Seventy Nautical Miles and a Challenge I Made Up Myself

By 4:25 a.m., I was at the bow trying to pull up the anchor.

Jesus Christ, I sure buried it.

The Delta did not want to come out of the mud. Which, to be fair, was exactly what I had asked of it the night before. Getting it loose solo meant the usual shuffle: bow to helm, motor over the anchor, back to the bow to see if it had broken free, then finally bring it up with the windlass.

It was a pain in the ass, but eventually it came loose. Well, Mearr definitely hadn’t gone anywhere overnight.

Setzer wanted to be outside while I got underway, so I put his bright orange life vest on him. A black cat in black water at four-thirty in the morning was not something I wanted to contemplate. If he went overboard, I wanted every possible chance of finding him. He was starting to get a little more comfortable underway, too. Once we were moving south, he hung around for a while as my lookout before deciding he had fulfilled his duties and going below for a nap.

Navigating the ICW around Titusville in the dark was surprisingly calm. Compared with Cumberland Island, this was easy. There were markers, signs, lights on shore. I would check the chart, point my headlight toward where the next marker should be and look for the reflection.

Yep, there it is. There’s the other one. Keep going.

Coffee in hand, I worked my way south one marker at a time, constantly matching what I saw in front of me to what I saw on the chart and making sure they both told me the same thing. It was peaceful, and it required a lot of attention.

About an hour and a half later, the eastern horizon started to glow. As peaceful as the morning had been, daylight was still a relief. Constantly confirming every marker gets tiring. Once the sun comes up, everything just gets easier.

By around seven, I was looking at my ETA for Vero Beach and realized I was going to get there pretty early.

I started doing the math. Speed, distance, daylight, how far I could reasonably push the day. Fort Pierce was farther south, but not absurdly farther. The numbers worked. Barely. That made it more interesting.

I don’t go particularly fast. Mearr is a cruising sailboat, not a speed machine, and still unknown to me at the time, my engine wasn’t exactly producing everything it should have been either. Fort Pierce looked possible and honestly, it sounded like a fun challenge.

There wasn’t some strategic reason I needed to get there that day. Nobody was waiting for me. Vero Beach would have been perfectly fine. I just wanted to see if I could do it.

At 8:00, I updated the route. Fort Pierce it was.

Once everything was settled, I had enough mental bandwidth to start looking around the boat again. At some point I glanced up at the Windex at the top of the mast.

One of the little reflective tabs had been missing for a while. I already knew about that, and since I was heading toward Marathon where I planned to stay for a few months, I figured maybe I should just order a new one when I got there.

As I looked up a picture online to shop for a replacement, I noticed a thin metal spike sticking straight up from the top of it. Apparently it was there to keep birds from landing on the Windex.

Wait a minute.

I rushed to grab the mysterious foot-long metal rod I had found lying in the cockpit the morning before and compared it to the picture. It looked strangely similar and about the right size. Then I grabbed the binoculars and looked up the mast. My Windex had no spike. Well, son of a bitch. That’s where that comes from.

Who needs to climb the mast when the mystery comes down to you!? Efficiency at its finest.

The rest of the morning was another mostly quiet day on the watery road. A few boats passed me. Most of the captains were incredibly considerate, slowing down and giving me plenty of room. I recognized Seaquel, a boat I had seen back at Brunswick Landing Marina, which was one of those funny little moments where the cruising world suddenly feels much smaller than it is.

Mearr kept puttering south. The stuffing box was still leaking, and the bilge pump came on roughly every four hours, actually slower than it had been the previous day. I kept an eye on it, but the pump was handling the water easily and I had a spare aboard if it decided to burn itself out. I checked the stuffing box again later. It looked about the same. Fine. I guess.

The refrigerator was also becoming increasingly unimpressive. Temperatures were okay, technically, but not great. I knew the refrigerant lines were corroded and had been expecting this eventually. Fortunately, I wasn’t keeping meat or anything particularly sensitive in there. People have sailed around the world without refrigeration. Surely I could figure out a week or two if I had to. Another problem for Marathon.

Sometime around two in the afternoon, I looked more carefully at the route into Fort Pierce. And the bridge schedule.

Oh… I had not considered the bridge schedule.

The North Fort Pierce Bridge had an opening at 5:00 p.m. If I missed it, I’d be waiting another half hour. Sunset was at 5:28, which meant missing the bridge could put me right back into arriving somewhere unfamiliar and anchoring in complete darkness.

Again. Do I learn?

Suddenly the fun little challenge felt more serious. I’d spent the morning thinking Fort Pierce was a great idea, and by then I really wanted to get there. Now there was an actual deadline attached to it.

I started looking for speed everywhere I could find it.

The wind was light, around four knots with occasional “gusts” that might reach seven. Not exactly America’s Cup conditions. I unfurled the headsail anyway and started motorsailing.

Sometimes it gave me three-quarters of a knot. Sometimes barely a tenth. Maybe half a knot on average. I’ll take it.

For the next few hours I kept one hand on the sheet and worked the sail with every little change in the wind. Pull it in. Let it out. Pull it in again. I watched my speed like I was driving a race car instead of a Catalina 36 moving at roughly the pace of an average jogger.

After a while, my arm was getting tired from holding the sheet and the afternoon sun was hitting one side of my face hard enough that I could feel my skin starting to burn. I needed shade, but I wasn’t about to stop playing with the sail every time the wind changed. So I improvised. I hung a giant pizza blanket from the bimini. Look, I like food. What can I say?

Every tenth mattered. And yes, I was doing the math.

Half a knot over two hours is a full nautical mile. At six knots, that’s about ten minutes. Ten minutes could be the difference between making that bridge and sitting in front of it watching the sun disappear.

Let’s fucking go!

I tweaked the engine RPM and adjusted the sail. On bends in the channel, I hugged the inside markers where I safely could to shave a little distance off the turn.

Yes, while watching the depth. I know some of you are already preparing an email. I’m not completely reckless.

The ETA kept moving around. A little better. A little worse. Better again. As Fort Pierce got closer, the whole thing became increasingly ridiculous and increasingly entertaining.

Four knots of wind. Micro-adjust the sheet. Another tenth. “Captain, I’m givin’ her all she’s got!” I thought in my best Scotty impression.

At some point the bridge itself came into view, and that made everything much more real. I kept looking at it, then down at the chart, then at my speed, then back at the bridge, trying to decide if I was actually going to make it.

About ten minutes before the opening, I called the bridge operator on the radio. I figured I’d let him know I was coming and doing everything I could to get there.

His response was essentially: if you’re here, great. If you’re not, too bad. Cool. Thanks for the encouragement.

I kept going, and by about 4:55, I finally knew. I was going to make it.

The bridge started opening ahead of me and I never slowed down. I kept Mearr moving, slid straight through, and heard the operator congratulate me over the radio for making it in time. Barely. I thanked him for the timing. It had worked perfectly for both of us.

Holy shit. I actually made it. Those tenths of a knot mattered.

I celebrated for approximately thirty seconds before remembering that the mission wasn’t over. Sunset was at 5:28, and I still had to anchor.

Thankfully, I already knew exactly where I wanted to go. I had picked the anchorage on the chart before arriving, and once I got there it was wide open with plenty of room. No circus this time. The anchor went down, grabbed, and held.

I looked at the time. 5:27.

At that point I was just laughing. Seventy nautical miles. Thirteen hours underway. A bridge made by minutes and an anchorage with a whole minute to spare.

Before I reached Fort Pierce I had already turned on the water heater to heat one tank of water. The batteries were full and the solar panels were making more power than I needed, which meant one glorious thing: a hot shower. It was extraordinary.

There are moments when hot water is just hot water. Then there are moments when you’ve been moving a boat for thirteen hours and hot water touches your skin and, for a brief period, you cease being a person and become the hot water. I was one with it. A spiritual experience.

For about 30 seconds.

Easy there, Captain Bourgeois. Electricity might be plentiful today, but fresh water is still fresh water.

I got dressed, climbed into the dinghy, turned on the nav lights, grabbed my headlight, and headed toward the Fort Pierce City Marina in the fading twilight.

There is something about going somewhere by dinghy that I absolutely love. I don’t even know if I can explain it properly. Taking the dinghy from your anchored boat to a restaurant or a bar, tying it up at a dock, and walking inside feels like one of those tiny pieces of the liveaboard dream that I had imagined long before I actually lived it. Whenever I get the opportunity to do it, I do.

Maybe it’s because there’s no car involved. Maybe it’s because my home is sitting out there on the water waiting for me. Arriving somewhere in a little inflatable boat is inherently more fun. Whatever it is, I love it.

I tied up at the marina dinghy dock and walked over to Cobb’s Landing. There was one stool open at the bar. Perfect.

I wasn’t going to eat since I had food waiting aboard Mearr, so I ordered a beer and started talking with the people around me.

Physically, I was done. Thirteen hours underway had caught up with me, and I was wondering how I was going to feel the next morning. For the first time all day, my mind could stop calculating and recalculating. St. Augustine had already taught me that sometimes I needed more recovery than I expected. Maybe tomorrow would be another one of those days. I didn’t know yet.

Emotionally, though, I was lit up. I was doing the thing. I had challenged myself that morning for no reason other than it sounded fun, spent the afternoon fighting for tenths of a knot, made the bridge by minutes, dropped the anchor at sunset, and somehow nailed the whole thing.

For the moment, I just wanted to drink my beer and stop.

Holy shit. I had just done seventy nautical miles by myself. Plenty of sailors have done more than that. That wasn’t the point.

I hadn’t.

At the time, I was proud that I’d pulled it off. Looking back now, I think that was one of those moments when my confidence was subtly building, even though I didn’t recognize it yet. Change happens slowly when you’re living it. Day to day, you barely notice it until eventually you look back and realize you’ve changed.

It was my milestone.

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.