Beautiful Marathon Winter
We had arrived in Marathon on January 21st and had a great 2+ months at Burdines Waterfront Marina. The weather was awesome without the cold fronts coming down every couple weeks like some past Winters.
Most of our friends here have moved on to other pastures and only Sal and Ina (our dock neighbors) were here to share the fun. Sal plays a wonderful harmonica so on the windy evenings (wind keeps away the no-see-ums) we got together under the tiki-hut for happy-hour and I played guitar, flute and Uke with Sal's harmonica and Laura singing along to many Caribbean or folk songs on our list.
I have several videos posted on our YouTube channel from previous years and we took this one for our friend Joyce who loved the song.
One big project for my Winter was installing StarLink internet on the boat. The marina Wi-Fi was very sporadic and we had maxed out our Hot-Spot on both phones for the ride down here. Having StarLink made a huge difference in our lives. No more wondering where our evening streaming TV was going to come from or how long it was going to work.
It was a little inconvenient not to have a car but we traded Sal and Ina good Wi-Fi (from our StarLink) for car rides to grocery and a few other places. It was a great trade for us since it didn't cost us any more then using StarLink ourselves. StarLink is advertised as being able to support (5) hi-def video downloads at once - I didn't try it but it had no problem running us and two neighbor boats.
I worked several smaller boat jobs including finally fixing our engine antifreeze leak. When Laura's nephew Jon was here we isolated the leak to one hose connection on the heat-exchanger. When I took the hose off, I could see the fitting on the heat-exchanger had corroded to where the clamp would no longer seal the hose. Here is the nipple after I cleaned it up with a wire wheel. The big indent I circled in red. This was probably caused from Galvanic Corrosion which occurs in salt water from dissimilar metals. Like if you have stainless steel and aluminum near each other in salt water, they make a little electrical current which corrodes one of them. Sacrificial zincs on boats help to prevent this. I'm simplifying here but if you want to know more, there are lots of articles on the Internet about Galvanic Corrosion.
The best method to fix this would have been remove the heat-exchanger and take it to a welder. They would cut off the nipple and weld on a new one (from a piece of aluminum pipe the right size) and I would put it all back together. I've done this in the past and it takes several days of work to take everything apart and put it back together. I basically have to take apart the whole right side of the engine.
I thought instead I'd try something less complicated. I had used JB Weld in the past to fix a few other problems and, while researching their offerings for aluminum, I found their two-part JB Marine. It seemed perfect. Laura picked me up a couple tubes from Home Depot after one of her Publix runs and I went to work. The stuff was not as hard as the normal JB Weld and more like toothpaste consistency. But it went on pretty well and I was able to shape it with a small piece of wood before it cured. Then, only 3 hours later I could sand it round until my hands got really sore. Here was the finished product. The JB Marine is so white it kinda washes out the picture but you can see how much more round the nipple is now.
After putting everything back together I still had a small leak that was fixed by just tightening the clamp with a small wrench. Good news is over 20 hours of engine time later it still doesn't leak.
Laura's granddaughter Kara came to visit and had a fun time snorkeling and beach combing. Here she was just coming back to the boat after nice snorkeling at Sombrero Reef. Lara kept a close eye on her and is over to the right.
Laura's long-time friend Catherine also visited. She and Laura had a great time reminiscing, beach combing and sightseeing a bit since Catherine had rented a car and we had wheels for a week. Here they are on the bow of Second Wind on Catherine's first ever sail. We had a beautiful day on the water with Catherine, Sal and Ina plus Jon and Margaret (s/v Quicksilver) joined us. Some how, we never took a picture of everyone together. Bummer.
We had a little going away party with Sal and Ina at Porky's Restaurant. Sal was playing harmonica with "Donny" so Laura and I walked up there for dinner and sat with Ina. Here we are full and happy after dinner and the band quit for the night.
I love this picture because it's so colorful. I guess I didn't get the memo and wore a white shirt...
We had planned on leaving around April 1st and it turned out that April 2nd started several days of nice travel weather for us. We had been taking advantage of food sales at Publix so had our freezers mostly stocked. Just a trip for fresh groceries and a few "before we leave" boat jobs for me like changing fuel filters, etc.
Saturday (April 1st), in the late afternoon, we moved the boat to the fuel dock to fill up our tank and make an easy get away in the morning. We were ready!
Sunday, April 2nd (Day 1)
Sunny with light SE winds. Water temp 83. Morning temp 77.
71nm today
I had topped off our water tank last night and put away our hose. That was the last piece before leaving. The alarm was set for 6:15am and we were up right away when it went off. I hadn't slept well (never do the night before we leave) but was energized to get going.
We were supposed to be off the fuel dock before they opened at 7am and we cast off our lines at 6:55. Here we go! Laura took this picture of the Burdines fuel dock behind us just before we left. Calm and pretty.
We motored out of the harbor and turned south (into the wind) to get around Boot Key. As we turned east to head up the Hawk Channel the winds moved to the beam so we rolled out the jib and main. The light winds added about 1 knot to our speed.
This was about 1/2 hour after sunrise. Very pretty day on the water.
As we approached Islamorada a few hours later, the SE swell went away and the waters became so clear you could see the bottom clearly 30 feet away. Laura went out on the bow seat and enjoyed the view for quite a while.
I knew we had 2-3 days of nice travel weather and my goal was to get passed the 40 bridges from Miami to Stuart by traveling out on the ocean. Since the winds were less than 10 knots, we decided to anchor near Elliot Key. This is a pretty anchorage but wide open to the east and south. This evening it was fine and we dropped the anchor on a sandy bottom just at 7pm. A long 12-hour day for us to make the start of our trip. But, it would set us up nicely for the longer run to Lake Worth on the ocean tomorrow.
Monday, April 3rd (Day 2)
Sunny with light winds. Sea temp 80. Morning temp 75
89nm today - 160 total miles
It was a very warm night in the boat. Even after running the air-conditioner for a couple hours off the Honda generator, our cabin was 83 degrees. We had everything open but the winds subsided after dark and we only had a fan blowing fresh (warm) air on us from outside. Around midnight, I moved to the sofa under the open hatches which was much cooler and slept for several hours. I needed it after not sleeping much the previous night.
I had the alarm set for 6am because I wanted to change out the house water pump which was giving us problems yesterday. Maybe because of the 120 degree engine room all day, the pump overheated several times and we didn't have any water coming out of the faucets or shower. After turning off the pump for a couple hours, it came back but eventually quit again. I didn't change it last night because I wanted the engine room to cool down first.
We had a spare pump (I've changed several of these in the past 17 years) and it's about the easiest thing to change on the whole boat. It's very accessible - just inside the engine room door - and the hose fittings just unplug from the old pump and plug into the new one. I had the old pump removed and the new pump installed in less than 1/2 hour. By 7am we were hauling up the anchor and getting underway.
This was the sunrise a few minutes later.
It was another beautiful morning on the water. We ran up the Hawk Channel about 5 miles until there was a clear opening over the reef to the ocean. I turned slightly eastward and we motor-sailed onto a calm North Atlantic.
My plan was to head away from the coast until we were in the Gulf Stream. This would add 2-3 knots to our speed - pushing us north - and enable us to make the almost 100 nautical miles to Lake Worth from where we started. After only getting to about 3 miles off-shore we started picking up speed from 6 knots... 7 knots... 8 knots... I love this part of the trip! It seems like we are zooming and the miles really count down fast on the GPS to our destination.
A couple hours later we were off Miami and Laura got a great picture of the city. Notice how calm it was.
We never had enough wind to help much with our speed but we averaged 8.5 to 9 knots all day on a fairly calm ocean. Plus the 6-7 knot wind in our big sails really stopped most of the boat movement on the occasional swell. I expected to see more sailboats heading north. Didn't see another sailboat all day until almost to Lake Worth.
We entered the Lake Worth channel just after a huge cruise ship came out. I wouldn't want to meet him in the narrow channel! It worked out we had the tidal current helping us and zoomed into the anchorage just south of the channel.
I think we've anchored here 5 or 6 times before and it's always a challenge. Boats are everywhere with some on moorings. This means they swing differently from anchored boats so you don't want to anchor too close to them. After 10-15 minutes of hunting around I found an open spot near the channel and we dropped the hook at 6pm. An hour less running than yesterday and almost 20 miles farther. I love the Gulf Stream!
There was a breeze this evening as the winds picked up from the SE an hour or so before we entered the channel. It gave us lots of fresh air through the boat with the open hatches on our cabin top. I decided to close the other windows so we were sucking in air from the bow and letting it back out from our cabin. This should cool everything down quickly, right.
Don't forget we had been running the engine for 11 hours and the engine room was almost 120 degrees. That's a lot of heat to dissipate when the rest of the boat is pretty warm already. I opened all the engine room doors to let the heat out. This would make our bedroom much warmer now but I hoped the wind through the boat would cool it later on.
That cooled down the engine room nicely to low 90s so I closed it up and tried to cool down our cabin which was now 87 degrees. After an hour or so it came down to 83 and now it was almost bedtime. It was too warm for me to get comfortable (again!) so I slept most of the night on the sofa. After midnight the winds died down (as predicted) which didn't help us cool the boat.
Tuesday, April 4th (Day 3)
Sunny with a few storms around. Water temp 80. Outside temp 78
49nm today - 209 total trip miles
It was another pretty morning with light winds. We slept in a bit because we had a much shorter run today and pulled up our anchor at 8am. The inlet was choppy as we pushed against the incoming tide and tried to stay away from the huge powerboat wakes. The waves in the inlets are usually not typical of the ocean as they are greatly affected by wind against current. I wasn't too worried as we bucked and buried the bow a few times because I figured the ocean would match the prediction like it did yesterday - 2 foot seas with a 6-8 second period. Just a nice push from the stern. Boy was I wrong....
We only had about 25nm on the ocean today if we took the short-cut and came in St. Lucie inlet. I hoped we would stay out a little longer and do the 40nm to Ft Pierce so we'd be anchored a little earlier.
After turning north out of the Lake Worth inlet, the ride wasn't very nice. We had a 2-3 foot swell on the starboard quarter with almost no wind to help with the sails. This makes the boat to a cork-screw motion up, down and around the waves every couple minutes. I decided to pull out 3/4 mainsail and sheet it in tight to cut down the roll. It did make the ride tolerable and when just a couple miles off-shore we picked up 2 knots of current from the Gulf Stream. Nice! Only about 3+ hours to St. Lucie inlet.
About an hour after we turned north, we saw a few dark clouds over land to the west and another off-shore to our east. Laura checked with Weather Underground (on her iPhone) and it said they were go away in an hour or so. No worries...
We had taken down most of our side windows in the cockpit a couple days ago because of the heat. Our plan is we could also put them back up in a few minutes if the weather was bad but the forecast was dry for the next several days.
An hour later it started raining lightly and the wind picked up from the north clocking east. Because I had a little sail out I turned the boat to stay pointed into the wind which gradually increased to almost 20 knots. A few minutes later we were in a deluge and pointed back to Lake Worth. Crap! I didn't want to go back because these storms were going away, right?
1/2 hour later, here was the weather radar. We are at the blue dot.
Weather Underground now showed the storms moving slowly west. We were doing about 8 knots north so I figured we could just keep going and gradually get away from them. The winds had died but it was still raining hard. I turned the boat back to the north. As we were moving cushions around, Laura accidentally pops my $200 sunglasses out onto the deck. I run out on the deck to get them before they wash into the water. Now I'm soaked and sitting in the rain running the boat. Oh well. It was a warm day and I couldn't get any wetter. We put up our sunscreen canvas for a little protection but it doesn't help much.
The storms followed us north and rained on us for the next 2 hours. I don't know how much rain we got but I later had about 5 inches in the dinghy because of a clogged drain. It was raining hard! It always seemed to be brighter on the horizon but raining on us. One of those days...
Even after the rain stopped 2 hours later, the predicted SE wind never showed. We motored on a rolly ocean for another hour before coming in to St. Lucie inlet and back to the ICW for the first time this trip. In the afternoon we finally had a little help from the winds as we motored down to Ft. Pierce so pulled out the jib for a little increased speed and lowered the engine RPM.
We turned off the ICW to the east and anchored way down past the Condos at 4pm. Time to dry out! We looked like a Chinese Laundry with all our clothes and towels hanging on the rail.
Our first cocktail hour in 4 days! The evening was quiet and pretty as we sipped our drinks , had a few munchies and talked about future plans. I grilled a pork loin for dinner. Laura has been playing with mac 'n cheese as our friend Bobby gave us a couple lobsters for a going away present at Burdines. We had been talking about Lobster Mac 'n Cheese for a few days but we didn't want to ruin the lobster if the cheese wasn't right. I gotta tell ya, it was an award winning dish. I grilled one of the lobster tails with the Loin and she added it to the Mac 'n Cheese she had fixed last night for a test. Yumm!
Since we were anchored earlier than the past few days, I was hopeful we could cool down the engine room and boat to make sleeping easier. It actually worked pretty well and our bedroom was down below 80 degrees for the first time in 4 days. I slept good in my bed!
Wednesday, April 5th (Day 4)
Sunny and warm. Light east winds. Water temp 80. Outside temp 73
15nm today - 224 total trip miles
It was much cooler on the boat last night and I slept a lot better. The temps were a little cooler outside (went to low 70s), the SE wind stayed around to keep air moving through the boat, and we had anchored a little earlier to help cool down the engine room.
We've been discussing the past few days what our plans were for this trip north and specifically the next couple weeks. We eventually need to be back in Catskill around May 21st or 22nd for Laura's flight out to attend her grandson Isaac's high school graduation. That means planning for around May 1st to be in Chesapeake Bay which is 980 ICW miles from here. We had a few days to hang out but had to be a little careful about having too many non-travel days.
Instead of hanging around Stuart (one of my favorite places), we decided to run to Vero Beach and see our friends Dean and Sue for a couple days. That meant today was only a couple hours on the water so we slept in a bit and stopped at Ft. Pierce City Marina for diesel and water. By 10am we had full tanks and were waiting for the Ft. Pierce North Bridge. This was our first ICW bridge of the trip. If the weather was nastier and we had come in Ft. Lauderdale (like 2 years ago), we would have had about 30 more bridges that had to open for us.
Once through the bridge we motor-sailed with nice SE winds the next 2 hours to Vero Beach. Actually, the winds were nice enough (and we were not in a hurry) that we could have shut down the engine and just jib-sailed this section. But, our batteries were a little low so I wanted to charge them off the engine alternator for a while so kept the engine running at low RPM. If the Vero Beach marina didn't have a mooring for us, we could have tied up to Dean and Sue. I didn't want to bug them with my generator running to charge batteries later.
Jib sailing the calm ICW to Vero Beach -
Turns out the marina did have a mooring for us. Laura did her normal great job of tying 2 lines to the mooring ball and we shut down everything after a long 3-hour travel day.
We put up our solar panels for the first time this trip (running the engine all the time we don't need them) and settled into mooring life. Dean and Sue stopped by in their dinghy a short time later and we had a nice reunion for an hour or so. We invited them for dinner but they later declined after Dean found some boat problems he needed to work on.
I promised Laura beach time here so tomorrow we will dinghy to a spot we found a few years ago to pull the dinghy on-shore that's only 1/4 mile from the ocean beach. Dean said there was happy-hour at the marina tomorrow so I'll bring my guitar for a little music. That will be nice.
Plans.... always up in the air. We've paid for 2 night here and could tentatively stay longer. I've been watching the weather and if we leave on Friday, we need a plan to hunker-down somewhere by Sunday for big north winds and thunderstorms later in the day. Then Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are rain, storms and high east winds. We could stay here though all that (8 or 9 days) or use the nice weather Friday and Saturday to get to Titusville and maybe stay on a mooring there for the crappy weather next week. Don't know if they would even have a mooring available - they are first-come, first-served. What to do....
I'll let you know what we decide...
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