Time for Some Boat Projects - Now in Real Time

 We have now been in Marathon 3 weeks and 4 days. We arrived on January 24th and I am writing this on Friday February 18th. It seems like a long time to be sitting in one place, but it feels like the time has gone by very quickly.

We started out at anchor in the west end of the harbor. We quickly met another couple that was on the boat next to us. They had been waiting for a mooring ball for over 2 weeks and were number 9 on the list when we arrived. We knew it was going to be a while. We started out at number 20. The problem is that many of the boats were planning to move on to the Bahamas, but the weather was not cooperating. 

After being in the harbor for 5 days, we had our first big blow. Which I wrote about in my last entry. Unfortunately, that was not the only northern we would have to deal with. We have had a series of them that each has lasted a few days. In between, we have seen some nice days. We have tried to take full advantage when the weather is good. We did have one nice night and I was playing with the night setting on the camera. These came out kind of cool.

I like the lines of colored lights under the boats

That one big sailboat has not taken his Christmas lights down yet.

I have met a number of other cruisers in the harbor. When I mention to them, that I am looking at doing this major battery upgrade, a couple of them have recommended a local company to assist me with the project. I decided to make contact with On-Board Rigging. The funny thing is that the Owner, Anthony has a boat that is anchored right next to us and his shop is about a quarter mile away. 

They sent over their best technical guy named Dan. He was very impressive. He spent 4 hours with me going over the project. He made a number of suggestions and corrected my thinking in a few areas. At the end of it all, I asked Dan if their company could do the work. He said sure! I asked for a proposal, which I had the next day. The next day, I went over to the shop and talked to Anthony. We put the deal together and I made a 50% down payment. Now we have to wait for the batteries and other components to be shipped to his shop. 

I really like the idea of working with a local shop for many reasons. I am not getting any younger and it would be better if an expert could do this work. I also like to help out a local company. So, I decided to buy all of the parts from them and have them do the work. The parts were scheduled to arrive yesterday. I am waiting to hear when the work will be done. 

Here is an overview of the work we are going to do:

1. We are going to install a 400ah Lithium battery bank from Battle Born

2. We will add a 400W panel over the dinghy davits

3. We will install two new solar chargers by Victron

4. We will rewire all of the battery compartments and chargers

5. We will install a Victron Multi-plus 2000W Inverter Charger

6. We will leave one AGM battery to serve as a starter battery and add a Victron DC to DC charger to charge the lithium batteries off of the alternator on the engine. 

I know this is all very technical, but the end result is that we should have a much larger battery bank, so that we can live longer between times we have to recharge our batteries. We will see how this all works out, I will report back. 

The big news this week is that we got the call! We were in the marina on Tuesday morning, when my phone rang and the girl on the other end said," This is the call you have been waiting for!". We  quickly paid the additional fees and headed back to the boat to get ready. The bad news is that the wind was blowing 10 knots then, but was expected to pick up to 20 knots before noon. 

The move did not go well. First we had problems getting the anchor up and on the bow. Kim finally decided to just leave it hanging off the bow. The wind then picked up while we were motoring the mile to the mooring ball. We were moving to almost the complete opposite end of the harbor. Our new home is ball C-15. 

The boats in the anchorage were swinging all over the place. As we approached our ball we had about 10 feet between our ball and the boat in front of us. At that point we slowly approached up wind. The other boat moved to starboard giving us some space to get to our ball. Kim did a great job capturing the pennant and threaded a line through. It was then that the boat swung back in our direction. We had overrun the ball about 10 feet, but because of the strong wind, the other boat was at the full extension of their mooring. The boats came together and our anchor put a small scratch in the port quarter of the very well maintained Morgan Out Island 41.  The accident was all my fault. I should have backed off more quickly. The owners were on board and come up to see what just happened. They were very nice and refused any compensation. We have since met Dana and Pam and they seem very nice. Hopefully we will get past this poor first meeting. 

Yesterday, we had to say good bye to our new friends, Bob and Sheila on "Sails Call". We had so much fun with you guys!

Bob and Sheila - I warned you you might just end up in the blog. I took this after our dinghy adventure and dinner at Overseas. 

Our social calendar has been stuffed since we have been here. We have played Pickleball, Dominos, attended Happy Hour and many other things. We really like it here. Hopefully I will update you on our project in my next entry. 

Getting Settled in Marathon

 We arrived in Marathon/Boot Key Harbor on Monday, January 24th. We had a difficult time finding a place to anchor, but it seems that SHIFT was ready to stop and we had a good first night. 

The second day, we were up early to head over to the marina to get checked in, pay our fees for shore services and get our name on the list for a mooring ball. When we checked, we were #20 on the list for a ball. We talked to our neighbor Bob and Sheila on "Sails Call", they were #9. They had been in the anchorage for 2 weeks. It looks like we are going to be here a while. 

We went back to the boat and looked at our options. My biggest concern was that we had a big blow coming in on Friday, so I wanted to get situated to weather that. We moved a grand total of about 100 yards, but that put us much further from the boats around us. I had been paying attention to each one and how they swing. The problem is that they are all on different amounts of rode causing their swing patterns to be different. 

The first week, we focused on domestic chores. Kim did laundry, I borrowed a loaner bike from the marina and made a grocery run for milk and other fresh foods. We made daily trips to shore for showers and fill water jugs to fill the tank in the boat. I also put out a second anchor to give us some additional holding for the strong north wind that was coming.

This is what it looks like in 10 knots of wind.

This is what the harbor looks like in 20 to 30 knots of wind. Still not bad wave action with the protection of the harbor.

 The storm came as forecast. We had 20 to 30 knots of wind out of the north. It also got much cooler. We even set a low temperature record of 46 degrees on Saturday night. That beat the previous record of 49 degrees. We stayed on the boat for two days and rode it out.  Riding out storms at anchor is not my favorite part of this lifestyle, but this one was not too bad. We did have one boat in the anchorage drag anchor. It almost hit our friends on "Sails Call". It settled into the shallows behind us and ran aground. 

After the storm the weather returned to more settled weather and we started to get into life in Boot Key harbor. They have a morning net on the VHF radio. All tune into channel 80 and the leader walks through announcements and other things going on. 

Kim played dominos one afternoon while I worked on this blog. We both played pickleball on Tuesday, which I really enjoyed. There is no shortage of things to do. 

This is the scene at Pickleball. I am on the second court over. We had about 40 people there on this day. 

We have big plans for the boat while we are here. Although the wind has been strong, which means our wind turbine keeps the batteries fully charged, we need to do an upgrade to our electrical systems if we are going to live unplugged for extended periods of time. I will lay out our plans jin my next entry.

Marco Island to Marathon Did Not Go As Planned

 In my last entry I wrote about our time in Marco Island.  We hated leaving our friends there, but there wasn't any more we could do to help and they were in a safe place with help on the way. We also had a great weather window to make three day sails to get to Marathon, where we plan to stay a while and do a major boat project. 

Our last night in Smokehouse Bay. It was a great place to enjoy our anniversary and get restocked for our future adventures. 

We left Marco Island on the morning of January 22nd. We needed to get an early start because the inlet can be shallow, and low tide was at 10 am. We were forecast to have an east wind, which was good because that was the same direction as the outgoing tide. You don't want those two to be opposed to each other. So many things to think about.

The only problem was that there was a storm approaching from the north.  It would not arrive until the next day, but it was sending some large swell in from the north.  We had to bash into some large waves as we left the inlet. Before long we were in deeper water and the swell was less noticeable.  We cruised along the coast due south with about 8 knots of breeze at about 4 knots. We were in no hurry,  we had only planned to go 30 miles to Indian Key pass. It is a beautiful spot that is in the area of 10,000 islands in Everglades National Park. 

Marco Island is a point of the Florida gulf coast. South of that point are the Cape Romano shoals that extend out about 10 miles. We planned to go south for about 5 miles and then cut through a natural channel that is about 10 feet deep. Then we would turn to the northeast and sail on the predicted 10 knot north wind  the final 15 miles to Indian Key. Well, that was the plan...

As we approached the shoals the wind picked up. First 15 and then 20 knots. It wasn't coming out of the north as predicted, it was coming from the northeast. My first problem was staying in the channel.  I had water north and south of me that would put me aground. I set the sails to sail as hard as we could up into the strong wind. I started the motor just in case I couldn't hold my line. SHIFT did an excellent job holding our line and we made it through the channel. 

Now we had another problem.  The wind was directly out of the direction we wanted to go.  We had 15 knots gusting to 20 right on the nose. Our only option was to motor straight into that to make our destination.  That is until Kim suggested we look at skipping Indian Key and going directly to Little Shark River, which was our second planned destination.  I  let our navigation application do the calculations and it told me we could make it by dark if we could average 5.5 knots. The good news is that when I set the sails to go that direction the strong wind propelled us to 6 to 7 knots. We decided to go for it.  

I sailed as fast as possible all day. At one point the wind died off and we had to motor and then an hour later the wind backed and increased to right on our stern and blowing about 15 knots. We  rigged a preventer on the main and sailed wing on wing for about 4 hours making more than 5 knots most of the time.  The shallow water was very sloppy with large waves coming from every direction. 

The whole day I was watching our expected arrival time.  I really didn't want to go into this place in the dark. We had been there before and had tracks on the chart plotter, but I didn't know how many boats may be in there or what else we might find. It was a bit stressful. 

We approached the anchorage at sunset, but it was overcast, so the light would not last long. I was relieved to see just one other boat in the anchorage.  I pulled in past the other boat and dropped the hook in 10 feet of water. We had plenty of clearance to the other boat, but I wasn't sure how much we would swing with the changing currents. We had sailed 57 nm in 11 hours and 15 minutes. That was using all of the daylight the day had to offer.

 I kept watch much of the night. I saw 5 feet of water at low tide, but it quickly went up after that.

Just us and this Power Cat called "Moment of Zen". They would be our neighbor for two nights.

Our view around Little Shark River. The bugs can be terrible here, but with the strong winds and cool temps we did not see any.

I  was expecting a strong north wind on Sunday, the 23rd. My original plan was to sail on that wind to our current location, Little Shark River,  but we were already there. The wind was strong all day with gusts over 25 knots, but we were safe in our very protected anchorage.  Many times I thanked Kim for pushing on the previous day. We rested and prepared for our departure on Monday morning. 

We awoke on Monday morning to partly cloudy skies and lighter winds. Our neighbor left just before us and headed north. We were headed south.

We were up early to catch the outgoing tide and headed south along the coast of Cape Sable in the boundary of Everglades National Park.  We had a 15 knot north wind directly behind us again. It is not our best point of sail, but we rigged up again for wing on wing. We were moving well, but the seas were rough. We spent most of the day on crab pot watch. There are literally millions of them in the Florida Bay. 

Our view of Cape Sable off the port side. The camera never shows how big the waves are.

This shot off the starboard side shows some white caps. Let me tell you it was a bit rough, but at least we were running downwind with it. 

As we approached the Florida keys, the wind diminished and the seas became calmer. We sailed all the way to the 7 mile bridge. Then we motored the final 5 miles into Boot Key harbor in Marathon, Florida.

Boot Key Harbor has 175 mooring balls. They were all full.  There is an area for anchoring, so we headed there and tried to find a spot. We anchored and re-anchored 3 times that first day. Right in the middle of the third time I got an engine overheating alarm. I quickly looked and we did not have any water coming out of the exhaust. The engine temperature was up to 210 degrees. It normally runs about 160 degrees. I quickly got the engine shut down and went to work figuring out what was going on. I suspected a clogged sea strainer, but when I opened it up it had very little in it. I then asked Kim to open the engine sea cock while I had the top of the strainer off to check the flow. I had no flow. I disconnected the incoming hose and had her open the sea cock again, I blew through it as hard as I could and after about 5 seconds whatever was blocking it cleared out the side of the boat. I suspect it was some sea grass, there is a lot in the water down here. I decided that we were good right where we were. I ran the engine for a bit and the temp stayed fine. The good news is the winds were light and forecast to die off completely that night, so I went with short scope and set hard and hoped not to drag. 

Our first sunset at Boot Key Harbor. It felt so good, but you can see how tight the anchorage is. 

I was worried about our anchoring spot, but I was still very happy to be in the keys. We have been moving since November 15th and now we could rest a while. In my next entry, I will write about getting settled into life in Boot Key Harbor.

On to Marco Island

 In my last entry,  I wrote about our delayed  departure from the Punta Gorda area. On January 18th we lifted the anchor in Pelican Bay and headed south motoring on the ICW.  

We only planned to go 18 miles to St. James City and anchor for the night. We did get the Genoa up for part of the trip to add some push, but mostly it was a slow trip with a surprising amount of  boat traffic for a week day. Just as we were approaching our anchorage I got a look at a bridge that our navigation software had me going underneath the next morning.  I checked, and it was way too short for our mast. We quickly rerouted and went another 5 miles to an anchorage we used back in 2019. That left us with an easy exit to open water the next morning. 

The sunset view from our anchorage near the bridge at Ft. Myers Beach.

The next day was January 19th, our 42nd wedding anniversary.  We were up well before sunrise and left when we could barely see. We headed out to open water and were greeted with 20 knots on the beam. It was a wild ride to start the day, but we knew the forecast was for the wind to clock around to the south later in the day. The forecast also called for 10 knots, but SHIFT loves 20 knots and we were moving briskly at well over 7 knots. 

The sunrise over Ft. Myers Beach. Winds were stronger than expected.

Fast Sailing

Good speed in 14 knots of wind makes for a fun sail

We had a great sail until we were 10 miles from Marco Island.  Then the wind did turn and we had to motor to the inlet and then up the channels to Smokehouse Bay. We got the hook down and for the first time in a while I felt like I could relax in this very protected bay.

We got in the dinghy down and went to an early dinner to celebrate our anniversary at Mango's right along the water. We then went to the dock at the Winn Dixie grocery store. We spent about $250 on this first trip and went back to the boat to put it all away.

Dinghy dock at Winn Dixie grocery store. This was day one.

The next day we went again and spend another $228. It feels great to have food again.

Day 2

While we were sailing to Marco, I had heard a radio call from a friend. It was not too me, but it sounded like they had a mechanical problem. I sent them a text and was surprised to hear back that Sally and Conrad were in Marco Island at another anchorage. They were indeed having an alternator problem. I  suggested they move to Smokehouse Bay. They arrived in the afternoon and we quickly removed the problem unit. We then spent a very pleasant evening sharing a bottle of wine and telling stories of cruising. They rented a car the next day and took the alternator to a shop in Ft. Myers.  They got it fixed on the spot, but it was still not charging. They had someone come to the boat after we left the following day.

This is Smokehouse Bay. The sailboat in this picture is the Island Packet named: "Final Packet" owned by our friends, Conrad and Sally.

I will write about the next leg of our journey south in my next entry. This was another case of things not going as planned.