Captain’s Log – Fri 5/23/25
A very long day for us, a little over 80nm. We left Key West at 7:15am, motor sailing the entire way to Capri Pass at Marco Island to make the best time we could. We navigated the pass in the dark, dropping anchor about 10pm in the shallow area just off of the channel at marker G15. There were three other sailboats that beat us there, so it was a pretty tight squeeze. With the afternoon sea breeze powering the sails as well as running the engine, we were doing well over 7kts most of the afternoon. It would have taken us over 17 hours at 5kts. We made it in just under 15 hours.
The passage started out flat calm directly into a light North breeze then shifted NW and built to 3’-4’ seas with the sea breeze in the afternoon. By the time we got to Capri Pass the seas were pretty sporty. The sea breeze fueled a lot of inland thunderstorm activity but fortunately we didn’t have to get into any of it.
The engine ran a bit on the warm side, around 185-190 degrees at 2300 rpm. (The engine is cooled by sea water.) The combination of warm water and very hot and humid weather are making it hard on the cooling system to keep up.
It was a hot, muggy and buggy night. The mosquitoes prevented us from sleeping on deck where it was cooler. We do have a big mosquito tent but we were too tired to hang it. We would have preferred to go into the marina so we could run the AC but the route in is very shallow and zig zaggy and I didn’t want to chance it in the dark. Needless to say we didn’t sleep well.
We definitely have pushed this cruising season to the limit and are looking forward to getting back to St Pete.
Saturday we are stopping at Pink Shell Marina to cool off.
✌️❤️⛵️
Leave a Reply