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!
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