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.
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