Key West to Marathon, Florida
“Deferred Maintenance” is a word that I have heard a lot over the past several months uttered from other sailors and myself. We are presently floating in Safe Harbor Marathon Marina at this time due to the fact we haven’t been in a marina in a month and Utopia needed a little TLC that’s better accomplished at a dock.
But I get ahead of myself. So this past Monday (New Years Day) we slipped from our mooring ball before 8 am, left Key West and started to head east. It was chilly motoring around Fleming Key, past Key West Bight and around Fort Taylor. Before heading east, we turned into the wind and raised the mainsail. Once facing east, the jib and staysail came out. The winds out of the north slowly built through the morning with little waves thanks to the protection of the keys. We zipped along, close hauled, opting for one “power tack” into the wind, toward shore as Utopia approached the reefs. After getting snug with the shore again, we tacked and resumed under sail alone, doing about 5 to 6 knots in winds that fluctuated from 6 to 13 knots, dodging lots of crab pots. Once we got near Summerland Key, the sails were dropped, and we edged our way into somewhat skinny water to drop anchor near US 1 between Summerland and Ramrod Key. It was so nice to have a comfortable sail that was drama free, albeit a little chilly. Over the two days there we went on a dinghy explore, exercised on land and had a tasty lunch at Tonio’s seafood. It was a nice stop.
As alluded to last week we did not make it to Dry Tortugas due to the weather and we were starting to grow roots in Key West, so we moved on. No matter how much you want to see a place, weather pretty much dictates if you will see it or not (unless you want to wait a long time).
On Wednesday we weighed anchor and headed east another 20 miles to Marathon where we now sit. We have spent a generous portion of our time doing projects, but we have explored the area, walked out to Pigeon Key and had a nice lunch via dingy to Burdines in Boot Key Harbor.
Sondra wanted to add a note here: We have met a lot of cruisers during our stay at Marathon Marina. We are getting more comfortable with striking up conversations with strangers (thanks Two Can from Marco Island for the encouragement to do so, and Citrus in Key West for introducing us to the app noforeignland). It has been fun walking the docks and discussing cruising plans, anchorages, weather and boat projects with others.
So now make a full circle back to discuss that “deferred maintenance” topic. We got a lot of work done these last few days. The big stuff are:
Aft Head rebuild- I have been “deferring” this fix since we have a second head and the difficulty of taking the pump apart and putting it back together in a cramped space to work. I finally bit the bullet and did it successfully over about 8 hrs. total with me in a tight space and swearing a bit. The head works perfectly now!
Accumulator for freshwater- This item is basically a little surge tank, so your freshwater pump doesn’t cycle so much when you are running the water. I had an extra one on board and switched this out pretty quickly.
Hot Water Heater- We recently had a large leak in the hot water heater that (I thought) was in addition to a smaller leak. I fixed the large leak last week and decided to put off the small leak till this week. When I took the heater apart, I realized that the large leak was just the small leak getting larger. So it was fixed already. That was an easy one.
Detailing the boat- Sondra spent this time doing a really good cleaning of the boat deck and hull. Since we have not been in a marina in a month, we have not had access to free running water for washing the deck. We took advantage of it and Utopia looks very nice.
Derusting and polishing Stainless Steel- Sondra also spent a good bit of time getting some rust off of some problem areas of the stainless steel.
Bilge pump- This pump goes off when there is no water in the bilge. I cleaned the sensor, and this seemed to do the trick.
Other than day-to-day work that has been a good list of the big stuff we are working on.
So where to now? After some weather blows through Tuesday the plan is to start heading further east. Slowing making our way from the middle to the upper keys.
As normal, you can click on the following link to see the last week in photos.
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Lucky you for catching a place in Marathon. You guys are sounding like “old salts”.