Monthly Archives: February 1999

Florida

The Florida Keys

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We’re still at Boot Key Harbor waiting for the arrival of our forwarded mail. We’ve got our route to the Bahamas planned and will head out after our mail and a favorable forecast arrives.

As it turned out, we were put back in the water a bit too soon after our haul out to re-bed the rudder post’s packing gland. The caulk hadn’t cured and we continued to have a small leak. The yard hauled us again and re-did the job, leaving us in the travel lift overnight (not a new experience; we got to do that in Lake Charles when the cutlass bearing was replaced) with heat lamps on the work to expedite the cure. We must have bonded well with the guys at the shipyard. Before we left, they brought us some shark and grouper fillets. John even gave us a recipe for the shark. We tried that out our first night here and it was GREAT! Claudia is fixing the grouper tonight with a recipe out of the Bahamas Cruising Guide.

While at Ft. Myers, I had a local autopilot guru, Heinz Buhrig of Heinz AutoPilots, Inc., come and evaluate our installation since we’d had it redone. Along with his blessing, he gave us the latest software upgrade (no charge because we’re still under warranty). Wednesday, after recalibrating its electronic compass and other sea trial settings, we were on our way to Key West, 102 nautical miles due south. Seas were 1-2 feet (good news), winds were calm, 5-10 knots (bad news) and were from the northwest (just wish there was more of it) so we motor-sailed, making very good time. At 0320 next morning, the northeast wind picked up just a bit so we shut down the engine to slow down enough to make landfall after sunup. It is still so cool to watch the GPS (Millie) and autopilot (Otto) work their magic, bringing us up to the northwest channel buoy waypoint and then rounding it to make our next waypoint.

As mentioned previously, since we arrived at Key West so early, since we’ve “done” Key West before and since the anchorage didn’t look that protected, we decided to continue on to Boot Key. I programmed in the new waypoints and we changed course. We never touched the wheel until we got to the Boot Key Harbor channel markers (156 nautical miles, 11 waypoints later).

Marathon_Maalahi1Maybe it’s because we’ve been through so much just getting here, but this place seems to have been maligned. We’ve read and heard how over-crowded and polluted this place is but we haven’t seen that. The cruising boats far, far outnumber the derelict boats. We found a great spot to anchor and the water is the best we’ve parked in yet. By the way, the weather is perfect. While dinghy-ing around, we found some manatees. Took pictures, petted them and gave them fresh water to drink. Never did that in Kemah! We paid $15 to a local marina (Sombrero Marina) for a week’s dinghy docking privileges which includes trash disposal, bike racks and receiving mail. It’s walking distance to Publix grocery, K-Mart, Eckerd’s and Home Depot. We’ll be ready to go when our mail gets here, but it’s a nice place to have to wait for it!

See you in the Bahamas,

David and Claudia

Florida

Now We’re Cruising

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Greetings from Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Florida. We left Ft. Myers Beach Wednesday morning and headed for Key West. We arrived at Key West about 7:45 AM and decided we didn’t need anything in Key West so we changed course and made it on down to Marathon. We secured the anchors at 3:30 PM this afternoon in Boot Key Harbor. We’ll wait for good weather and head to the Bahamas from here. More later, after I’ve had some sleep and can compose the details.

David and Claudia

Florida

Dry Tortugas

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Well, I thought we’d be sending this message from the Dry Tortugas, but once again we’ve maintained our flexibility and rolled with the punches. When we left Sarasota we headed down to Venice which was only 15 miles away. The offshore forecast had seas 5-7 feet so we decided to give it one more day and we continued down to Boca Grande. We anchored off of Useppa Island in Pine Island Sound (thanks for the tip, Raf). When we arrived, there was a sailboat hard aground trying to kedge off. Another cruiser had gone over in their dingy to help but to no avail, so we lowered ours and headed over to lend a hand. They were very glad to see our 15hp which did help make the difference and they were soon back in deep water. Since we had the dingy down we took off after the many dolphins swimming and feeding in the area. This appears to be a very beautiful cruising area and I’m sure we saw just a glimpse of what exists. I’d recommend a boat with a much shallower draft and no masts to really cruise Florida’s west coast.

Anyway, we were off early the next morning, another perfect sailing day, heading for the Dry Tortugas 122 miles to the SSE. We were 20 miles closer to our destination when I decided it would be a good idea to inspect the autopilot’s belowdecks behavior since it’s recent refit (and due to the fact that it makes noises that we normally don’t hear with the engine running). Otto was doing a marvelous job, but I noticed the bolts on the steering quadrant had loosened up. After retightening them my attention became focused on the leak around the base of the rudder post’s packing gland. It had been there awhile but was so small that I had hoped to deal with it at our next haulout in another year or two. However, watching the small amount of water come in with every stroke of the autopilot’s ram and the realization that we were heading to relatively remote areas and that real, nominally priced boat facilities were only 20 miles away, we decided to abort and changed course to San Carlos Bay and the anchorage and shipyards at Ft. Myers Beach.

FtMyers_RaisingWaterline6The yard we selected is Gulf Marine Ways and Supply. Our boat looked tiny sitting in their 150 ton travel lift! We took advantage of this yard time and did what many cruisers eventually must do … raise the waterline. Lee, the yard manager, even gave me the bottom paint and brushes to do the job! The next morning I dismantled the autopilot ram and tiller arm and the steering quadrant (I’ve done this way too many times now) and John quickly unbolted the packing gland and freed it from the hull. He took that over to the shop to clean it up while I cleaned the inside of the hull for its rebedding. There are 4 bolts that hold it in place but I found 5 bolt holes plus an additional large void that had simply been filled with chalk which in almost 20 years had become quite saturated and no longer kept the water out. We filled the voids with epoxy and rebedded and repacked the packing gland.

We’re back in the water and are making new plans to leave here and head straight for Key West, 102 miles due south, but as usual with us, don’t hold your breath. We’ll continue to go with the flow and enjoy wherever it is we wake up to each day and just maybe, someday, that will be somewhere we actually planned to be.

Later,

David and Claudia

Florida

Moving Again

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I am happy to report that we’re finally under way again. We are currently at anchor with a beautiful view of downtown Sarasota. Sarasota_Anchorage1Tomorrow or the next day we’ll head offshore from Venice to the Dry Tortugas (weather forecast permitting). We finally got to use the water maker today and it works great, filling a 6 gal jug in 1 hour. With warmer seawater, it should make 8-9 gal/hr. This past Friday we enjoyed a visit from a friend we met while in Gulfport. Raf and Linda have cruised Florida’s west coast and the Bahamas and have given us a lot of good information. Raf was in the Tampa area for business and came by for a visit.

We haven’t heard from some of you in a very long time (you know who you are). We’d sure like an update or a howdy from you sometime. That’s all for now, keep in touch.

David and Claudia