Big Sailor pants...

So we checked the weather yesterday and, with the exception of a few rain showers, it looked good for leaving in the morning. This morning we checked the weather again - same forecast. The sky, however, suggested that maybe someone didn't have the weather picture completely in focus. The big puffies building to our north and east sure looked to me like something that might ride along the edge of an incoming cold front. But I have been feeling like a real weather weenie lately, hiding while part timers are out galloping around. There were big patches of blue sky and, well, there was the forecast. Time to put my grown up sailor pants on and go sailing.

Red in the morning...

We did need fuel and water. The fuel dock opens at 0900. We got there around 0830 to start filling up the water tanks while waiting on the fuel guy. Crew from a charter company had one of their boats on the dock as well, getting it tanked up for the next customer. They caught our lines and we stood around talking for a few minutes. As usual they made fun of the madman in the White House, subtly suggesting that America looks a bit like the largest collection of fools in the civilized world. And, as usual, we really did try to explain that the man isn't all that popular, that most of us didn't vote for him, that we were all hoping he wouldn't be as bad as we feared, and we are pretty disappointed (though some of us not very surprised) that he is even worse. But, what are you going to do?  (Well, you could get on a boat and go visit some place that hasn't lost its collective mind yet. Something the dock guys all agreed sounded like a pretty good idea.)

They went to start pumping fuel into their big cat while we started filling the water tanks. I kept looking at the sky, something I had been doing since we had pulled up the anchor. The blue patches of sky were filling in rapidly, and the big puffies were crowding together pushing a clear wall of lower clouds out ahead of them. Rain shafts fell in the not-too-distant distance.

The wind, which had been calm and made for an easy docking, picked up and pushed Kintala hard against the pilings. Then she healed over as the wind gust hit and the temperature dropped about 10 degrees in half as many minutes. Every monohull in the harbor slewed through 100+ degrees of heading, then leaned back hard against their rodes. The cats all sailed about a bit, apparently confused as to just which way the wind was blowing, but eventually figured it out, got twisted bows into the wind, and leaned back hard against their rodes.

If it looks like a cold front...

With the first gusts fading we muscled our way off the dock. Deb headed us out into the harbor. I took off my grown up sailor pants and put on my foulies. The anchor went overboard and pretty much landed in the same hole it left when we pulled it up this morning. Sixty feet of chain went out as well, none of it piling up as the wind blew us backward. I locked the gypsy, Kintala leaned back and set her own hook without any help from the Beast. I played out a few more feet of chain and set the snubber, which  stretched out all of its own and then sprung us back in a little. Welcome to auto-anchoring.

As I type this, the visibility is a mile or so in rain and the wind is moaning through the rigging.
We will check the weather again tomorrow.

Making new tracks...

The little Garmin chart plotter we have at the helm records our track, and saves it for an impressively long time. We could have, and sometimes did, follow our old track all the way from Oak Harbor back to Miami. Since leaving Biscayne Bay and turning south into the Hawk Channel, there has been no old track to follow. The new track now hooks around the south end of Florida and is working its way up the West coast.

Stopping the new track for two nights in the anchorage off of Cape Sable may not have been the best idea, but we wanted to spend a day at the beach there. It might have been fine had the forecast light winds out of the ESE actually showed up. The actual SSE winds of 10-15 knots roughed the place up enough to make sleep pretty hard to come by. Oh-four-hundred on the second morning found me fully dressed and trying not to fall off the settee, which was pitching and rolling around slightly less than the v-berth I had abandoned. The very first light of day found me out prepping the deck for getting under way.

Cape Sable at sunrise

The hook came up before the sun, and we motor-sailed northwest, sleep deprived, sore, and not sure if we could make Marco Island before running out of daylight. Exactly 12 long, long hours of grinding out the miles, dodging endless lines of crab traps, following the chart directly into the mud, backing slowly off, re-grouping, and taking a different approach into Factory Bay, the anchor hit the bottom.

We had a half hour of daylight to spare.

Factory Bay anchorage

Cape Sable beach

Cape Sable anchorage. No protection. For 5 ft draft vessels, 1/2-3/4 mile out is the best you can do.

Alligator tracks in the sand

For us, the beach at Cape Sable did not live up to its reviews. It was empty, which was good. It was free of trash, which was also good. And it was covered with 'gator tracks, a weird kind of, “Wow, look at that!” good. The whole visit turned into one of the strange things that happens with this lifestyle. We are glad we saw the place. It will make our “story list”. But we should have thought about it more and maybe not have done it at all. We spent two days off an exposed shore, beat ourselves up pretty good, and ended up pushing hard to beat some inbound weather. 

But we saw 'gator tracks in the sand.

So far our experience of laying tracks in new waters has been that kind of thing. As Deb already shared the sail from Boot Key to Bahia Honda was pretty sweet. The original plan was to spend a day exploring Bahia Honda, reported to be a favorite place of the locals. Alas, the Mantus found nothing but rock or coral under a thin cover of sand, several attempts utterly failing to get it to grab. It was too late in the day to try and find another anchorage. The good news was that the forecast for light winds. We laid every inch worth of 200 feet of chain on the bottom, rigged the snubber, and hoped for the best.

Fortunately, the forecast got it right. The next morning found us sitting in the same place but leaving the boat was out of the question. Bahia Honda will have to wait. Instead we hauled everything in and headed to a place called Crawl Key. Crawl is only 8 nm or so away from Bahia Honda, just short of the northwest end of the Bahia Honda Channel. That end boasts some pretty thin water, 4 feet at mean low tide according to the chart. Crawl lay just before the thin spot and was the perfect place to wait on the morning high tide. When we pitched the hook over for the night it sank out of sight and grabbed hard.

Crawl Key is a good click away from everyone and everything. It boasts the kind of quiet that almost hurts, and the kind of dark one rarely has the chance to experience along the crowded eastern shore of the US. We were starting to have our doubts about the Keys, but Crawl redeemed them, ranking as maybe the best place we have anchored since leaving Oak Harbor back in the fall. We slept well and content that night.

A trawler anchored off Little Spanish Key next to Crawl Key

The next morning we ghosted out of the Bahia Honda Channel flying full main and jib, making three to four knots. Waiting for high tide was a good idea. There were places where we had barely 18 inches under the keel. Past the last green maker we decided it was official, Kintala was in the Gulf of Mexico. We tacked out into the Gulf a few miles hoping to find a point of sail that would lead us to Cape Sable.

One of the MANY crab pot lines in the Gulf.
This one was over 20 nm off shore.

But, just like in the Atlantic, it seems the wind in the Gulf always blows right on the bow. It was a valiant effort though, eventually, we had to admit that we were not making any real headway. Daylight would be long gone before we could raise Cape Sable. Since that part of the Gulf is mostly a crab / lobster hunting ground, daylight was necessary to keep from collecting a pot. The sails were put away and the Beast pushed us onto Cape Sable before the sun was gone. And then the winds, which had been blowing directly off the coast, the winds that were forecast to fade, shifted instead. 

We have a few days of travel left before settling in for the summer. My friend and soon to be New Boss wants to know if we can get there a little earlier than originally planned. It seems the yard is bursting with work - which is good news for both the yard and for its newest marine technician. The Garmin track will stop there for a while, but there are all kinds of tracks in a life.

And we will still be making new ones.