Just because our boat is 2000 miles away doesn't mean that there will be no boating activities to report this summer. Yes, it is not sailing, and true, it was not with either of the Ilenes, but I, Roger, enjoyed a great cruise from Royal Palms (near Boca Raton) Florida, to Altantic City, NJ. This was thanks to our friends the Leafs, the owners of Sea Leaf, a magnificent new 69.7 foot long, Ocean Alexander Flybridge 65 motor yacht. Words cannot do justice to the boat, so I took some pictures. But I moved them from my camera to my home desktop computer in ADOBE Photoshop Album Starter Edition 3.2, and have been unable to move them from there to here. If I ever learn how to accomplish this, I will edit this post by adding them and let you know. In the meantime, the photos in the attached link, offering an older and smaller version of the boat for sale, can give you an idea of the boat's opulence.
Sea Leaf cruises along very comfortably at 10 knots with only 1300 rpm in each of her two engines (a mellow purr compared to ILENE's higher pitched sound at 2400 rpms to motor at six knots. Sea Leaf can go faster, up to 14 knots but would be burning almost three times as much fuel per hour, so to avoid aiding the OPEC nations we cruised at a stately pace, comfortably. Comfort is enhanced by stabilizer fins -- underwater hydraulic, omputer controlled wings on each side that flap down when that side of the boat wants to roll down and vice versa. I learned that ILENE, despite its tiny relative size and absence of such fins and the electric power to operate them, is more stable in big waves because of her keel; she will give you a bouncy ride, but has much less risk of toppling over.
Everything on the boat is controlled by a computer, which is controlled by buttons on panels mounted in about five strategic places in the boat. Comfort is also enhanced by air conditioning that is always on -- either heating or cooling each cabin -- powered by 100 amps of shore power or one of the two big generators that produce plenty of juice. Docking is easy: you pull her up near the dock, stop and ten push her sideways to the dock with the bow and stern thrusters.
Each of the four sleeping cabins has its own large,satellite-antenaed, flat screen TV and its own head and marble shower. I slept in the guest stateroom with a queen size bed. The rooms have mirrors but they are superfluous because the beautifully matched wood and bulb paneling gleams under many coats of high gloss varnish. The smallest stateroom is for the paid captain, aft, and it is none to shabby either, larger than the one Lene and I share on ILENE, with its own TV and rerigerator. No one has to sleep in the living room/dining room/galley/indoor steering station, which is a huge indoor space with an outdoor promenade deck all the way around, and located above the sleeping level. The levels are connected by beautiful spiral staircases. Both the living room level control station and the one on the fly bridge above, have two large TV screens, each perhaps 20 inches across, on which the chartplotter, the radar, the depthsounder and various data are displayed. The chart plotter is controlled by two separate computer programs. Each has many options as between raster and vector charts, straight above view or on-a-slant view, with or without a satellite photo of the land and its features, etc.
One very nice feature is a display of the NOAA government radar display of storm activity, tidal flow direction and strength, overlaid upon the chart and updated every five minutes. So when we hit our one big storm out in the Atlantic, well actually it hit us, with sustained 35 knot winds and a gust to 50, we got very usefull current information to confirm the data from our own radar -- big ugly red splotches -- where the heavy rain and associated winds were. These were confirmed by our own observation as the storm was quite visible coming up our port side. We used this overlay to try to steer between the heaviest spots in the passing front. Bob is an excellent sailor with Atlantic crossings on his sloop under his bent before he, as we sailors say, went over to "the dark side" of power boating, though Sea Leaf is such a great boat that she almost wants to make one not use that slanderous term. Bob took the helm in the storm and praised his "big girl" for how well she handled the storm.
After provisioning the boat, Bob took me to a Musical Review put on by the Royal Palm Yacht Club; luckily I had brought a pair of long khakis because shorts and denim are prohibited in the dining room of the club, which used to require residence in the gated Royal Palm community for membership. After the passed hors d'oeuvres and coctails and before the desert table, we were entertained by a jazz orchestra and singer who did Duke Ellington, Cole Porter and George Gershwin. The final number was a song written and played by a member of the Club who was our MC. He gave brief entertaining bios of the composers.
Because of rough seas, we stayed inside the Intercoastal Waterway except for the 400 mile stretch described below and from Hampton Roads north. From Boca Raton we went to (1) Vero Beach FL, (2) New Smyrna FL, (3) Beaufort NC (this was a 40 hour romp in the ocean -- 400 nautical miles), (4) Belhaven NC, (5) Coinjock NC, (6) Little Creek VA, (7) Ocean City MD, (8) Atlantic City NJ and (9) New Rochelle NY. I had to get off in Atlantic City to make another engagement. The rest of the gang, Bob, the owner, Dave, the professional Captain, and Bill, a retired Army Colonel and realtor who belongs to the Royal Palm YC, successfully completed the transit without me.
We averaged about 90 miles per day inside and 240 miles per day in the ocean. Why the difference? (A) In the ocean the path is straight, not curving along the coast, and not wiggling along the curve, (B) there is no need to wait for bridges and canals to open and no "no wake zones", (C) we got a boost from the Gulf Stream that added 25 percent to our speed and most importantly (D) we had the opportunity to motor around the clock rather than only in daylight. Night time travel in the narrow constants of the Intercoastal Waterway would be difficult, even with a chart plotter showing our location.
Some highlights:
++A sparrow sized land bird, grey with white belly and bolts of yellow on its wings and tail, alighted on our boat about 40 miles off the coast and stayed with us for over 24 hours, including during the storm. The bird helped us clean off the last few of the thousands of "love bugs," those slow moving harmless types that get squashed on your car window, which had alighted on the boat in the ICW for an orgy of tail to tail procreative activity. They were very easy to catch by hand in a paper towel and to dispose of.
++The restaurant in Coinjock NC is not particulary high on ambiance but noted for its prime ribs with its reputation well deserved. We each had the small 16 ounce variety and took half of them back for the following day. None had ever had a better prime rib. And their soft shell crabs for an appetizer were great too. Bob and Bill had been disappointed in the restaurants we had patronized earlier, preferring our shipboard dinners, but Coinjock made up for it.
++The boat has two bicycles and I took rides in several of the ports, searching for local postcards to send to my grand daughter. In Belhaven NC I found a sailmaking needle and twine and whipped the ends of the few lines (compared to a sailboat) that Sea Leaf has. They were not in danger of unraveling due to a heavy fusing or cauterizing of their ends by the heat blade that had been used to cut through the plastic, but they look more nautical now and I would hate to break my tradition of whipping the lines into shape on boats I sail.
Thanks, Bob, for a great boating experience.
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