Easy Nautical Miles and a Great Biryani

Docking gets most sailors at least a little more on edge. It tests skills and relationships. Yelling is often involved. Swearing? A staple. There’s a reason people make shirts that say, Sorry for what I said while docking the boat. The little wireless headsets couples use to communicate from opposite ends of the boat are nicknamed “marriage savers.” I had no marriage to save.

This would be about my fifth time ever docking Mearr. The other four had all been in my own slip in Brunswick. Same dock and approach. Same familiar surroundings. Now I was heading toward the St. Augustine City Marina fuel dock, current running the wrong way to be particularly helpful, with nobody aboard but me, myself, and I.

I was so nervous.

An hour earlier, I had been drinking coffee on a gorgeous 70-degree morning with nowhere in particular to rush to. Things had escalated.

I hadn’t even set an alarm. Waking up around 7:30 after another great night of sleep in St. Augustine had me feeling more rejuvenated than I had in a while. I was toward the end of an outgoing tide, so I sat with my coffee and started looking at the day’s routing. Ponce Inlet was an option, but once I looked at the tide timing, the ICW made more sense. I had never done this section before anyway, so why not?

I also wanted fuel. Leaving Brunswick without full jerry cans had been fine, but before continuing toward the Keys I wanted to take one uncertainty off the list. There were plenty of other worries to choose from.

After my normal engine checks, I dropped the mooring around 8:30 and headed for the fuel dock.

Learning happens in discomfort. I’m not sure the amount of learning is actually proportional to the amount of discomfort, but it sure felt like I was about to learn a lot in the next five minutes.

I flaked my dock lines over the lifelines so they would be easy for someone to grab, called the fuel dock, and started making my way in. Luckily, nobody else was there. Apparently the universe had pity and figured it could allow me to learn a little less.

I came in steady and brought the bow close enough for the attendant to grab my bow line. Once he had it, I turned hard to starboard and reversed, using my prop walk to pull the stern toward the dock. By the time I was done, the attendant simply walked back, picked up my stern line, and tied it off. I never touched a line.

It wasn’t quite a Captain Ron docking, but it was somewhat inspired by one.

Yet again, I had managed to impress myself. I had approached the whole thing with a pit in my stomach and then docked like I had been doing it all my life. Without swearing.

Hmm. What are we learning here?

I took on about 20 gallons of diesel, which topped off the tank and filled three five-gallon jerry cans. That put roughly 47 gallons of fuel aboard. In Catalina 36 speak, that’s basically enough diesel to motor all the way to Marathon in the Keys if needed. My little engine that could takes tiny sips.

Leaving was considerably less dramatic. Mearr turns on a dime, so I pulled forward and away, spun her 180 degrees while coming nowhere near the wave attenuator, and pointed south toward the ICW.

I was fighting the current a little at first and moving slower than I expected. I blamed the current.

Five months later, after getting back to Georgia, I would discover that my engine had not been running properly for the entire trip.

Oops.

At the time, though, I didn’t know any of that. I was just moving south.

This was my first time back on the ICW since leaving Brunswick, and the day could hardly have been calmer. There was little to no boat traffic. The water was ridiculously flat. Autopilot did most of the steering with only tiny adjustments from me, which left plenty of time for the important work. Like having my own private dance party in the cockpit.

Sometimes I would take my phone with the charts running and go sit up on the bow for a while. It was much quieter up there, away from the engine, and I could just watch the scenery slide by while still keeping track of where we were going. Stunning homes and condos lined parts of the waterway, surrounded by healthy-looking palm trees.

At one point I passed a large statue of Neptune, or Poseidon depending on which pantheon you prefer, and gave him a proper salute. Superstitious or not, I wasn’t gambling.

After the bilge pump had gotten my attention two days before, I was also paying a lot more attention to the bilge. I pumped the bilge down periodically while underway rather than letting water slosh around down there, and I would pump it again once anchored near Daytona. Nothing looked particularly concerning. I was simply watching it more closely now.

Otherwise, it was one of those beautiful, peaceful days when moving a sailboat feels almost absurdly easy.

By around four in the afternoon, I decided it was time to start dinner.

Lamb biryani.

I am notoriously obsessed with that Indian dish. It may legitimately be one of my love languages. I had marinated the lamb back in St. Augustine and planned to braise the meat underway, then finish the biryani with the rice once I was anchored.

Normally, cooking a two-hour braise while navigating a sailboat might sound like a questionable decision. That day the ICW was so flat that I set up an induction burner right in the cockpit and started cooking.

So there I was, motoring south toward Daytona Beach, autopilot steering, listening to a true-crime podcast, lamb bubbling away beside me, and regularly checking my surroundings between stirring dinner.

Setzer was asleep below. He had been badly seasick offshore only a couple of days earlier. Today he apparently had no complaints whatsoever. Other than the occasional wake from a passing boat, there were basically no waves. He spent much of the day napping while I navigated and cooked.

That relieved me. This trip would have been miserable for him if every day had been rough.

Somewhere during the braise, I realized I was going to be anchoring after dark.

My destination was an anchorage just north of Daytona Beach, between two bridges and directly across from Caribbean Jack’s, a waterfront restaurant. I knew of the anchorage, but I had never actually been there. It has a bit of a reputation.

I would eventually collect several stories from that particular anchorage, including one involving a naked woman, apparently drunk or high, swimming out to one of the anchored boats and getting aboard while the owners were there.

You know. Normal cruising shit.

This would also be my first time anchoring in the dark. Actually, it was only my third time anchoring Mearr at all.

What could go wrong?

I arrived on the tail end of dusk, somewhere around civil twilight, and prepared for my first attempt. Anchoring solo on Mearr has its own little complication. The windlass, which raises and lowers the anchor and chain, is at the bow. The helm is at the stern. These are, inconveniently, opposite ends of a 36-foot boat.

I had installed a windlass switch at the helm specifically because I can’t occupy both ends of the boat at once. That solved part of the problem. Unfortunately, if I let the anchor chain run out too quickly, it had a bad habit of jumping off the wheel that grips it. Once that happened, the windlass lost control of the chain and it just started dumping overboard.

The helm switch couldn’t fix that. I had to leave the wheel, run to the bow, put the chain back where it belonged by hand, and then haul it back in.

On the first anchoring attempt, that’s exactly what happened.

Instead of dropping the roughly 60 or 70 feet of chain I wanted, the chain started running away from me. I left the helm, made my way to the bow, got it back into place, and started recovering it while Mearr lazily drifted toward the surrounding boats.

Another theme of solo sailing: sometimes the problem isn’t that you don’t know what to do. It’s that you need two of you.

Eventually I got everything recovered and tried to set the anchor. It wasn’t biting, so I hauled it back up and tried again. On the second attempt, I tapped the windlass switch in short bursts while dropping the chain so it couldn’t build enough momentum to jump out again.

Anchor down. Back up on it. Nothing. Still not biting.

By the third try, it was properly dark. My primary sources of illumination were the moon and Caribbean Jack’s neon sign glowing across the water.

Now I was starting to get antsy. A Delta anchor needs to drag enough to actually dig itself into the bottom. I had been too tentative with it. This time I was going to give it room to bite.

I dropped the anchor, let out the chain carefully, backed down, and finally felt it catch. Then I gave the engine plenty of RPMs in reverse to make damn sure it was buried.

I was not ending my trip by dragging into another boat, grounding Mearr, or crashing into one of the bridges in Daytona Beach of all places. No thank you.

The anchor held. I set a tight anchor alarm and finally let myself relax.

My first nighttime anchoring attempt had taken three tries, one runaway-chain incident, and a little jogging back and forth across the boat in the dark, but I had done it. I felt pretty damn good.

I also remember thinking that I should probably avoid arriving at anchorages after dark in the future.

Spoiler alert: I did not learn that lesson.

I went below to finish the biryani. Once the rice was done, it needed to sit for a little while before eating, and Caribbean Jack’s was sitting right there across the water. Well… it would be rude not to.

I dropped the dinghy, pulled the starter cord, and the outboard fired on the first pull. After all the carburetor nonsense in Cumberland Island and St. Augustine, that felt particularly satisfying. Navigation lights on, headlight on, and off I went.

Caribbean Jack’s was pretty quiet. It was a Tuesday night, probably around 6:30. A handful of people at the bar looked very much like regulars, with a few occupied tables scattered around the place. I chatted with the waitress a little, but mostly I sat there with a beer looking at the next day. Bridge openings. Distance. Possible stops. What time I needed to leave. Most importantly, what time I needed to leave if I wanted to avoid anchoring in the dark again.

I was planning to make Titusville. At the slow pace I had been moving, it would need to be an early start if I wanted enough daylight left to anchor. I also had a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch on my calendar for the next evening, and I wanted to be in Titusville for it.

After a couple beers, I climbed back into the dinghy and headed toward Mearr. My headlight swept across the water as I got closer, and eventually two glowing demon eyes appeared in the darkness, staring straight back at me.

Ah! Admiral Setzer was waiting for his crew member to come back.

I had left the hatch cracked open so he could get some fresh air after being cooped up inside most of the day.

Before anyone freaks out: Setzer swims very well and has a net to climb back onboard if he falls in. Again.

Once aboard, I gave him his dinner and finally served myself a very large, very well-earned bowl of lamb biryani. While I ate, I finished working through the plan for tomorrow.

Titusville. Early start. Get through the bridges. Anchor while there was still daylight and in time to catch the rocket launch that evening.

Not long after dinner, I climbed into bed feeling proud of my day. I had docked Mearr in St. Augustine current, navigated a new stretch of the ICW, braised lamb in the cockpit while underway, and anchored after dark for the first time.

And, naturally, I was already a little nervous.

That part never really went away. Every day I move the boat, even now, I get a little pit in my stomach beforehand. It feels a lot like stage fright. What if I ground? The anchor could drag. Something could break and I wouldn’t know how to fix it. What if the weather changed unexpectedly? Then there was Setzer. And, of course, the really big one: Mearr taking on water and losing my home and everything I own. There’s no shortage of what ifs when your boat is also your home.

The funny thing is that once Mearr starts moving, I’m fine. The nerves settle down and I start doing the thing. Until something actually happens, of course. Then the fear has something useful to do.

Over time, I never stopped getting nervous before departure. I just became accustomed to the feeling and I knew it would be back in the morning. That was okay.

I had a rocket launch to catch.

Author’s Note: This story took place in November 2025. It was originally shared as a short social media post and has been expanded here with the benefit of hindsight.