Last Days in Hurricane Hole Then Back to Marathon

Sunday, February 2nd

Not much going on today but we're looking forward to the winds finally dying down in the afternoon.

I missed a few things from the past few days because I've been writing the blog in the afternoon so miss writing about the night fun...  Friday night we had John and Alexis from Ashling over for cocktails.  Their boat is anchored right behind us.  They are new to cruising on a beautiful 47' catamaran with all the trimmings.  We had lots of fun getting to know each other and John took this picture of the group.

Last night, we were invited over to dinner on their boat along with Phillip and Betsy from Nova Status (another catamaran anchored near us).  They are new to cruising too so we answered tons of questions from our 13 years living on Second Wind.  John grilled chicken and there was plenty of wine to make the party lively.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of us all.  Bummer.  Nova Status is a "Kid boat" - they have two boys on board ages 8 and 11 who they home-school.  It's unusual to see children on cruising boats but I think it's great.  What a life!

Back to Sunday ...

Later in the morning, several small boats came into the harbor (from Miami?) and anchored around us for their weekend party.  They came into the calm harbor because the wind and waves were still up a bit around the sandbar in Key Biscayne where they normally party on weekends.  It was fun to watch the crazy "kids" on the power boats dancing to the loud music and playing in the water.  A short time later the Key Biscayne police boat came through and told several of them to turn down the music or leave.  Several homeowners had complained about the music.  Most complied but several left to anchor outside the harbor in the windy bay.

After lunch, Laura and I decided to take the dingy around to No Name Harbor again for a walk around the park.  When we motored out onto Biscayne Bay, the waves were still 1-2 feet which made for a sloppy ride.  We decided to turn around and on the way back, we were flagged down by an anchored powerboat and asked to retrieve an air pump that had fallen in the water.  No problem as Laura picked up the pump and I motored back to their boat.  We were invited to stay and party but it seemed a little loud and crazy for us (read: lots of alcohol).  Plus, we were about 40 years older than everyone on their boat.  What would we talk about?

We instead motored back into the protected harbor and slowly made the rounds checking out the weekend party boats (and young ladies with skimpy bikini's...).  As we were passing Nova Status, Phillip waved us over and invited us aboard for a visit.  We chatted for awhile and we introduced to the two young boys.  One was named Ky and the other .....  (old brains suck!).  We had a nice visit then left about an hour later and decided to try Biscayne Bay again for a ride to the park.

This ride was much better and we zoomed the 2 miles down to No Name harbor.  After tying up and locking the dinghy, we walked all the way to the lighthouse - about 3 miles round trip.  We were pretty tired as we untied the dinghy and motored away from the wall.

On the way out of the harbor, we saw another dinghy zoom in and stop a short distance away from us.  The guy driving started pulling on the outboard starter and looked like he was having problems.  I motored over and was surprised to see Phillip and one of the boys.  We stuck around for awhile then decided the tow them back to Hurricane Hole as their motor would not keep running.  It was a much slower ride back but the waves were pretty calm so no worries.  Here is a different sunset picture of me driving the tow-boat.

I dropped the guys off at Nova Status where Betsy was very thankful.  I was just happy we were there to help.

Laura and I made plans to leave here tomorrow.  Since the winds will not be south enough to sail from here east to the Bahamas, we decided to head south to Key Largo area on Monday.  If the winds look better tomorrow, we can sail to Bimini or other Bahama destination from there.  If not, we will sail back to Marathon and re-visit our friends.

Monday, February 3rd

This morning we hauled the outboard off the dinghy and stowed it on the aft rail.  We then slowly motored out of Hurricane Hole where I slowly ran aground right in the middle of the entrance and right over our GPS track line from coming into the harbor a week ago.  I was motoring really slow so easily backed off the sandbar and tried about 10-15 feet to the right.  No problems there with about 2 extra feet under us.  I set a waypoint on my GPS to mark the deeper water for next time.

Not enough wind to sail today if we wanted to make Key Largo or Rodriguez Cay so I kept the engine running and we had a calm trip down to Pumpkin Cay.  Now the choice was to anchor here with protection from the east winds tonight or to continue through Anglefish Creek to Rodriguez.  The forecast called for winds under 10 so I decided to keep going for another 20 miles and make tomorrow a shorter day.  If we anchored here, we would not get to Marathon tomorrow before dark.

On the sail down Biscayne Bay, I checked the weather forecast several times on Chris Parker's emails, Windy.com, PredictWind.com and WindFinder.com.  All pretty much agreed now that the trip east of Bimini would be tough for the next week or so.  If we sailed to Bimini tomorrow, we would be there for a week or more.  We decided to made the decision and sail back to Burdines in Marathon.  I called them and formalized the slip reservation. 

It was a calm motor-sail down the Hawk Channel with the winds mostly from the N - NE.  The winds were supposed to clock to the SE later in the night but stay low.  Rodriguez Cay has really no protection from any east winds but I figured it wouldn't be too bumpy a night with winds under 10 knots.

Turns out the winds did die during the night and we had a peaceful night even though we were open to wind off the ocean from our anchorage.

Tuesday, February 4th

Very calm this morning as we get the boat ready to leave the anchorage and proceed 45 miles to Marathon.  Anchor up around 8am and breakfast a short time later motoring down the Hawk Channel.  About an hour later the winds picked up from the SE (as predicted) and we were able to turn the engine off for almost the whole trip with full Jib and Mainsail out.  The boat sailed nicely at 6-6.5 knots all the way to Marathon.

Only problem was for some reason the seas really picked up and were much higher than they should have been with only 10-12 knot winds.  My only justification was the tide was going out (west to east) while the east wind was blowing in.  Tide against wind usually create higher waves but these were uncomfortable all afternoon.  The boat was bouncing around pretty good in the 2-3 foot close-period waves on the beam.  Once in a while a larger wave (4-5 foot?) would come and slap the boat sideways a couple feet.  We had to hold on for those.

A little after 4pm we were motoring into Boot Key Harbor.  I called Burdines on the phone and Shorty met us at our slip when we tied up.  Several of our friends were at the dock to welcome us and we spent a quiet night on the boat.

So....  what now?

The 10-day forecast calls for a front the next couple days (high winds and rain) then the eastern trades settling in for the following week.  No window to the Bahamas in the forecast that we can see.  Sometimes, boats sit here a month or more waiting for crossing weather so we'll just settle in, enjoy shore life and work on the boat (as usual).

Oh.  Our friends Jeff and Alison on Serena (former dock-mates at Burdines) had left Marathon Tuesday morning for Bimini.  They had a fairly good ride in that direction and arrived Wednesday morning.  They only had crew help for a couple days on their boat so decided to take this weather window even though they will be at the dock in Bimini for a week or so.  We are in their old slip at Burdines.

I'll stop the blog until we leave Burdines again - hopefully for a couple months in the Bahamas.  Hope you enjoyed our little 11-day sail-a-bout in the Florida Keys.  We did!

Growing roots in Hurricane Harbor...

Saturday, February 1st (Wow!  February all ready!)

The past few days have been fairly quiet on Second Wind as we are still anchored in Key Biscayne for the 5th straight day.  Yesterday (Friday) the winds were light and Biscayne Bay looked very glassy so we decided to take our dinghy across the bay to Dinner Key and do some shopping.  Winds were supposed to pick up in the afternoon so we decided to go in the morning.

There is a Winn Dixie on Key Biscayne but getting there is a little sketchy from here.  Our neighbors John and Alexis on Ashling told us they had made it there a few times.  You have to drop a person at the bridge on the far end of the harbor.  Then they have to climb over a 3-4 foot fence onto the road.  It's only about 1/2 mile to Winn Dixie but you have to walk passed a security station and hope they don't see you.  We decided to try Dinner Key instead.  Maybe we'll leave fence jumping for tomorrow.

Around 9:30am we had the dinghy packed including an empty 5-gallon gasoline jug that I had poured into the dinghy tank and our Honda generator.  The 4-mile ride across Biscayne Bay was very cool.  We zoomed at close to 20 knots which seems like flying in a 11 1/2 foot boat.  The new outboard was really showing it's strength as I kept it around 3/4 throttle for most of the trip.

We slowly motored around Dinner Key checking out the (4 or 5) marinas and looking for a good place to tie up the dink.  I saw a couple out on the deck of their trimaran so motored over.  They told us Dinner Key Marina was the best place to tie up as they have about 100 moorings and all the dinghy's tie up there.  They also said a closer marina sometimes lets people tie up but motored over there and the workers said no.

It was a 15 minute trip back to Dinner Key Marina and we found the dinghy dock pretty full.  There was a sign that said, "For paying customers only.  Others should use the public dock" with an arrow pointing toward the road.  We motored in that direction past several commercial boats and found what we thought might be the public dock.  It was pretty well destroyed and didn't even connect to shore.  We motored back to the marina dinghy dock and tied up.

We had our luggage wheelie and fold-up crate so I carried them about 1/2 mile to The Fresh Market.  This was a pretty high-end market with almost everything organic (read "expensive") but the fresh veggies looked very nice and they had everything we were looking for.  We left a short while later with 8 small grocery bags for $107.  Not too bad.

I drove the dink around the harbor to the fuel dock about 1/4 mile away.  No problems filling up the 5-gallon jug with $4 / gallon gasoline.

The dinghy was pretty loaded now but it didn't seem to make any difference to our new 20hp outboard.  Still right up on plane as we left the harbor for our trip back to Key Biscayne.  It was a little more exciting than the trip over.  The winds had picked up to about 10 knots which blew a little 1 foot chop into Biscayne Bay from the ocean - almost the exact direction we were heading.  I took it easy for the first 1/2 of the trip and headed a little more north to get into the lee of Key Biscayne and cut down the waves.  The last 1/2 of the trip was zooming along again at 20 knots with a fully loaded dinghy.  Nice!  Back at the boat we unloaded and stored the groceries and gasoline.

Here was the sunset last night.  Very colorful with wispy clouds and calm waters.

Before crossing over, we had stopped at John and Alexis' where they gave us the information about getting to the Winn Dixie.  Before leaving, we made plans for cocktails together that evening.  Around 5:30pm they came over on their dinghy and we had a nice evening together.  Their boat is a 45' (?), fairly new catamaran.  There is another catamaran anchored in the harbor (Betsy and Philip) who John and Alexis had met that day too.  Betsy and Philip had taken their dinghy around to No Name Harbor (where we went on Thursday) and walked to a local hardware store for something they needed.  They were coming back into the harbor as John and Alexis were getting ready to leave so we waved them over and said hello.  We made tentative plans for dinner together Saturday if the weather allowed.

Last night around 11pm the winds really picked up and the rain started.  By midnight I was sitting in the cockpit watching natures fireworks all around us.  Sometimes it seemed like a solid sheet of rain falling on us.  Laura found a few more leaks in the boat that we'll try to work on over the next few days.  Here is the doppler radar from my iPhone during the worst of it.  We are at the blue dot in the middle.  Red stuff is BAD!

I still spend about an hour each morning agonizing over the weather forecasts.  Monday / Tuesday look possible for a crossing to the Bahamas if the winds go SE to S.  Windfinder and PredictWind show winds staying from the east on Monday and Tuesday so that would not be good for us.  I'm really hoping that tomorrow everything will start to agree.  Just in case, I made "pencil us in" reservations back at Burdines in Marathon for Tuesday.  Our old slip is available until Feb 15th which should put us into some better weather patterns.  If the winds do stay east on Monday, we'll use them to sail back down into the keys.

This morning our neighbor John texted me and asked if I would look at an engine problem he's been having.  I dinghy'd over a little while ago and was able to help him narrow down a problem where he is getting air in his fuel lines causing a problem with that engine (on a Catamaran they have two engines - one in each hull).  Good news was I helped troubleshoot to the cause.  Bad news is the cause is the steel pipe coming out of his fuel tank.  He's going to have to get it fixed in a welding shop somewhere.  Now he had to decide if they are going to stay around here for a couple weeks to fix that or go to the Bahamas (maybe Monday / Tuesday) and wait to get it worked on over there.  I recommended getting it fixed here since he's more likely to find a good welding shop around the Miami area.

We had a little rain this afternoon but another storm with high winds is supposed to blow through around 3-4 with the high winds lasting until tomorrow afternoon.  Hopefully, we will have a window to dinghy over to John and Alexis' for dinner tonight.  I'll let you know.