15 miles off shore, under a beautiful blue sky and with all the sails up and no engine we had rudder failure. We had decided to jump again, even though Morehead to Georgetown was quite the wild ride. Everyone agreed that the only way to get to Jekyll Island Ga by Christmas was to jump outside from Georgetown to Hilton Head in one fell swoop. Then we could casually work our way down the inside of Jekyll Island at our leisure and be close to where we know other boat kids would be for Christmas.

Things were going well too. We contemplated the weather and waited and extra day when it seemed that the storm that most of the East Coast got as snow buffeted us with wind and rain. We sat through the flooding knowing that it would create debris in the ICW portions of the channel on the way out to the open ocean markers and then, just when the time was right, we left Georgetown. Honestly it was a cute town with a nice marina and the whole family had a bit of a thrill when, while walking down the main street of town we saw that Boyd’s company had an office right there. That said we were all ready to get underway again and so when the moment came we grabbed it, dropped the dock lines and were off.

The channel took forever and after the experience coming in I was not looking forward to that narrow washing machine type motion we’d had coming in. But the tide was outgoing and so the current and wind were together. There wasn’t much action and when we finally rounded the last portion of the breakwater I was happy to see that the offshore wind was doing a particularly good job of keeping the waves in check. Wave heights had been predicted to be in the 3 to 5 ft range (to which Nicole commented “Well that’s not much different than 2 to 4 made me have to smile) and they were considerably less. We motored for a while until Boyd decided that it was time to put out some sailcloth. He started with the jib (which until this very trip had remained tightly furled since we had but one turning block installed when we left Maine) and he and Paul got a bit sail happy.

We had been making a respectable 7 plus knots with the engine and before we lost the tide from Georgetown we’d had nearly 9 knots. I was pleased to see the sails going up but bit concerned about what it would do to our overall speed. In our previous trip the unexpected early arrival of the storm had impacted us and I knew that with the weather window we had we really wanted to make a minimum of 6 knots all the way to Hilton Head. But boys will be boys and Boyd and Paul seemed oblivious to need for speed as the unsheathed and released one after another of the sails until finally we were flying all four. It’s a lot of canvas! Frankly, I could hardly believe it as we watched the GPS chart plotter with all the sails up and the engine in neutral we were doing 8 plus. Of course we were healing like crazy.

It’s hard to explain the sensation.. after more than a year of planning, another year plus of working on a boat you’ve only seen in the water in photos to finally get her in the water, with all those sails up. Even I have to admit it was somewhat exhilarating. The culmination of many years of thoughts, blood, sweat (lots of money), and tears and finally out on the real ocean with the blue sky above and the open ocean in front we were actually sailing. Wow. That brings us to the point with the loud bang and the rudder failure. Oh, did I forget to mention the loud bang? How inconsiderate of me, well yes we were healed over having a great run of it supposed, in fact to be on that same track for the next 16 hours when, there was a loud bang and we suddenly began to fall off the wind and loose speed. Since Boyd was below and the engine was secured we called to him and all began to pitch in in our own way to help solve the problem.

Paul began to steer by manipulating the staysail, this sail has lines that lead aft to the wheel and he was able to adjust the sail to keep us from gaining too much speed (and without the rudder to adjust our course) unintentionally jibbing as four sails on the wrong side of the boat with that kind of wind would be unpleasant not to mention dangerous. Boyd dove down below first checking the hydraulic fluid level and then the mechanical components to the steering. I moved the wheel meaninglessly and did whatever they told me to do and Nicole cleared the cockpit to make it easier to maneuver.

In the end Boyd was able to quickly identify the problem and with a few tools we had on board he was able to restore steering. Then the guys doused the sails and we “limped” into Charleston to work on finding 30 year old parts for a rudder no longer made from a company long out of business 4 days before Christmas. Just another adventure.