It's been a month of Arkies on the Ocean, friends and family from the Ozarks found reasons to get out of the cold an down to the Keys in February, a temperature difference of 70 degrees was convincing.
I worked on the clean up and painting of the trawler Just Because at the house on Valencia St while staying in the apartment on the ground floor. She's a great old boat with a big comfortable stateroom, two heads and a bath tub, yes, a bath tub on a boat. She needed her bright work restored and needed a paint job, I gave her both. In the middle of February it was cold and snowy in Arkansas and I convinced mom to come visit Florida, it wasn't hard to convince her, while it was snowing there I was in shorts and 75 degrees here. The owner of Just Because loaned her to me to take mom out, Waltzing Matilda is not terribly comfortable for overnight trips with more than one person. A few days before mom was scheduled to arrive I still had lots of painting and a bit more sanding to do and knew there was no way I could get it done by myself. I contacted the crew of Ginger and they came to assist. After having been on the hook for 3 months a chance to get to a dock, take showers and sleep indoors was a real treat for them. We sanded, painted and scrubbed and got Just Because shining in time to take her out for a shake down cruise.
Ginger's crew and I motored six miles to an anchorage known to locals as Mangrovia, a funky little anchorage community that has some really great folks around, the local fishing charter captains hang out there and share the excess fish and beers donated by the tourists. Ginger was anchored there, we stayed the night and motored back to Valencia St. the next day while taking lots of photos of Ginger under sail, it was my first time piloting anything larger than Waltzing Matilda and I am proud of how well I brought her into the dock.
When mom got to the Keys she was quite tired from flying all day and a bit bummed out that she missed the sunset, I assured her that there would be more sunsets. We had a nice little jaunt down to Marathon, we only hit one crab trap! Actually mom hit it but is wasn't her fault, some inconsiderate crabber had placed his trap in the ICWW channel, and somebody else's prop had cut the float off of it so it was just a block piece of black line floating in the water, nearly impossible to see. Despite being cross waked at 04:00 by a very inconsiderate crabber, (they are ALL inconsiderate) we had a very nice night anchored out on the north side of the island. We motored under Seven Mile Bridge and through the Marathon anchorage to Sister Creek. I took mom kayak exploring the mangroves and taught her how to sail a kayak with an umbrella, I found a geocahce by chance and signed the log book, left a lighter but didn't feel the need to take anything. When we left the next day I though we should run the ocean side of the keys half way then cross under a bridge to the bay side, that way mom could get both sea and bay experiences. The weather had other ideas. As we headed out to sea I could see the 3' waves were not a big deal, at least not in a sail boat, but we weren't in a sailboat and 3' waves in a power boat are no fun at all. Mattie got sea sick, things began rolling and banging around and in less than a mile I turned around and went back into Marathon. We had a nice calm day returning Just Because to Islamorada, no crab traps were hit and mom got some photos of dolphins dancing along side us.
Upon return to the dock mom and I went out to eat a nice dog friendly place on the ocean, it was a great visit and mom had a good time, I made sure she left with a coconut in her carry on, I hope it wasn't more than 3 ounces of liquid.
With Just Because painted, a few dollars in the cruising kitty and all of my minimal responsibilities fulfilled the only things left to do were stock up with food and go to the Bahamas. I sailed Waltzing Matilda to Mangrove Marina and anchored out intending to spend two nights, the weather had other ideas. A huge high pressure front was coming across the Gulf of Mexico and I like being well protected in nasty blows, Community Harbor is well protected, shallow but has really poor holding. The harbor is 4.5' deep and surrounded 360 degrees by mangroves with a small marina and very few anchored boats. I was concerned about dragging anchor (I'm really good at dragging) and was going to move close into the mangroves to be sheltered from the wind. One of the locals that I met a few weeks ago in Islamorada offered to give me a 50lb danforth anchor, 50lbs is a lot of anchor for a little boat like mine but dragging into a marina and possibly scratching a fancy yacht is never a good idea, so I ran out the big anchor attached to 40' of heavy chain and 20' of rope just moments before the winds began to gust 40mph from the north. It's amazing what too heavy of ground tackle can do for a sailors sleep. I've read in plenty of sailing books the proper scope ratios to use in anchoring, these guidelines often come with disclaimers, one should be “anchoring anywhere in the keys is not easy, get 5 anchors that are too big, use too much chain, run too much scope and hang on, you're going to drag eventually”.
The weather has cleared, my boat is stocked, I am going to head up to Cape Sable to redevouz with a buddy boat and cross the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. I've wanted to go to the capes for quite some time but avoided it in October as that is the height of “mosquito season”, there are 17 species of mosquito in Florida, they are represented by the millions near the capes but this time of ear they aren't as thick.
I plan on being back in the states before the beginning of hurricane season in June, but I've never been south and I could island hop far enough to get under the hurricane paths, I've never seen the Southern Cross and am not opposed to crossing the equator. We'll wait and see, Waltzing Matilda is not the right boat for doing long journeys but I've made it this far.
