This morning included a trip to the propane office to determine if there is an issue with one of my propane tanks. I have 10lb (or 2.2 gallons of LP gas) cans for the boat and each provides about 3 weeks worth fuel. I am having a problem with one that when it is out of fuel, it only takes a little over 1 gal of fuel, which only provides about a week of use. We could not determine any issues and when both tanks are full, they both weight in at 20 lbs. I will try this again and see how it works out.
From there it was a trip to the laundromat for the final cleaning, fuel for the boat, stop at the dive shop for a dry bag in case I need to abandon the boat in an emergency, stop at the library to get on-line once more and a stop at the Yamaha boat dealer to pick up parts for the motor, oil filters and oil for another two to three more hours of engine support.
I then made a dinghy trip with all of the day’s purchases and laundry to drop off and then back on the road again to drop off the rental car. The rental agency was about ten miles from the yacht club. I stopped and filled up the tank and turned the car back in on time. The courtesy van was off in the opposite direction so I headed up the road hitch hiking. I was lucky to get picked up by a surgeon, Dr Orlando, that gave me a ride back to Key Largo. It turns out he is somewhat a celebrity. On the show, The Anatomy of a Shark Bite, he performed the trauma surgery of a shark bite victim that was flown into Fort Lauderdale from the Bahamas.
After I made it back to the yacht club, I shuttle water back and forth with using the two five gallon water jugs I have to fill up the water tank. My parents had taken a walk to have lunch. When I was done, I sat in the yacht club and had a couple of cold beers and talked with a couple of the members of their experiences sailing multihulls in the early days. It was relaxing and I felt I was as ready as ever to take off.
After my parents made it back to the club, we hoisted the
dinghy on the davits, raised the main sail and pulled the anchor. We sailed off across the sound to follow the ICW back north to Key Biscayne for our launch point to the Bahamas. As we passed through a cut between two of the sounds we saw a manatee. It has been an animal I have wanted to see. It swam slowly along the edge of the mangrove trees gently. Listening to the weather it appeared Tuesday or Wednesday was going to be the best days to make the crossing to the Bahamas as there was a cold front bringing in north winds early Thursday morning. We sailed on that day until about 4:00 and dropped anchor in Little Card Sound. We had a nice sunset and I had a SG&T for a relaxing drink.01/06/2009 We pulled anchor about 8:00 and had a great sail up through Biscayne Bay on a south-westerly wind. We were able to fly the spinnaker most of the trip. We made it to Key Biscayne by 12:00. I decided earlier that day we would leave this evening for our crossing and I wanted to stop to finalize a few things on the boat before we left the shores. We pulled into No Name Harbor in Bill Baggs State Park on the southern end of Key Biscayne. This is my fourth time staging a trip out of this area.
As we came into the park we motored towards the end of the harbor and I dropped anchor. There was a large power cruiser tied up on the wall 40 feet from me. The owner yelled over where I lived in Colorado as he recognized the state registration on my boat. I told him I was Littleton and then he asked me my name. He turned out to be Tom Mitchell. Tom was from Boulder, Colorado. Not only was he from Boulder, but I knew Tom for the fifteen or more years. We both worked for Motorola and at Cisco, based in Colorado. He has been retired since 2001 and now is living in Fort Lauderdale with his family. What a small world.
While on anchor there, I needed to put on the new registration boards on the dinghy, hailing port sign on the back of
No Rush, pull the motor off of the dinghy for the crossing, make sure we have all of the documentation and collect it all, pump-out the holding tank and buy a bag of ice. While my dad and I were doing that, my mother walked into town to drop off some mail and she hiked to the local Winn-Dixie to pick up a couple small items. When she made it back, she and I took a hike to find the light house on Cape Florida. As I said earlier, this is my fourth time to this park and I never made the time to visit the light house and climb it. My mother is a fan of light houses and was excited to have someone climb the tower. We finally made it there and it was closed. Oh-well. I guess I need to visit another time.The last task I had before we left was to pump-out the holding talk. We made it to the pump just in time as the tank was full and reached to the top of the outlet that I hook the hose into to basically vacuum out the holding tank.
With that all clear we headed out to the Atlantic Ocean and cross the “dreaded” Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is a current that basically laps the North Atlantic Ocean. It runs north along the coast of the United States bringing the warm waters from the Caribbean. T
he current will run as high as three and a half knots which is good if it is pushing you and rough if you need to go against it. The other factor that will determine the condition of the seas is the wind. All the books that ever talk about crossing the Gulf Stream is never ever try to cross with any north winds. The north winds travel against the current and through wind-water friction will build large steep waves. This is never fun and the books say it is very dangerous, even life threatening. One thing I did not want to do on this trip was threaten my parents lives. It appeared we had all of the conditions in our favor. The winds were at10-12 knots from the southeast. For the direction we were heading, I couldn’t expect better conditions. We had a beam wind, which is fastest for and most comfortable for a sailboat, and we were sailing northeast, which had the current carrying us. The seas were 1-2 feet and we had great sailing in these conditions until midnight.We were making such good time in these conditions I needed to slow the boat down. For quite a while when we were in the middle of the Gulf Stream we were covering 10.5 nautical miles an hour. That was 7.5 knots of boat speed and 3.0 knots of Gulf Stream current. We had a little under a hundred miles to cover from leaving Key Biscayne and entering the Little Bahamas Banks at West End. I was planning at least fourteen hours, but we were covering it and at this speed and could have entered the banks in about ten hours, or three o’clock in the morning. The problem with this is that the banks are very shallow (7-10 feet) and there was a very small channel that is not mark to enter on. I did not want to enter until the sun came up. Around midnight I took down the main sail. It is the primary power for the boat, but we were still moving at 7.5 nautical miles an hour and cruising along.
We took two hour shifts each of us. My dad took the 8-10, I took the 10-12 and my mother took the 12-2. She had the most activity with boat traffic (two boats and they always seem to be on your track for collision) and a crossing sailboat headed south that wanted to chat on the VHF radio. Around midnight the winds clocked more towards the south as was expected and the seas started to grow higher. I believe this was because we sailed past the main channel between the Bahamas Banks that provided open water and different wave action. The seas built to 4-6 feet and a little disorganized. It made for a choppy ride that did not sit well with my parents. This was the most calm I have felt in traveling off-shore on this trip. Everything seemed to line up right in the weather and timing. My dad then took the 2-4 shift and we shortened the jib down also to slow the boat even more. We were down to basically a hanky of sail cloth and the boat was still moving at 5 knots. I then took watch for the rest of the morning until we were on the banks.
As I still a couple of hours to kill before the sun rose, I jibed the boat away from the banks and kept her stalled so that I did not over shoot the cut I planned on entering the banks at. At 7:00 I jibed the boat again and set for the cut at Indian Rocks. My mother was sleeping at the salon table and I did n
ot wake her until we were on the Banks. I needed to trust my chart plotter to determine the correct place to enter the banks as the channel was less than a hundred feet wide with rocks and sandy shoals less than 4 feet deep on both sides. I was also riding six feet surf into the cut. I had waves breaking on both sides where the rocks are. At 7:45AM we made it onto the Banks and everything went calm. Once on the Banks, the seas went flat as the water is to shallow to allow much more than 1-2 feet seas and we had a beam wind again as I was not traveling east. I raised the yellow quarantine flag that indicates I am a foreigner that has not checked into Customs yet.After about an hour of calm sailing and allow the nerves to calm, I put the main sail back up and we started sailing for Great Sale Cay. This is located in the middle of the banks as is a place that was recommended to me for a good stop before checking in with customs and immigration at Walker’s Cay on the north end of the Banks. We dropped anchor at Great Sales Cay at 4:00PM after 145 nautical miles of sailing, the longest trip of my journey so far.
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