Whether you go or Weather you don't

As many of you know, Tim and I have been working on writing a book together. We're writing the book we wish we had had in our hands before we bought Kintala. As I've been working on it this past week, one thing that has hit home hard is this issue of the weather. I can't say it loud enough. I can't say it often enough. If you're going to go cruising, your life will be ruled by the weather. So get comfortable with it, learn to read it, surround yourself with all sorts of ways to monitor and predict it, and fill your Kindle up with lots of books for when it laughs at you.

We've been stuck in No-Name Harbor for 13 days now waiting on the weather. We had wanted to sail down to Key Largo or at least Elliot Key before we take a mooring ball at Dinner Key for the month of December. It's a longish day's sail down there so we would really need 3-4 days to sail down, spend some time snorkeling, and sail back. The longest window we've had in the 13 days since we got here was 1-1/2 days. Both Elliot Key and Key Largo are only good if the wind is from the East. They are too exposed for any other direction. The forecasters had predicted 8 + days of N-NE winds at 15-20 but suddenly it changed to East so we thought, "OK now we can go!". We got the boat ready to leave the following morning and, on one of my middle-of-the-night bathroom visits I peeked out the porthole only to discover we were faced due South. South. Exactly where we wanted to sail. Having no interest in motoring 8 hours to Key Largo we decided to stay put. Weather gods rule. Now where is my Kindle???