Keep going

Eagle Too anchored at Rodriguez

In the last 5 days Kintala has covered 230 nm and is now anchored off Eau Gallie, tucked in behind a bridge causeway and riding out a storm. There are wind gusts reported to 60+ and large hail but it looks like we are going to miss the worst of it. After leaving Marathon, friends Robert and Rhonda were waiting for us at Rodriguez Key. It has been two years since the last time we shared space with Eagle Two and it was fun to meet up like that. They are headed back to the Florida Panhandle area for the summer but maybe we will cross wakes again next fall.

The last of the pretty Keys water

After Rodriguez, the hook dropped into the bottom of Biscayne Bay just outside of No Name Harbor. We thought about going in, but decided it would be impossible to leave after just a night’s stay, and we wanted to keep going. We should have gone inside anyway. Though Biscayne Bay is a favored place for us, the weekend power boat shenanigans were a little too much. They kept blasting between the anchored boats like we made up the board of some deranged pin ball game. Even the local Sheriff slashed his way past at full song waving as he launched a sizable wake our way. I would have taken a video of him but that seemed like an excellent way to provoke a boarding. Never provoke anyone who has a gun and a badge, no matter what silly thing they might be doing.

Note to self: weekend time at No Name needs to be spent inside No Name. Inside is fun. Outside is just ugly.





From there it was an overnight run to Vero Beech. It didn’t start out as a run to Vero Beech, but we caught a ride from the Gulf Stream and it was just too good to get off. In the wee hours of the morning just off the inlet to Lake Worth (the original destination) Kintala was blasting along at better than 10 knots on a near idling WesterBeast and a jib working with a 10 - 15 knot wind. That is nose bleed territory for an old sailboat.

Sunset underway

Sunrise after a pretty decent overnight sail

Le Capitan deep in thought

The Ft. Pierce Inlet

Vero is another favored place, but not so much this time of the year. It was brutal hot, with the no-see-em’s flowing though our screens with every little wind gust. The first night’s sleep was lost to the watches of a short handed crew doing a night run close to shore and in busy waters. The second night’s sleep went to bug bites and burning skin. There was no hesitation about bailing out of Vero, sleep or no.

The WesterBeast has been puking a little bit of oil here and there and Deb has been keeping a close watch on it. We have cleaned off this place and that, trying to decide exactly where the breach was, but such discoveries are no easy task on a tired, dirty old engine. After the 25 hour run, the level amount of oil making a mess was getting on the border of being alarming, slowing her engine check this morning as she looked for hints of the source. The worst drip on the engine blankets finally gave a solid clue and she directed my gaze toward the adapter plate for our remote engine oil filter. It didn’t really look wet, but it is hard to see…and even harder to reach. I managed to get a wrench on the thing with a wrist twisted into angles slightly unnatural and more than slightly painful. A bit of pressure and it moved far easier than it should have. YES!

More twisting and unnaturalness got some torque applied, enough for nearly 3/4s of a turn. With the plate now snug, safety wire was twisted into place to make sure it stays that way. Minutes later Vero was happily abandoned.

A seven hour motor / sail run got us here. The Beast is as clean and dry as it has ever been, the storms are almost over, and we are closing in on Blowin' in the Wind.

Tomorrow we keep on going.

Storm rolling in to the Eau Gallie Southwest anchorage

0400 on a wind blown anchorage

Kintala motored into Boot Harbor Key two days later than planned which, for a sailboat, is right on time - even a bit early. Winds and waves kept us pinned in Rodriguez Key longer than anticipated, with the third night being a bit of a trial. That afternoon the winds had actually died away, though it was too late to try and make Boot Key. I started looking forward to a good night's sleep and an easy motor / motor sail the next day. But as the sun went down the winds came back, moaning through the rigging, stirring up the bay, setting the v-berth to pitching and rocking once again, and blowing away any chance of sleep for the third night in a row. By 0400 in the morning jumping overboard and swimming to shore started to sound like the best idea I had had in a while.

Sunrise leaving Rodriguez Key

Exhausted, sleep finely won out just as the sun came up. The wind was still hovering around 20 knots but it would be a near beam reach in a following sea. Deb went about doing the engine checks and prepping the inside of the boat, letting me sleep as long as she could. But around 0730 she had to roust me out, not an enviable task. Bleary eyed and fuzzy headed, I stumbled out to the still rocking and pitching deck to get the boat ready to make sail - a task repeated so many times over the last few years that I can, as the saying goes, “Do it in my sleep.” Getting the anchor up was a different song and dance, given we were riding hard against the snubber and pitching just short of putting the bow under water. Still, all fingers and toes were accounted for when the anchor was up, pinned, cabled and tied.



A few minutes later the bow swung to the south west, the point of sail being just forward of a beam reach. The big jib spun out cleanly, the Beast was given a break, and ye ol' Tartan slipped through the waves at better than 5 knots. Staying on board at 0400 started to seem like a good choice after all.

A couple of hours later the speed slipped with the winds finally starting to fade a little. The main sail went up, still with two reefs, enough to bring the speed back up as well. A little later the wind faded some more and we shook the reefs out of the main. A little later still, a little less wind, we added the staysail to the mix. For the first time in a while, Kintala was making way flying everything. It was grand; staying on board at 0400 was definitely the better choice.

Of course it couldn't last. About half way through the 50 mile run the white caps disappeared off the waves, the seas flattened out, the speed fell off, and the sails started to slat. As nice as the sail had been, it was equally as nice when the jib and staysail rolled in smooth and clean, nary a drama or a snag. We left the main up mostly for show, and motored along.

An hour or so before dark we raised the entry to Boot Key Harbor. The main sail dropped into the lazy jacks with a pretty good flake, making it 3 for 3 in sail management for the day. That sounds like a minor thing, but it offers some hope that our recent run of difficulties doing that thing most basic to sailing, i.e. putting up and taking down sails, may be in the past. Some hardware changes and using different techniques have, hopefully, put those things behind us. One of the projects for this summer will be to change some of the running rigging and modify the lazy jacks, with the intent of excising the last of our sail handling gremlins.

The moorings at Boot Key Harbor

Since we were planning to take a bus down to Key West for a day, and the winds are forecast to be in the 30s, we called the marina on the off chance they might have a mooring available. Amazingly enough they did, even one with an easy approach. We motored in and picked up the ball just like we knew what we were doing.

This is the first time we have been on a mooring in Boot Key, and the difference between being anchored out while here and now on a ball has been a bit of a surprise. With easy access to the marina being included in the fee, we head to shore every day. With all the boats around us also on a mooring ball, when the wind blows in the middle of the night we worry less about other boats getting free and running us down. Inside the harbor as we are, even with the winds howling, the ride is calm and sleep easy to find.

The cost isn't insignificant. In addition to the mooring fee itself, easy access to land means easy access to restaurants and ground transportation. We have spent nearly as much money “eating out” in the days we have been here as we did on food the entire time we were in the islands. For budget cruisers that is startling.

We have made some new friends who stopped by the boat because they saw “St. Louis, MO” on our stern. But the fact is, being on shore everyday, makes it so much easier to make connections to the tribe. Casual conversations are normally not so casual between boats that are anchored. There is a kind of perceived aura around an anchored boat, one that – often quite properly – suggests “strangers not welcome." Sitting in the cockpit and waving or nodding at those who pass by helps, but there is no getting around that deep in most cruiser souls is a streak of “loner”. We are different than those who live on land, and outnumbered millions and millions to one. We are loners almost by definition.

Yet, on the other hand, I have softened my inner, puritan voice, the one that whispers that true cruisers anchor out whenever they can. I don't know that I'll ever be of the group that goes from dock to dock, but that may be more an economic necessity than a choice of lifestyle. When I can spare the dollars, a mooring ball or occasional dock visit is a different kind of cruising, with pluses (and minuses) of its own.

One of which might be fewer times of thinking of jumping off the boat at 0400 on a windy morning.

 One of the anchorages in Key West

 A public beach in Key West

 A historical church in Key West on Duval Street

 Florida has some of the most amazing trees. Some of them are really wrinkly like this one.

 The southern most point in the US. The line was 3  blocks long to take

your picture there so we skipped that.

 The Strand theater opened in 1920 and now houses, unfortunately, a Walgreens store.

 Old friends Carolyn and Dave of Boat Galley fame and new friends Diana and John of S/V Joy

enjoying the good eats at Burdines in Boot Key Harbor

A perfect rainbow this morning

Bashing

After a week of enjoying being still and protected in No Name Harbor, the calendar kind of insisted that we get a move on. As is normal, weather is the issue. (Sailboats, as a new friend put it, are the most unreliable source of transportation the world has ever known.) We need to go south, the winds and waves have been coming from that direction for days. But it looked like Tuesday would be an okay day to give it a try, right up until I did a last minute check of the weather Tuesday morning. The Ding was aboard, the deck was set, the engine checks done; but the waves were running just shy of 4 feet on a 4 second period, and there would be 20 knots worth of wind directly on the bow.
No thank you.

No Name Harbor at sunset

The day passed with occasional frets about the passing of time, though I was secretly pleased to spend another day. No Name, though not for everybody, is high on my list of places I have enjoyed since we headed out. If Biscayne Bay is our American home, then No Name Harbor is my lounge chair sitting in front of the fireplace.

The next morning we were up at dawn to stop by the pump-out, fill the water, and be on our way before 0800 to make Rodriguez Key before the sun went down. At first it didn't look too promising. Leaving the bay we were wind against tide, the surging rollers washing over the bow and slowing us to less than 2 knots. (It is a good, if somewhat scary, way to wash all the mud off the anchor.) It took more than an hour just to gain enough room off the coast to make the turn southward. When we did, things picked up a little. Though we still needed the Beast, there was just enough angle on the wind to fill the reefed main and stay sail, making for enough speed that, at least, it looked like we would make Rodriguez before midnight.

The Hawk Channel is not quite the turquoise of Bahamian water, but still good on the eyes

Later, though not in the forecast, the winds picked up more and soon we were making good speed, helped by the waves tamping down a bit as we entered the Hawk Channel. Still, it was a long, hard day of motor bashing, the decks often awash with spray making its way to the dodger and bimini. I was glad to pitch the hook over the side just after 1700. I was really dragging. Dinner and a shower were done by 1830, by 1900 I was in the v-berth, where I slept for most of the next 13 hours.

We were going to try for Boot Key today, but an 0500 look at the weather wasn't promising. Wind and waves would be more brisk, and still directly on the bow. So much so, that it would be unlikely we could make anything more than 2 to 3 knots, even with the Beast thumping along. At that point we decided that moving to the other side of Rodriguez would be the only movement today. There we will wait for the cold front to pass, and hope to ride a north wind to Boot Key tomorrow. I went back to bed.

Sunset at Rodriguez Key

So we are listening to the wind blow and trying to decide on the proper time to relocate. Most of the boats that were around last night have gone, all north bound. (They will make Biscayne Bay easy today.) A couple of other boats have joined us, and two remain from last night.

We were hoping those two would leave. I missed the show, but they scared Deb. The crews came in from shore drunk and belligerent, shouting at each other, falling overboard, and puking over the sides of the boat. For some reason they also saw fit to scream racial slurs and ignorance into the night at the top of their lungs. At one point Deb was afraid that the woman on board was in real trouble, the noise and abuse to the point where she thought about calling the police. But this is Florida, and I will bet you a good cup of coffee both those boats have guns on board. Armed nut cases are an American staple, one best left to self-destruct without interference. So far today, there hasn't been any activity on either boat, and I will be happy if it stays that way.

So here we sit, struggling a bit because we “have” to get someplace by a certain time. Sailboats are simply not designed to do that, yet we haven't figured out how to make the cruising life work without those deadlines. Family can't be ignored, nor can the cruising kitty. It is best to be someplace else when the hurricanes come to visit, or at least be in a place where one can leave the boat and run, run away. (Insurance paid up, of course.)

Four years in, and we are still trying to figure out how to balance out the competing needs to not have to be somewhere, and having to be somewhere anyway. So the path to Tampa Bay is uncertain. Learning to live with that uncertainty has become my biggest challenge to living this way. Pilots live with alternates, but at least they know what those alternates are. Sailors, in a way, just live. What the day will bring is nothing short of a guess. Sometimes, what the next couple of hours will bring is the biggest guess of all.

Debriefing

Airplane drivers are regulars at “debriefings”. After every sim session during recurrent training the crew and instructor retire to a briefing room. There, every decision made during the session will be rehashed, along with a diagram of the flight paths just flown. Such discussions are particularly enlightening when the flight path diagram ends up in a simulated smoking hole in a field somewhere. Just like in racing, you can't really know just where the line is until you bin a couple. That's why all good pilots love simulators. You get to try things you would never try for real, and crashing doesn't hurt anything but the ego.

Kintala left Boot Key and motored sailed to Rodriguez Key for a beautiful night in a nice anchorage. The next morning she headed for No Name Harbor. The forecast suggested there would be enough wind to let the Beast take most of the day off. And so it was. The only real challenge was that the Hawk Channel isn't particularly wide and the wind was directly off the stern. Normally we would have just spun out the head sail, and we tried that. But there wasn't enough wind to get to Biscayne Bay before nightfall. So we got bold and flew the main as well, setting the sails wing on wing; head sail flying off the port side, the main on a preventer, flying off the starboard side.

We haven't done much wing on wing in Kintala. Usually the head sail is all we need and, well, wing on wing sailing is (for my money) a lot of work and some risk. Getting the wind on the wrong side of the main sail and having it slam across the boat is a nightmare thought for any sailor. Rigs come down that way, booms get bent, and to do it right one also needs to use a jib pole on the head sail.

I have never made friends with the jib pole. With a back still a little stiff from hauling the anchor out of the clay of Boot Key, after it was set by days of 30 knot winds, I wasn't enthusiastic about dancing on the foredeck with that unwieldy and cantankerous thing. But it was the sailorly thing to do and, someday, I hope to be a sailor.

After my normal amount of fumbling around the jib pole was set and the preventer secure. For a couple of glorious hours Kintala flew up the Hawk Channel with her wings spread wide. Deb even tamed the wind vane and it was working like a champ. A great point of sail, vane working, following seas, flying along...how does it get any better than that?

But the channel bends a little, and the winds were shifting a little, and the fun had to end. It did, with two fingers of my left hand tangled in the preventer and jammed against a cleat just as the line picked up the load from an accidental jibe cased by a passing powerboat wake. It was an interesting (and painful) couple of seconds before Deb cut me free with her knife. (Mine, of course, was down in the cabin where I always put it at night so I don't forget it the next morning.)

Hand now free and still functioning to a degree, we managed to get things back under control and sailed on. Me pretty embarrassed at such a bone-headed move. Deb still a little buzzed by the adrenaline hit. A few hours later things got really interesting.

By time we made the markers for the channel into Biscayne Bay the wind was a solid 25 knots. Kintala was humming along at better than 7 knots, with a lot of sail up for that kind of wind in a narrow channel. Too much, actually, which is why I had considered dropping the main while still out in the Hawk channel and easing our way into No Name at a less frantic pace. Considered, but didn't mention. Later the effort to reduce the head sail without being able to turn much in the narrow channel just off the light house point proved...unfortunate. The furling line back-lashed and froze, there was no rolling that sail in. Believe me, I tried. In fact I tried so hard that the lazy sheet got away from me, spun out into the wind, whipped around the forestay, and ended up in the water on the other side of the boat. With the wind behind us there was no way of getting the main sail down either.

With the line trailing in the water all the way back to the prop, any thought of waking up the Beast, turning into the wind, and getting things under control went away.

We blew past the entrance to No Name at better than six knots, head sail flogging, sheets flying, and Deb working hard at the helm just trying to keep everything together. I scrambled madly around the deck not accomplishing much of anything though, eventually, I did get the wayward sheet under control and back on the boat. Deb woke up the Beast and sailed us into the bay proper, where we had enough room to actually turn up into the wind. I dumped the mainsail into the lazy jacks and tried to un-jam the furler, which was a no-go. Deb saw me getting ready to drop the jib to the deck but, at that moment, I was trying to remember which halyard was which. The stay sail is on a furler as well and it has been a couple of months since we put those back on the boat. Finally I just picked one and let it free. It was the right one, the first break of the day.

As the jib started down Deb swung the bow just enough to put the flogging clew inside the life lines. I wrestled the wayward sail down onto the deck, a rope burn on my left arm and the loss of part of the fingernail on one of the fingers already mashed was the only toll required.

I was glad to pay up. Sails down and Beast rumbling, I tried not to think about the anchor still tied, pinned, and cabled. Should the Beast join in the fumbling of the day it would be questionable if the hook could be dropped before we were blown into shallow water. But sometimes the very worst doesn't actually happen, and we limped into No Name.

We had planed on using the pump out station there, then anchoring for a couple of days. It turned out that pump out station is out of service. That would be five out of five. We tried to get pumped out before leaving Boot Key. Not a single marina had a pump out in service, and the pump out boat was booked full for the next couple of days. We couldn't get on the list before the weather window north closed.

So we are tied to the wall near the inoperative pump out in No Name. Our tank is full so the bathrooms here are the only option until we figure out what to do next. The Park Ranger, being told that the boat was broke, I was hurt, and the holding tank was full, was kind and understanding. He told us to say tied-to as long as we need to figure out our next move and get the boat back in sailing shape. The jib is flaked and stored on deck, the main sail is flaked, tied, and covered, halyards are secured, and Kintala and her crew safe and secure.

We did so many things wrong today, yet did everything right we needed to do to keep from hurting the boat or getting hurt too badly ourselves. (I'm a mechanic, smashed fingers and burns are pretty much a regular occurrence. The minor bang ups of today hardly count.) Oh, and just to add insult to injury; while flaking the jib I managed to put my bare foot deep into an ant hill. It still feels like it is on fire.

We are still not exactly sure how to characterize today. Back in my old life I actually knew what I was doing. Today, more than three years into my new life, I don't seem to have a clue. Tomorrow we will start fixing things, re-assembling things, and try to find a pump out somewhere in Florida that actually works. I am all for not pooping in the ocean, letting the land dwellers add my small contribution to their overwhelming flood of sewage. But if they are going to pass “no discharge” laws, the least they can do is give a person a chance to comply.

And that's the debriefing for today.

Pics from the Keys

Sunset outside No Name Harbor

Leaving No Name Harbor as the sun rises

Welcome to the Hawk Channel. This is new territory for us.

Looking back at Miami in the haze.

Rodriguez key on the horizon. We'll anchor on the south side.

Last time Tim was here at John Pennekamp State Park was 44 years ago when he took a boat similar to this one
to do his open water dive with PADI to get his SCUBA certification.

Part of the Seven Mile Bridge right by our anchorage

The Lost Horizon

The Mantus cleared the sand at Rodriguez Key this morning at exactly 7:00 am. Not a breath of wind was to be found but we raised the main anyway to help to dampen the rolls we would surely experience later in the day from monster sport fishing boats. At that particular moment there were no boats to be seen underway, only our two anchored neighbors, and the water was flat. The Westerbeast yawned and growled to life and Kintala was off on the second of two 45 mile days down the Hawk Channel headed to Marathon.

Henrietta the autopilot was brought online, this being the day of her majesty's preference - flat water and no wind. The sun made a very brief appearance through a slit in the clouds, the only time we would see it through the entire day which settled into an odd, hazy combination of blues, greens, grays and purples all blended together in a fuzzy combination that defied both my old camera and my even older photographic skills. The various keys and long bridges rolled by a mile or two to starboard, and the crab pots sprinkled the landscape just enough to justify a careful watch and an occasional degree or two of change in heading.

We rounded the bend to the west side of Boot Key where we tucked in as far as we could go for protection and laid the Mantus to rest. It's impossible to capture on film the magical feeling of losing the horizon in this place. The green of the water blends seamlessly into the blue-green of the sky as the sun fades and the conch horns blow. As the boat traffic dies, the only sounds remaining are the dive-bomb splashes of the brown pelicans as they search for dinner and the occasional rhythmic splashes of the flying fish as they attempt to escape their predators. A few birds unfamiliar to me call in a sing-song chatter as the first starlight eases through the darkening fuzz. The last of the wakes smooth out and I want to sit here for a long while, just looking, but the bugs are claiming their territory so I'm chased below. It will be nice to see this beautiful water in sunshine tomorrow, but I'm completely happy to have enjoyed the day of the lost horizon.

As the sun set the colors deepened