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.