by Judy Handley | Feb 23, 2015 | Florida, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 136, Year 10: Tom and Detta Arrive
Date: Monday, February 23, 2015
Weather: Sunny and WARM, High in the 70’s F, SE 10
Location: Dinner Key Marina Anchorage, Coconut Grove, FL
Hurray! Our friends Tom and Detta arrived and we enjoyed the afternoon and evening together. Enterprise Car Rental picked us up at the dinghy dock at 9 am and off we went to Fort Lauderdale. We went to Plantation, east of Lauderdale, to the Bahamian Tourist Office to pick up Immigration Arrival Cards for us and for Lee and Lynda. Since Tom and Detta’s flight didn’t come in until 12:30, we had time to kill so we paid a visit to Bluewater Books & Charts. Its always fun to poke around and see what new sailing books are out there. Luckily there was nothing that we don’t already own, so it was on the airport. We picked up Tom and Detta and headed to the beach in Fort Lauderdale to have lunch at Coconuts, drove a mile or so north after lunch to Omaha Steaks to buy some filets for dinner (had a gift card that needed to be used), and then headed back to Coconut Grove. As we were stepping onto the dinghy dock I was explaining to Tom and Detta that we had seen manatees here the other day. Detta was looking around and spotted them right under the dock with their noses jammed into the rocks on the shoreline. It looked like they were stuck in the shallow water and then someone told us what they were doing. There is a bubbler under the dock and they were taking turns sucking on a fresh water drainage hose. It is not known whether or not manatees require fresh water, but they love and will drink out of hose any time they get the chance. Detta and I were tempted to get down in a dinghy that was basically sitting on top of the bigger of the two manatees so we could pet her but commonsense took over and we didn’t. But we sure enjoyed watching them.
We made it out to Windbird in a jam-packed dinghy and enjoyed sunset in the cockpit. We ended up having salmon filets and salad for dinner and will have the steaks on Wednesday night. It was very dark by the time we were ready to grill and we decided to wait so that we can see the steaks while they are grilling. Tomorrow we head over to Key Biscayne to Bill Baggs State Park. We’ll return to the Dinner Key anchorage on Wednesday and Thursday Tom and Detta fly home. We’ll do our very best to enjoy every minute that they are here.
A note about the weather—We listened to Chris Parker’s weather on Saturday on the SSB and he thought we might have fairly benign weather for a few days starting this weekend. There is no SSB weather on Sunday so when we listened this morning we had hoped to have the Saturday report reinforced. No such luck. We will be getting fairly strong north winds again this weekend with no hope of a window for leaving for the Bahamas. His best guess was that it would be the second week of March. That could change, but we will prepare to sit and wait. At least we have having wonderful weather this week for Tom and Detta’s visit. After the cold and snowy New Hampshire winter they have had, this sunshine and warmth is a welcome retreat.
by Judy Handley | Feb 22, 2015 | Florida, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 135, Year 10: Someone Flipped a Switch
Date: Sunday, February 22, 2015
Weather: Mostly Sunny and WARM, SE 10
Location: Dinner Key Marina Anchorage, Coconut Grove, FL
Today it felt like summer. What a nice change to be forced to shed the long sleeved shirts and long pants because we were too hot. I figure someone must have just flipped a switch to cause this sudden, but positive, turn in the weather. But whatever, we’ll take it. It was glorious.
We spent our day ticking off things that need to be done before we can leave for the Bahamas. Mark took the dinghy into the gas dock to fill the two jerry jugs we have onboard and discovered that it was the perfect time to bring the boat in. He was going to make multiple trips in the dinghy to fill the tanks, but the perfect conditions changed his mind. It was slack tide, nearing high, and the dock was an easy on and off. So ‘tick’—first job on the list done. Unfortunately we couldn’t fill the water tanks. When I asked if there was water, the young man on the dock simply said, “No water here. We’re a gas station.” Duh. When we got back to the anchorage another boat had taken our spot, so we searched for a deeper place to anchor. We had no luck, so now we are in an even shallower spot (only by an inch or two) and we continue to bump the bottom at low tide. At first this made me very nervous, but now I’m just viewing it as preparation for the shallow anchorages in the Bahamas. I did some ‘house’ cleaning while Mark rested. The heat and sun had gotten to him. But once I was done and we had lunch, he was ready for the next job. We went to shore, took a bus to Mary’s Laundromat, and did the laundry. So ‘tick’ ‘tick’—boat is clean and laundry is done. On the way back to Dinner Key Marina, we decided to stay on the bus and go to CVS to pick up prescriptions Mark will need while we are in the Bahamas. ‘Tick’—one more job done. And finally when we got back to Windbird, Mark took our empty water jerry jugs to shore to get some water. When he got back, I gave our pathetically dirty dinghy a perfunctory cleaning with a promise to give it a thorough cleaning when we are in a beautiful anchorage in the Bahamas. So ‘tick’ ‘tick’—two more jobs done. We are now ready to concentrate on having a good time with our friends Tom and Detta when they arrive tomorrow. We are renting a car and going to the airport in Fort Lauderdale to pick them up. It is two train rides and one bus ride away and with the connection time figured in, it was going to be late afternoon before they could get here. With the rental car, we will get back much sooner. Plus, we plan to take one of our two propane tanks that we use for cooking with us to get it filled. That will allow us to ‘tick’ off one more job that needs to be done before departure. We’re getting there, one little ‘tick’ at a time.
by Judy Handley | Feb 21, 2015 | Florida, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 134, Year 10: Eyes on the Bahamas
Date: Saturday, February 21, 2015
Weather: Partly Cloudy, SE 10-20
Location: Dinner Key Marina Anchorage, Coconut Grove, FL
All eyes (and ears) are on the Bahamas now. We were up at 6:30 am this morning to listen to Chris Parker’s weather on the SSB radio. Chris advises subscribers on the best time to make crossings to the Bahamas and the Caribbean. We don’t pay for his service, so we can’t check-in and talk with him, but we can listen and hope that someone who is a subscriber wants to go our direction at the same time as us. He gives great weather overviews and this morning he talked about the strong weather systems we have been enduring for the past two months. Then he said the magic words—he thinks that after this week we might have ‘gentler’ weather for at least a couple of weeks. Sure hope he is right. We have read that the Bahamas can have unsettled weather in January and February with good weather on either side in December and March. Or it can have the reverse. Since our friends Ed and Lynne who are in the Exumas in the Bahamas say that they have had unsettled weather since they arrived in January, we are hoping for scenario #1 with a fair March following unsettled January and February. We’ll continue to listen to Chris over the next few days and hope that we will find our ‘window’ for crossing the Gulf Stream soon. But right now we are still dealing with windy weather here and even though the thermometer says we should feel warm, that wind still feels chilly. The high today was in the upper 60’s, but tomorrow it is supposed to be in the lower 80’s. Sounds great to me.
We are also getting ready to welcome our friends Tom and Detta Porat aboard for a few days. They fly into Fort Lauderdale from snowy New Hampshire on Monday. Can’t wait to see them. But as is typical when guests are coming, I spent part of my day doing some cleaning jobs that I have been putting off. The incentive of people coming to visit can make you put yourself into gear. The Sunbrella canvas covering our cockpit is light tan and sometime in the past month I looked up and noticed that there was a light coating of mildew. This happens when it is cool out and we zip up the cockpit to keep warm. The cockpit captures all the moisture from cooking and those nasty little mildew spots start appearing. So I did the magic cleaning job today and we once again have tan canvas without all the little polka dots. I also spent a great deal of time reading Dozier’s Waterway Guide to the Bahamas. I will read and reread this guide and others to get as familiar as possible with the islands we plan to visit. While I did this, Mark checked various weather sources, filled out the paperwork needed for entry into the Bahamas and made the duplicate copies necessary, and worked on plotting a route from Biscayne Bay across the Gulf Stream. Tomorrow the winds pipe down a bit and he will make a few runs to and from shore with jerry jugs of diesel to fill our tanks. Then we head to shore to catch a bus to the laundromat. Little by little we are getting ourselves ready for departure.
Saturday is the day that the yacht clubs have all the kids out racing the little sailing prams. Our friend Heather Turgeon, who is currently sailing around the world with her husband Jon, grew up here and has fond memories of sailing through the mooring field in a pram. These photos are for you, Heather.
by Judy Handley | Feb 20, 2015 | Florida, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 133, Year 10: Weather, Weather
Date: Friday, February 20, 2015
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Very Windy NNW10 Turning ENE 20
Location: Dinner Key Marina Anchorage, Coconut Grove, FL
Weather, weather. It seems to be the total focus of our attention these days. When we got up this morning the outside temperature according to our thermometer was 42 degrees F—in Florida, south of Miami, at the end of February. I would expect this in January, but it is almost March. It has been a cooler than expected couple of months for us in Florida, so we’re definitely ready for spring as I’m sure everyone in New England is as well. We don’t have tons of snow and freezing temperatures, so we really have no complaints. We checked into the Dinner Key Cruiser’s Net this morning as newcomers and the net controller asked us where we were from. When we said Cape Cod, she immediately said, “So you are the ones that brought this cold weather.” Sorry. But even with the chilly night, we were warm and cozy under our comforter. I must admit, however, that it felt down right chilly when we first got out of bed. We no longer have the propane tank aboard Windbird that we were using on the trip from Myrtle Beach to Cumberland Island, so we had no easy way to fire up Mr. Heater. So we just waited for the sun to warm things up. It wasn’t long before the cockpit was warmer than downstairs. As always, we are so thankful for our cockpit enclosure. This morning it warmed us up and served as a clothes dryer for the wash I did yesterday. I had tried to dry it by hanging things in our shower, but it was just too cool. The sunny cockpit did the job. Around 10 am we had a bit of a break in the roaring wind, so we launched the dinghy and headed to shore to take a walk and get a few staples at The Fresh Market just a couple of blocks from the marina. We arrived at the dinghy dock and took our trash and recycling to shore. Mark decided to go back and lock the dinghy and while he did that I just waited for him at the end of the dock. For some reason I looked down and just at that moment a mother and baby manatee swim right under the dock I was standing on. By the time I got my camera out, they were moving on. Mark came back about that time and I just pointed to the water. He saw the manatees and grabbed the camera and ran to the next dock where they were heading. We didn’t get great photos, but it was a thrill to see them up close in such shallow water. We then walked to The Fresh Market. It is a great little supermarket, and despite its relatively small size, it has an amazing array of food–much of it prepared. The clientele must be busy city dwellers who don’t want to spend much time cooking. Looking at the food made me so hungry we had to rush back to the boat to have lunch. And it is a good thing we rushed because the wind switched to the NE just about the time we got to the boat and the seas started building immediately. We spent a few minutes going around the anchorage with our portable depth sounder to try and find a deeper place to anchor, but nothing looked any better than where we are. So we stayed put, had lunch, and bumped the bottom at low tide. I decided to make granola so that I would have a good excuse for keeping the oven going this evening. It is not nearly as cool tonight as last night, but it is toasty inside the boat now. And the empty granola containers are filling up.
Both Mark and I spent time reading and planning for our trip to the Bahamas this afternoon. And once again, the weather is serving as the frustration. We would love to be able to leave next weekend, but some reports are projecting more windy weather. You want settled conditions for crossing the Gulf Stream, so we might just have to sit and wait. Well, we really won’t just sit and wait. Our good friends Tom and Detta Porat arrive on Monday, so we will have plenty to do during the week. But once they leave, the sitting and waiting will begin. My birthday is on March 5 and I really want to celebrate it in the Bahamas. Come on weather, be a bit cooperative for a change!
by Judy Handley | Feb 19, 2015 | Florida, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 132, Year 10: Windy Day
Date: Thursday, February 19, 2015
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Very Windy NNW 20-30
Location: Dinner Key Marina Anchorage, Coconut Grove, FL
Our morning started with 20 knots of wind, but as the morning progressed the winds increased to 30 knots. At one point I was climbing the steps up to the cockpit and I thought a jet was flying close overhead. It wasn’t that at all. It was the roar of the wind. Since the winds were coming from the NNW, the land gave the anchorage protection and it felt calm even though it wasn’t. But we were not about to get in the dinghy and go to shore. There were white caps all around and we would have gotten soaked on the way in. If the forecast is correct, it will continue to be windy tomorrow and Saturday, but we’re hoping for a little break tomorrow morning so we can go to shore and take a walk.
It was another low key day on Windbird. We did a lot of reading and I did a laundry. The excitement for today came at low tide. We were stuck in the ‘mud’ for a bit. It caused no problem, but I really hate being aground. If it is calm enough tomorrow, we might look for a deeper spot and re-anchor. We’ll take the portable depth sounder out in the dinghy and see what we can find. If there is nothing, I’ll just have to settle into the daily groundings. Tides are not as low next week, so maybe the problem will just go away.
by Judy Handley | Feb 18, 2015 | Florida, Sailing Logs Year 10 |
Day 131, Year 10: World Record
Date: Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Weather: Overcast with Rain, Sun Late Evening, Winds NW 10-15
Location: Dinner Key Marina Anchorage, Coconut Grove, FL
A record has been set in the world of Mark and Judy. For the second straight day, we have done nothing but read, write, and relax! This is unprecedented in our world, but today was a good day for doing nothing. It rained off and on all day, so we just relaxed into the day. Well, Mark did move our mattress to measure the diameter and length of our steering cable. On New Year’s Eve, just before we ate dinner, we discovered that our steering cable was broken. We were on passage from Little River to Cumberland Island. Mark had to move our very heavy mattress to get to the steering quadrant. He was able to do a temporary fix by overlapping the two broken pieces of cable and bound them together with a cable clamp. That has been working for us, but we decided that we really shouldn’t head off to the Bahamas without at least having a new cable with us to install if necessary. So Mark took the measurements, called the manager of the West Marine back home in Falmouth, and Sylvia contacted Edson, the manufacturer of the cable, to find out if the cable was available, and then made the special order for Mark. She is having the cable sent to the West Marine store here in Coconut Grove that is less than a mile from the marina. Hopefully Mark’s ‘temporary’ fix will hold until we get home, but if not, at least we’ll have what we need to do the repairs.
We also had a nice Skype video call with Heather and boys. It is school vacation week and they got more snow yesterday. But they were having a lazy morning just like us. The boys were all still in their pajamas with no interest in going out to play in the snow. I think they are snowed out. We had a long conversation with Jonah and he showed us some of his paintings. Uncle Justin and Auntie Jo got the boys paint canvases and vegetable-based paints for Christmas and Jonah has been enjoying the gift. Ollie had his mommy take the computer into the play room so he could show us what he has been playing. We didn’t get to talk to Sam as he was deep into reading the second book in the series, The Mad Scientists’ Club. Jed enjoyed the original book when he was a kid and Sam discovered it this week. When he finished the first book, he asked Heather and Jed to take him to the library to get the second book, but it was checked out. He almost cried he wanted to read the second one so badly, so they downloaded a Kindle copy. So even though we didn’t get to talk to him, it was fantastic to see him enjoy reading so much.
I tried to catch up on long-overdue email correspondence today. I made some progress, but still have more to go. I suppose that’s what tomorrows are for.
