Winter in Marathon Overview -
We had a very nice 4+ months at Burdines Marina in Marathon. Weather was not as nice as some years (that's weather...) but we enjoyed the warm days. As a general overview the marina has gone down-hill since the long time manager (Randy) left a couple years ago. Without getting into specifics, folks at the marina are basically free to do whatever they want. People being people, this sometimes does not work out well for others. 'nuff said.
Laura left to visit family for a week in January and I worked on my boat project list. First item was to send our Standard Horizon Marine VHF radio out for repair. The screen had become mostly unreadable (from being in the Sun?) and I worked with the support team to schedule a fix. They were very helpful and I sent off the radio for a fixed-fee $75 repair (if they could fix it).
First, I had to remove the radio by taking the wooden cabinet apart. This was not an easy task since Laura and I had thoroughly bedded the wooden instrument panel when we installed the radio several years ago. I ended up taking the panel apart in pieces to get everything out. In this picture we are gluing all the wood parts back together after I destroyed them. In the upper left, you see the old panel in front of the hole where it was. On the table in the middle, is the bottom piece being held together with clamps while the glue dries (it was in 4 pieces). Believe it or not, it all went back together fine when we received the fixed radio.
Standard Horizon support did a great job and I had the radio back in a few weeks. It looked and worked great. I was happy with $75 plus shipping instead of $500 for a new radio. Here is the repaired radio re-wired into the fixed cabinet.
When Laura returned, we had a fun happy-hour at the neighboring Castaway's restaurant. We invited our neighbors Sal and Ina plus Pam and Russ who were staying at the marina 1/4 mile away. When we walked in, we were surprised to see our old dockmates Rich and Marcy who sold their boat 2 years ago. They rented a condo for a few months in Marathon and we would get together several times over the winter. Here is the good looking group! I'll let you try and figure out who everyone is. Note that some of the couples are not sitting together.
Next project was to fix a leak on our propane stove. One of the burners was only working a little and it had flared up a couple times. I took the cover off and inspected the propane lines underneath. It looks like a bit of a maze, right?
I sprayed some soapy water around and found a leak near one of the burners. Looking through my spare parts, I had a new burner so spent an hour or so to replace it. It seemed to fix the problem with the low burner and the leak was gone. Nice!
Mid January we invited our friends Jon and Margarete to join us for dinner at the marina restaurant. Russ and Pam plus Sal and Ina also joined us.
In February, we decided to replace two of the lifeline stanchions on the starboard side. Our lifelines stanchions (like our boat) are over 40 years old and they are very tough to clean and keep from staining the decks with rust. We had replaced the two on the port side before leaving Catskill and I had ordered extras for the starboard side. This is not a tough repair but the screw holds are different (of course) so I had to remove the old stanchions then plug the holes with epoxy. After drying, we repainted the entire toe-rail before installing the the new stanchions on top of the new paint.
Here is what the old stanchion looked like -
Laura helping to paint the toe-rail. You can see that we are missing two stanchions in this picture. We haven't installed the new ones yet.
The new stanchion and paint.
In March, I finally decided to make our Starlink dish go flat and stay there instead of it moving around when the boat moved. I've been procrastinating on this for several months and had even ordered all the tools and parts. This hasn't been a priority because it's only a problem when we are anchored and the boat swings the tilted dish away from the satellites. Making it go flat then disconnecting the motor wires has proven to be a good fix by many other users.
After an hour of cycling power on and off to get the dish stopped where I wanted it, I then CAREFULLY drilled a 1" hole in the bottom (high pucker-factor here), I was able to disconnect the motor wires and put a weatherproof plug back into the hole. It came out pretty good! The flat Starlink antenna is the white rectangular thing next to the BBQ grill.
I don't want it to seem like all I did was work on the boat all Winter. We relaxed a lot, walked, got together with friends many times and enjoyed the (mostly) quiet marina. The temps were a little cold in January so the water didn't really warm up until March for swimming and snorkeling.
By the end of March, I had performed my usual pre-cruise engine maintenance, we had stocked up the boat fridge and freezers, and were ready to head north. Here we are heading out for a sea-trial a few days before leaving. We wanted to check out everything before our big trip north. Thanks Pam for the nice picture!
Thursday, April 4th - Marathon to Key Largo (Day 1)
Cloudy with rain showers. Winds out of the NW @ 10-20. 72 degrees, Water temp 76
71nm today
We had said good-byes to our friends and the marina workers so now only needed decent travel weather. A big front came through starting at 5am which clocked the winds to the NW around 7:30am. That was my indicator for leaving the dock. Here was the weather RADAR shortly after 7am. We were at the blue dot.
By 8:20am we had everything running and brought in our last dock lines. We were off!
After motoring around Boot Key and turning east, we pulled out the big sails. Winds were 10-15 so pretty nice.
Through the morning the winds picked up and we had a few showers. By 1pm we had the engine off and sailing with reefed sails plus a good heel angle. Time to get our sea-legs....
Our sailing only lasted 1 1/2 hours until the wind died and our speed dropped to 4 knots. My goal today was to get passed Key Largo, through Anglefish Creek and anchor in Card Sound by the northern shore. That would protect us from the north winds tonight.
It was nice to be back on the water even through the weather wasn't sunny and warm. But the day was uneventful (good for a first day out) and a little after 7pm we had motored through Anglefish Creek and were greeted by this colorful sunset.
Just before the Sun set we dropped anchor near Long Arseniker Island. Laura reheated some frozen spaghetti sauce and we had a quiet dinner on the hook to a pretty after-sunset glow in the sky.
After scrutinizing the weather forecasts up the coast, our plans are to motor up to Key Biscayne tomorrow and anchor near the yacht club. This should give us good protection from the north winds. The up the coast on Saturday - hopefully to at least Lake Worth. Wish us luck!
Oh geez. Just remembered tomorrow starts a beautiful weekend for the part-time boaters. Everybody that knows anyone with a boat will be out on the water. Oh well.... we'll try to give 'em room when they stop right in front of us to take a picture or send a text.
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