Small Trip to Big Lagoon

This hasn’t been the best summer for sailing, though it’s mostly my fault. I’ve been a little under the weather for much of the season, and then there have been various other modest catastrophes that have kept me off the water.

But last week I decided I was going, come hell or high water. I had a couple of days with a fairly good weather window– no more than a 40% chance of rain, and moderate winds. I set off down the road to Pensacola on Wednesday morning, and a couple hours later put in the boat at the nice Big Lagoon State Park ramp. One side of the ramp is silted in, but the right side is deep and steep. Slider came off her new trailer effortlessly. I tied her up, raised the mainsail, and was short-tacking up the narrow channel that leads east to the lagoon 15 minutes after we arrived. The winds were about 10-15 knots out of the SE and our course was pretty much SE too, so I didn’t even put the jib up.  Slider tacks easily without a jib, and I was feeling lazy.

I can’t overemphasize how pleasant it is to have a boat that eats up big chunks to windward with each tack.  I’ve sailed many boats that didn’t do very well on a beat and it’s painful.  Slider makes haste to windward most effectively with the sheets a little free, but she loses very little ground to leeway. With her daggerboard down, the helm is light, even without a jib.

At each tack,  I’d look back and see that the channel marker I’d tacked beside on the last tack was now well behind us.  Chop doesn’t make much difference.  Slider’s skinny hulls seem to slice easily through the chop without being slowed, as some small boats are.

Once into Big Lagoon, we could sail east and lay the course to the far end of the lagoon, where the remnants of old Fort McRee cap the end of Perdido Key.  I camped there last fall as well, but this time I decided to take a different approach.  On last year’s trip I was sailing every day, all day long.  This time I decided to just anchor in a pretty spot and spend a couple days enjoying the place.  I was in no great hurry, so I didn’t even bother to put up the jib.  We still averaged 4.5 knots, and that was fine.  I hadn’t been out for a while, and the 10 miles over to the end of Perdido were a great pleasure, despite our somewhat poky speed.

When I reached the end of Big Lagoon, I sailed across the buoy line into the no-engines-allowed marine reserve behind the remnants of the old fort.  As I sailed across the flat, a big Coast Guard vessel came through the cut to the north and turned to parallel my course.   I was a little concerned that they might be intending to launch a Zodiac and come for a visit, but apparently they were doing some kind of exercise, because they eventually anchored and spent the night a few hundred yards from my beachorage.

There’s a lagoon within a lagoon down near the end of Perdido Key, with perfect all-around protection, but when I went in there, I found that I couldn’t sail very close to the beach.  I wanted to be able to step off the boat and be ashore.  So I sailed back out to the west until I came to the first charted anchorage.  Two big monohulls were already anchored a half mile off the beach, but I sailed right up onto the sand.  Perdido Key was deserted.  The Labor Day weekend just past marked the end of the tourist season, and I didn’t see a soul on the beach for the three days I was there.

I put up my deck tent, set up my cot, and heated up one of the frozen casseroles I’d packed in the big ice chest.

My new combination cockpit table and one-burner stove worked very well.  I had a canvas folding chair and enough LED lanterns to read by.  I set out a couple of citronella candles on the foredecks, and was not bothered by any bugs.  Last fall, I’d had to deal with a zillion little black biting flies, inside the marine reserve, but this year they didn’t show.

A couple days went by, and I did pretty much nothing at all, but it was a good time all the same.  I spent a lot of time watching the abundant sea life.  I saw a manta ray jump out in the lagoon, saw a lot of tailing redfish, and mullet jumped around the boat continuously.    I read, listened to music, wrote, played Go on my little netbook computer, watched a couple of movies.  My deep cycle battery and inverter worked well, and would have lasted a number of days longer.  This semed like pretty luxurious camping for a 16 foot open boat.  I had standing headroom under the deck tent, and plenty of room to move around.

At night, I had to move off the beach a little, because each night we got strong winds from the NE, and there was about a mile or so of fetch– enough of a chop developed to bounce us up and down on the sand.  The last night, the winds were very strong and gusty, and the deck tent rattled loudly.  But it stood up fine, although it did give the boat enough windage that she wanted to sail back and forth on her anchor. Each night, the Coasties anchored south of the Intracoastal, and their lights were a bit of an annoyance.  On the other hand, I didn’t worry about pirates.

Thursday night when I called home on the cell phone, my wife Nancy told me there was bad weather forecast for Saturday, so I decided to go home the next day.

On Friday, I slept late– a cot is a wonderfully comfortable bed, compared to a pad or an air mattress.  I ate a leisurely breakfast, took one last walk down the beach, packed up, and headed back to Big Lagoon State Park.  The wind was blowing 20 knots out of the east, so we scudded along before it at a pretty good speed.  The shoreline seemed to whip past, and when we turned up into the approaches to the Big Lagoon ramp, I was a little sad that the trip had to end.

One half of the ramp is badly silted in, so I just sailed right in between the wing docks and up onto the sand.  I fetched the car and trailer, hauled the boat out, dropped the mast, and was on my way home 15 minutes after we pulled in.

I’m going to try to get in a couple more little trips like that one before winter gets here.  I think one of the best arguments for a small beach cruising catamaran is that it can have fixed beams, and so is only a little more complicated to launch than a john boat.  That ease of getting under way encourages small spur-of-the-moment trips like mine.

For busy folks, that might be the only way we’re going to get to do much cruising.