We departed our southbound trip on a Friday, with bananas and a woman on board. As my friend Bradford would say, what could possibly go wrong (#HNTS).
Sailors can be a superstitious lot. Even today some will not begin a trip on a Friday. Others will state bananas and women should never be on a boat during a voyage, although those two are slowly fading out of practice.
Sailors also love to sit around a bar to share their stories of mishap. This blog is our form of sitting around the bar. So far our mishap stories are more lessons learned, and thankfully not dramatic. Same goes for this week’s post. First a recap of the journey, then the fun stuff what messed up.
Friday 11/3/2023
Departed Harborage Marina around 11:00 a.m.
Sailed under the Sunshine Skyway under sail alone, going about 6 knots
Anchored on the Manatee River near Emerson Park at 3:30 p.m.
Saturday & Sunday
Hiked in Emerson Park and on DeSoto Point
Explored the east end of Sneads Island, upstream of our anchorage on the dinghy
Got brave and attended a cruisers meet up, and received good advice on an alternate route to Sarasota, but left our favorite bowl behind; I’ll have to swing by St. Pete to get it on an upcoming work trip
Monday 11/6/2023
Weigh anchor just after 8:00 the morning
Sailed out to Tampa Bay, exited the bay south side of Egmont, sailed down the coast
Entered back inside at Longboat Key Pass
Anchored between Lido Key & Otter Key at 3:30 p.m.
Tuesday & Wednesday
Took dinghy across Sarasota Bay for errands and lunch, then explored the keys by dinghy
Found a tree to tie up to and walked around St. Armands and got a great view of a manatee in the canal!
Swam very briefly, like 60 seconds, in the water behind Utopia
Jimmy went to the top of the mast to hunt down an AIS issue
Thursday 11/9/2023
Anchor up at 8:00 a.m.
Docked in Venice at the Crow’s Nest. Attempt into slip at max ebb flow failed. Ended up with a very nice side tie docking at 12:30 p.m.
Splurged on a delicious dinner at Crows Nest Restaurant
Watched sunset at the south Jetty
Friday 11/10/2023
Jimmy rinsed the boat off and did laundry at the marina, while I took care of an FWEA call
Rented bikes and did a 16 mile round trip exploring Venice, going to West Marine, lunch at the Old Salty Dog, and a little provisioning trip to Publix
The day was topped off with another south jetty sunset and a happy hour zoom call with friends from Tallahassee
Saturday 11/11/2023
Successful springing of the stern off a tight side tie dock shortly after the 7 am charter rush hour traffic an hour before max flood currents; We were super stoked to perform a textbook maneuver without hitting the boat in front of us, the fence and rocks behind us, and not smashing our bow against the piles
Motor-sailed south with pretty glassy waters with lots of fishermen and crab pots out on the Gulf
Crossed into Charlotte Harbor using the Swash Channel. It was a rising tide, at about 1.4’ and we saw 12’ depth minimum
Entering Boca Grande was grand with 1.5 knots of flooding flows and some mild eddies
Anchored just off of the ICW (or GIWW, or GICW) for the night between Punta Blanca and Mondongo Islands
Took the dinghy out for a quick exploration of Punta Blanca Island and saw a giant conch with a little conch on the big one’s shell and had a quick visit from a dolphin
Later today we plan to head over to Pelican Bay to anchor for a few days.
Now for the bar stories…
Rigging
We have learned the importance of checking the rigging and became clewless. I was on deck getting a preventer ready when I saw something fall from the end of the boom into the water. I hoped it was an old dirt-dauber nest, but it turned out to be the shackle pin holding the mainsail clew. None of our spare pins fit. Instead of messing around in rolling seas to find a alternative fix, we opted to sail from Tampa Bay to Longboat Key Pass under jib alone. This is how you learn… At least it happened on a light-wind day. We now have a soft shackle acting as a pin.
More practice is needed with the mast mounted whisker pole. We have deployed it a couple of times and still need more practice to make it smoother and faster. I am glad I did not break the hatch “glass” when I dropped the pole straight down on top of it.
Electrical Things
Early in our trip we discovered that our AIS does not appear to be working (receiving ok but not transmitting) properly and Jimmy has spent a lot of time researching the issue. Then yesterday after leaving the marina, we noticed that our alternator stopped charging our batteries. This has Jimmy pausing his research on the AIS issue to figure out why the alternator has paused its job. Fortunately, we have had a lot of sun to charge the batteries, but we plan to conserve as much power as possible until the mystery is figured out.
Docking
Between the two of us, I am a glutton for punishment as I like to do the docking for us, and Jimmy is glad to have someone else do it. He thinks I might be better at it; I am not so sure since it is possible that about 50% of my departing or arrivals are seriously screwed up. When we left the Harborage, we thought the light north wind would not be an issue since we just needed to back up to the south, then turn our bow to the east. However, there was a little easterly wind as we backed out of the slip, which caught the bow, turning it west. I was unable to get it turned where I wanted and ended up leaning against the dinghy across the fairway. Somehow or another we got off the dinghy and backed out of the fairway until reaching the main fairway where I was able to turn in the direction I wanted to go.
Then while arriving at the Crows Nest in Venice, there was a 1.3 knot ebb flow. In my mind, I would go wide in the fairway, turn early since I was going with the ebb and gun it into the slip. Things were far from what I imagined with a ton of boat traffic all over the place and not finding our slip until it was too late to turn. After ramming the bow into a pile, I announced I was going to go out and try it again (Jimmy said that he was glad it was a loose wooden pile). Shortly after my failed docking attempt, power boat also could not make it into a slip with the cross current, so, the marina staff redirected both of us to side tie docks. I am happy to state that the side tie docking went off as the textbooks say it should. The only exception is that Jimmy did not know my plan, and it caught him off guard. We will continue to work on providing clearer information to each other as this is often a factor in poor docking. When we left the side tie dock two days later, we clearly discussed the departing maneuver and how to handle lines. I believe that was a major factor to the great success of springing the stern out.
Anchoring
The Manatee River afforded us our first opportunity to anchor in a location where the effect of the current is stronger than the wind. It started out as a normal anchoring process, turning into the wind, waiting for the boat to stop, then dropping the anchor. Shortly after Jimmy started to pay out the rode, we turned not only sideways, but all the way around, so that the bow of Utopia was facing the bows of the modern boats in the anchorage. Jimmy decided we should just continue on with paying out the rode and backing down in the backwards position. It may have felt awkward to be facing the other boats but turned out just fine and Utopia eventually turned back around and oriented with the other heavy boats in the anchorage.
Also, sometime during this trip we realized why there was an extra hook on a line near the windless. It was not a snubber, and we just thought it was for securing the anchor during passages. It finally dawned on us that the hook should be used when backing down on the anchor. Until this point, we were backing down with the chain wrapped around the windless, which may or may not have caused the windless to skip a little while setting the anchor on the Manatee River.
We encountered another current vs. wind in Charlotte Harbor. This time we kept the boat in reverse idle to keep her lined up until the anchor was set. Not sure which is better to just let the boat swing around or to work with the reverse idle, but both seemed fine to us.
Running Aground
While at the Manatee River anchorage, a sailor encouraged us to use the Longboat Key Pass on our way to Sarasota. It was predicted to have enough wind to sail on the Gulf and we liked the idea of sailing on the outside instead of motoring through extra bridge openings. I checked her information with a friend from the area and went for it. There is not a good bar story here as we made it through the bridge opening just fine, although there was some pucker factor coming into the inlet and getting close to the beach before aligning with the bridge opening. After feeling so good about our bridge opening, we turned south on the ICW. It was not too far from our turn when we found some skinny water on the ICW. We both missed the red “!” shown on the charts which clearly explained to favor the red buoys. Luckily the ground was soft next to the green can. At first, I thought “uh, oh we are gonna block the ICW”. After the stop, Jimmy felt we were floating and pushed on forward. I am sure it was a good show for all. Glad the power cat behind us noticed our stop and slowed down to avoid getting to know us too well.
P.S. - Sorry no photos this week due to very low internet availability. I am lucky to have been able to upload just the one for this week's thumbnail. Hopefully next week we can provide a link for photos that go with this post.
PSS - UPDATE! I was able to upload some photos to share.
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Thank you for sharing an awesome play by play. I love sailing vicariously with you guys!
Richard Reinert