Time to Sail South

We stayed anchored in Manatee River for 3 nights waiting for the weather to clear. We saw winds of just a bit over 20 knots, which is not that bad, but we will be conservative. Monday, November 4th looked like a perfect day. The forecast was calling for 10 to 15 knots out of the east and then dying off around 2 PM. That is exactly what it did.

We decided to sail about 45 NM to Venice, Florida. We got up at about 6 am to make sure we would be anchored well before dark. It was a beautiful morning with the wind just as predicted. We set our sails before we left the river and stayed on the same port tack until we made the turn (a jibe) to go through the inlet and head south.

We set the auto pilot and just made minor corrections the entire way to Venice. The wind started at 10-12 knots and then picked up to about 15 to 18. We were doing between 6 and 7 knots most of the time. The boat was balanced and very comfortable. We both think it was our best day sailing yet.

Kim in her place of comfort. No seasickness on this day.

Perfect Day

Under full canvas

As we got to Sarasota, the wind picked up to 15 to 18 and it just got better.

We had some water over the rail, but still very comfortable. The boat is a bit salty now.

Kim contemplating life on a lean.

I have added one additional thing to my Navigation system. An Android tablet running Navionics software is great to double check the chart plotter and to give us some redundancy.

New tablet and mount. No lost visibility.

We got to the Venice inlet, but we were about 9 miles offshore. We had to do that to stay on the wind. We planned to make a tack and head to land. The problem was that it was now 2 pm and the wind just died. I mean like totally died. It became dead calm and the water was like glass. It was crazy how fast it changed. We fired up the motor and cruised on in. During that time we were greeted by a pod of dolphins on the bow. Kim went up to talk to them and they stayed there for about 5 minutes. She LOVED it! Sadly, no pictures.

We came in the inlet and motored up the ICW about 2.5 miles. We had to open one bridge and then dropped the hook in Blackburn Bay. It was glass smooth and we had a beautiful evening. We had another very cool dolphin encounter that I did get on video. Check out the video to follow to see that.

We had the local rowing team come by with their coach. They had a girl coxswain, just like my niece Katherine.

Our anchorage at Blackburn Bay. We were surrounded by beautiful homes and a nice sunset.

SHIFT ready for bed after a long days work.

Just one more sunset shot. 

We liked this anchorage so much we decided to stay 2 nights. It really had more to do with the weather than anything else, but we are not in any kind of hurry to get south. We have had a lazy day just reading and relaxing today. We are planning to sail tomorrow, but we will see.

The Adventure Has Begun

We have spent the past two weeks in the marina getting ready to go. We turned in the rent car on October 19th and thought that was it, but an opportunity to help a friend and use their car for a few days presented itself, so we jumped at it and did some last minute additions to the boat.

David and Janice moved their boat, "SloMotion" down to Marathon in the Keys. To make that happen, David sailed single handed down to Marco Island. We took Janice down to Marco to get on the boat and sail with David down to Marathon. We had Janice's car for 4 days while they made the three stop trip. We then drove the 5+ hours down to Marathon and picked them up, so that David could get his truck, and Janice could continue with a number of things including her job in Tampa. Thanks for the use of the car, David and Janice. We are so happy to help you with the car shuttle.

During the 4 days we had the car we added about $300 to our provisions, which brought the total to right at $1000. We also added a new to us sail. The former owners of the boat had decided they did not want the Spinnaker that was on the boat when they bought it. It had been at a sail consignment shop in Sarasota for the past year and a half. When we went sailing with Don he offered to give me the sail. I have always wanted to learn how to fly a spinnaker, so I said YES! The sail will need a dousing sock, but other than that, it looks beautiful. I can't wait to fly it. This sail will be used in light wind when going downwind. 

After doing our last provisioning run, we found we had more storage space available. We decided to restock our fresh veggies and and added to our supply of non perishable food.  We also hit the laundromat one more time. We then took the time to do a touch up on the varnish job on the boat. It came out looking pretty good. We just did a light sanding and then added three coats of Spar Urethane. It looks like a touch up every six months on the sun exposed teak and a complete job every two years will be the way to go. 

We enjoyed our time at Snead Island Boat Works. We met some great folks and it was tough to say good bye. It always is, but it will be great when we see them again. Hopefully, this time out on the water.

Jeff and Julia on Oo La La, a cool Westsail 32. Our port side neighbor.

I have been watching the weather closely and watching the cold front that has brought very cold weather to the rest of the country. We have seen the reports of snow in Denver and Kansas City. We have still be in the high 80's in central Florida. The front finally made it to our area on November 1. That is also the day that we were planning to leave the marina.

We awoke to noticeably cooler temps, albeit still shorts and t-shirt weather at about 70 degrees. The big difference was the lack of humidity. It felt great. The wind was blowing about 15 knots out of the north. The anchorage we had chosen for our first day was not going to have great protection from the north, so we opted to go to an anchorage all of 1.4 NM from the marina. Yep, that was our first day, 1.4 miles.

We spent the afternoon, watching the dolphin and other fish and birds around the boat. The wind was nice and kept the boat cool and comfortable. We dropped the dingy and took a trip to Emerson Point Preserve.  We have been intending to visit from land, but never got around to it. I am sure we did more miles in the dingy than the big boat on this first day. Here are a few shots of our views around the boat:

A shot of SHIFT at anchor. You may notice she is a bit down in rear. She is fully provisioned for our 4 to 5 month cruise.

Not a great shot, but I finally got a dolphin picture.

This boat broke loose of the anchor and washed up on shore during the last big storm a few weeks ago.

Our neighbor for a few hours in a beautiful Catamaran. 

Looking across the river at Desoto Point. 

I am not sure how long Caroline has been here, but it looks like it has been a while. She is lying about 100 yards northwest of us. 

Large homes on the Bradenton side of the river

We have to get in shot of the nice sunset and sunrise of our first night of this trip.

We enjoyed the nice cool evening in the cockpit.

Beautiful Morning

Our neighbor leaving early

We took a second dingy ride this morning over to Emerson Point Preserve and took advantage of their facilities and talked to the volenteer in the visitors center. Bob is an interesting guy and told us all about the ancient Indian Mounds on the site. We took a short walk to check out the mounds.

Lots of Spanish Moss

Looking up at one of the mounds. This one is the temple mound.

When we returned to the dingy, the tide had fallen and we were high and dry. 

It was an uneventful first couple of days. We do have another front coming in tonight, so we will sit tight and see how that impacts our comfort level. For now, other than a few boat wakes we are very comfortable. In my next entry, I will write about actually going somewhere, come back to see how that works out.

The Adventure Will Begin Soon, But First a Storm

I know in my last entry, I said that the next entry would be the beginning of our trip south for the winter. I decided to add at least this one entry to chronicle the last two weeks before we leave the marina.

We arrived back in Palmetto, Florida on October 17. We rented a car at the airport in St. Petersburg to be dropped off at the Enterprise office in Bradenton. After stopping at the boat to turn on the refrigeration, we headed to Walmart to buy non-perishable foods. We were hoping to buy enough food to last us most of the winter. We filled two shopping carts. The bill came to right at $500. Our rent car was actually a small 4 door pickup. We filled the back seat and covered the floor of the bed.

Kim was not sure it would all fit, but this boat continues to amaze us. It all fit with room to spare. We would need that additional room.

This picture shows about half of the non-perishable food we purchased.

On Friday the 18th, we were up early and on the road to St. Pete to pick up our sails. That went well and then we hit the West Marine and Home Depot for a few needed hardware items for the boat. Then it was off to Walmart again for the perishable items. We spent another $200 to bring the total on food to $700. We put a lot of thought into what to buy that would be in good shape as we travel. I hope it all works.

When we arrived in Florida, there was a tropical disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico that was soon upgraded to Tropical Storm Nestor. The storm was going north of us, but we were expecting some storm surge and wind and rain. We were up a few times during the Friday night/Saturday morning checking dock lines and watching the water rise. We only got about a foot of storm surge and some hard rain, but not much wind...yet.

All looked good, so we headed over to Tampa to by a wetsuit that I had found on Facebook Marketplace for about a third of new price. It turned out to be in perfect condition and should be perfect for me to get in the water when it is cold to do what needs to be done. On our way back, we noticed the wind had picked up significantly. By the time we crossed over the SkyBridge it was blowing at least 30 to 40 mph. When we arrived at the marina I did not like what I saw. The wind was at the worst direction. Right through the mouth of the basin. Our boat was right in line with the wind and we had no protection, because we had no boats on our starboard side. We were getting pushed hard into our port side pilings and had a small scuff mark on the rail. We spent a few hectic minutes tightening our lines and getting our fenders in the best possible places.

Here is a shot looking down to the mouth of the basin. 

The wind gauge showing 30.6 knots. We saw sustained winds of 30 knots with gusts about 35. 

The wind lasted most of the rest of the day, but thankfully shifted to more out of the south and that gave us more protection.

We now have a new boat behind us when we back out. This is an even larger sport fishing boat. with a jet ski and a skiff on the bow.

We invited Don and Kim, the former owners of our boat, out for a day of sailing. Wednesday, October 23 looked like a perfect day. We had a nice north wind that brought in some cooler weather. We had a strong wind at between 15 and 20 knots. It was an exciting ride as we crossed Tampa Bay a few times. The wind eased as we headed for the marina, but the perfect direction allowed us to sail right up the river to the marina for the first time. We had an awesome day with great people. I really liked having the experienced extra hands. We need to do more of that.

Don and Kim, our new friends. We certainly hope to spend more time with you as our path cross in the future. 

Today, we had lunch with Mike, our former broker and now our good friend. Mike has been so great to work with and has kept up the great advice. We had heard he was having a health challenge and wanted to say. "See you later" before we left. If you read this, All the best, Mike! Thanks for everything. We asked Mike to take our picture on our boat before he left. It seemed fitting for him to take it.

This will be the "Before" picture. You can see how calm the marina looks on a normal day. 

It looks like we may have one more little adventure before we leave the marina. I may get to write about that in my next entry.

A Month Away From the Boat

It has been over a month since I have written in this blog. I am writing this entry from our boat in Florida. We are about to start our time cruising on our boat. It all became very real yesterday when we turned in our rent car. We now have no transportation other than our boat and our dingy. Before I write more about that, this entry is about how we spent our last month.

 We left Palmetto, Florida on September 13 and made the 16 hour drive back to Missouri over two days. We had a very busy month. We decided to not move our trailer from the storage location by the shop. It worked out ok, but we probably won't do that again.

Our campsite by the shop.

This site does have the advantage of a nice view of sunsets.

We spent some quality time with the grandkids, but in the end it did not feel like enough. It never does. We went to soccer games and tried to make it to as many activities as we could. We also enjoyed having Will and Amelia out at the ranch for a couple of nights. 

Amelia is just so cute!

One of the main reasons we went to the ranch was to help out with two motorcycle events that are held each fall. As is turned out, I did not do much on the first event until the day of the race. My son Scott and I, worked a checkpoint. We had an enjoyable day together. 

One big piece of news is that our youngest son, Mark moved back to Ozark, Missouri. That is the town that our daughter, Shannon lives in and the town that all of our kids went to most of their years of school. That is why we have Ozark as our hailing port on the back of the boat. It is about as close to a home town as we have. 

Mark accepted a job at O'Reilly's Auto Parts home office in the IT department. It was great to spend some time with him while he got situated in Missouri. He had to buy a car because he did not need a car in Boston. He decided to buy a very nice Mazda S3. 

Scott also was getting a new car that was a gift from Kim's Mom and Dad. We had to make a trip to Oklahoma to pick it up. That trip turned into an awesome road trip. Mark was available to go with us because he had not started his job and when we talked to our son Michael to ask if we could stop by his place in Arkansas on the way south, he decided to also go to see his grandparents. 

Our three sons, Mark on the left, Michael in the middle and Scott on the right.

From the left, Mark, Kim's Dad Richie, Kim, Scott, Michael, and me.

I have to include one picture that includes Kim's mom Phyllis. Maw Maw is awesome!

We got some bad news while we were in Missouri. My mother was in the hospital in Denver and not doing well. Kim and I decided that we would let Scott drive the three boys home and we would make the trip to Colorado to see Mom and Dad. Mom is doing a bit better, but as I write this she still has a way to go to get her health back. 

I sadly did not take any pictures with family in Denver. We had a great time staying with my brother Bob, and his awesome family. We spent some quality time with Mom and Dad. We love the mountains and just had to take a quick trip up to Echo lake. The Aspens were at peak and it was beautiful. 

The high range in the distance. I love the contrast of the green pines and the golden aspen.

We ended up driving 2400 miles on our big loop. It was certainly worth it. 

We made it back in time to help out with the second event. I spent a few days in the woods, stapling arrows to trees. It is exhausting work, but I really do enjoy it. The day before the event, I had a strange problem with my shoulder. I think it was a pinched nerve. I ended up running the event from the pavilion rather than my normal job of riding my motorcycle marshaling the course. I think it all worked out well. My shoulder is fine now.

After the event, we had 4 days to be ready to return to Florida. This time we flew and rented a car. We have spent he last three days spending over $700 on groceries, picking up our sails and getting ready to go. We had dinner last night with the former owners of our boat, Don and Kim. What an awesome couple. We really hope to spend more time with them when our paths cross in the future. Tonight, we enjoyed having our former slip neighbor, Janice over for dinner. 

So that brings us to the start of our great adventure. In my next entry, I will begin to tell the story of living on a boat, (not in a marina) and traveling down the west coast of Florida to the Keys. If we make it that far. Come back to see how we do. 

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.