshing shower in the cockpit after dark. Funny, the last time I did that was four days ago at the Acala anchorage. It had actually been a bit cold, and I had remarked to myself that I had evidently gotten north enough already that the evening showers had turned from refreshing to chilly. Alas, that was just a fluke, I guess. Temperatures are back up in the 90’s and refreshing evening showers!

This morning has been lovely, with partly cloudy skies, about 80 degrees, and a very nice breeze blowing through the boat. In fact, I had to pull a cover over me because I was getting chilly. I think I’m going to do pancakes this morning, then maybe prep some food for the passage tomorrow.

Speaking of which, I’ve been debating either doing a single overnight to Charleston, SC, or doing two overnights all the way to Beaufort, NC, the entrance to the waterway leading to Oriental, NC, my first real “goal.”

It would save so much time to just stay outside for an additional 24 hours and more than double the distance (Charleston is about 150 nm as the crow flies, and Beaufort is about 340 nm.) For the two-day trip, the routing takes me further offshore to capture the Gulf Stream again. I would end up completely skipping two states (Georgia and South Carolina). And that 340 nm “as the crow flies” is probably more like 400 nm in the ICW. At the 40 miles per day that I can do in the ICW, that would take 10 days. Or I could suck it up and do it in two. Save about 60 gallons of diesel, too.

Once arriving at Beaufort, I would then be “inside” for an indefinite period of time as I would be going inland a bit to Oriental, then taking one of two ICW routes to Norfolk, VA, thence into the Chesapeake. So, once at Beaufort, I would be finally launching my dinghy and towing it behind the boat. This would make anchorages much more fun, as I could easily go back and forth to shore.

But, the most I’ve done solo so far (twice) is one overnight at a time. This would be something like a 55-60-hour trip. The conditions seem very nice, with max wave heights of under four feet and winds not more than 15 knots (and both following). And, best of all, there is nothing significant forecast for days after my arrival, so I wouldn’t have to hurry to beat a weather system or anything. If there were a time to do it, this would be it.

So, I’ll continue to evaluate weather, how rested I feel, etc., but I seem to be leaning more and more towards just grunting through it, two days of 20-minute naps, to save ten days worth of drudgery in the ICW going through GA and SC.

More to follow!

1. This entailed putting a short dock line on the stern cleat that was against the dock, reverse (against a fender) which should swing the nose out. Everything surprisingly went pretty much according to plan. The only hiccup was that by morning the winds had shifted to the south. That worried me as my bow is greatly affected by the wind. I could see a situation where my nose would come around a bit–maybe 90 degrees–but the wind would keep it from turning the remaining 90 degrees and I’d be stuck in the small marina fairway sideways and drifting with the current.
   
   But, it turned out to not be an issue. I asked the mate of the mega yacht if he’d move the runabout they had parked in front of my boat the day before, and he gladly agreed. That gave me more running room when I switched from reverse to forward after prying my bow out as far as it would go. I sort of wanted to do this all by myself, to see if I could get the technique down, but a fellow cruising sailor came up to ask if he could help, and we talked about strategy for a bit before agreeing to have him tend the bow line just in case things went bad.
   
   So basically, I put the boat in reverse after having looped the stern line around the dock cleat and put two sturdy fenders hanging from my boat opposite that (since that’s where the boat would be pivoting, using the dock as sort of a lever.) That held the boat against the wind, allowing me to remove both spring lines. The man was holding the bow line, but there wasn’t much tension on it; everything was just sort of sitting there. So, I gave the engine more reverse throttle, and the bow slowly started creeping away from the dock. I had to increase throttle some more (1500 rpm?) to get it to keep moving, but that didn’t cause any problems and the fenders were keeping me off the dock.
   
   When the bow was about 40 degrees off the dock, it wouldn’t move any further, but I felt that was good enough. At that point my helper was almost out of bow line, anyway (and he wasn’t doing anything but tending the line as the bow moved, so I could have just removed that line before starting the maneuver), so I told him to toss the line as I took the boat out of reverse, put it in forward, turned the wheel to starboard, and gave it a little bit of throttle as I let loose one end of the stern line and pulled it from the other end around the dock cleat and back in the boat. Using judicious throttle forward and backwards to maximize prop walk, I ended up having plenty of room to turn 180 degrees and motored safely out of the fairway. Success! And it was sort of fun using physics to maneuver the boat!) ↩︎