Friday, December 3, 2004
Jacksonville, FL
Vanessa’s grandmother, Vanda, is an honest-to-goodness American dream success story. She immigrated to the United States from Northern Italy around the end of WWII, became a citizen, and built a comfortable life for herself and her family. What she brings with her are a whole bunch of “old-world” Italian anecdotes — wives-tales really — and “destino scritto” is one of them. Literally translated, it means your destiny is written. She uses it when she can’t explain the reason for events. Some people refer to it as “God’s will” when they can’t explain things. Vanda uses Destino Scritto.
I prefer neither, as I don’t put much faith in destiny. After all, if it is already supposed to happen, why the hell am I working so hard for it? Why not just sit around and wait? If I had done that, we would have never come on this cruise. No, I prefer to keep both hands on the wheel and feel I make the decisions that affect me and my life. Not some unseen magical force, like the gods of ancient Greece, controlling things from behind the scenes. No, I’m determining the future of my life. I am the one driving the car. But, it is funny on how there sometimes is “traffic” helping steer my decisions.
For example, we slept in this morning, made breakfast, and prepared to go ashore to see the park on Cumberland Island. However, events occurred, forcing us to reconsider. The wind was blowing out of the northwest, right down the anchorage, making things a little bumpy. Not bad, we’ve experience worse, but enough for us to take notice. Add emptying water tanks and our stay just got shorter as we will need to take on water very soon. The cold front that had blown through was followed by another smaller one, making for some cold temperatures – we are still running the fireplace at night – and walking the beach with weather like this isn’t appealing. So, we decided to skip Cumberland Island, stop delaying, move on, and enter Florida. As we motored past the park’s pier, I thought, well, no we could just tie up for a while and go to the island anyway, maybe they’ll have water. Just as I was about to make the turn, another sailboat cut over and took the spot, like traffic, making me wonder if there isn’t something to this destino scritto thing. We pushed south.
And if it is written, then I need to read well ahead to see the good stuff. On the way out of Cumberland Sound, something unusual happened – I hit a crap pot. I say unusual, as we’ve been driving over fields of crab pots since we’ve been in salt water, but today, motoring along, I heard “brrrrrrrrp!” We all looked up at each other and then back to see the float marking the pot floating away in tiny pieces, thoroughly cut up by our propeller.
“That’s unusual,” I said to myself, but didn’t give it much more consideration. Throttle up. Florida, here we come – sort of. After a few minutes, I noticed that we weren’t making the speed we should have with the rpm’s of the engine. “Now what? Did that stupid little float damage our prop?” I asked. We throttled back and tried to access the situation. Vanessa was able to see enough into the murky waters of the St. Mary’s River to determine that, in neutral, the prop was freewheeling, so there shouldn’t have been any damage to the drive shaft and prop. No, this was something else. The rudder was unresponsive and kept turning the boat to port, also unusual as our boat tracks forward extremely well. “So, what? Did we somehow pick up that pot and wedge it into the rudder?” I pondered out loud. The water wasn’t clear enough to see more than a few inches down, let alone five feet to the bottom of the rudder. Unfortunately, it looked like I was going to have to get wet today. Shit!
At this rate, it looked as if we shouldn’t have left and should have gone to the island. Perhaps this destino scritto concept is working backwards, since I’m not Italian, don’t understand how it works. We are a sailboat, so up go the sails to help us “speed” along across the St. Mary’s River and officially enter the State of Florida at 1116 this morning. We’ve arrived. Let the long ending or our cruise begin.
Dragged for six miles across the FL/GA border
Off the St. Mary’s, the tide, still eight feet here, was working with us, but we still weren’t moving very fast. I new there was something below fouling the hull. We radioed the marina in Fernandina Beach, FL and made arrangements. They had the option of an hourly rate, or a daily rate. Nice, as we might only need to stay an hour or two, or if there is more damage, we’ll be spending the night. We tied along the side, I inflated the dingy, grabbed my mask, and got in for a look. The water was brown, so I could barely see the propeller, which turned out to be fine. Great, something is down at the rudder. Before having to dive in the chilly water, I had an idea. Vanessa handed me the boat hook and I reached way down and swept it along the keel where, bump, I caught something – a line.
Feisty little suckers!
Back up on the dock, Vanessa and I hauled up the boat hook, pulled hard on the line, as a giant crap pot came up out of the water about thirty feet behind the boat. It was full of crabs! Man! Can you believe it? Vanessa has been trying to catch some crabs since the Chesapeake, and all we had to do was drive into Florida. Some of them were very aggressive, as Vanessa tried getting them out of the pot, but then again, if I were just dragged across the bottom of St. Mary’s River in a cage, I’d probably have an attitude problem myself. I must have been quite a ride!
1, 2, 3 . . .
The Dockmaster wandered over. “Looks like you caught yourself some dinner.”
“Looks like it. Do you have any idea how to get this pot back to the owner?” I inquired.
“Let’s see, it is supposed to be marked. But, I don’t see anything. If it is marked, then legally, you can’t even have the crabs, as it is some guys livelihood. But this one is unmarked. That means it’s yours.”
4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 . . .
“Well, that sucks for the fisherman. But, I guess it is good for us, since we’ve been deprived of our crab dinner for months,” I added. “We are clear and ready to go, so what do we owe you for our dock time?”
“Oh, y’all don’t worry about it. Just go and have a safe trip,” he replied.
“Well, how about a crab trap?” I offered. “That seems like a fair trade.”
“Hell yeah,” he exclaimed, “and I know right where I’m going to put it in my favorite fishing hole! Thanks.”
16 Crabs steamed for dinner!!!
Off he went with his crab trap, and off we motored down the ditch with our bucket of crabs. After months of trying, we are finally going to have our crab dinner. Even if we didn’t really catch them all by ourselves.
Into our anchorage, Vanessa rinsed the crabs in hot water and put them into the pressure cooker to steam them in some vinegar, beer, and Old Bay seasoning. She prepared a side dish of red beans and rise, cracked a couple of beers, and thirty minutes later, it was chow time! Whoo Hoo! Our $100 crab dinner, free! Free is even better!
The spread!
To savor the moment, we decided to eat up on deck, under the light of our oil-burning trawler lamp – just so perfect! Besides, we knew we would make a complete mess pigging out on fresh crab, so we didn’t want to eat below. Up on deck, we could just hose every thing down after we were finished. We dove right in! No amount of money spent in the restaurant could match this meal! We’ve been waiting far too long, and on our first day in this state, we stuffed ourselves like crabs! Binga wasn’t too sure about the whole experience and decided to pass. One of the crabs had snapped at her and we were unable to convince her that there were harmless now and actually quite tasty.
Where’d they go?
Now, I don’t know if this is a sign of things to come or not, but for getting “forced” into Florida this morning, was fate or not. We certainly weren’t happy dragging that cage across the state line, but in retrospect, the events leading up to this night make perfect sense. What a fantastic day we had and what a magnificent welcome to the State of Florida. Right now, we are stuffed and very happy to be here. We still have a long ways to go; Florida is a big state to round. We still have to carefully watch our money, as we are now on reserve funds, i.e. funds reserved for other things, like a house, or feeding the family. But, if today is any indication of things to come, then let the ending of this cruise begin!
-Steve