So much for plans. We'd hoped to be in the Bahamas by now, but instead we're sitting in the North Lake Worth anchorage, waiting for weather. At least we're no longer Soverel Harbour Marina $50 a night for the dubious privilege of being tied to their concrete dock. They provide water and electricity, but nothing else; there's no laundry, no showers, no toilets, and no internet connect. The marina staff is surly and the other boats there are nearly all sportfishers. When the wind blows from the west, it carries acrid black ashes from Central Florida cane fields being burnt to clear them after harvest. When the wind blows from the north, as it has been doing for the past three days, it coats everything with a thick layer of dirt from the construction site next to the marina. Before we left, we spent several hours giving Windom a good bath. We were very happy to get out of there!
We have finally finished installing our autopilot. Like everything else, it consists of a large number of components which need to be mounted and connected, all with varying constraints and requirements. One of the big pieces we needed that wasn't included was a tiller arm to connect the hydraulic drive to our rudder. We had to order it from the manufacturer of our steering system, on the west coast, and wait for it to be made and delivered (delaying our work).
A big consideration in installing an autopilot is radio frequency interference; we don't want the boat to turn circles every time we talk on the VHF or SSB. We really wanted to mount the electronics of the autopilot far from the radios, but the way we'd set our radios up, there was no way to do it without ridiculously long wire runs (which have their own problems). Instead, we decided to use shielded cable for all the connections, but we couldn't find any locally, so we had to order it and wait until it arrived. (more delays).
We had another setback when Britt was putting away his tools after a day of work and managed to snap a flexible plastic ruler into his left eye. It felt ok that evening, but in the middle of the night he woke up in agony and was miserable all night, despite the painkillers I made him take (so at least I could get some sleep!) In the morning I took him to the doctor, which for cruisers in an unfamiliar town is a little harder than it is for most people. I called all the opthamologists in the Yellow Pages until I found one relatively nearby that could take him that day, then called all the car rental agencies until I found one that had a car available and could pick me up at the marina. It turned out that he had cut about a 3-mm swath across his cornea, which unfortunately is the most sensitive part of the body and therefore hurts like crazy even with only a tiny scratch. He got prescriptions for painkiller eyedrops and antibiotic eyedrops, along with a promise that it would heal quickly. Sure enough, after a few days, he was fine.
As with most major systems, installing the autopilot made us very aware of how much easier nearly every aspect of cruising is when there are two people to share the labor. We brainstormed together whenever we needed to pick an option, such as where to mount a component, and we think that helped us pick good choices. It often required both of us to get parts in place, especially when running wires, which needed to be pushed at one end and pulled at the other. The mechanical and hydraulic parts of the autopilot were mounted in the far aft end of the lazarette/engine compartment, which requires major contortions to get in and out of, so Britt was very happy to have me run and get parts and tools instead of having to uncoil himself each time he needed a different screwdriver. When I wasn't fetching things, I worked on wiring the electrical connections, so we were able to make faster progress by doing some things in parallel. Before I started cruising, I would have thought that the hard part of being a singlehander would be the sailing and boat handling, but now I can see that docking solo is nothing compared to, say, trying to bleed the autopilot's hydraulic drive arm while simultaneously pumping the reserve cylinder and turning the wheel. (Heck, that was hard with only two of us!)
Speaking of singlehanders, we've encountered a few of them on the ICW, but the overwhelming majority of cruisers seem to be couples. Families with children are about as rare as singlehanders. We've met a surprising (to us) number of gay couples; I wonder if having a non-mainstream lifestyle to begin with makes it easier to make the leap to becoming a cruiser, or if it's just that land-based folks tend to socialize in small groups with those of similar interests, while cruisers all hang out together, so we're meeting a broader cross-section of people which more accurately represents the general population.
I can't generalize about ages as easily. We had expected most boat people to be older, retired folks; there certainly are a lot of the AARP crowd, but we are meeting quite a few younger people as well. Most of the couples in their thirties and forties are just taking a year or two off, as opposed to long-term cruising, but there are many who (like us, who fall in this age group) have saved enough to leave their options open. We've met very few under-30 folks.
Roughly a quarter of cruisers we've met are full-time, no time-limit liveaboards. Another quarter are out for a sabbatical of a year or two. Some have rented out their houses, some have sold out with plans to move back on land somewhere else. The other half, mostly "traditional" (older) retirees, have both a house and a boat and split their time between them.
As far as wealth goes, again there are about three different groups. I'd say the majority are like us: a 38-42 foot boat, not new but not beat, with a few "luxury cruising" items such as a SSB, watermaker, or air conditioning, and a budget that can handle marina stays and meals out, although not every night. There are a few wealthy cruisers, in bigger, newer boats with more toys .(The filthy rich who are more likely to be in a crewed motoryacht are so stratospheric that I don't even count them as cruisers.) Finally, there are those in tiny boats with minimal gear and even more minimal budgets; there are more of these than the rich guys, but even adding together the two ends of the scale doesn't come close to the numbers of the middle.
At the moment, southern Florida is in the throes of a frontal passage. The wind here in the north Lake Worth anchorage has been between 12 and 25 knots all day (great for our wind generator!) from the west. Tomorrow it will be from the north, which whips up great big waves in the Gulf Stream, not good conditions for crossing. Ideally, we want fairly calm conditions, either light SE winds (the usual situation, which requires motorsailing or motoring across) or light SW to W winds in advance of the next front. We also need to wait for some time after the wind shifts to allow the waves to die down before going.
The winds are supposed to moderate and shift away from north on Saturday, but another front is predicted to come through on Monday. That probably won't give us enough time to cross over, so we will either wait for better crossing weather, or use this mini-window to get further south.
We have mail coming in that we will pick up on Friday. We ought to make one more trip to the supermarket, and we need to top off our propane and diesel. We're still doing little projects -- Britt's sewing a canvas bag for the dinghy anchor, and I'm programming our favorite channels into the SSB -- but we are basically ready to go. And boy, do we want to get going!