On the move again

Our last night in Middle River -Perfect!

Kintala unhooked from Middle River this morning and now sits in South Lake, about 11 nm … well … south. Including a stop to get diesel, gas, water, and a pump out at the Hollywood Marina, it took about eight hours to do the trip. And yes, that is an average speed of less than 1.5 nautical miles in a hour.

Kintala's happy engine speed is just wrong for making the staggered bridge timing along the ICW. We could flog the old WesterBeast, would still miss the next bridge opening by a couple of minutes, and end up doing circles while we wait. Or we could let the Beast rumble slow and easy and plod our way through. I trust not the Beast, so plodding is the choice when sailing is impossible.

We came down here because we are convinced we like this place. Not sure why. Three times we have been here in two different boats. Three times we have run aground hard enough to stop the hulls dead in the water. Today we were creeping along showing 20 feet under the keel and looking for a little less water in which to pitch the hook when “THUMP”, the boat twisted to starboard and stopped in its tracks. Off the starboard side of the boat I could not reach the bottom with our long boat hook. Off the port side we could see the bottom in about 5 feet worth of water. Clearly the powers-that-be dredged vertical cliffs in the bottom, underwater topography that is not reflected on the charts I updated just yesterday afternoon.

Worse, we picked a Friday afternoon to anchor a bare hundred yards or so off the ICW. Stupid power boater tricks have already started and some of the wake hits have been impressive. Even better the weekend is just getting started...yay! Still, the sunset is spectacular, the temperature perfect and, having run the engine most of the day, there was hot water for a long shower. Which I needed since this morning started with scrubbing about 50 feet of green snot out of the anchor chain. I smelled like a dead swamp thing.

I don't know that South Lake is still on my favorites list. Even if we don't come this way again I am glad to be here tonight because it means Kintala is back among the world of “boats that move”. Last night we worked well into the evening scraping barnacles off the bottom of the dink and this morning was the swamp snot. Even in a place as nice as Middle River sitting too long is bad for the constitution of boats, dinks and crews. We will not be tempted to stay that long in South Lake.