Thursday, January 19th - Day 10
It was a fun morning catching up with the family news from Jon. He was quickly fitting into the boat life and immediately changed his cowboy boots for sandals.
Instead of doing groceries from here, we decided to wait and do them tomorrow in Stuart. The park where we can dock the dinghy is only about 1/2 mile from the Publix there. Instead, Jon and I walked into town and picked up a few things at the liquor store we needed for proper cruising. It was a nice walk about a mile each way and Jensen Beach is a cute town with wide sidewalks and lots of palms.
Back on the boat we worked a few boat jobs to get things ready for moving tomorrow. We enjoyed cocktails and munchies in the cockpit watching a beautiful sunset. Here's the three of us with the Sun setting in the background.
A short while later the Sun really lit up the clouds and water.
Laura made us a great dinner and we relaxed and talked the rest of the evening. Underway again tomorrow!
Friday, January 20th - Day 11
187nm (2 days and 1 night), 511 total miles from Savannah. Temps mid-60s rising to mid-70s in the afternoon. Sunny with winds under 10 knots.
Those of you that have been following us for a while know that we are very flexible with our schedule and plans. As you can see from the "187nm" above, we didn't motor the 10 miles to Stuart and anchor for a few days. We slept in a bit and left the mooring at 9:20am slowly motoring south while I checked that the boat was running good then browsed the weather for the next week.
The weather window for running down the coast to The Keys 4-5 days from now didn't look as good as it did yesterday. I was looking for fairly calm seas (3-4 ft or less?) and winds under 20 - not from the south. The window had shortened plus there was no repair date yet on the Donald Ross bridge. If we couldn't go through this bridge (maybe next week?), we'd have to leave the ICW much farther north - at least St. Lucy Inlet near Stuart. If they fixed the bridge, we could jump off-shore from Lake Worth and make Miami (<>60 nautical miles) in a long day. Without the bridge, we would have to do an overnight sail.
Today, tonight and tomorrow looked very nice for that trip so we changed plans, configured the boat for an ocean passage and motored out the St. Lucy Inlet. About an hour after leaving the mooring, we were motor-sailing south down the ocean toward Miami and The Keys.
Our plan was to get passed Miami around midnight and maybe go into Biscayne Bay and anchor for a few hours sleep before running tomorrow to a protected anchorage near Key Largo for the coming high winds tomorrow night.
It was a very nice ride with the winds helping a little on the big sails but not enough help to turn off the engine. Again, no pure sailing for this trip.
Laura and I napped during the day and she tried to sleep until about 10:30pm when I would go down for a snooze.
There were small fishing boats everywhere. It was warm and sunny with no wind or waves so everybody was out here, near shore, fishing. We needed to stay near shore to keep out of the gulf stream which slowed us down a bit during the day. At one point I was 1/4 mile from the beach trying to get out of the contrary currents slowing us down.
Saturday at sea
It was a warm, comfortable evening and night. Jon helped Laura keep watch for fishing boats while I slept about 3 hours. Around 3am we approached the Miami ship channel (Government Cut) and I took over while Laura and Jon tried to sleep a bit. No problems with the ship channel other than all the small fishing boats. I did notice a large cruise-ship coming in about 1/2 hour later.
Now we had another decision to make. If we entered Biscayne Bay and found a place to anchor later today for the high winds tomorrow, we might be there for 4 to 5 days waiting for weather to get to Marathon. If we kept going, I estimated a 5pm arrival in Marathon today which would get us to the dock before dark. The only problem was we had told the marina we would be in around January 25th - this was only the 21st. Would we have a place to stay?
We've spent 14 winters in the Florida Keys so know everything around. If the marina didn't have an open slip for us, we'd find some place safe to hang out. We (I?) decided to keep going down the Hawk Channel and not stay in Biscayne Bay.
Now, you might say I've been making decisions to travel in a hurry. We were not on a tight schedule and had plenty of time to stop in places to "smell the roses." But, as I always say, "We live and die by the weather." If we anchored near Key Largo to get protection from the big west and north winds the next few days, there was nowhere there to get off the boat. The local marinas are very private and hadn't let us even tie up the dinghy for a walk in the past. I was pretty sure the weather would be good today. Not too sure of the weather 4 - 6 days from now.
Laura and Jon took over the helm around 6am as we were approaching Key Largo from the ocean-side. Here was a beautiful ocean sunrise that Laura took a little while later
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Around 9am, Laura called Burdines marina in Marathon to see if our slip was available today. It was! That was great!
The winds gradually increased and we rolled out the jib then the mainsail. The boat was running nicely 5-6 knots without the engine so we shut it off and gave Gertrude a rest after 25 hours straight. Jon's first sail on Second Wind! I decided to pull up the mizzen (which we don't use often) and showed Jon how to actually hoist a sail. It was fun on a moving boat and only took us about twice as long as normal. Laura took this video a short time later.
The winds died 3 hours later and we had to run the engine again to keep our ETA before dark. Just after 5pm I brought the boat into Burdines, slip 2 and we tied up the boat. It felt great to be here!
We spent the next hour or so getting the docklines configured to my liking, cleaning up the cockpit and putting the boat to bed after 32 hours underway from Jensen Beach mooring field.
Jon took us out to dinner at the marina restaurant and we were a little giddy being ashore and enjoying good food, drinks and company. I think we all crashed around 9pm and we all slept well. I slept over 12 hours and felt great the next day.
Trip stats from Savannah -
511 nautical miles in 11 days ("sat" for 5 days, traveled for 6 days)
6 nights anchored
3 nights on mooring
2 overnight trips on the ocean
Marathon
Sunday Jon and I took a long walk to loosen up. Later in the afternoon, Jon volunteered to be hoisted up the mast to fix our steaming light that was not working. Rob (in Savannah) had gone up and found a burned out light bulb. I didn't have a spare but did purchase one before heading back down to Savannah a couple weeks ago. Jon make quick work of the small but important project.
We invited Sal and Ina (our longtime friends and neighbors) for cocktail hour and music at the tiki-hut. We also introduced ourselves to the neighbors on the other side and they joined us at the tiki-hut too. Jon had taken another walk and I wasn't sure where he was. Thinking about myself at 30, I figured he had stopped at one of the local pubs. Turns out he was at the nearest bait shop talking to the owner about fishing around here (he's much more of a fisherman than I was...). He joined us for the end of our get-together.
Monday Jon and I acid-washed the 1,600 miles of scum off the hull and scrubbed with soft-scub and a brush to get off most of the other marks and stains. The boat was looking good again!
Jon borrowed the dinghy to fish in Sister's Creek (the other side of Boot Key Harbor) and was a happy man tooling down the waterway with a fishing pole and bucket of shrimp
Tuesday we decided to meet our friends Lee and Linda in Key West for lunch. Jon had rented a car to drive to Tampa (his next stop for this trip) and walked the 4 miles to pick it up this morning. It was a fun time with Lee and Linda who we meet whenever we are in the same part of the country. They had just purchased a power boat and are planning on bring it back up the coast to Catskill Creek this summer. Then we'll see them more!
Sorry I didn't get a picture of the whole group but did manage to take this one before Jon inhaled the special at the Hog Fish Grill - the Hog Fish Sandwich.
After lunch Jon drove us back to Marathon and we stopped at Publix to take advantage of a car for groceries. We'll have tomorrow together then he's planning on leaving Thursday (unless he buys a boat and stays ....)
Thanks so much for following us and some of the great comments on Facebook. If you would like to read more about our 17 years cruising on Second Wind, we have 4 (less than $5) books available on Kindle starting from the beginning. You can check them out by clicking HERE.
We plan on heading back to Catskill again for the summer and will leave here sometime in April (unless we decide to do something else....).
p.s. I've finally had it with internet connectivity on the boat so ordered a Starlink yesterday. I'll let you know how it works out for us.
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