Video of Trip North

Click on this link to see the Video: Trip North 09/05-8/2019

Trip North

I am writing this entry from the ranch in Missouri. We have been crazy busy the past two weeks. We made the drive to Missouri on September 14 and 15. It feels very strange to be here in our home on wheels. SHIFT is alone in her slip in Palmetto, Florida. We are watching the weather closely, praying that no hurricanes come to that area.

This entry will be about what we did just after Hurricane Dorian turned north and missed the west coast of Florida. As the hurricane headed north it brought solid 15-25 knot winds out of the west and dry air to the Tampa Bay area. As many of the boats in the marina were getting put back in the water, we quickly got ready to head out on a trip. We have been wanting to check out the area to the north of Tampa Bay and this would be our opportunity to sail in some stronger winds.

We headed out on Thursday, September 5. We had to go west to exit the bay, so we made a few long tacks to get the right angle to exit the inlet. The sailing was brisk, with 20 knot wind gusting to 25. We sailed under the first reef in the main and about 50% genoa. The boat felt very balanced and did not heel much at all. By the time we made it to the inlet, the wind over the top of the outgoing current created some huge waves. We started out, but quickly turned back. It was just too rough and Kim was feeling a bit sick.

There is an island called Egmont Key at the entrance to Tampa Bay. I turned the boat back to get in the lee of Egmont. We still had good wind,but the waves were significantly reduced. We sailed around the bay for a couple more hours and then decided to drop the hook behind Egmont for the night and get an early start the next morning.

As we were eating dinner, this Carnival Cruise Ship headed out of Tampa.

Lots of Pelicans and other birds

The anchorage was a bit rolly, but we got some sleep. The strong breeze kept us reasonably comfortable and no bugs.

We would like to have been closer to Egmont, but the water gets too shallow to chance it. The breeze was nice, but the constant roll and the passing of the pilot boats that base on Egmont made for an uncomfortable night. We were up early the next morning to try again to exit the bay and head up the coast. We had to motor directly into the 20 knot breeze to stay in the narrow ship channel. The waves were not as large as the previous afternoon, but still big. We could only muster between 3 to 4 knots. A large ship came in while we were in the channel, we stayed as far to starboard as we could and passed comfortably. It took almost 2 hours to get to the point that we could turn north and put the wind on the beam and shut down the engine.

That is the Century Royal coming at us at 12.3 knots. My AIS system show these ships on my chartplotter.

Just as we turned north, we passed this tug pulling two barges:

We sailed north for about 6 hours in 4-6 feet seas with 15 to 20 knots of breeze. Kim and I debate how big the larges waves were, but I am sure they were close to 8 feet. This is exactly the type of sailing we wanted to do to gain confidence in both us and the boat. I was never concerned for our safety, but was happy to arrive at the inlet in Clearwater.

A shot of us coming into the Clearwater inlet.

We came in passed the hotels and condos and intersected with the ICW and turned back south for about a half mile to the Bellview Island Anchorage. It was a perfectly calm night with a nice breeze. We both slept great.

Sunset at Bellview Island, Clearwater in the distance.

Beautiful Sunrise at Bellview Island

 We relaxed for a bit and decided we wanted to go further north to some barrier islands that promised to have some nice beaches. The wind had died down overnight, so we decided to just motor up the ICW.

Kim took this shot of me at the helm. 

There was a lot of boat traffic on this Saturday. We had to open one bridge, but for the most part it was an easy trip.

You never know what you will see as you motor along. A Shark Boat!

We tried to anchor close to an island in Anaclote State Park, but got a bit too close for comfort. It got shallow very quickly. We reversed course and moved a bit further away. It was fun to watch all of the families enjoying their day on the beach. Later in the evening, after all of the boats left, we swam to shore and took a walk on the beach. We would have taken the dingy, but we forgot to get the dingy gas before we left the marina.

Lots of boats on this little sand island. 

Beautiful sunset at Anaclote State Park

We were up early on Sunday, like before sunrise to make the trip back to Palmetto. The winds were supposed to be 8 to 10 knots in the morning, but only 5 in the afternoon. We made it about 2 miles with some wind and then it went to zero. What a difference 2 days make. It was like a big calm lake. We had to motor all the way back to Tampa Bay. It was actually a very pleasant day. We took turns on the foredeck in my chair watching for crabpots, dolphins and turtles. Sadly, still no good pictures of dolphins or turtles.

In this shot you can see how calm the seas were. I spent much of it on the foredeck in my very comfortable chair taking pictures. It was a very relaxing day.

As we got to Tampa Bay the wind increased and we were able to do a bit of motor sailing. As we came through the inlet this large ship was on it's way out.

We made it back to the marina at 6 pm. It was a very good trip. We learned a lot and that will certainly help us with our future plans.

We spent the next week working on the boat. I replaced a raw water pump that was leaking and sent the old one out to see if it could be rebuilt. I then changed the oil in the engine. We have put 75 hours on the engine in the two months since we have owned SHIFT. I then replaced the rusted out water heater that may have been original to the 26 year old boat. We took advantage of great wind on Wednesday and sailed over 30 miles in the bay. That brought up our total miles to over 200 nm in the first 11 days of September.

We had a rigging inspection done on Thursday, and found all of the major things looked good. We will have to replace some minor rigging and we found issues with both head sails. We took them off and took them to North Sails in St. Petersburg on Friday morning on our way out of town. They will hopefully be able to fix them while we are in Missouri.

Our future plans include staying in Missouri until October 17th. We will fly back to Tampa and rent a car for 3 days to do our final provisioning and pick up our sails. We expect to spend close to $500 on food to stock the boat for our 5 to 6 month trip to the Florida Keys and back to Alabama. I will probably not write much for the next month. We will relax in Missouri and get ready for the adventure ahead.

Dorian Spared Us

It has been about 10 days since my last update. I really wanted to write sooner, but we have been very busy. This one will be short to try to not fall too far behind.

First off, Dorian turned north and missed us completely. We are safe and sound and had no damage to the boat. On Friday, August 30, we were very concerned. The forecast track had it coming right at us. It would go over the Florida peninsula first and lose some strength, but it would have still done significant damage. By Saturday, the track was changing and we decided to not take down our canvas and other planned preparation. Here is what the boat looked like.

If you look closely, you can see all of the extra lines. I think we had about 14 lines on the boat. You may also notice there are no boats next to us. Many of the boats in the marina had been hauled out.

A row of very expensive motor yachts

A 58 Marquis from Dallas, Texas. She was only here a few days. 

We felt so good about everything on Sunday that we went to the Bradenton Beach after church. We had an awesome time walking along the beach and swimming in the clear water. There was almost no wind and just a beautiful day until mid afternoon. That is when we started to feel the effects of the storm. We just had some strong thunderstorms and 30 knot winds. That stayed with us until Wednesday.

We felt strange praying for the hurricane to go away, because we knew if it was not us, it was going to hit some other place. The damage reports from the Bahamas are amazing and terrible. We are hoping to visit the Bahamas in 2021, we pray for their recovery.

By Thursday, we had strong wind and dry weather. We decided to take a trip. I will write about that trip in my next entry.

Here Comes Dorian

This is one post I had hoped I would not have to write. We are still in Palmetto, Florida and are now waiting for the arrival of Hurricane Dorian. We have been watching the progress of the storm for a few days and we kept hoping it would not head our way, but now that seems like a real possibility.

The good news is that we are on the West coast of Florida, just south of Tampa Bay. The storm is coming through the Atlantic and looks like it will hit Florida somewhere between Ft. Lauderdale and Jacksonville on the east coast. That is a huge area and where it hits will make all of the difference to us. If it hits south of us, it could go across the state and do damage to our area. The part that drives everyone crazy is the not knowing. If it goes a bit north, it could then turn further north and not impact us much at all.

Kim and I have been in a wait and see mode for the past few days. We checked into having SHIFT hauled out with the lift and putting it on stands on the hard ground. The problem is they are full with reservations here at the marina, so we can't do that. If it was going to be a direct hit from a Gulf of Mexico storm, we would look at other options for getting put on the "hard". After consulting with many other local boaters that have much more experience in dealing with these storms, we have decided to stay here in this very protected marina. We will strip all of the canvas off of the boat and reduce things that can be impacted by the wind. We will also add many more lines to anchor points around our slip. The boats on both sides of us have been placed on the hard, so that gives us more room to run lines. We completed that work today. We will take the canvas off tomorrow. We also placed the dingy upside down on the foredeck and lashed it down. We have made countless other things that have been pointed out to us.

When the time comes, we will leave the boat and go in a direction of safety. We will not stay on the boat unless it looks like the impact will be minimal.

For the most part we have stayed calm and discussed our options and made decisions. The thought of our boat getting damaged or worse is crushing. All we can do is do our best to protect her and then hope and pray that it will all work out.

I expect my next entry will be right after the storm and I will report the status of us and SHIFT. Thanks for reading.

Just a sunset shot to end this post on a positive note. Venice, Florida

7 Day Cruise (part 2)

I took this double rainbow shot while we were aground. We knew we would be fine.

We will now pick up the story on the morning after grounding the boat. I was tired and slept in. Kim got up to say goodbye to Dave and Janice. Janice had to be back at work the next day, so they had one day to make the 65 NM trip back to Palmetto. They ended up stopping after a 12 hour day motoring up the ICW and then just making it in time the next morning. We did not have any time restrictions, so we decided to spend the day exploring this beautiful area.

We started the day by taking the dingy to the dock at the State Park. They charge a $2 per person daily pass, that we gladly paid. We took a golf cart ride across the island to the beach. It is a nice beach with lots of shells. We walked for a little over an hour and added to our shell collection.

Beautiful beach all to ourselves

Flowers on the beach.

Kim on a beach. There is that theme again.

We went back to the boat and relaxed a while. Later in the day we were joined by 4 other power boats in the anchorage, but there was still plenty of room and privacy. In the late afternoon we took a dingy ride to further explore the area, but I guess we were not in a picture taking mood. I fished in the evening hours and caught 6 fish, but no pictures. None were keepers. 5 were trout and one catfish. I had a double hook rig and actually caught two fish on one cast. It was our best day yet on the boat.

We were watching the tide schedules to give us as much water as possible to get out of the bay, so we decided to leave at 10 am the following morning and head back north. It was our first day traveling alone and we wanted to take it easy, so we just motored up the ICW 18 miles in about 4 hours. We opened two bridges and then stopped at a very exposed anchorage in Lemon Bay. We wanted the open location to give us better breeze. That did not work out so well. All was good until I was awoken at 12:30 to a strong breeze whistling through the rigging. The anchor alarm went off and I was up in a shot. I looked at the instruments and it showed solid 20 knots of wind with a gust or 2 over 30. I checked our position and we were stable and the anchor was holding. I stayed up for an hour or more to keep a watch. By 2 in the morning the storm had passed and I was able to get some rest. That is just part of life on a boat.

Our view of the sunset at Lemon Bay

A rainbow at Lemon Bay

We left the next morning and continued to motor up the ICW. The wind was pretty good, but there were storms all around, so we decided to play it safe and not sail out in the gulf. 

I was hearing storm warnings on the VHF radio all day, but they were pretty far north of us. We had motored about 28 miles and were just entering the large open water of Sarasota Bay, when I heard a storm warning that was for the area we were in. I pulled up the radar on my phone and it did not look good. We had to make a quick decision and found a protected anchorage just about a half mile back. We spun the boat around and headed for Ken Thompson Park. I had to watch the charts closely to not run aground. I worked my way between boats that were moored in the area. I found a fairly open area and Kim took the helm, so that I could get the anchor ready. We dropped it and let out 70 feet of chain. I backed down on the anchor with the motor and we were hooked well. By this time the storm was closing in on us. Kim went below and got everything closed up. I put on a rain jacket and sat in the cockpit and watched it come in. I wanted to be able to start the engine and help the anchor if needed. We saw gusts over 35 knots. We had rain coming through the cockpit like a firehose. It was intense for about 20 minutes. Through all of that, the anchor held tight. Then just as fast as it came, it was gone. 

We had a nice evening with a comfortable breeze.

Downtown Sarasota from the Ken Thompson anchorage

Other boats moored around us.

I thought we were done with the storms, but at 2 am, I was awoken by another one. This one was not as bad and our protected position helped, but we still saw gusts about 30 knots. It was another night without enough sleep.

We got moving the next morning and hoped to sail down the bay, but the wind was right on the nose and we did not have room or desire to tack up the bay. We motored for about 4 hours and were at the mouth of the Manatee river when another storm hit us. The wind was not bad, but it rained buckets for about a half hour. We motored on in to the marina, got the boat put to bed, then another one hit. It was nice to go below and not worry about the anchor. We feel very secure in our slip. And it was even better to turn on the Air Conditioner. I went to bed early and slept very well. 

We have learned that this is not a good time of year to be sailing in Florida. It is very hot and humid and the afternoon thunderstorms are daily. Not to mention the possibility of a hurricane. This past week, the storms were much more frequent than normal due to a disturbance out in the gulf. It will certainly be our goal to be in northern climates during the summer months in the future.

That wraps up our 7 day trip. We had an awesome time and we learned a ton of important lessons. We can't thank Dave and Janice enough for taking us under their wing and showing us all that they did. 

In my next entry, I will talk about our plan going forward. 

Video of 7 day trip

I ave been trying to shoot some video along the way. I put this together. Please let me know what you think. This one is in 1080p, so it should be better quality if you have a decent connection.

Video of 7 Day trip to Pelican Bay

Enjoy!

7 Day Cruise (part 1)

We got back to the marina after our trip to St. Petersburg on August 7. We relaxed for a day and then our boat neighbors asked us if we wanted to tag along with them on a little trip to their favorite anchorage. This trip would require us to do a number of things that we had never done before, so we quickly accepted the invitation and got ready to leave on Friday August 9.

The first order of business was a trip to a place called Bimini Bay. This is a very protected little bay just a few miles from the marina. Dave and Janice have a Gemini 105C Catamaran and they wanted to clean their hulls before they set out. In this area you should clean the hull about once a month to keep the buildup of growth to a minimum. If the growth gets bad enough, it will actually slow the boat down.

It was very shallow getting into the bay and required me to keep a sharp eye on the chartplotter. We made it by following their path and dropped anchor. We swam for a while and cleaned our hull also. At one point I looked over at Kim and a dolphin was about a foot behind her. She heard it, but did not see it. Swimming with dolphins is a very cool experience. It would be the first of many on this trip. Sadly no pictures.

We then motored up the Inter-coastal Waterway (ICW) for a few miles to the Anna Maria Island Bridge. It is a bascule (draw) bridge that is only 20 feet high when closed. We called them on the radio and requested an opening. I was a bit slow getting through the bridge, but it worked out fine. That was a big first for us. We then motored to the Cortez Bridge and did the same thing. Just a few miles later we were at the Longboat Key Pass. This is a very cool place. We motored in with Dave leading the way through shallow water and dropped the hook.

We were then invited to Dave and Janice's boat for sundowners. Sundowners are a boating tradition and just a good reason to have a drink and watch the sunset. We dropped the dingy and installed the outboard and headed over. Here is a shot of SHIFT sitting at anchor from D and J's boat "SloMotion".

SHIFT at anchor

We then decided to go to shore to a restaurant to eat dinner. Just as we sat down it started to pour down rain. OH NO! we had left our hatches open. The good news it did not last long. That was the first of many lessons we learned on this trip. We had a non-memorable dinner and went back to the boats. The next day I was up early. Having coffee in the cockpit is a beautiful way to start the day.

SloMotion at anchor - This one is for you Dave and Janice

View off our starboard bow

View off our port side

View Aft

We had a nice breeze and we slept fairly well. It is still hot, but the breeze makes it much better.

Kim and I took a ride to the beach in the dingy. We walked around a bit and enjoyed the park along the beach.

Kim on a beach, that theme will never change. 

We enjoyed the day at the beach and at a sandbar that got quite crowded on this Saturday. We made it back to the boat and then a big squall came in. Some wind and rain was just enough to run off most of the weekend boaters. We spent a second night and planned to go out the pass the next morning.

When we awoke, there were storms all around us. We waited and then decided to head further south on the ICW, rather than going out in the gulf. It is always nice to have that option. Just a few miles south was Sarasota bay. It is about 7 miles long and very wide and deep, so we got the sails ready and headed out. When we hit the bay, we had 10 knots of breeze. First we took a leg downwind and then had to make a turn and had the wind right on the beam. We sailed side by side down the bay. It was a blast. We each took shots of each others boat. It is really difficult to get shots of your own boat under sail.

SloMotion charging down the bay

SHIFT sailing wing and wing downwind.

SHIFT on the move

SHIFT under full sails

We then dropped the sails and motored down to Venice, Florida. We opened three more bridges along the way, but that is easy now. We looked for a place to anchor, but decided to stay in a marina. It was not a great experience. We had problems with the dock power and we had to move our boats after we were all tied up. Thankfully with 4 of us, we got it done. The marina was overpriced at $105.00 for the night and we rolled with the incoming swell all night. We won't be back to Crow's Nest Marina. I fixed dinner for all of us and then finished the key lime pie from my birthday.

The next morning we were on the move early. We went out the inlet and sailed down the coast. We had a great sail for the first 4 hours. We had 5 to 10 knots and the swell was not too bad. Then we got hit by a storm that caught us from behind. We reefed the sails and watched the wind climb to 18 knots. The sea state went from comfortable to wild. We had waves and swell over 6 feet high. The good news is the boat handled it in stride and I never was concerned about our safety. We sailed in through Boca Grande Inlet. The tide was coming out and the wind was stacking up the waves. We turned on the motors and were barely moving. It took forever to make it through the pass.

We rounded the corner to starboard and got our first look at Pelican Bay. It is a beautiful place and we had it all to ourselves. SloMotion got in and dropped anchor. It was then that I made a mistake. I was looking at the chart and saw very shallow water, but failed to turn quickly enough to avoid it. The next thing I knew we stopped moving. We were AGROUND!

I thought back to all I had read on the subject and got to work. I dropped the dingy and carried out an anchor to deeper water. I carry two anchors on the bow of the boat and one for the stern. I put that anchor rode on one of my big sheet winches and pulled it tight. The boat did not move, but it was low tide and we would just wait. We got the boat put to bed and had dinner. This was our view from our boat that for the first time was not moving.

I got out and walked around in the shallow water. Our draft is 4.5 feet, and that is about exactly how deep the water was. I determined where the deeper water was and waited until 11PM. I pulled on the winch and the boat began to move. Then sadly it got stuck again! I took the anchor out again and went through the whole process again. This time with some help from the motor, she got free and we made it to deeper water and dropped the main anchor. That was a huge relief. We finally fell into bed at 1AM, exhausted but happy to be rocking a little bit.

That is enough for this entry. Dave and Janice left us the next morning to head back to civilization. It was just Kim and I to figure out how to get back to the marina. Would we make it? I will tell the rest of the story in my next entry.