It was a windy morning and I was watching the already very low tide going lower and lower while waiting on the new owner to arrive. As soon as he arrived with his family, Christine and Jacques toured the boat quickly while we untied the dock lines for one last time from the end of Cottonwood lane. A few pictures later, we were on our way out of the Apollo Beach channel. We skimmed over the sand between marker 4 and 5, clearing by about 2 inches.

The bay was not flat, it felt like a cool winter day with the water spraying over the bow. We raised the main with a reef and decided on the storm jib just to balance the helm a little bit. We were surfing down to St-Pete in 4-5 foot waves and 20-25kt wind. We tack-jibed around to make the skyway bridge and saw close to 10kt quite a few times on the speedometer. A fast and fun ride out of Tampa Bay!

We lowered the sails just before entering the intracoastal behind Anna Maria Island and motored under a couple of bridges following a few fellow sailors. We saw a true example why it is important to stick to the channels in that area… A smaller sailboat was beached in the middle of the place, in probably 2 feet of water. I hope he made it out of there, but it didn’t look obvious how he would do that! Oo…

We raised the main again in Sarasota bay, not without some effort, since the take down created quite a mess around the boom… And with only two people on board, we could have used a few more hands!

Everything went well, Salsa Verde met her new home Squadron and is now safely floating in Sarasota Bay.

So here’s part of the little history that I gathered through the years, by either meeting people who recognized the boat, or having people find my website and email me what they knew about her.

She was named Salsa Verde by the daughter in law of the previous owner, John Boom from Gloucester Point, VA (2003-2008). Before that she was Dream Genie, owned by Dave Hackney, who was in Jacksonville, but moved to Charleston while he owned her (1999-2003). Before that she was Leprechaun in Jacksonville, but I don’t have the name of this owner. This may or may not the the dentist from New Berns, NC who was the second owner. And my most recent “surprise” was when Danny, the son of the first owner (Wilmington, NC, 1982-1990), found Salsa Verde by searching the sail number and sent me those pictures…

1 – Off of Wrightsville Beach, NC
2 – Going to the winward mark in 1984, off of Beaufort/Morehead City, NC
3 – At the start of the Biscayne Bay J30 midwinters
4 – Album cover from 1985 – Biscayne Bay, J30 midwinters 1985
5 – Album cover from 1991 – Overnight offshore race from Wrightsville Beach to Cape Lookout and then a series offshore at Beaufort. Photo 1985.

Thanks so much Danny!

located in Apollo Beach, FL
Asking $24,000

Salsa Verde is for sale!!!!

I finally put a sign on my boat. As I was tying it with strings to the life lines, on a warm breezy evening, a sailboat passed by the dock and yelled: “Selling? No! Come on!!!!” All I could do was raise my shoulders and my arms in a slow and sad acknowledging motion…

Enough winning, now about the boat:
Salsa Verde is probably the prettiest J30 you’re going to find in the southeast. Ok, I may have a bias opinion about that, but when I bought her 3 years ago I had to go all the way to Virginia because there was no such a J30 available closer than that. Since then, I have made major improvements and have taken really good care of her. She is honestly in much better shape than she was. To name a few important things, I did all the re-coring needed where water had infiltrated the deck and sealed (not with caulk, but with epoxy!) almost all the hardware holes on deck so no more water can ever get in. I also redid the bottom paint all the way to a new barrier coat (interprotect 2000e) so there will not be 20 layers of old paint to sand off if you ever want to change the antifouling type.

Some features:
 very decent sail wardrobe (one mainsail – North Sharkskin Dacron; two #1 genoa 160%; 1 jib 110%; 3 spinnakers; one staysail; one storm jib)
 reliable engine (fuel tank and cooling system cleaned… what you don’t want to have to do underway!)
 All standing rigging has been replaced (except spreaders)

I could go on and on about all the details, but I’ll keep that for when you come for an inspection visit! Feel free to navigate my blog to find out more about her. The bottom line is that this is a top shape J30, race ready or cruising ready, that just depends on how you feel like!

Still not convinced? Read the why own a J/30 article on the class website!
Waiting to hear from you!

magalie@salsaverde.org

I had volunteered to take a few families out for a sail during Valentines’ weekend for the Sweetheart of sailing event (see www.heartofsailing.org), but unfortunately had to cancel on them because I caught the flu. So this past weekend, while my friend Eric was visiting from Chicago, we reiterated the invitation and took 2 lucky people out on Salsa Verde: Suzie and Matthew.

The weather was more than perfect, with 10-15kt out of the west, sunshine and 80+ degrees on a day of March. As soon as we were out of the channel we raised the sails and I gave the helm to Matthew who did not need much instruction to make us sail straight and fast! He is a natural, I thought. Well this seems to run in the family since Suzy impressed us just as much when she took over the skipper’s hat and sailed Salsa Verde like she had done it 10 times before! Congrats sailors, if this had been an exam, you would have passed easily

Everyone enjoyed the day and we all hope to meet again, hopefully on the water!

Thanks to George, the founder of “the heart of sailing”, for creating these magic and memorable opportunities for all of us.

Here’s a few pictures of the day:

What a weird day, started with a normal cloudy afternoon and some white caps, finished in the rain and light winds after passing through a major fog patch…

Another regatta with new people on board, Ken drove all the way from Jacksonville, Samuel (doing an internship from Canada), Patrice and Robert from Lakeland, Kathryn from Apollo Beach and Regis who is on a business trip from France… Great crew!

At the start we started to wonder if we had our timing right when we saw that Triumph was crossing the line at the 1 minute gun. Hum… Took a few seconds to be at the right angle from the committee boat to see the class flag up. Fiew! We were ok, still 1 minute to go. With Ken doing his tiller magic, we made it to the start line right on time. Though, when we saw the “over early flag” we had to call the committee boat to make sure it was not us. They confirmed that Triumph was over early, which resonated in their VHF and initiated their turn around. We were now in the lead! Woohoo!!!!

That didn’t last too long, since one of the competition was a Flying Tiger with a PHRF of 48… They “slowly” creeped up on us from the south side of the course and were ahead of us before the second mark. We were relatively happy with how we were able to keep up with them until the fog hit us like a dramatic scene! As I was seeing it coming, I thought it was rain, so I ran downstairs to put my rain geat on, and by the time I stuck my head back out, we couldn’t see 100 feet in front of us! Wow… I could hear the scary movie music playing in my head for a short moment. Then the wind started to shift and our competition tacked away in the fog. Smart move… We should have done the same, that’s where we probably lost the race. Oh well. The fog cleared up and we tacked a few time to the next mark, realizing that the Tartan 30 was scaryly getting closer from behind. Oh oh! They must have played that wind shift really well too…

So the wind continued to slow down as we were hoisting the spi for the last leg. We did all we could to keep going, but inevitably, the Flying tiger was getting smaller and smaller, and the Tartan 30 was getting closer and closer. Did the wind only died around us? Maybe… maybe not. Either way, I’m pretty happy with a 3rd place. Here’s a photo of our pirate trophee!

And here’s what happens in Lakeland the day after a rainy race

Apollo Beach, Florida, December 31st 2010, 80F under the sunshine Afternoon of sailing, followed by a nice evening at JP’s and fireworks on Tampa Bay! Awsome way to end the year!!!!

Nice wind, beautiful sunset, good company, what else can you ask for!
Dilek, Ismail and Ultan had their first sailing experience under pretty nice conditions… Thanks to mother nature again!

View Larger Map

Date: Nov 1, 2010 6:45 pm
Distance: 15.1 miles
Elapsed Time: 2:16:40
Avg Speed: 6.6 mph
Max Speed: 10.2 mph
Min Altitude: 0 ft
Max Altitude: 144 ft
Start Location:
Latitude:27º 47.2233′ N
Longitude:82º 26.2392′ W
End Location:
Latitude:27º 46.3704′ N
Longitude:82º 25.4113′ W

We sailed towards the power plant until we hit bottom… Oops! The funny thing is that the depth souder sarted beeping about 1 sec. AFTER we hit the ground! Interresting… must have been a pretty steep hill down there. I believe it was since we were able to simply gybe and sail off.

Then we sailed towards St-Pete as the sun was setting, crossed the commercial channel and turned around. Thanks to Erdem’s GPS for finding our way back to the Apollo Beach entrance without hitting the red marker!

Everyone did an awesome job at steering the boat, you guys are all natural sailors, you just don’t know yet

Sorry it took me a while to tell you the story, but here it is!

Saturday October 9 2010, 6:20 am, I’m all packed and ready to go with food for 4 people for a week. The rental car looks pretty full already… I pick up Bill in Tampa at 7am, we load some more food and some cruising essentials, like an awning and a sun shower. 2h later we make it to Gainesville to pick-up Quentin, and fiew (!) everything fits in the car…At 11am we are unloading the car in the boat and at 1pm I drop it off at Jacksonville airport where my dad is waiting on me. He’s coming to warm up for a week of sailing (he’s hoping for wind…).

Plenty of people are there to see Salsa Verde leave…I get a rose from Roger (which made the whole trip safely btw!) and brownies from Diana (they were sooooo good!!!! They didn’t last very long…) Everyone is so nice they organized a flotilla to escort me out of Julington creek!!! Ted and Ulf on Ted’s new boat, Andrea & Matt and their crew on True Luck, Diana and Joan on Lothlorien… Wow!!! I did not expect that, I’ll miss those guys so much. And that’s not all, they put CONFETI in my main sail! So when I hoisted, it fell everywhere on the boat! There are still plenty of them in the cracks around the cockpit, traveler, inside the boat…I have a sweet thought for my Jacksonville sailors and friends when I see that. I don’t know how to thank you all enough…

So we’re leaving Julington creek and saying bye byes, motor-sailing as the wind is close to being absent. Our first obstacle is the roadway bridge. It’s closed, so we turn in circles in front of it for 15 minutes… Then a train comes! Yeh!!! It will be over soon, so we think. The train comes slowly, slowlier, and slowlier, and stops. Hum… Many minutes go by, and we keep starring at it with lots of hope. Ha! It’s moving!!! But wait, is it going backwards? Argh…The long train does its dance, back and forth for a while and disappears. We (and some other patient boaters) get closer to the gate, thinking it will open soon. We are seeing a few workers on the bridge, they seem to have a problem. Then we hear on the VHF that the railway bridge will be closed for an undetermined amount of time…WHAT!!!!???? That’s when we decided to dock Salsa Verde on some company’s dock just before the bridge. We were not gonna keep turning in circles for an undetermined amount of time, we would have gone nuts! The tide was rushing down like mad. The boat looked like it was sailing at the dock! Luckily our stop was not that long, another train came by (slowly) and the bridge came back up.

Next slight “slow down” was in sight, the main street bridge. But this one did not cause any unexpected delay. We were back on track, 1h later than planned. That caused us more than 3h delay at the end of the day since the tide turned around in our face before we were out of the river, which significantly lengthened our last river miles. Thanks Ted for lending us his chart plotter…Getting out of this river in the dark would have been pretty freaking challenging, even if I’d been there before. No moon, lots of lights on land, and only a few lighted markers on our way… We were in the ocean by 10pm, with a light south wind. Dad and I took the first shift and sailed most of it on 3 tacks, but had to start the engine when the wind died around 2am.
The rest of the Atlantic part of the trip was mostly motor-sailing in an oil-like ocean, encountering dolphins, rays, jellyfish and ballyhoo.

We made it into Ft Pierce inlet early Monday morning, and that’s when (awesome timing) the engine decided it had made enough of an effort and needed a fuel filter change. So we were able to idle into Ft Pierce city marina, borrow a filter wrench, buy more fuel and ice, and get a quick hair washing with the joy soap and a hose. Job done in 1.5h, not without sweat, since the fuel filter change and engine bleeding was a little far in my memory. Hopefully the nice guy with the filter wrench was there to resolve our dilemma. And here we went, starting the next leg of the trip… the Okeechobee channel crossing.

The wind was still light, the sun was hot, we put the awning on and motored our way towards the lake. Perfect day for the boys to get a sun shower! The way to the lake goes “upwards” into a few locks and the highlight of the day was crossing under the lowest bridge, which was supposed to have 49 feet of clearance. So as soon as we were in sight of the bridge, I put my climbing harness and helmet on, geared it with a screwdriver and got winched up the mast. I took the wind vane off just in case, because from a distance it really looked like we might not make it under. Well, contradictory to popular beliefs, there was a good 3 feet of clearance above my 48.5 feet high mast!!! Hooray!!!!!!! We made it!

Last stop before the lake is a lock where we met this lockmaster who kept telling us that he did not know anything about the area “cause he was from Pittsburg”. However, he did tell us that the channel through the lake was deeper than the rim channel, which was contradictory to what we had heard from many others… So beware of lockmasters…

We entered the lake just after sunset Monday evening, and since the rim channel has a bridge that is closed at night time, we decided to cross the lake to make better distance overnight. That way we could make it to the lock on the other side, in Moore Haven (Mosquito heaven you mean…). We got about 15 minutes of rain in the middle of the lake, just a cloud, actually the only cloud we encountered in the entire trip! Sailing across was only possible with the chart plotter, the markers are so far apart, and not necessarily light that it would simply be a grounding episode to try it otherwise. It required a lot of concentration to navigate there in the dark, without hitting any day markers and without running aground. The last part of the way across the lake is into the rim channel. That’s another interesting situation… Forget about markers, and forget the chart plotter. The channel is so much narrower than the GPS accuracy that it shows you’re on land most of the time. All you have to do is look to the left, look to the right, look to the left, etc. And try to stay somewhat in the middle. We succeeded with only one quick touch to the ground in a curve just before Moore Haven. Mosquito heaven was our hell, they were waiting on us like a starving pack of wolves. By the time we tied the boat to the lock’s side, rolled the mainsail and put away the essentials, we had been eaten alive. We closed ourselves in the boat and proceeded with a mosquito mass murder episode. It’s about 1:30am and we really, really, really wanted to sleep. Signs of dead mosquitoes were showing all over the boat and survivors were still found 2 days later in Apollo Beach.

We woke up at 6:30am the next morning and went through the now open lock. Bill made us “French toasts” and coffee while we were motoring through the fog. Later that morning we passed in Labelle, Fl. Very interesting, in the middle of nowhere (Labelle, FL) there is an immense boat storage yard! Apparently people make this trip just to store their boat over there for long periods of time. Bill was even saying that most boats have holes in the hulls to avoid water accumulation inside…
Motoring can be boring, so we put ourselves to work a little and reinstalled my handrails, that had been off the boat for more than 2 years. I didn’t need them in the river, so did not rush getting them back on. The exercise was more challenging than expected, for some reason, the holes didn’t line up at first…Hum… And the new screws are sticking out unevenly! Interesting…but we made it work.
Later that afternoon was time for a second fuel filter change. We hoisted the mainsail and used what we could of the little wind there was to stay in the channel. Bill timed me and it took 12 minutes to do the work. Now this is great practice, I will not forget how to do that anytime soon! We stopped at the Ft Myers city marina to get some fuel and a proper shower. We tried to buy more fuel filters since we were out of stocks, but we had no luck. So we crossed our fingers that there would be wind in the gulf!!! We took the Boca Grande pass to reach the gulf that Tuesday evening and were lucky enough to sail all night, almost in a straight line towards the north. The next morning (wednesday) we were in front of Sarasota and opted for that short-cut behind long boat key. We were entering Tampa bay around noon and we were welcomed by the dolphins in Apollo Beach by 4pm.

Thank you Bill, Quentin and Dad for making this trip safe, fun and memorable

Salsa Verde will soon leave her dock, with all docking lines on board, and this time, for a good reason. I moved to Lakeland this summer and miss my boat… But we will both be happy sailing in Tampa bay soon. Although… I will miss Jacksonville very much, or I should say, the sailors in Jacksonville! No more brown water, no more alligator… It’s gonna be sharks now!

I started to explore the possibilities for a dock in Apollo beach. I think it is the best spot, near the Tampa Sailing squadron and Davis Island, and not too far from Lakeland. I hope to find someone who has an empty dock and would like to sublease it. I could also drop the hook in front of the marina, but I don’t think I would sleep well at night in Lakeland. So if I can’t find a dock I might have to end up at the most expensive place around. Since of course, there’s plenty of slips available there!

I’m not sure yet if I’ll be sailing around the keys, taking the short cut or trailering her accross. I really want to sail, but time off might be limited… A pit stop in the Bahamas would be nice too Hey, I can dream! Anyone has suggestions as far as routes to take through the keys?

This is fun, here’s a video!