Category: Captain’s Log

Captain’s Log – Mon 5/19/25

As we were getting ready to head for Marathon this morning, the Admiral said “Can we just head for Key West instead?” Aye! Aye! Captain plotted a new course.

We found a dock slip at our preferred marina. We do have to leave by Memorial Day weekend because they are booked up, but that’s amateur hour anyway.

We decided to stay on the Florida Bay side. With the southern wind, we had flat water and a good breeze today for a delightful sail. It took a while to while to work our way through to deeper water. For the first couple hours we weaved around shoals in 6’ of water before we could sail. It’s skinny water on this side. We draw 4’9” loaded up for cruising so that’s not a lot of clearance. We made a tank of water while we were motoring and generating power. The engine seemed fine again today.

We were getting ready to drop anchor off a mangrove island for the night and bumped a shoal. It went from 15’ to 4’ in about 20 yards. And the tide was going out quickly. I took the spare anchor out about 70’ in the dinghy then used the winch to kedge us off. Did I mention it’s really shallow on this side? Not a major issue, other than a slight delay for dinner.

We moved to the next island to anchor carefully in deeper water just in time for another amazing sunset. If you look carefully you can see the border patrol’s blimp high above the keys here. We are anchored off Content Key. This one’s good. Don’t stop at the one before it!

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Captain’s Log – Sun 5/18/25

It was a bit of a slow start this morning, a little after 10am by the time we double checked the engine and raised anchor. I wanted to exercise the engine today before we got too far away. It does seem to be running good. Warm, but it is 97 degrees here. I checked periodically underway and everything looked good. I believe we’re good to go.

We took advantage of running the engine to make water while we were at it. It wasn’t great snorkeling conditions though. There was just enough southern wind to make everything rolly but not enough wind to sail and get anywhere in a timely manner.

I decided to duck under the Channel 5 bridge and anchor on the lee side of the keys to get away from the rolling tonight. We found a pretty spot by Long Key, calm but enough breeze to cool the boat down.

We anchored just in time to attend my niece’s graduation virtually. The camera cut off the stage when she walked up, WTF?

After the graduation ceremony, we needed a dip followed by a frozen Blue Hawaiian cocktail. We made an extra stop yesterday for more of the frozen drink mixes. It’s hot.

Amazing sunset here, every bit as beautiful as Key West!

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Captain’s Log – Sat 5/17/25

With fingers crossed we took the dinghy to Tavernier Creek on the quest to get the replacement water pump for our engine. Craig’s Bait shop was nice enough to let us tie up for a couple hours. We then took a $60 round trip Uber back to the marina in Key Largo we left a couple days ago where we had the pump overnighted to for $90. At least I didn’t have to get a plane ticket like the parts run in Freeport. We made a side trip to Napa for more coolant and some liquid gasket just in case. We got ice at the bait shop, a new filet knife to replace the scamazon one I had and some chips. I felt like we should buy something there since we tied up there.

The installation went smoothly. There were two spare gaskets on board so no need for the liquid gasket. I was actually able to save about 95% of the coolant and reuse it. I didn’t want it going overboard in such beautiful water down here. The only challenge was doing the job in the 95 degree cabin, which got even hotter when I tested the engine. That wiped me out. Had to jump in the water to cool off, so I scrubbed the waterline while I was at it.

Mahalo’s to my friend Art whose super power is locating obscure parts in stock somewhere, to Discount Marine who made sure the shipment made it to UPS in time for next day delivery, to UPS the second time on this trip, for getting the package to me overnight, and finally to Craig’s bait shop for letting us tie up to run errands.

Tomorrow morning we will head further south to do some snorkeling and diving. Between the weather delay earlier this week and the engine breakdown it would put us in Key West Memorial Day weekend. Which would be ok if everything wasn’t booked up. So between the delays and the sudden heat wave, we will likely start heading back to St Pete when we get to Marathon. Sadly we’ll miss all of our friends that just got to Key West with the Bone Island Regatta.

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