Florida, Bahamas, and Beyond

Thursday, February 27th Looking North Towards 7-Mile Bridge Coffee @ 0500. Auxillary started @ 0700. Fuel dock @ 0730. Through the 7 mile bridge @ 0830. Dodging lobster pots. Passed Red Bay Bank for Long Key. Change of plans. Heading 011 degrees true for Cape Sable. ETA 1300. Lots and lots of crab pot buoys, somewhat like constellations of stars on the water. Missed them all!!! We dropped anchor at East Cape Sable @ 1400. About .75 miles from the beach. The anchor is holding. The water is murky. Mostly cloudy skies. Light westerly breeze. We have the place to ourselves. Hoping for stars tonight. Tonight is pork loin ala pressure cooker. Or so we thought. The holding here blows. Between the westerly breeze and the current, we found ourselves broadside to the wind. We also were dragging. Hoisting the anchor showed the bottom substrate not unlike wet cement. In the end we motored on to find something better. We ended up at Shark River about 1.5 miles offshore in 9 feet of water @ 2000 hou...

Tuesday, February 25th Best laid plans always has some twists and turns. We were awake by 0600. After coffee, we got busy prepping Imagine for tomorrow morning's departure. Our starboard hatch over the salon leaked yesterday. It's the squeaky wheel among the drips. I removed the hatch, drilled and counter sunk the holes, the filled them with thickened epoxy. Brenda worked below cleaning up the mess I was making. We departed Imagine at 0730 to pick up our propane tanks and to fetch fresh water. Once done, we returned to the marina for laundry and another water run. Our spare refrigeration parts finally arrived.  By afternoon, we were ready for showers and Taco Tuesday at Dockside. The boating community here is really friendly. We met another couple from NC. They're also heading for the Bahamas about the same time we'll cross. It's a small world. All in all, it's been a busy day aboard Imagine. With a bit of luck, we'll be on our way in the morning. Wednesday,...

Sunday, February 23rd What a NICE day it's been. We slept in till 0600. After coffee, we were on our way at 0830, heading out. We snagged loaner bicycles from the marina. Breakfast at the Cracked Conch Cafe.  Shopping at Publix. Laundry. Fresh water runs. Happy Hour at the Castaway Waterfront Restaurant & Sushi Bar https://castawayfloridakeys.com/ A pit stop at Birdine's Waterfront for a follow up cocktail https://maps.app.goo.gl/jmk2VDraAv2bofEz9 Beautiful weather. Sunshine. Low 70's. There's nothing else I can think of that would make this day any better. Sunset.... Time to blow the conch horn. I'm so very grateful for this day. Monday, February 24th It's 0600. Coffee just finished brewing. A gentle breeze. No stars to be seen. Rain arrived @ 0730.  Today was an excellent day to go online for my "work". I haven't written much about this to date. To briefly fill the readers in, since September 2022 I have been working as a contractor for Boein...

Thursday, February 20th I'm not making this up. We went to bed last night with 98% charge on our new LiFePO4 house battery bank. All was good with the world. Or it seemed so. Around 0400 I was awake to check on things. As I passed the galley I noticed that the freezer and refrigerator digital thermostats were both reading high! It had nothing to do with our new house battery bank. Needless to say, I didn't go back to bed. Within the hour I diagnosed the problem. Unfortunately, I didn't have a spare compressor controller. Amazon to the rescue, sort of. Quickly ordered but with a Monday delivery. The remainder of the morning was devoted to persuading the compressor to start up. No bananas. Controller Circuit Board As I previously wrote, the boating community here is marvelous. By 1300, we had our freezer unloaded and everything stored at a local's condo. Twenty pounds of ice will keep our fresh perishables for the next twenty-four hours. By 1400, I was just too mentally e...

Tuesday, February 18th Morning coffee vista Many of the liveaboards here claim that the Boot Key bottom is sticky. There's some truth in that. Presently, we're still in the middle of replacing our house battery bank. Brenda signed up for a 5K on Saturday. It seems like it'll now be next week before we pry our anchor off the bottom. While I tried to get everything prepared for the new batteries, Brenda applied water proofing to our Dodger and Bimini Top. It's been a rather lazy morning all in all. Outside, it's another magnificent day here on Boot Key. Our solar panels are at full power while the AGMs slowly take in the amps. I'll be relieved when this chapter comes to a close. The LIFPO batteries finally arrived at the marina office via UPS. An hour round trip to pick them up, and they were safely stowed below. We then took off for Dockside. It's Tuesday Taco night. Margheritas, tacos, and queso dip with chips was a great way to finish off the day. The live ...

Thursday, February 13th When we pulled anchor at Geiger yesterday morning, it came up with a huge mud ball. The windlass struggled. On our way out the channel we ran aground. Backing off and turning to Port took us back to deeper water. Rule number who knows: don't always trust marine charts. The wind was just under fifteen knots, and of course, on the edge of putting up any sail. Seas were mostly two to four with an occasional five or six footer. Crab pots were initially sparse, but things got busier as the morning progressed. We motored along at five knots. Just to mention, our new MaxProp gives us an additional knot comparing it to our old Classic. We were finally able to roll out the staysail. It added up to two knots, as the wind increased to better than fifteen knots. The seas got bigger too. Dropping off a couple waves, to Brenda's surprise spray reached back to the cockpit. The auto pilot did most of the helming except when I had to snake our way through closely laid st...

Wednesday, February 12th We departed Boot Key around 0730, stopping for diesel before exiting the channel. With favorable winds, we happily sailed westward reaching Shark Channel around 1430. Our anchor quickly set.  Dinner was grilled lobster tails, steak, fresh green beans. Everything was delicious. I retired early. Around 0200 we were awaken by the anchor chain against the hull. With an out going current and incoming breeze, the game was on. Imagine was all over the place. She couldn't decide which way to go. We slept the remainder of the night in the cockpit. At sunrise, it seems as if we may have dragged anchor but very little if at all. The NOAA forecast was not promising for continuing to Fort Jefferson, and we decided to return to Boot Key for safe harbor and to undertake repairs. More on that in a later post. After setting anchor again in Boot Key, we checked in with the marina and quickly gathered our gear for the full moon dinghy drift on Sister's Creek. The last I h...

Saturday, February 8th Low humidity last night. Gentle breeze. Glorious sleeping weather. We slept in till 0600. Coffee in the cockpit. Normal morning chores.  There's always something that needs fixing or attention. Today was stern running light bulb replacement. It sounds simple and quick. Easy enough, but it still took twenty minutes to gather tools, swap out the bulb, test it, put everything back together, then replace the tools.  The freezer needed defrosting. That's another chore. Unload the foods into a basket wrapped with towels to keep things from thawing, deicing the evaporator, removing accumulated water from the freezer, and finally reloading everything. I also spent some time troubleshooting our water heater. I'll vent on that later. Let's just say that whoever did the original installation apparently didn't know what they were doing. After lunch, we Uber'd to Pigeon Key. https://pigeonkey.net/ We walked the 2.0 miles out the old Seven Mile Bridge t...

Monday, February 3rd We anchored at Lower Matecumbe Key last night. The private homes there are massive, spectacular, and all have sandy beaches. It was a pleasant night aboard Imagine. We raised anchor at sunrise. Instead of Hawks Channel we took the inside for Marathon. With little to no wind, we motored westward to the 7-mile bridge.  We arrived there at dead high tide. The board was reading 65 feet, but since it was early in the day we dropped anchor for a couple hours to get another six inches of clearance. In the end, we cleared the bridge without even touching with the VHF antenna.  Arriving Boot Key was straight forward. Just pass close to the green marks. Once inside the bridge to nowhere, we anchored near red "18". Boats here are a collection of bristol to derelict motor yachts, sailboats, trawlers, and even a few catamarans. Tuesday, February 4th We arrived at the Marathon Marina office early to check in. Facilities here are quite nice and a great value. $100 for t...