We made our way south from St Augustine along the ICW. We anchored at a spot called “Cement Plant” on the charts, and it turned out to be one of the best anchorages we’ve ever stayed at, at least from a protection perspective. It’s perfect for one boat and will accommodate two. The little “pond” appears to be surrounded by a SeaRay plant these days, so probably nowhere to get off. Next day we continued south to a wide open spot in the Mosquito Lagoon. Very cool place, but in any kind of wind it would be bad. Next morning we transited the Cape Canaveral area and on to Cocoa Beach. It was Friday, and we had seen enough of Florida boaters to know that we didn’t want to be out on the weekend if we could avoid it, so we anchored for the weekend here. Nice anchorage and they also had a free dock which we could have taken advantage of as we would have been better protected from the significant northerly winds that kicked up on Saturday and Sunday.
On Sunday morning the winds were pretty sporty still. We’d stayed on the boat Saturday to avoid getting soaked in the dinghy, and it looked like this was going to be another day on the boat. As I was looking out the galley window, I saw a boat going by pretty close, and was a bit surprised that folks would be leaving in this wind. It’s a small sailboat with a tiller, and wait—there’s nobody at the tiller. In fact, the washboards are up and nobody appears to be in the sailboat at all. It’s broken free and it just blowin’ in the wind. I rush up to the cockpit just in time to see it clip the bow of Ambassador, a very pretty sailboat neighbor, and it seems to get stuck there, obviously tangled on something. A guy rushes up from below and starts struggling to free the dang thing. His wife runs up to help, but she’s carrying a baby. A young couple obviously.
I call BoatUS but just as they are answering the guy gets on the radio and asks for help, so I hand up with BoatUS, jump in the dinghy, and go over to see if I can help. Turns out BoatUS couldn’t have helped him anyway because it would have had to be my own boat to use my account, and this guy didn’t have BoatUS. Stephan is this fella’s name, and he’s new to boating. He and his young bride and their baby (Ocean) had been rudely awoken by this drifting derelict thumping into them, and now it was caught on them and causing damage by the minute.
The rudder of the offending drifter had caught itself on Ambassador’s anchor chain. We try all sorts of things, and the thing that finally works is that Stephan levers the rudder free and it falls to the bottom, releasing the derelict from Ambassador. We scramble back onboard Ambassador and both jump in our dinghies, aiming to try and guide the derelict toward a safe shore as it’s being driven by the wind. Stephan’s motor won’t start though, and within minutes the wind has driven him far from Ambassador, so I go back to him and tow him back. In the meantime, the derelict has drifted far downwind, and folks who had been watching Stephan and I had called it in as a drifter for mariners to be on the look-out for.
We baked a loaf of bread for them, hoping to make them feel better after such a nasty start to their life aboard. Turns out they had just bought the boat and had just moved aboard, neither of them knowing much about boating or sailing.
That story is the perfect segue to the topic of derelict boats in Florida. This just floored us as we traveled the Florida ICW. All along the route we saw boats in varying stages of dereliction. Some sunk, some half-sunk, some still afloat but clearly derelict, some still afloat but hard aground and had clearly been hard aground for a long time.
I’d read many articles by boaters about the terrible anchor restrictions that Florida and Georgia were instituting, essentially making anchoring illegal in many places. Seeing this mess, I understand how folks would be in favor of finding ways to prevent this sort of abuse. I don’t think the anchoring laws as written solve this particular problem however. As I’ve read more about the situation, it appears that the laws have been written to satisfy wealthy hotel owners who are mad that boaters anchor outside their expensive resorts.
But something should be done, of that I have no doubt. But, as always, define the problem well before going about solving it, otherwise you’re likely to solve something that doesn’t need solving, and fail to solve the actual problem.
