12/07/2008 Key West to Key Largo

I want to thank you all that have been checking in on the blog over the last month with my lack of time and energy to keep things up to date. I have been frantic with traveling back to Denver, seeing family and friends and working to get the boat ready for her next phase in the journey.

12/03/2008 Transitioning guests. The Thanksgiving crew has left and I now have Jim Ulatowski and Alecia Cope joining the boat for a little over a week. We have all raced against each other for many years in the Denver Area. I was on a mooring buoy behind Fleming Key on the east end of Key West. I met them at the marina after a dinghy ride in through the chop. I have had three days of heavy winds. I made a stop at the post office to pick up some mail from home and then off to the grocery store to provision for the next week. Then the fun started with a dinghy ride back to the boat. It is about a mile ride through heavy winds and deep chop. Sort of like riding the Log Jammer at an amusement park.

12/04/2008 Our original plans were to make a run for the Dry Tortugas, about 60 miles west of Key West and then we would head back a sail up to Key Largo where I am going to leave the boat for Christmas. Oh the best laid plans of mice and men. The weather did not appear to be cooperating so we decided to hang out in Key West for another day. We went back into the marina so it would easier and drier to visit town. We had a good time. Jim and Alecia took off for the Conch Train tour ride and I went off to find the library to register my last entry onto the blog. I then went and took the tour of Mel Fisher’s Maritime Museum. Mel Fisher is the treasure hunter that has found many wrecks including his most famous that brought in over $200M worth of silver, gold, jewels and other artifacts from a Spanish galleon. After that we met and started our Duval Crawl. We visited many of the bars along the major street of Key West and sampled many rum drinks, listened to many bands along the street and had dinner at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaretville. It was a fun night and we woke up better the next day that we felt when we went to bed. A successful party night.

12/05/2008 Since we decided to pass on the Dry Tortugas, that allowed us to take a slow trip up the Keys towards Key Largo and stop for snorkeling. We sailed out to Sandy Key light house and went for a snorkel. It was the first on the trip with Jim and Alecia. We had good winds to get us there. When we arrived the water was churned from all of the weather we sat through and was a little murky. We did see some fish, including barracuda as always, and a black tip reef shark. It has amazed me that almost every time I have snorkeled on this trip I have seen a shark.

After some lunch we pulled the anchor and headed for Saddlebunch Harbor on Sugarloaf Key. We needed to motor most of the way in the light air on our nose to make to there as the sun was setting. I have never been in this cove before. There are very few good anchorages along the Keys on the ocean side and I believe I have been in most of them as I look through the cruising guides. The issue with this anchorage was that it is very shallow. We hit ground once as we were coming in. The bottom is soft and we were able to back the boat off, but we needed to weave our way in and find a spot to set the anchor. The channel was marked more for locals. We ended up anchoring on the edge of the channel. This worked out ok as there wasn’t much traffic and we left early the next morning.

12/06/2008 We left this morning in a light misty rain and headed for Loew Key. This is considered one of the best snorkeling reefs in the Florida Keys. I had seen my first shark on this reef three years before on the Boy Scout trip down here. There hasn’t been much traffic on the reefs since we have been sailing down here. We made it to the reef and went for a swim. It was pretty wavy there with the wind. We had an encounter with the largest barracuda I ever saw. I believe it was at least five foot in length and had a girth of 18-24”. It was sitting in a hole in the reef and there wasn’t another fish in the area. We were able to stay on the edge of the hole and watch the barracuda and it just hovered there as I expect barracuda to do. I was happy that this one didn’t follow me around like we saw on Molasses Reef. Just as we made it back to the boat there was a large Nurse Shark resting on the bottom. It did not move and just laid there. It was one of the biggest sharks I ever saw.

From there we sailed over to Bahia Honda State Park and dropped the anchor for the night. I stayed here when Sara and I did our trip with Tri-to-Fly. An issue with anchoring here is the road noise from the bridge across the inlet there. Other than that it was a nice place to spend the night.

12/07/2008 This morning we went ashore to explore the state park. They have a wonderful sandy beach, nature center, dive/gift shop and a walk way up on the old bridge. After we left the park we sailed to Coffin Patch for a snorkel. This was a high light snorkel for me as I had never seen so much live coral before. It was like a garden under water there. I am disappointed I do not have any pictures to share with you from this place. We also saw a huge ray lying on the bottom. It’s wing span must have been at least 4 feet across and had a tail that stretch 5 feet. The other interesting thing was that the schools of fish would follow us all around while we swam. After that we sailed to Long Key Bight for the night. This would be an open water anchorage for us.

That night after a couple of cocktails, dinner and a bottle of wine, we cleared the aft deck of No Rush and turned it into a dance floor listening to KBIL. KBIL is my iPod turned onto shuffle mode and we would skip to songs through out the extensive list I have built up. We then improved it by taking the covers off of the cockpit and dance under the moonlight of the clear sky. It was a great evening.

12/08/2008 Today we had heavier winds out of the NE. Today was going to be a sailing day and the water was to rough for snorkeling. We sailed into the wind the whole trip to Rodriquez Key, located just south of Key Largo. This was the most physical sail I have done so far on the trip. I was spent at the end of the day. We had tacking the boat all day long and readjusting the sails like we were in racing mode. After that day, I knew my mentality had changed from racer to cruiser. We made 42 miles up the Keys this day. Trying to find and anchorage it tough with winds out of the NE. Rodriquez Key runs NE-SW. I was trying to decide whether to and on the SW side or the NW side. I finally decided to anchor on the NE where I have anchored in the past, hoping that the wind might shift more toward North or East. We had steady winds that night, but the seas weren’t too bad.

12/09/2008 Today we sailed to John Penacamp State Park. The creek to get the main park is a beautiful ride through the mangroves. The water is clear and there are a few birds there. We made it to the main docking area, but they are not set up for catamarans in and form or fashion. I was planning on using a mooring buoy in the lagoon, but I was told the water was too shallow for my boat. We walked around the park and checked out the aquarium in the nature center. It has many of the different fishes and wild life of the area.

We decided to head over to Key Largo to Jerry’s dock. I call Wes and we met. We needed to rearrange the powerboat that Jerry has and put it on the trailer before we could dock. I am very thankful to Jerry for allowing me to leave my boat at his house while I would travel back to Colorado for the holidays.

12/10/2008 Today was readying the boat for my departure off of her for 18 days. We cleaned her up and started on making a major repair that was needed. I have had problems with the remote throttle controls for the starboard engine since I bought her. I could barely shift the engine into reverse and due to the strain, broke the shifting arm. We set off to pick up our rental car and made a stop at a Yamaha dealer and purchased a new throttle cable and looked into replacement parts for the shifting mechanism. There are no replacement parts and they wanted almost $950 for a replacement unit. I later found the same parts at West Marine for $600. After a great lunch at a recommended bar on the water, Jim and I replaced the cable. This definitely made life much better. It also allowed me to understand what I needed to do to replace the whole shifting console when I came back to the boat after Christmas.

We had dinner that night with Karen and Wes and had a great time together. I am also very thankful to build the friendship with Karen and Wes through this trip. They have been most generous and helping in all matters.