In This Small World, You Never Know With Whom You Might Cross Paths...Even At Sea

It was late January of 2024, I was in Marsh Harbour working my way back to Folly Beach. My wife and son were at home for work and school, respectively, and I needed to be getting back to prep for the charter season. My buddy, Palmer, helped me sail from Eluethera to Marsh Harbour, then his time away from work ran out and he had to fly home, so it was to be a solo sail from the Abacos to Folly Beach.

I departed Marsh Harbour and headed first for Florida, as I had a small weather window. My first leg was to Great Sale Cay, an uninhabited island in the middle of the Little Bahama Banks. I had to wait there for eight hours to allow the winds to die down some and to shift to a somewhat favorable direction. I slept and got in a hot meal when it was finally time to weigh anchor. I headed fifty more miles across the shallow water of the banks to the ocean where I had another sixty or seventy miles to cross the Gulf Stream and make Saint Lucie Inlet.

The crossing was not ideal, the winds were from the west south west and around 20 knots, which made for an uncomfortable, but manageable passage. That winter had had some awful weather and more was in store. When I made Saint Lucie Inlet, I secured a slip at a marina on the Indian River, cleared in with US Customs and spent three days there as a dangerous front blew through. I took time to get rest, replenish my depleted ships stores at an American grocery store, and plan the rest of my voyage to Folly.

I decided to make my way up the ICW up the coast of Florida, anchoring each night. This went well and uneventful as I got to North Florida. I had fallen in love with St. Augustine the previous year so I rented a slip at the municiple marina for a couple of days. I had to wait for a weather window to open up to allow me to take the ocean from there back to Folly. It was a great visit, I was able to get in some wonderful meals, hot showers and accomplish some boat chores. I went to Saturday night Mass at the Cathedral. Unbeknownst to me, the Notre Dame Choir had been touring the country over the Christmas season and they were singing at the Cathederal as their final peformance before returning to Notre Dame. An exceedingly nice bonus to a beautiful and fulfilling service.

After two days, my weather window emerged, so I made way to the Atlantic. As I headed out of St. Augustine Inlet, the weather forecasters' predictions came to fruition and I had comfortable seas for my treck home. Traveling at five knots, I calculated that I had a thirty-seven hours until I made it to the Stono Inlet and Folly Beach. On previous trips going north and going south along this route, I had always made a beeline between North Florida andthe Stono Inlet, which carried me 50 miles or so offshore as the Georgia Coast curved inward. Since I was sailing solo, I decided to hug the coast between five and ten miles offshore in order to maintain cell coverage. As I said the seas were comfortable. The air was not. Cold was the order for the trip.

Leaving St. Augustine

Autopilot is a Godsend to the solo sailor (it's a Godsend to a crewed vessel as well...more on that another time). Due to the chilly conditions, I stayed below in the cabin as Water Music made steady, 5 knot (~5.5 mph) progress northward. During wakened hours I periodically and frequently emerged from the cabin to check my surroundings and heading. As I approached navigable channels I stood physical watch on deck at least an hour prior to reaching the channel until I was safely past it, keeping an eye for possible intersecting boat and shipping traffic.

Shipping traffic. How do those massive ships get into and out of harbors, especially those harbors along the Southeast coast which are served by long, narrow, and potentially treacherous channels? Each harbor has a professional group of local harbor pilots. Every commercial ship must be piloted in or out of a harbor by one of these pilots. As a ship approaches a harbor from sea, a pilot boat carrying a harbor pilot races out to meet the ship, and the pilot has to climb aboard-no matter the sea state. When a ship departs our shores under the navigation of a harbor pilot, a pilot boat goes out to sea to meet the ship and retrieve the harbor pilot (again no matter the sea state, the pilot must physically climb down the ship and aboard the pilot boat). Not your average 9-5 job.

Around 2100 hours (9:00pm), in the black of night I was approaching the Brunswick, Georgia shipping channel. Brunswick is a busy commercial port, so I figured I might see some traffic, and indeed I did. I recognized the running lights of a large commercial ship exiting the channel. It was a RoRo (roll on/roll off automobile carrier). I was a safe distance away, but I still maintained a sharp eye on the ship's movements out of safety, and quite honestly, it was the only thing to see out there at the time. The ship moved steadily out of the channel until it was about halfway out, approximately 5 miles offshore, then it stopped. Moments later, I saw the lights of a smaller vessel leaving shore and approaching the ship. The smaller vessel pulled up to the starboard side of the ship and stopped. Even though I was a few miles away and it was dark, I surmised that the smaller vessel was the pilot boat picking up the harbor pilot who had just navigated the ship safely to sea. After five minutes or so beside the ship, the smaller vessel took off, turned about and headed to shore.

I know one of the harbor pilots in Brunswick. His name is Jonathan Tennant. I don't know him well, but his sister, Lisa, is a dear friend and has been for nearly thirty years. To say Lisa loves her brother and is proud of him is an understatement. She and I worked together for around twenty years and she was always telling me stories about Jonathan and how she thought we'd get along well together. The stories only increased when Jonathan had a son around the same time that my son was born. I say I don't know him well, but that's not totally accurate; due to Lisa I know him better than I know many people, just not first hand. I finally got to meet him at a party celebrating Lisa's marriage. What a great guy he was, and I thoroughly enjoyed the small amount of time I spent with him. I admire him and all harbor pilots due to the skill and bravery it takes to do their unique job. Well, brave indeed is Jonathan. Heroic is a better term. In 2019 Jonathan was piloting a RoRo ship (The Golden Ray) that had been improperly loaded, so much so it started listing dangerously and was about to capsize. With quick thinking, he intentionally ran it aground on a sandbar and stayed with the ship orchestrating rescue efforts, thereby saving the port of Brunswick from shutting down (due to what would have been a blocked channel), saving the environment from fuel contamination, and most importantly, saving 23 lives. He received the US Coast Guard's Meritorious Public Service Award, and he did so in a most humbled manner.

I didn't know how many harbor pilots served Brunswick, but I figured it had to be at least 10, so it probably wasn't Jonathan piloting the ship that night. However, if you don't ask, you'll never know. I picked up my handheld VHF radio and hailed the captain of the Brunswick pilot boat on channel 16 and he had me switch to a working channel.

"Brunswick pilot boat, this is the sailing vessel Water Music. Do you happen to have a Jonathan aboard? I know his sister very well and I've met him before."

The pilot boat responded, "That's affirmative, captain." Then silence. After about a minute or so, the radio came to life.

"This is JT. Greg, what the hell are you doing out here??" I explained I was sailing back to Folly Beach. He told me he had just had dinner with Lisa, which meant she happened be down there visiting with him. I told him to give her a hug for me. He offered me a place to stay or anything I might need. What an outstanding person, I could tell he meant every word of his kind offerings. I thanked him and let him know I was staying asea until I got back to Folly Beach. Then we ended our conversation, and I felt less alone on the dark Atlantic.

Captain Jonathan Tenant

After we ended our radio conversation, it was all I could do to refrain from calling Lisa, but I knew she'd get a much bigger kick out of the story of our high seas encounter if she heard it from Jonathan, so I kept to myself the rest of the night. Around nine or ten the next morning, I think I was off of Savannah or Hilton Head, I called Lisa. She was amazed and delighted that Jonathan and I had run across one another out there. She was laughing and said she'd told the story to our friend, Teresa. Lisa reported that Teresa replied, "Lisa! What would you have done if Greggy would have walked in that door with Jonathan last night?" That would have been a great story, too, but I like this one even better.

That was one of the coolest and most surprising things to happen to me. You just never know.