3.2  MOREHEAD CITY TO THE FLORIDA KEYS

We left the mooring at Morehead City and passed out through Beaufort Inlet and headed South at about 190 degrees for Florida. With a good and comfortable but testy wind we sometimes reached 6 to 7 knots. A knot  is a unit of speed equal to one nautical mile per hour, approximately 1.15 mph. So our top speed was about 7 mph. However the true speed with which we advanced was closer to 4 mph.

At that speed with wind and sail, time simply ceases to be important. We were about level with Bald Head Island and decided to head fo Jacksonville and run along the coast. Now there is another strange phenomenon that we discovered which was to be of great use years later and that was that when all is going perfect and you are at home with what is natural, you don't remember anything except a general well being.

It seems like memory only logs with a large valence the extremes. We remembered the sea, the stars, the clouds and the wind, but they all meld together with the three of us aboard just doing what it is natural to do at sea with a set of sails pulling you along while you perform mechanical duties...

It is different I suppose on a sailing cruise or if you are looking for stimulation and adventure, but if you are simply where you are at the moment, what is there to remember? So the mind is calm and you dwell in well-being.

It is a good message for those interested in true meditation and no-mind.

Only one unexplainable problem arose which caused concern but no fear.

That occurred somewhere after we turned to sail the coast down from Jacksonville. I don't remember where. There was a large stern swell. The Janus rose up on a wave and then when down in the trough we hit something. There should have many fathoms below, but it seemed that our fin keel kept hitting with a sounding shudder running through Janus- It continued for about ten or fifteen  minutes, with a certain regularity.

We got ready with the life raft in case we snapped off our keel and turned turtle. Ninette showed not the slightest panic, nor did I look for it in her.

It was just one of the unexpected things which she accepted as part of living. I don't know if you can see that it wasn't there before. It just arose in the circumstances. I believe it is a part of the human spirit if you let it be.

Being immersed with nature cuts away expectations. It is not a matter of becoming a believer in determination or a fatalist. It is rather a positive confidence in Natural Dharma.You let your no-mind nature run things for you and use the conscious mind as a tool.

No one does it perfectly, but that is what Ninette did and learned, and watching her undefined naturalness in new and difficult situations earned once more my admiration. I was a rock and always had been, so it was no credit to me, but Ninette transformed her gentleness and womanness into courage without losing her base.

From Jacksonville we followed the coast to Ponce de Leon Inlet, planning to pick up the Intracoastal Waterway again.

On the Atlantic Waterway Again

A complete change now with time for quiet cruising and appreciating the ever-changing landscape with at first a narrow waterway between hundreds of islands leading into large waterways with the mind-intriguing name of Mosquito Lake with a string of small islands running along the starboard (right), which suddenly stopped allowing a short canal, Haulover Canal, which led to indian River.

Now while the great events may well provide enduring lessons to those awake to any truth, it is the quiet moments that build character from association with nature in all its forms. We never saw a Manatee, but sea birds and all sorts of water creatures including water snakes brought us back to a common birthplace.

We passed Merritt Island and way the other side was Cape Canaveral. We didn't even find it interesting to consider.

We left the waterway at Jupiter inlet and decided to go into Fort Lauderdale. The immense contrast to our little unimportant voyage came home. We sailed in and moored as we had everywhere else, for we had neither money nor inclination to use a marina.

We were not there long before the local police boat arrived and told us in unveiled terms that we were not welcome. Our little vessel scarred from the voyage was simply not up to the standard that Fort Lauderdale expected. We slept the night and were off at first light.

As if to tell us something, reinforcing our haste to be gone, we dragged anchor a little during the night when the wind shifted and we had to put a second anchor out.

We avoided then like poison Palm Beach and Miami and ran down the coast inside the reefs along the Florida keys, putting in at Marathon. We learned later that we had passed Key Largo, famous for the 1948 movie with Bogart and Lauren Bacall and Edward G. Robinson.

We didn't care. We were in the Keys and it was time to get land legs again.