Little Card Sound to Rodriquez Key (Day 70) to Marathon (Day 71) and Trip Stats

Thursday, December 5th (Day 70)

Another beautiful morning in The Keys with temps in the mid-60s heading to near 80.  It was sunny with just a few wispy clouds on the horizon as we pulled up our anchor after 3 days here.  We motored back to the ICW channel, through the narrow channel and back into Card Sound.  As winds were out of the N-NE and we were heading NE, we didn't put up any sails but motored to Angelfish Creek.

Low tide on the ocean side of Angelfish was around 9:30am so we timed our trip through the creek for close to 1/2 tide and rising.  We have run aground before, right at the eastern end of the channel, at low tide with our 5.5 foot draft so I knew we needed some tidal help to be safe.

It was all good as we had 1.5 feet of tide by time we got to the shallow part.  Our depth sounder was down to 6.5 feet at the worst section.  Figuring the tide was up 1.5 feet, it would have only been 5 feet at low tide.  Not enough for us!

We were hoping to sail the last 20 miles from Angelfish Creek to Rodriquez Key anchorage but it was not to be.  Since we were going dead downwind, the apparent wind stayed at 2-4 knots all day.  It takes at least 5-6 knots of apparent wind to keep the sails full so we never put them out.  But, it was a lovely day - warm and sunny - as we motored down the Hawk Channel at 6 knots.

We anchored on the south side of Rodriquez since the winds were supposed to be N to NE all night but in the single digits.  It was only 3pm so I brought my guitar up into the cockpit with a small glass of tequila to watch the sunset.  Laura and I decided to try taking a music video with her Nikon camera on a tripod.  It took us a while to get all the settings right including the microphone.  The camera had a "zoom microphone" setting which was cool but would only pickup the guitar or my voice but not both.  Once we figured out how to turn that off, it worked pretty good.

Here are two music videos I uploaded to my YouTube channel.  Check them out when you get a chance.  They sound much better if you can play them through a bluetooth speaker or stereo.  I like the wind on the water in the background that makes it look like we are sailing.

The first song is by Jimmy and the Parrots called Sail Away.

 

The second song is Today by John Denver.  We thought we'd try something different and just show the beautiful sunset on this one.  Feel free to share if you feel they are share-worthy and I'd appreciate any feedback - good or how to make them better.

 

The sunset tonight showcased all the different shades of red and lasted for almost a full hour.  I don't know if this is something special about The Keys (long sunsets) but remember when we sailed the Caribbean and it seemed like it was dark about 10 minutes after the Sun went down.  Here is just one of the many pictures we took.

We made a little picnic-type dinner with BBQ chicken, potato salad and baked beans.  It was a quiet evening and very comfortable anchorage.

Friday, December 6th (Day 71 - End of Trip!)

I was awake quite a bit in the night and not sure why.  The boat wasn't moving around much but maybe it was just a little warm in the boat from the engine running all day.  I slept to about 9am then decided it was time to get underway.

While performing my morning engine room checks, I noticed our pump for the shower sump was off its mounts and just hanging.  I changed into "engine room" shorts and old shirt and climbed down to fix it.  After spending about 10 minutes on it I decided to leave it for Marathon.  It didn't want to go back where I had originally mounted it.  Oh well, there wasn't enough room for it to go anywhere so I let it be and we got underway.

Another sunny, warm day with the only problem of not enough wind again to sail.  During the afternoon the winds did pick up to 5-6 knots off the beam so we rolled out the main and jib for a little extra speed.  Since I had slept in this morning, we needed a little help to cover the 45 miles to Marathon before 5pm when the marina closed.

Laura spent a little time playing the the GoPro underwater and was able to get a cool movie of the bottom going by while we were underway.  In the video, it looks like the water is only a couple feet deep when actually it was 15-20 feet.  Here's the video she took....

We arrived at the entrance to Boot Key Harbor around 4:30pm and I called the marina on my cell phone to let them know we were coming in.  We were assigned a different slip at the marina this year because we didn't let them know we were coming until just a few weeks ago.  No more easy-in, easy-out from slip #1.  Now we were directed to slip #10 between a huge sportfishing boat and big sailboat.  No wind and no currents so getting into the slip was fairly uneventful.

It is nice to be back at Burdines where we ran sailing charters for 5 winters.  Most of the other boaters we are friends with have not arrived yet so we won't see them until we get back from our Christmas drive back to NY around New Year's.  We enjoyed talking to other people and getting off the boat to walk around after 8 days at anchor.

We are all tied up safe-and-sound after 2 1/2 months on the boat from the Hudson River.  It was a very nice trip with much better weather than we are used to this time of year.  I'm pretty sure this was our longest trip for the east coast which is good.  I've been trying to take it more slow and easy after 8 years of zooming up and down the coast for our charter schedule.  We both like the slow trip much better.

Trip Stats

Departed Catskill Marina Friday, September 27th.
Arrived Burdines Waterfront Marina, Marathon, Friday, December 6th

Total trip time - 71 days (10 weeks and a day)
Total miles - 1,636 nautical (1,882 statute / car miles)

Nights
     at anchor - 31
     at moorings - 18
     at marinas - 9
     at free docks - 10

Expenses -
     Fuel -$867
     Dockage - $1,930 (marinas and moorings)
     Repairs - $1,580 (new generator was $1,000)
     Groceries - $1,461 (includes stocking up before leaving)
     Eating out - $371

This will be my last blog entry for a while - probably until we leave here around the end of January.  Hope you enjoyed it!

Little Card Sound (Day 68 and 69)

Tuesday, December 3rd (Day 68)

Today was mostly a down day on Second Wind.  Laura sewed for much of the day (some of our friends and relatives will appreciate this at Christmas time) and I worked on a few boat jobs.

Non-boaters might want to skip through this next section to Wednesday.

I've been trying to figure out the best way to secure our spare main halyard (line going to the top of our mast used to raise a sail) for what seems like several years.  If I use the cleats at the bottom of the mast, it gets very confusing with all the lines that are there already.  I typically tie it to the outer main stay near the deck which gets it out of the way but doesn't secure it very well.

A few months ago I purchased a deck cleat that I was going to use for one end of the spare halyard - maybe in front of the mast.  When I tried fitting everything there, I didn't like it.  Instead, I put the deck cleat away and re-tied to the outer stay.

Several weeks ago when helping our friends Dean and Sue with some mast repairs, I noticed that Dean had several lines secured to stays with a stay-cleat.  I thought this was pretty neat so eventually purchased one in St. Augustine and used it to tie the free end of the spare halyard to the stay.  It looked pretty good.  Now I needed to figure out the other end - something that I'd be happy with.

I decided to use the deck cleat to secure the shackle end on the toe-rail.  Then the entire spare halyard would be out of the way and very secure to where it wouldn't be in the way of us running the sails or be in the way.  Anyway, that the long story of the spare halyard and the picture blow shows the completed work.

The rest of our day was uneventful with nice weather and a comfy boat.  We did watch the rest of "The 100" first season and both of us commented on how bad the acting and writing was.  Tomorrow we will watch one of our 250 movies on the computer.

Wednesday, December 4th (Day 69)

Beautiful weather and nice conditions at our anchorage again.  After a little work this morning, we decided to take the dinghy into Alabama Jacks for lunch / dinner.  Alabama Jacks big claim-to-fame is the "first Keys bar" on the way onto The Keys.  We've been there several times when we are anchored nearby and it's always fun even though the food and drinks are a little on the expensive side and there are only plastic tables and chairs.  But...  I guess you are paying for the atmosphere.

We were excited about leaving the boat and seeing other people.  It's been 5 days since we've been off the boat or seen anyone else.  We enjoy each other's company (obviously) but a little excitement is always good.

I dropped the dinghy and we lowered the outboard from it's ocean storage on the back railing.  When I started the engine, it seemed to take a long time for the cooling water to come out but it eventually, it seemed to be OK.  We call this the outboard pissing.  That's what it looks like too.

We changed into "public" clothes, got our safety gear together and headed out for the 1.5 mile run to the Card Sound Bridge then down the canal about 1/4 mile to the docks at Alabama Jacks.  Almost to the bridge, I remembered I had the anchor alarm set on my phone.  We stopped so I could dig it out of the pack Laura was carrying to shut off the alarm.  That complete, I turned around to get the engine going again and noticed it wasn't pissing.  Instead, there was just a lot of steam coming out.  Oh oh.  This is the first time we've had problems with this engine since we bought it used in Grenada 13 years ago.

Rev'ing up the engine a little made a little water come out so it was getting some cooling.  I immediately turned around and headed back to the boat to see if I could get it working better.  I didn't want to row our 12' inflatable back 1.5 miles if the motor died.

We did make it back to the boat and I tried cleaning out the water port with a wire - nothing up there to block it.  I also checked the intake at the bottom of the engine and it wasn't clogged.  The problems were most likely caused by the rubber impeller inside the lower end.  I didn't have a spare on the boat so we hauled the dinghy back up on the davits and Laura made us a nice lunch.  We'll have to party by ourselves this afternoon.

So you don't feel too bad about missing Alabama Jacks, here are a few pictures from their website.

Tomorrow morning we'll head out through Angelfish Creek to the ocean side of The Keys and start working our way to Marathon.  We should be there Friday afternoon.

Card Sound to Little Card Sound (Day 67)

Monday, December 2nd (Day 67)

Winds were low at our anchorage last night as we watched several episodes of "The 100" first season and relaxed after Laura made fish tacos for dinner.  (No Wi-Fi here but I had downloaded the whole first season to my iPad off NetFlix when we were in Stuart.)  We've anchored here several times before and it is one of the more remote anchorages.  The ICW channel is about 2 miles away so we barely feel the wakes from even the biggest powerboats going by.

It was a warm night again but should be the last one for a while.  Temps in the bedroom were in the high 70s but we slept well with just a sheet and a 12v fan blowing fresh air on us.

Here is an overview of our anchoring strategy -

Today a front is coming through which will clock the winds from south to west then north tonight.  This anchorage is excellent for south or west winds as the shore is only about 1/2 mile away in those directions.  But, we are very open to the north so will be moving sometime later this afternoon.  This is a screenshot from my iPad using AquaMaps to show where we are.

The yellow island in the lower part of the picture is northern Key Largo.  The little icon of a sailboat with the red circle is Second Wind (I added the red circle so you could find us).  Since north is up in the picture, you can see we have land east, south and west of us.  But, north is quite open.  Later tonight or early tomorrow morning the winds will clock to the north so it will probably get quite bumpy here.  Instead, this afternoon, we are going to move about 3 miles and attempt to anchor where I've put the red "X" on the chart.  Notice how that spot is protected from the west and north but open to the south.  We will move there later today when the winds clock west.  

I say "attempt to anchor" because you never know where these is enough sand and grass over the coral for the anchor to hold.  If I don't feel comfortable anchoring at the "X", we will continue south and pass under the Card Sound Bridge to anchor near the red "2".  We've anchored there several times in the past and sat out storms with 30-40 mph winds so I know the bottom is good to hold the boat on anchor.  Only problem is you can see how it is open to the west for a couple miles.  But, this evening the winds are supposed to be NW then clock N by early morning so it shouldn't be too bad for a backup plan.

Which ever anchorage we choose, we'll be there until Thursday.  The winds Thursday are predicted to come from the north then northeast which should make for nice sailing down to Marathon on Friday.

This morning was a little cloudy with winds around 10 knots from the south.  Now, around noon, the temp is 84 (Weather underground says "feels like 92") and the winds have picked up to near 20.  It's comfortable in the boat as we have all the hatches open and a nice breeze coming through.  I can see dark clouds off to the west and there is a squall line west of us on the local radar.  We will probably get a storm in the next hour or so.  The temps are going to drop quickly after the front when the winds clock to NW than N.  Low last night was 74.  Temps  tonight are going to low 50s.  Quite a difference for us!

A little while ago I took a panorama with my phone to show the area around our anchorage.  I'm quite surprised (and pleased) that no other boats have come and anchored near us.  Nobody for at least 2 miles in any direction.  Click on the panorama below and you should be able to scroll to look around.  Very pretty here with Mangroves to the east, south and west.

It's getting pretty dark out now.  Time to batten down the hatches!

I was about 2 minutes late with the "batten down the hatches."  I went up into the cockpit to put the covers on our forward hatches and it started pouring.  As our hatches leak a little in the rain without the covers, I put them on anyway.  5 minutes later I was done with the covers and looked like a drowned rat.  Geez!

Rain and winds in the 30s lasted about 10 minutes.  A short while later the Sun came back out but the winds stayed in the mid-20s.  They also clocked around to the NW which started sending 1-2 foot seas into what was our nice, calm anchorage.  By 2pm, we decided to move since the boat was bouncing around pretty good.  I got the boat ready to go and we were soon off the anchor.

Our normal anchor process is I am up on the bow running the anchor windlass while Laura is in the forward cabin making sure the chain lays correctly when it comes in.  Sometimes, the anchor comes up really mucky and I call to Laura for her to come up on deck while I run to the helm.  It all worked good today and I was able to stop the boat from getting blown too far backwards between the anchor coming up and my engaging the engine.  Only problem was our anchorage must have been a little protected from the current wind angle because as soon as I started motoring west, the waves got a lot bigger.  Laura was bouncing up and down about 2 feet with every wave while trying to clean the anchor and bring it up to the roller for storage.  She was a real trooper and spent much more time cleaning things up than I would have.  After all, we're going to anchor again in about an hour...

It was a slow ride motoring against the 25-30 mph winds but, about an hour later, we were in calmer water and decided to try anchoring.  Our first attempt was on coral and the anchor just bounced around for a while.  I moved about 1/4 mile north and tried again.  Success!  It held us fine even with 25 mph winds trying to blow us backwards and the engine in reverse at 1,200 RPM.

Here is the updated chart plotter zoomed in a little.  Notice the purple line which was our track from the anchorage in the lower right to our new anchorage in the upper left leading to the little icon of the sailboat that shows where we currently are.

We'll be here today, tomorrow and Wednesday assuming the wind forecast doesn't change.  Time to head up into the cockpit to read a bit while making sure we aren't dragging the anchor...

Stuart (Day 63) to Lake Worth (Day 64) to Biscayne Bay (Day 65) to Key Largo (Day 66)

Thursday, November 28th (Day 63)

HAPPY THANKGIVING EVERYONE!

Laura has been cooking up a storm even though we're not having dinner on the boat.  The Sunset Bay Marina is cooking turkeys and stuffing while boaters are bringing all the fixin's.  It cracks me up sometimes to see what the other boaters bring and what Laura makes.  Once, I saw a boater come to St. Mary's Thanksgiving dinner with a store-bought box of cookies.  There is a sign-up sheet in the marina office where boaters are supposed to pick an item that isn't already on the list.  Laura made a pumpkin roll and apple pie bars for dessert PLUS her sausage stuffing.  It's gonna be GOOD!

I'm sure we'll make new friends today but it is a little sad to be away from all of our family and friends.  The last few years we had Thanksgiving in Brunswick Landing Marina and St. Mary's GA with at least some people we knew.  Today we are on our own.

We arrived at the party just before 3pm.  Lots of people around but we didn't know anyone here.  I grabbed a table while Laura put out her stuffing and desserts.  When she returned, she walked around a bit and found another couple for us to sit with - Claudia and David.  We introduced ourselves and a short time later, dinner was served as a buffet.

It turns out David purchased a powerboat similar to my last boat.  I had a Present 42.  David has a Present 38.  There were only about 200 of the 38s and 42s boats made in total so it's unusual to find someone with one of them.

A couple pictures of the Thanksgiving dinner plus David and Claudia on the back of their boat.

Everything was excellent and, of course, I ate way too much.  Remember my saying some people don't do much for these parties?  Here is one of the desserts someone brought worth a Thanksgiving dinner for two with all the fixin's.

Bummer that we didn't have any leftovers.  We'll miss them.  Maybe we should have bought a small turkey at Publix for leftovers.

Friday, November 29th (Day 64)

After a week of sitting on the mooring, I was ready to get underway.  Our goal today was travel about 35 miles to Lake Worth on the ICW.  There were 8 bridges that had to open for us and the last 4 were on schedules (usually on the hour and 1/2 hour).

In hindsight, I let my excitement for leaving get the best of me.  We know from experience that traveling the ICW in the south on weekends is usually crazy with tons of boaters who don't really know what they are doing and think the ICW is just like a highway.  Thanksgiving Friday was even worse.  We should have anchored for at least two days away from the ICW and associated powerboat wakes and waited for the next Lake Worth to Biscayne Bay off-shore weather-window.

But, tomorrow was supposed to be nice sailing down the coast so we left the mooring and stopped at the fuel dock right when they opened at 8am.  The attendant here is not very helpful and, when you need something from him (like turn on the fuel pump please), he is always in the little office on his cell phone.  Today was the same but I expected it.  Laura filled our water tank with about 100 gallons and I filled (3) 5-gallon gasoline jugs which was our usage since 2 1/2 weeks ago in Myrtle Beach.  10 gallons for the generator and 5 gallons for the dinghy outboard.  We were off the fuel dock by 8:20am then had to wait 15 minutes for a train to pass over the bridge before it would open for us.  Not a good start with the bridges.

It was a pretty relaxing day until we got to Hobe Sound where it seemed like everyone who owned a boat or knew someone with a boat was out on the water.  The next 15 miles to Lake Worth were very crazy with boats to 40' zooming up and down the waterway on a hurry to get somewhere.  There were two bridges we had to wait for so just motored along slowly - about 3 knots - which I think made things worse (for us and the other boaters) but, we really didn't have a choice.  The bridges only open every 1/2 hour.

The rest of the bridges were very little wait and we motored to the Lake Worth inlet anchorage right around 3pm.  It was difficult to find a place to anchor away from other boats and moorings.  Unlikely as it sounds, you can have a mooring placed anywhere for a few hundred dollars without needing permission or forms as long as it doesn't block navigation.  Also, you don't need to use it.  It just sits there waiting for you.  There were 20-30 unused moorings we passed that were blocking really nice anchorage spots.  You might ask why didn't we just tie to an open mooring?  Problem is you never know what is on the other end.  I've seen moorings with just a tiny anchor on the bottom.  If we tied to that, when the wind picked up we'd drag it all over the place.

Anyway, after searching for about an hour, we found a place I thought would work.  It was close to the channel and in between three open moorings but looked like plenty of room.  We anchored and I watched the boat drift around a 200' circle with the north wind trying to blow the boat south against the current.  A few hours later the tide changed and the wind and current agreed with what they wanted the boat to do.  Everything settled down and we had a nice quiet evening.

Saturday, November 30th (Day 65)

I had the alarm set for 5:30am but was up a little after 5 making coffee.  We needed to be out the Lake Worth inlet before sunup if we were going to make the 70 miles to Biscayne Bay and possibly anchor before dark. 

No problems with the anchor and motoring out of the harbor.  We rolled out the mainsail on the way out.  Once we turned south we also rolled out the jib.  The forecast today was for light NE winds and 3-4 foot long seas.  The seas met the forecast and mostly just gradually picked up the boat then set it down on the other side.  But the winds were out of the west (not NE) at only 5-7 knots.  These are what is called Land Breezes and occur when the actual winds are very light.  During the night, the land cools and the ocean stays warm.  The air over the ocean rises and creates a breeze blowing off  the land to the ocean.  We've had lots of experience with this phenomenon after 80,000 miles so I stayed close to shore in order to take full advantage.  Here was our sunrise before and after the Sun came up.

 As I figured, the winds died in the late morning then picked up from the east in the early afternoon.  You got it right?  The Sun heated up the land which made the air rise and pull the cooler air from the ocean.

It turned out to be a lovely day on the ocean with our only complaint that we didn't have enough wind to turn the engine off and still make reasonable speed - more than 3-4 knots. 

Here is the beautiful, blue ocean with Laura up on the bow working on her tan.

We did have a pod of dolphins come around and swim off the bow for a few minutes.  Laura was up there cheering them on.  Afterwards, we thought about a boat we've been watching on YouTube sail around the world called Delos (Here is their YouTube page).  They frequently take movies of dolphins while they are sailing from UNDER THE WATER.  They attach a GoPro camera to a boat-pole and hold it under the water while the dolphins are swimming around.  It's pretty cool and Laura decided to try it.

She attached our GoPro to a boat-pole and eventually was able to take a move under the water while we were sailing down the coast.  Unfortunately, the dolphins never came back so we'll have to wait for next time to show a good dolphin movie.  Here is the camera.  It looks weird but actually works!

Now it was decision time.  We typically anchor on the west side of Key Biscayne near the yacht club.  This area is very busy on weekends (100s of boats) but they don't usually anchor or cruise that close to the marina.  It's a very protected spot for any winds but south and west.  Guess which way the winds were going tomorrow morning.  Yep.  South.  It would be hard to anchor anywhere around there with protection from south winds plus we wanted to travel south in the morning to get into the protected area at the south end of Biscayne Bay.  So I looked for an alternate plan. 

What I came up with was to go around Key Biscayne, navigate into Biscayne Bay and sail south for another 20 miles after dark.  Not a great plan and Laura wasn't too happy with me.  But, we needed to get south before the south winds so there wasn't much choice.

It actually worked out really well as the winds helped all day to keep our speed between 6.5 and 7 most of the time.  We crossed the Government Cut channel (Miami) around 4:30pm just before 4 huge cruiseships came out.  7 miles later we turned into the Biscayne Bay channel and were actually in Biscayne Bay before dark.  We motor-sailed for another couple hours then I decided to pull off the marked channel and anchor for the night.  This area had protection from the current winds and we'd move the boat in the morning another 10 miles south to the better anchorage before the big south winds. 

We actually had to anchor twice because the first time our anchor just skipped over the top of hard coral.  The Florida Keys are really coral islands with a little sand thrown in.  Sometimes you have to find that little sand.  1/4 mile away we tried again and the anchor set nicely.  I turned the engine off after 15 hours and 85 nautical miles.  I went straight to bed (at 9pm) while Laura stayed up for a bit.

Sunday, December 1st (Day 66)

It was a very calm night here but also the warmest we've had so far.  The temperature in our bedroom never got below 77 even though we had all the windows open and a fan blowing outside air on us.  We'd worked hard to get away from the cold weather and we'd made it!  It actually wasn't that bad and we both slept pretty well with just a sheet.

The morning was calm and sunny as we slept in and relaxed.  We needed to wait until 11am or so anyway to let the tide come up a bit for a few shallow spots we had to pass.  I started working on this blog but couldn't keep a connection on my phone because of poor service.  Finally at 10:30am we pulled the anchor just as the south wind was starting to build. 

No problems with the shallow spots as we motored south past Pumpkin Key and into the SE corner of Card Sound.  As we were approaching our anchorage, the south winds were in the mid to high teens so I was glad we didn't have to motor all the way down Biscayne Bay against that.  Our poor little motor doesn't do well against wind or waves.  It's only 60HP (when it was new almost 40 years ago) and sometimes we slow to 2 or 3 knots against wind or waves.

Anyway, we dropped our anchor in a nice protected spot from the south winds today and west winds tonight.  Not sure where we will move for the north winds tomorrow.

A nice short day on the water with only 8 miles in less then 2 hours.

We'll be here at least 2 days and maybe more depending on the weather and winds.  I see Laura has lunch about ready so I'll sign off until later. Hope all our Northeast friends and family stay safe with the big storm today and tomorrow.