Day 21:
April 15, 2014
We got underway fairly early today. As soon as we motored out of the little
harbor near Tavernier, we raised the sails and proceeded to sail for most of
the day. We had strong blustery somewhat
gusty winds that ranged from 14 knots to 20 knots. We reefed the main sail and partially furled
the jib so that we had a great
manageable ride.
The wind was coming from our port fore quarter so we beat most of the
time. Since we were heading up wind, our
progress was not that great. We were
traveling at around 4 knots. But, it was
fun exhilarating sailing.
Typical wind speed and depth for the day. |
The ICW followed an interesting path as we headed
southwest. It would traverse large open
bays that were shallow just outside of the sparsely marked channel and then,
out of nowhere, we would come upon a very narrow path way that might be 200
yards long. There would be a number of
channel markers directing you through an area that might be 6 or 8 inches deep
on either side of the channel. With the
help of the GPS/chart plotter, it was no challenge to navigate these areas,
however, without it, I can imagine that there were (and possibly still are) unwary
boaters running aground. I have heard it
said that “If you haven’t run aground in the Florida Keys, you haven’t been in
the Florida Keys.” The really nice thing
about our boat is that it will travel in waters of less than 2 feet so if we do
venture into an area where we are not supposed to be, we can raise our
centerboard and rudder and head back for deeper waters.
Marker 98 and cormorant rest stop in Bowlegy Cut |
At the edge of these large bays, we headed into a
narrow creek that wound through the mangrove islands. The first one we entered had a significant
adverse current that was caused by the running tide. In that one, we were motoring along at a
fairly good clip but our actual speed over ground was about 1.5 to 2
knots. Surprisingly, we haven’t seen
much wild life. We see a lot of pelicans
and some gulls, not much else. Last
year, we saw dolphins on a number of occasions; however, we saw none on this
trip.
At one point, as we were sailing along, I realized
that the boat had plenty of wind but had slowed down significantly. Checking out all systems, I realized that I
had not raised the motor when I shut it down and it had captured a lobster trap
buoy and was dragging it along. I raised
the motor and the buoy slipped off. We
were back on our way.
Unwrapping Lobster Trap Line from the prop |
Thirty minutes later, we had fired up the motor
and were cruising up wind when I heard a bang and the motor came to abrupt
halt. I had hit another lobster trap
buoy but this time it got wound in the prop.
I pulled the Dink up alongside
of the boat, got in and spent the next 20 minutes bouncing around trying to
free the line. What luck! These lobster traps are set all over the area
and I couldn’t believe that I had hit two of them.
Within an hour, I hit my third one. This time, it was wound so tight that I had
to finally take to propeller off the motor to free it.
Truly enjoying a Spam Taco |
My lunch today was another wonderful spam
taco. Since I was busy sailing, Janine
lowered her standards and actually fixed this one for me. She’s truly a winner and keeper.
Later in the afternoon, we motor sailed under the
Channel #5 bridge to the Gulf side of the Keys.
I assumed that since the wind was coming from the southeast, the water
would be quite rough, but it turned out that we could manage the waves quite
well. I would not have wanted to travel
for 10 hours in the rough water but I am now convinced that we could handle the
bigger waters that we would possibly encounter in a crossing to the
Bahamas.
Our destination was a large protected cove on the
northeast end of Long Key not far from the Channel #5 bridge known as Long Key
Bight. There were about 5 other boats
anchored out in the area but it was large enough that there was plenty of room
to swing on the anchor. The depth of the
water was about 4 feet over a sparsely grassy bottom. I set the anchor and put on my mask, fins and
snorkel
and swam out to check on security of the anchor. It looked good. Back on the boat, I put out more rode (anchor
line) to insure that we would not have a repeat of the dragging anchor problem
of last night. I also added a weighted “sentinel”
to the line to improve the holding power of the anchor. It turns out that the more anchor rode that
you have out and the closer that you can keep the line to the bottom, the
better your anchor will hold. I felt
confident in our set up.
Sun going down from Long Key Bight |
I grilled the last of our pork chops and we
enjoyed cheesy mashed potatoes as our starch. There was a fair breeze blowing but the anchor
appeared to be holding so we crawled into bed at about 9:00. It was warm so we left the ports open in the
sides of the boat assuming it would not rain.
No comments:
Post a Comment