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!