There have been a few changes to our plans this past week, mainly due to weather conditions. Looks like we will be spending Christmas in Key West this year!
A review of weather conditions and some local knowledge picked up at the Marco Island West Marine resulted in changes to our cruising plans early last week. If we made a chart of the decisions made last week, it would look like the track of the ball in a pinball machine.
In the end, we decided to stay in Smokehouse Bay at Marco Island until Friday, then jump directly to Key West. After spending Christmas there, we would look for a weather window to head to the Dry Tortugas. At least that is the plan for the moment. Making the decision to delay our jump south was odd to us, but once made it felt good. I think the retirement schedule might be starting to set in.
Marco Island to Key West Passage
Smokehouse Bay is a good place to wait for a good weather window. We met several other cruisers doing just that this past week (Two Can, One Life, “Yellow Boat,” Two of a Kind, and 2nd Wind). It is a great anchorage with free dinghy docks and amenities nearby. However, reaching this little bay requires playing the tides, which we did on Friday. Around 10 AM, just before high tide, we weighed anchor and motored out to the Big Marco River and anchored across the river from Snook Inn. We needed to stall our departure for Key West until late afternoon so that we time the end of the 18 to 20-hour trip with sunrise.
Close to 3PM we pulled up the anchor and headed out to the Gulf of Mexico to begin a great downwind sail south to Key West. The land protected northeast winds, providing seas that started out with just about 1’ in height. Except for a two-hour period just after sunset, the winds stayed with us all the way to Key West.
Between 6:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. we covered the helm in shifts, with one of us on watch while the other slept, or attempted to sleep. As we got further away from land, the seas became quite rolly. That swell, along with the noise of the lines, sails, and auto-pilot, made sleeping in the quarter berth a little challenging. By the second off-shift comes around, you are so tired, you can ignore the noise and get in some sleep.
With winds a steady 15 to 20 knots, a big focus of the trip was to keep the boat from moving too fast. This was a nice change of pace from other trips where we are pushing to reach a destination by a certain time. In general, it was an uneventful trip, that is, until we reached Key West.
A Test of Boating Skills – Both Sailing and Engine Repair
After sunrise (just yesterday), we entered the Northwest Channel of Key West, then turned on the engine and dropped the sails. Not too long after this I noticed that our engine sounded odd, in fact I first thought there might be a boat passing us. About the time I said something to Jimmy, he could smell something burning. He looked overboard and did not see any cooling water.
At this point we went into emergency mode, deploying the jib before shutting off the engine. I took the helm while Jimmy became the Tasmanian Devil in his attempt to solve the problem. At first, I felt I had a lot of room to maneuver Utopia down the channel under jib. However, the winds were about 16 to 18 knots, and we were moving fast. I managed to reef the jib on my own and get the boat speed down to three knots over the ground. There was quite a current in the channel, and eventually we crept over towards the lee-shore making me really dig deep into my sailing skills to keep Utopia moving slow and in deep-enough water.
Meanwhile, Mr. Tasmanian Devil quickly changed the impeller with no positive results. He tried a few other things as fast as he could, still with no positive results so he asked me to divert to a nearby anchorage. This required an immediate tack across the channel. Utopia is a heavy girl, and we were not confident that she could tack under jib alone, so we fired up the engine long enough to head up, raise the mainsail, and complete the tack. From there we sailed across the channel into the Wisteria anchorage, where we pulled in between a shoal and several anchored boats and headed upwind. The slow tacking of Utopia, the current, and wind stopped our forward momentum causing us to begin to drift backwards before I could lower the mainsail. Jimmy noticed an anchored boat behind us and made a good decision to deploy the anchor at that moment. I then dropped the sail and ran forward to pull it all the way down.
Best practices suggest using the engine in reverse after dropping anchor to ensure that the anchor is holding, a practice called “backing down.” Since we were unable to back down, I stayed in the cockpit watching our position to make sure our anchor did not drag while Jimmy worked on the engine issue. It turned out to just be a blown impeller. When Jimmy first switched it out while the channel, he rushed through the job resulting in not fixing the issue. At anchor, he took his time and realized what was missed in the first two attempts to change the impeller. I was not on anchor watch long before he came back up, fired up the engine and saw the cooling water discharge. Man, he was so happy that he gave me a high five that stung my palm for a good five minutes. Later he said it was a lesson learned for him to slow down when a problem arises. We lost time drifting down the Northwest Channel because he had hurried. Hey, I guess we got the opportunity to test out our sailing and engine skills as a result, and no people or boats were hurt in the process, oh, other than my hand from the excited high-five.
Garrison Bight Mooring Ball
After properly replacing the impeller, we weighed anchor and motored further east, picking up a mooring ball at the city’s Garrison Bight Mooring Field. It was fun, and strange to see soooo many boats anchored everywhere on that zig-zap course to the mooring field. And some of these things anchored, could not quite be called a boat.
Before heading to shore, we put the boat back together; it was quite a mess in the cockpit and below when Jimmy was in Tasmanian mode. After paying for our ball, we showered and walked downtown for an early dinner at Half Shell Raw Bar (where we took our Christmas photo). We knew we would crash shortly after sunset, so we returned to Utopia for a sundowner. I managed to stay awake until almost 7:30 p.m. and Jimmy said he was not far behind me, but I wouldn’t know because I was sound asleep pretty soon after my head hit the pillow. Today we will venture into Key West in a more rested state, and we are looking forward to spending our Christmas holiday in a fun, funky town.
For now, here is a link to the Marco Island photos. This is the same link from last week, but we have added photos to share this past week’s activities.
Merry Christmas & Seasons Greetings to you all!
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