April - May 2016
Preliminary- Kryss had to go to New York prepare for her Summer Trios performance, so I went to Cruiser's Forum to seek crew for the trip. Received responses from a number of interested qualified parties and decided to enlist the assistance of Patrick Rousseau from Punta Gorda Florida for the trip. He had just the right mix of experience, physical fitness, schedule flexibility, and apparently mild temperament to seem like the perfect choice. Turns out he was. In addition to being good company he is an excellent sailor and enabled me to push myself and the boat far more than I ever would have with Kryss.
4/19-I had been provisioning the boat for at least a week or more before today, so when Patrick arrived around midday it was easy to familiarize him with the boat, pick up the few last minute things we still needed and get ready to cast off before the end of the day. The weather prediction for the next two days was for strong but not too strong winds out of the Northeast and East, which seemed perfect for our planned overnight from Boca to Key West. We left the slip in sunny moderate wind conditions to spend the evening in Lake Boca to get an early start on the trip the next morning. I was uncertain whether the Hillsboro Inlet would be suitable as an exit point from the ICW due to the fact that we had been experiencing very heavy Northeast winds in the preceding days and the forecast that the winds would continue to come out of the Northeast/East.
4/20 & 21-We leave Lake Boca in time to make the 7:40 Camino Real bridge opening in sunny moderate wind conditions. We get to Hillsboro Inlet not long after the tide started to ebb and the winds had died down to the point where an exit into the ocean from the Inlet was safe. Once into the ocean we put up the sails, turn off the engine and we're off to Key West. Conditions are pretty much ideal. Winds are favorable and strong but not too strong (15-20 knts.) so we make very good progress as the day progresses. We frequently were doing over 8 knots and sometimes almost 10. The only untoward event is that the autopilot is not working, although it had worked well just days before, so it's all hand steering. The forecast for the night continues to predict the same weather with the wind building to 20 knts. with gusts to 25 out of the East so we blow past Miami (our last bailout before being committed to an overnight). Seas are moderate and we continue to make really good time. Before it gets dark we reef the mainsail and take in some of the jib. After nightfall we begin formal 3 hr. shifts. Conditions are boisterous but favorable and I actually prepare us a full hot dinner even though we're "rockin' and rollin'" pretty good. Wind picks up to what was predicted during the night and as we turn more and more West along the Keys it moves to our stern to the point where we're surfing along on a 5-6 ft. following swell with occasional waves up to perhaps 7-8 feet. At some point the jib isn't helping very much and is was making the boat a bit hard to control so we take it in entirely. The moon is full and as the night progresses we're actually sailing along a moonlit "path" when it's not hidden by the clouds. We experience no rain during the night although some rain was more likely than not.
When daylight breaks the seas and the winds have moderated some and we're right on schedule. Just as we approach Key West and are thinking about taking down the main we encounter our first rain squalls. One is intense (wind speed up to 32 knts.) but short-lived. Main is in and we turn down the channel into Key West with a strong swell on our beam that is a little reminiscent of when we turned to enter the Cape Cod canal when we brought the boat down from Maine. We are right on schedule (about Noon). We motor into the main harbor and then around Fleming Island into the mooring field behind it. The day is kind of grey at this point and we get soaked in the rain picking up the mooring, but we're safely at rest in Key West, very much just as planned, tired but happy. Lunch is accompanied by a celebratory adult beverage and we head to our bunks for a nap. The winds are down and the mooring field is sheltered from the swells so it's calm.
Get up from our naps just in time to begin preparing dinner.
4/22-It's sunny and the winds are down and we spend the morning doing chores around the boat, then we power out of the mooring field to an anchorage on the West side of Fleming Key closer to the entrance to the harbor to shorten the time it will take us to get to the Dry Tortugas the next day and to allow us to leave in the dark. The lengthy narrow entrance/exit for the mooring field would have made it unsuitable for us to have left in the dark from the mooring field. The current is strong and we have to reset the anchor three times to find a suitable not too deep spot even though the anchorage is not crowded. As we are resetting the anchor we are approached by a sailboat that is leaving the anchorage and warned that the holding may not be that good as a nearby sailboat dragged badly the night before. It's clear from what's coming up on the anchor as we reset it that there's a fair amount of grass on the bottom and that with strong current would certainly account for difficulties in holding. After we're set, we're then approached by a couple in a dinghy from a nearby sailboat and learn that it was their boat that dragged the night before, albeit in quite strong winds. They're on their way to Cuba the next morning when we will be on our way to the Dry Tortugas. The rest of the day is uneventful and a sumptuous steak dinner tops off the evening.
4/23-We leave at 5:45 a.m. for the Dry Tortugas with light winds as predicted and a full moon lighting the way out of the harbor.
Our exit is uneventful and we start on our course to the Dry Tortugas under power. When the sun comes up the day is clear and the winds stay relatively light so we're only under power as we approach Boca Grande Island and the Marquesas (the Straits of Florida ones, not the South Pacific ones). When the wind does come up it is generally under 10 knts. and on our nose, so for all intents and purposes today we are a motor vessel. It would have been great to have the autopilot for this, but it hasn't been working since we began the trip. Seas are calm and we average about 6.8 knts. Very few boats out here. The trip is about as uneventful as a 63 nm trip can be and we pull into the harbor right in front of Fort Jefferson on Garden Key at about 3:00 p.m. Only two other vessels in the harbor at the time so we get an anchor location pretty much of our choosing, drop the hook, and settle back to bask in a gorgeous anchorage. Loggerhead Key and it's lighthouse are easily visible the sun is shining, there's little wind and "all's right with the world". We lower the dinghy into the water and put some air in it, but leave putting the engine on until the next morning. Pat tries his had at fishing and hooks a "big one" almost right away until he brings it up and discovers is a piece of coral. We both have a good laugh.
4/24-Winds stay light and the sun keeps shining and it's another gorgeous day in paradise. We put the engine on the dinghy and start her up. I'm gratified to find that she fires up pretty easily after not having been used for about two years. Congrats to Greg McElroy for a good winterizing job and to our decision to have a good cover made for it while it's not in use and secured on the aft rail. We motor into the Garden Key dinghy area and go to check in with the Park Rangers. Turns out it's very relaxed out here about things like that and I have to hunt the right one down, but he's very gracious. The Park Fee has been waived by the Park Service for the time being for some reason and so we register, but our stay is free. He even lets me use his satphone to leave a message for Kryss that we have arrived safely. The power cat from Key West arrives and Pat joins the Fort tour that the Rangers give for them. Having done that not so long ago I take a walk instead, find an environmentally sound way to dispose of our garbage despite the fact that the Park rule is bring it in/carry it out and so we have another problem solved. When the tour is over we return to the boat to put on bathing suits and get snorkel gear. I have already heard from some people who I met and talked to that the snorkeling off of the beach on Garden Key is very "tame", so I don't take my gear and I go off to read in the shade while Pat swims and snorkels. The big event is the appearance of Carlos the local saltwater crocodile which gets everybody's attention. BTW, you can no longer snorkel in the moat as you used to be able to do. Not a great loss. I walked around it and saw only some sea cumber, conch and mullet. We return to the boat where Pat tries his hand at fishing again and I take a swim. A smaller sailboat comes in from Texas and anchors more or less in front of us at first, giving me cause for concern that it will foul our anchor, and even after it moves a bit I'm concerned that we may "collide" at night due to the strong current and light winds. I put some fenders our just in case. We delight in another perfect sunset, and the only glitch is that I discover that the DC switch (not the breaker) for the freezer is malfunctioning and has shut off the freezer. Luckily, most all of the still frozen stuff is frozen hard at the bottom of the freezer. I reset the switch and we begin monitoring it carefully. It seems to be holding when we go to bed and the freezer is cooling down again.
4/25-I get up at 3:30 and check and the freezer switch is still functioning, so that's a good thing, but by the time I rise for the day at 7:30 it's off again. Not a good thing. I come up with what I think will be an easy fix. We'll see. Weather is wonderful again. Bright sunshine and light wind. We did not suffer and contact with the other sailboat during the night, also a good thing. Well, we struggled mightily, but we could not resurrect the freezer. Thankfully we had enough room in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator to take all of the frozen food from the freezer, so we can live without it. We load up the dinghy with our snorkel gear, fill the gas tank from the spare and motor off to try to find the wreck in the Bird Key Harbor. We get to a sand bank that's at a depth of about 4 feet and then drops off to about 16 feet. I think this is the right spot so we start to put our snorkel gear on and Pat is in the water first when he looks off to a spot about 50 feet away and asks whether what he is seeing is a big ray. I respond "no", that it's a shark and he just about jumps back into the dinghy. The shark was good size, I'm guessing maybe 5-7 ft. or so, but I couldn't tell whether it was a nurse shark or a bull shark or another kind given the distance and my angle of observation. Anyway, it glided off into the deeper water and Pat gets back into the water when I do. We follow the line of the bank where the depth drops off for a while into a pretty strong current, and the only fish life we see are quite a few small to medium size barracuda with some occasional larger ones. They're schooling and following us around, clearly very curious. We can't find the wreck so we return to the boat to reread the material on where it is and discover that we were looking in the wrong place. On the second try we find it readily, but the current is really ripping in that area. The wreck is very shallow, 4-6 feet, and except for the propeller and shaft, because it's in shallow water and quite old, there's not much wreck to see. There's a lot more fish life than where we first snorkeled so Pat stays in for a while. I get out because with my readily cramping legs, I'm afraid that swimming against the current will do me in, and besides, it's not a very impressive site in contrast to many that I've been to. I let Pat do a little drift dive and then I pick him up we return to Duet in the anchorage where we really have a spectacle. A bunch of Cuban refugees have just landed their home made "boat" on Long Key which forms the end of the crescent by which Garden Key, Bush Key and Long Key form the Garden Key anchorage. A large military helicopter lands to assist the Park Rangers in taking the Cubans into "custody" and we watch as they are escorted from Long Key to Garden Key for "processing". Pat had just heard about how the Cubans fleeing Cuba have taken to landing her rather than Key West even though this is considerably further from Cuba because there is less chance of their being interdicted before they can reach American soil. It's really news in the making and quite a site. That's enough excitement of us for the day and it's already later, so we chill for the rest of the afternoon. Pat snoozes and I write this log and read while Jorge Bolet plays Liszt and Rachmaninov plays Rachmaninov. Could be worse.
4/26-Day breaks with more sunshine and mild breezes, although they are up a bit from the last few days. Last night we rescued a "runaway" dinghy for the boat next to us and today he offers to take us in the small Whaler that he has been using as a dinghy to Loggerhead Island to snorkel the Windjammer wreck instead of us doing it in our dinghy. The Whaler is much larger, faster and more stable, so we gladly accept the offer. The wreck is in about 20 ft. of water with a portion of it coming just out of the surface of the water. It's an old wreck, so much like yesterday's there's no real structure left, but unlike yesterday's there's quite a bit of fish life and some coral and sponges, although nothing exceptional. As we are about to return to the dinghy from the wreck the fellow who offered it and who has large free dive fins and a free diving technique spies a very large Goliath Grouper which is quite impressive. I also find that there are a number of quite large free swimming Jacks that are interesting. The funniest thing for me though was the Barracuda. They are very territorial, and even though they were not particularly big, when you entered their territory they would come at you to try to frighten you and then veer away when it didn't work. Quite amusing to me. We spend the rest of the day putting the dinghy, dinghy engine and equipment away as well as our snorkel gear so that we are ready for a "first light" departure tomorrow. Our plan is to head back in a series of "easy" 50nm day trips of so, stopping at Boca Grande Island next to the Marquesas, then Moser Channel, then Rodriguez Key in Key Largo, then Key Biscayne and then home. Let's see whether we can keep to the plan.
4/27-We leave Garden Key at first light is moderate wind and head back towards Boca Grande Key (just a bit West of Key West) for an evening anchorage. Wind is on our nose and seas are up a bit so we're motoring and making about 5 knts. Seas abate a bit as we get into deeper water and we begin making a little better time. The trip is uneventful (in fact kind of boring since we're motoring). We get to Boca Grande on schedule (around 3:30 pm), but as I feared, the Island is so small and we can't tuck in too close because the approach is too shallow so we don't get enough of a lee for a calm anchorage. We could have anchored safely for the night but it would have been pretty rocky so we bail out and head for a calm anchorage in Key West. Saw a quite large turtle between Boca Grande and Key West. It stayed around for a little while. Returned to the Fleming Key anchorage we left from and settle down in light winds for another Key West sunset.
4/28-Winds are down, air is mild and we depart under beautiful conditions for Moser Channel/Marathon/Boot Key. We're finally able to sail a bit as we turn up Hawk Channel and we turn off the engine for the first time since we sailed from Boca to Key West and enjoy the quiet swish of the waves. Wind is still too much on our nose for us to keep to our course or get to Moser Channel at a reasonable time, so we're looking at starting the engine and motor sailing. It's 11:00 am and I'm able to work on this log while we're under way. It's the first time I've tried to type heeled over. Going topside now-to be continued. Wind doesn't shift enough to allow us to sail without assistance so we start the engine and motor sail, and between the two means of propulsion we are able to make enough speed to get to Moser Channel with time to spare. We see a number of turtles along the way and we go under the bridge and anchor in Florida Bay opposite Pigeon Key at the very South end of Marathon and at the beginning of the seven mile bridge. We have a nice swim (the water's a lot warmer in Florida Bay than it was in the ocean at Garden Key. The night is uneventful.
4/29-We get up a little later figuring that we will have plenty of time to get to Rodriguez Key where I intend to spend two nights, but as we're analyzing the latest weather reports we realize that the winds are expected to build out of the East and that at least for Saturday (what would have been the second night), we would be too exposed in the Rodriguez Key anchorage. It's already pretty windy and the seas are building somewhat. We can't sail on a point that will allow us to sail our route directly, so we tack out to sea to try to get a better angle along our rhumb line. Between the tack and some assist on some of the legs from the engine we have a rollicking sail to Rodriguez Key in 15-20 knt. winds reaching 8 and 9 knots a good deal of the time and pull in not long before sunset.
4/30-We leave at first light and the ocean is pretty rough when we leave the reef line and head out to sea. Although the wind continues to be out of the East at 13-20 knts., our course line is increasingly northerly so after a sizeable tack with the winds up a bit we close haul the sails and have an amazing sail without have to tack again. We probably averaged around 9.5 knts. for the whole trip and we occasionally were doing over 12 knts. The rail was all but buried and the boat sailed just beautifully. We make the trip from our anchorage at Rodriguez Key to the entrance to Key Biscayne Channel in about 5 hours. It's about a 50 nm trip when you include our tack out to sea, so that's really "truckin". The seas quiet somewhat as we travel North and although I have some trepidation, by the time we need to turn West to enter Key Biscayne Channel they are moderate and our passage into Biscayne Bay is uneventful. We anchor in the bight by Southwest Harbor on the West side of Key Biscayne, and of course it's chocked full of every kind of boat you can imagine as much of Miami comes here to hang out by the sandbar on weekends. I'm used to it. Pat is amazed. We originally thought we would spend Sunday here but the weather is not predicated to be that great and now our refrigerator has failed, so we'll head home tomorrow.
5/1-We leave our Key Biscayne anchorage at first light with little apparent wind, but as soon as we get out from the lee of the island it appears that the winds are stronger than first thought. We have an uneventful motor under the Rickenbacker Causeway and into the Port of Miami for an exit to the ocean through Government Cut (the main Miami entrance inlet). As we're passing Dodge Island we see a seemingly new Azimut of about 50 ft. hard aground well outside of the channel. There are really large channel buoys marking the channel all along as it is a main shipping channel and the chart plotter shows a large white fairway where the main channel is, so it's a real puzzle as to how that boat went out of the channel into very little water, but there is was. As we are now facing East into the wind it's clear that the winds or 15-20 knts. and that it will be an "interesting" exit into the ocean through Government Cut as the tide is ebbing pretty strongly setting up the classic "standing wave" paradigm for opposing wind and current, particularly in relatively shallow water. The exit from the inlet is by far the worst I've ever experienced with wind and steep standing waves quite close together on our nose but the boat performs beautifully and we're finally able to turn out of the channel to our course for Port Everglades (Ft. Lauderdale). Not going to Hillsboro Inlet because I'm afraid of what the conditions will be like at Hillsboro Inlet with the wind out of the East and the seas having been building since last night. We would have an incoming tide pushing us towards the bridge, it' Sunday so there are likely to be lots of boat, and there's little or no room in the turning basin to manoeuver while waiting for the bridge to open. The seas are now on our beam and moving us around quite a bit but they're no longer dangerous. Since we don't have a long trip and it's really quite "rocky" we put up just the jib and soon we're rollicking along on course at between 7.5 and 8.2 knts. in 13-18 knt. winds. We roll up the jib and motor into Port Everglades where we just make the 17th Street bridge opening, and thereafter, with the ICW just chock full of boats me manage not to miss a single bridge opening all the way back to YARCOBR. As promised to Pat, Lake Boca is chock full of boats on this beautiful Sunday afternoon, more so even than the at the sandbar by the Key Biscayne anchorage, so he gets another eyeful. We're soon home and Pat departs for Punta Gorda while Kryss and I begin to unload the boat. It's not until then that I see that we really dodged a bullet on this last leg of the trip. My 80 lb. Manson claw anchor is no longer riding where it belongs on my bow roller. It has bounced off and is hanging over the side of the boat supported by the shank on my gunwale, the chain and my retaining line. It would have been a disaster if it had gone further over and started banging the hull. Anyway, I get it back on the roller and resolve to put a restraining line over the shank to keep that from happening again. All in all we had a really successful trip, with great weather, great sailing and good company.
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