More Key West

Well, I got an email from a friend who was giving me a hard time for not posting anything new in a while. I haven't posted because I haven't moved. I'm still in Key West...and still enjoying it.

I've learned a lot about Key West. The town was founded by "wreckers," those gutsy fortune hunters who scavenged the cargoes of the many shipwrecks that were lost on the reefs of the Florida Keys. In the early 1800s, a hundred ships a day would pass by Key West carrying cargos from Europe and New England to New Orleans and Mobile. Each year, nearly a hundred of those ships would crash on the reefs. The "wreckers" would save the lives of the crews and passengers and then claim the cargo. They made so much money that Key West had the highest per capita income in the U.S. in the mid-1800s.

The richest of these shipwreck scavengers built a fine home that was bought by Ernest Hemingway decades later. We toured the house and got a great tour guide who revealed a lot about Hemingway's genius and insanity.


Hemingway's typewriter in his studio


Hemingway's bed.

The chains were there to keep tourists out, not to keep his wife in. :)

Since it's snowing in Tennessee today, I'll include some more photos of Key West to keep my friends there warm.


Banyan Trees




The flags of Key West




An anchor in our marina that was recovered from a wreck that went down in 1622!



Agaliha in the Marina, with a sweet addition...



...a first mate.




A drink at the Hogs Breath Saloon




Another Key West sunset


Another lifelong sailing friend will join me tomorrow and we plan to set sail for the rest of the Keys. Time to move on into the great Atlantic Ocean.

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Thanksgiving in Key West

I had been to Key West on an airplane for a short visit, so I thought I knew what to expect. We've all heard about the "Key West Attitude" and frankly I thought I would grow tired of it quickly. I was wrong.

I think it's back to the whole speed of travel concept. If you try to capture Key West in 48 hours, there's not enough time to "get in the groove." When you slow down and take it as it comes, Key West takes on a different flavor. Yes, there is the outlandish, but even that recedes into more of a Savannah or Charleston flavor as you slow down and take it in.

Or maybe I'm totally influenced by Linda's arrival. After weeks apart, it is so sweet to be back with her that everything looks good. The Galleon Marina is really a great place to "hole up" for Thanksgiving. It's part of a resort so we have access to a pool, Tiki bar and fishing pier. We are in the center of everything without being in a crowd.

The weather has been incredible. The wind has blown 15 to 20 every day. The locals are complaining that the wind has been so strong. We are loving it. (Sailors don't complain about wind!) We had a short rain shower one evening, but other than that it has been picture perfect. The sunsets from Mallory Square have been "off the charts." I have so many great sunset pictures that I have trouble picking which one to post here. So, here's a few. Each night, they seem to get better.









On Tuesday night, we decided to be part of the pageant. We left the Galleon Marina and sailed Agaliha along the seawall of Mallory Square where the throngs were lined up for a view of the sunset. Our modern rig allowed us to blow past the schooners (not to mention that our decks weren't laden with 50 tourists). The cruise ship "Carnival Magic" was pulling away from the dock and I contemplated calling the captain on the radio to tell him we were sailing and had rights.






We sailed back to the marina and cooked a fabulous dinner of snapper and couscous. We shared a charcoal grill on shore with other boaters because the Marina safety rules don't allow you to use your boat grill in the harbor. It's a nice way to meet your neighbors. We ate in the cockpit in the center of paradise.

On Wednesday, we walked to Mallory Square to enjoy sunset like tourists. The bagpipers and jugglers were lots of fun. With no cruise ship in harbor the crowds were down and we soaked it all in.









Maybe you noticed in the pictures that I lost my facial hair. Actually, I shaved it off a little at a time. I left the mustache until Linda told me that I looked like Will Ferrell in "Anchorman."



Well, It's just part of the journey. Can you believe I lived 57 years without every growing my facial hair? When I look at the pictures, I can see why.

Here are some other random Key West photos. It's very different to be in 85-degree heat at Thanksgiving. I could get used to it.












Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

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Key West - a dream comes true

It has been a day for pinching myself.

Some pinches were to keep me awake...others to see if I was really awake or just dreaming.

I am writing this from the comfort of my V-berth in a beautiful marina in Key West. My dream of sailing my own boat from Chattanooga to Key West has been achieved. This achievement is not just a "merit badge" or something to tack on a wall. It has been a learning and growing experience -- and it's not over yet.

Every few hours that I was in Naples, I would get on the computer and study the weather resources. (Learning point number one -- consult multiple resources). On Wednesday morning, I discovered that another cold front was sweeping across the U.S and would come south and kick things up in the Gulf again. While Naples is a perfectly nice place to be, two days was enough and I was ready to get to Key West.


(Naples geriatric dock attire)
Wednesday morning, I showed Bob the hour-by-hour wind and wave projections and he agreed that it looked like we should leave on Wednesday afternoon for Key West so that we would arrive at the entrance channel at first light on Thursday. Another all-nighter.

We finished some errands (post office, banking, filling water tanks, etc.) and gracefully left the Naples City Docks about 3:00 p.m. We had no sooner turned Agaliha down the Gordon River toward the Gulf when I noticed that my speedometer was reading 0.0 knots. My GPS was telling me my actual speed, but I didn't want to start a 90-mile trip out in the Gulf with a broken instrument. I told Bob that I wanted to pull into one of the residential canals of Naples and jump in and swim under the boat to see if I could fix the sending unit. He's known me long enough to know that I was going to do it anyway, so he said, "O.K. skipper." I grabbed a mask and snorkel, threw on a bathing suit and jumped in. Two minutes later, I was back on the swim platform rinsing off with fresh water. We turned back into the river and, hurrah, the knot meter was working again.

As we rounded the corner to Gordon Pass, we saw two beautiful Bald Eagles sitting high in a tree with several boats underneath pointing and taking pictures. I had lost count of the Eagles I have seen on this trip, but they never cease to make you draw your breath.

We motored into the Gulf and I programmed the GPS to take us to the pass into Key West, The instrument told me it was 86.6 nautical miles and projected our arrival time at the present speed to be 5:00 a.m. I wanted to arrive after sunrise, so I slowed the engine back until the GPS predicted a 7:00 a.m. arrival. I wanted to be able to see where I was going.

So, we sat back and prepared ourselves for a 15-hour trip to Key West. My weather research had predicted that the very slight wind would be in our face, so we couldn't sail. It also predicted that the seas would be very calm. This time, the forecast turned out to be spot-on accurate.






While the Yanmar diesel purred and the autopilot drove, Bob and I sat back and took a planetarium ride. The sun set beautifully at 5:38 and slowly gave way to a black sky filled with thousands of stars. I saw a sky that I have seen very few times in my adult life. We were miles offshore, away from man-made light and the atmosphere was perfectly clear. I used my iPhone app to show us the constellations and refresh our memories of the ancient names for the constellations. For four hours we watched the show unfold, complete with shooting stars for our entertainment. The silhouette of our masthead danced in front of the Milky Way. The water was so flat that it was hard to tell where the stars ended and their reflections began. You had a sense of being completely enveloped in points of light. I wish there was a way to get a picture of it.

At 10:45, the moon rose and I was glad to see the horizon again -- all 360 degrees of it. I wanted to make sure I could tell the difference between a star or planet and another boat headed at us! Actually, I shouldn't have worried. In the entire 15-hour trip, we only saw four other boats...and they were very far away. After midnight, we took turns napping as we inched our way to Key West. The star show was diminished by the bright moon, but there were still plenty to admire. Polaris was on our back and Orion's Belt swung over our head throughout the night.

The seas were so calm, I could imagine I was on Chickamauga Lake back home in Tennessee. Based on recent experiences to the north, I expected this to change, but it never did. The only real threat to our progress were the thousands of "crab-pots" that littered the Gulf. No matter how far out we got from civilization, there were cantelope-sized floats holding up a rope to a crab trap on the ocean floor below. They are scary to boaters because the rope can wrap around your prop and disable your boat. During daylight hours, you can "slalom" your way around these obstacles, but at night, you just have to take your chances. Agaliha's chances are low, because her keel guards most of her propeller...but there is always a chance. Piloting your way through these risks is almost enough to make you give up eating crabs. About 2:00 a.m. our keel snagged a loosely floated ball and it rushed toward my stern and then slid off the bottom of the keel. No harm, other than the 6 years it took off my life as I watched in horror!

At 5:00, I looked behind me and could see faint flashes of light to the north. It was probably "cloud-to-cloud" lightning caused the approaching cold front, but it got me worried that we might have a repeat of my Clearwater experience. Fortunately, the front was still hundreds of miles away and didn't reach us. Just before 7:00, we were treated to a tropical sunrise through the clouds over the keys.


Once again, the GPS and autopilot were so accurate that I could have reached out and touched the marker buoy when we got there at 7:03 a.m.--three minutes later than programmed! We called Galleon Marina in the heart of Key West and they said they had a transient slip that we could rent by the day. By 8:30 we were tied up and powered up...and ready for a nap.

Sure enough, the wind came up later in the day and the seas built offshore. Our timing had been perfect. The only way it could have been better was if the wind had been suitable for sailing. But smooth seas are the priority here and we got some of the best you'll ever get this time of year.



Be careful what you dream of...you just might do it!

A sweet ride to Naples

We left Cabbage Key on Sunday morning and hoisted the sails in a strong easterly breeze . We sailed down the ICW toward Sanibel Island. Most of the trip was due south and we had a very pleasant sail with dolphins riding along with us most of the way.

The ICW is very shallow and narrow in this section, with a dredged depth of about 10 feet. We watched the channel markers very carefully because there wasn't enough water for Agaliha outside of the channel. Captiva and Sanibel Islands were protecting us from the Gulf.

At the southern end of the Bay there is a major confluence of boating paths. The Okeechobee Waterway begins here and takes boaters across the state of Florida to Stuart. There are narrow channels to Fort Myers, Fort Myers Beach and a pass opens back into the Gulf for those headed south...like us. The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway official ends here and we arrived at Mile Zero about 1:20 p.m.

The last mile of this is affectionately known as "The Miserable Mile" because of the volume of boats that are squeezing through it. It was particularly bad when we were there because it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and everyone who owned a boat was using that day.





At one point the channel is less than 200 feet wide everything from kayaks to 80-footers were moving in both directions. Most were courteous, but there were a few jerks throwing up 6-foot wakes. I enjoyed the spectacle, but was also glad to turn out of it to pass under the Sanibel Causeway Bridge.

By 2:00 we were tied up in the Sanibel Marina on the southern tip of the island...very near the lighthouse on Point Ybel. The entrance channel to the marina was very shallow, showing less than 7 feet on our depth sounder at high tide. Low tide would occur at 9:14 a.m. the next morning, so we would have to leave early to decrease our chances of running aground.


The marina is home to a locally famous eatery -- "Grandma Dots." We had a good dinner there, although I don't think I've ever had a $25 entree served with plastic water cup before.


We left Sanibel Marina Monday morning at 6:30 a.m. and were happy to find six feet of water in the entrance channel. By 7:00 we were rounding the buoy that guards the shoal off Point Ybel. We raised the sails and pointed the boat toward Naples, our next port of call about 25 miles to the southeast. The waters of the Gulf were smooth and the wind was perfect at about 12 to 15 knots out of the northeast.


Agaliha's instruments on the way to Naples. (note - the little clock quit working a few weeks ago, proving that I am on island time. The SOG (speed over ground) on the GPS is reading 7.0 knots -- our true speed. The speed in the upper left (6.5) is speed through the water, but needs to be recalibrated from time to time as things grow on the sending unit under the boat.)

Soon, Agaliha's keel was humming again and Bob was in the galley making "nest eggs." (He cuts a hole in a piece of toast and fries an egg in the hole with a little butter.) Simply delicious.





By 11:00 a.m. we were turning into Gordon Pass, named for the Gordon River that snakes northeast to downtown Naples. The waterway was lined with mansions and beautiful yachts. It was a sunny, 80-degree day and we were soaking it in. We tied up at the Naples City Marina, which is a aging wood pile and wood deck facility that is teeming with boaters of all descriptions.


We were working on boat cleaning chores when Bob said urgently, "Ron, look up!" I looked up in Agaliha's rigging and saw a flock of green parrots! I ran below to get my camera. I wanted a shot with the parrots and my Tennessee flag in the same frame. I guess we really are in the tropics now.






Naples is our last stop before the offshore voyage to Key West, ninety miles due south. Our job now is to find the right weather window for the crossing. Linda will fly in on Monday morning for Thanksgiving week, so I have plenty of time to pick the best conditions and be there when she arrives.

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Cabbage Key!

One thing we had not accounted for in our planning was the effect that wind direction has on tide height. I have several great tools for telling me the tide data, but local knowledge is required to predict the combined effect of tide and wind. The very strong northerly winds on Friday had pushed the water out of the northern end of Charlotte Harbor. This, combined with a very low tide, had left Agaliha sitting in the mud in her berth at Fishermen's Village.

I don't think we could have gotten her out on Friday morning if we had wanted to. So we needed to get out on Saturday before low tide at 9:00 a.m. At 7:30 we started unplugging cords and untying dock lines and Agaliha's keel kept us stationary. I fired up the engine and we had just enough power to slide out of the muck.

We watched the navigation aids carefully leaving the Yacht Basin knowing that water was scarce. As soon as the depth sounder said nine feet I raised the mainsail and unrolled the genoa. I pointed Agaliha south and the wind came over the stern corner of the boat at 15 knots. The keel started humming and we were moving on toward Key West at a rapid clip.

The autopilot steered as we ate breakfast enjoyed the beautiful ride. There was still a little bite in the air from Friday's cold front so we had jackets on. Later in the morning, as we turned east toward the Boca Grande Pass, the wind died down (5-8 kts) and we slowly winged our way toward Cabbage Key. We sailed past Pelican Bay, where we had spent Wednesday night.



We arrived at the docks at Cabbage Key about 1:30 and their friendly dock hand was giving us good instruction on the radio. He helped us tie off in a strong tailwind and his help was much appreciated. The place was hopping with tourists who had finished lunch. A "cattle boat" arrived at 3:00 to carry most of the horde back to Captiva and lots of small private boats departed, too.








We strolled around the island and soaked in the atmosphere. The vegetation was lush and you get a sense that there is a constant struggle to keep the vines and bushes from overtaking the man-made structures.






As we were imbibing cocktails in the cockpit, a couple in an inflatable dingy motored past and we invited them to join us. They quickly agreed and we learned that their 50-foot custom trawler was anchored a few hundred yards away. They gave us lots of advice about the Keys -- which was their destination, too.

The main attraction to Cabbage Key is the Restaurant that opened in the 40's. Our dinner of Triple-tail Grouper was delicious. We ate at the bar with our new friends from the Trawler.








The tradition of tacking a dollar bill to the wall started in the bar and has now spread to the entire restaurant. An estimated 50,000 bills cover the walls, rafters and ceilings. Supposedly, outbound fishermen in the 40's would tack a bill to the wall to ensure they could get a beer on the return, even if they gambled all their money away during the trip.

We had almost made a decision to bypass Cabbage Key on our way to Sanibel Island. After our day there, we were very glad that we hadn't. There is a unique charm to the place that I wouldn't have wanted to miss.



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Another cold front, but we were smart this time

Bob and I woke up to totally calm water in Pelican Bay on Thursday morning. We were at low tide with very little water under the keel. The weather forecast was calling for another cold front to sweep across the Gulf from the northwest during the night. One source was predicting gale force winds, so we didn't want to be exposed to it.

We decided to head into a large bay to our east, called Charlotte Harbor. At the north end of the bay lies Punta Gorda, with a highly regarded marina called Fishermen's Village Yacht Basin. The cold front would whip up the open Gulf between us and Key West for a few days, so a side trip seemed to be in order.

I raised the anchor and slowly started picking my way out of Pelican Bay. It was low tide and what was nine feet deep when we arrived was now about seven. We retraced our steps from yesterday afternoon, taking a wide swing around the eastern shore of the little bay. I was running the boat at idle speed so that a grounding wouldn't be violent. Sure enough, right at the bay entrance we came to a slow stop as the keel rode up on the sand. Bob, like most power boaters, looked very concerned. I told him there was nothing to worry about. For one thing, the tide was rising and would float us off (even though that might take several hours). Secondly, Agaliha's big rudder is right behind her prop and I can throttle up and turn the wheel from side to side and "wiggle" the keel through a minor shallow spot. And that's exactly what we did. Three minutes later, we were moving again with three inches of water under the keel.

That's Florida. In fact, there is a joke that Florida is the indian word for "shallow water." And it is an actual fact that "Bahama" is spanish for "shallow sea." Another joke is that there are two kinds of sailors: those that have run aground and those that have lied and said they didn't. The good news is the sand is soft.

We started motoring for Punta Gorda in a glassy Charlotte Harbor. There was NO wind. This is the first time I have seen flat calm since I got into salt water. Later in the morning, a slight breeze (4-5 knots) came up from the northwest, so we raised the sails. When it died a couple of hours later, we motored the rest of the way to the marina.

When we got there, we decided to visit the fuel dock, since I hadn't bought any fuel since Clearwater. There was a small powerboat at the dock, so we "stood off" waiting our turn. He pumped enough fuel in that boat to take us around the world three times. During our 20-minute wait, the wind came back up to 12 knots, making our docking exciting. The wind gods love to mess with you.

After securing our boat in our assigned slip, we walked over to the "Village" for lunch and an alcoholic beverage. The little strip mall adjacent to the marina was bustling with people (mostly retired folks, but not all).


There were several restaurants and they were all busy. It was a very quaint little place and we were glad we had come.


The Christmas decorations were making us laugh.

During the night, the cold front came through as predicted. The anemometer hit thirty knots and I was reminded of the trip to Clearwater. I was very glad to be tied up for this one. By the way, I had been keeping up via email with some of the other boats that were waiting in Carrabelle with me. Some had just left on Tuesday...and still didn't have an easy trip south. So, the upper Gulf is just a tough place this time of year. Maybe that's why they call it "CarraHell."


Agaliha is the smallest sailboat on our dock. These won't be going up the TennTom with those tall masts.


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