MAPS

This is a map of the area we are sailing in. The top of the Map is North.

The Big Sail

07/14/2006; 25 miles; 7 hrs; The wind was out of the East 10-15 with gust of 20 knots. A big day, we had planned to go to horseshoe key. 10 miles as the crow files NE of Big Pine. We started out during high tide so we could cut across the shallow area just south of No name key, this would chop off about 4 miles total travel distance there. Tacking against the wind would add on about 1-2 miles of the 10 miles straight shot to Horseshoe.

We just had the main sail up at first because I was real nervous going through this area, because it averaged about 4ft and my center board is 3’10” all the way down. I had it half the way down and that effects how the boat sails in high winds, so I was treading in dangerous waters, figurativly and literally.

CO actually was telling me to let more wind hit the sail so we could go faster. I think the faster you go the steadier the boat, but you are heeled over more, meaning the side your sitting on is about 4 feet off the water and the other side is 6” above the water. Very nerve racking in shallow water, in high winds. So I’m doing the crazy laugh while she is telling me more, more, more. What has gotten into this girl?

We finally make the turn around No Name key and start heading NE. This means deeper water, no more tacks, just straight sailing with both sails for about 6 miles. Well, as the water got deeper the waves got bigger; when a gust of wind hits 2 sails the boat heels over faster than with just 1 sail; and with a boat heeled over all the way and a wave hits the boat at the same time…I’ll just say it’s a feeling I’ve never felt before. It’s like for a split second your mind knows something is going on, but you don’t know if your falling, stopping, turning, or crashing, it’s just complete confusion to all the senses.

So we spent the next hour hiked out as far as we can on the high side, while being pounded with waves and wind. It gave me a tiny, little picture of what sailing in the pacific must be like. Very humbling in God’s creation and the magnitude of forces behind the small things. God is AWESOME! and I was having fun. This is where I want to be.

We came across a little key on the way and it was past noon, so we decided to eat lunch and take a break. Well, it was more like let’s take a break and eat lunch while we are resting. We pulled in behind this 200ft wide island, out of the wind, and set up the tarp shelter over the boat. Very comfortable. Went for a swim and started eating hotdogs. I looked at my GPS and I forgot to mark horseshoe key, before I left the house, so I’m going to have to guess which one it is. We can see about 10 islands all around us, so I will probably pick the wrong one, but who cares, we're sailing. That’s the cool thing about sailing, the destination is only 25% of the trip.

CO read and I played with the tarp to get it just right. It rained, which was fun, because we were dry under the tarp and after it stoped we decided to get going. I figured we only have about another 2 miles to horseshoe. So we set sail. Right back into the big stuff. We felt more comfortable now with the wind and the boat heeling over. We had to make some tacks to go around an island. They were not smooth at all, but we did them. I was just being too wimpy about the whole thing. Unsure of everything it seemed.

Finally we decided to go to another island that was closer and more down wind and just call it horseshoe. We were getting tired and sloppy. We were running with the wind and hauling BUTT, it was a nice break. When we got close to the island we had a major explosion, but survived. I could tell we were both really tired now, so it was time to go home. I marked our position to check out what island it was when we got back.

We were cranking along at a good pace running with the wind. If the wind was blowing out of the 12 o’clock position we were traveling in the 4 o’clock direction. It was funny because we were sitting on the high side of the boat and the other side was “in” the water and we were talking about the long ranger and sidekicks of hero’s. We had fallen into the comfort zone of excitement. It was an interesting moment.

We made it back in 1 piece and was completely exhausted. A very good day of sailing.

I checked the map when we got back and we made it to sand fly key, about a half a mile from horseshoe, not too far off. and we took our lunch break at friend key.

Happy Birthday

7/13/2006; 12 miles; 2.5 hrs; Almost missed my Birthday sail due to storms. But we decided to go later that afternoon to the gulf side of Bahia Honda after I realized I’d rather be rained on sailing, than not rained on, not sailing. I brought a poncho for CO. The wind was barely 5 knots out of the east, so we would have to tack there against the wind and get a good down wind sail coming home. CO and I decided to take Brittan, since the wind was light.

Brittan did very good. She was even going to the other side of the boat when I would tell CO to come about, that is tacking into the wind. The wind died about a mile and half from the beach, so we decided to go back. CO worked the tiller while I played with the sails to get the most out of the breeze we had. It was a blast. Best Birthday I ever had. Everything was perfect until I realized I had gotten my bearings tangled with the sails and saw that we were not in Bogie channel but heading into a really shallow area. We made a course adjustment and realized I needed to crank the motor to get out of this shallow area before the out going tide put us on the bottom.

We made it all the way to the edge of the channel before we hit bottom so I had to pull the boat about 25 ft before it got deep enough. Good lesson learned. Check your position, then check your position, then check your position. God blessed us on my birthday.

The boat got back to the dock so it was a successful day.

Back in bussiness

7/12/2006: 4miles; 1 hrs; I got everything finished in dry dock. I can now say “baton down the hatches”. I have three hatches, 2 up front and one in the back. They were just kinda sitting on there openings. I wanted them storm worthy or underwater worthy.

The other modifications were working out well also. CO and I were just sailing back and forth on bogie channel. The wind was from the east and it was about 10 knots. We practiced tacking a little and CO was tired from a big day of swimming and walking, s owe decided to go in.

I had been wanting CO to learn everything on the boat in case something happened to me and she has been doing really good. Well today she was going to motor us back to dock. We lowered everything and I wanted her to motor around a little to get use to the motor. On the way in the motor just died. It wouldn’t crank back up. We were about a 100 yards from the canal where we kept the boat.

I really was not in the mood to try to paddle through the gate that keeps sea grass out of the canal. So we just drifted over to this canal that use to be a resort/ yacht club. I anchored the boat in protected waters so it’s not getting hit by the wind waves. A storm was blowing in so things were getting rough.

We got out and walked back to the jeep. We were both tired and hungry, so I wanted to get CO home to rest and eat and maybe after I eat I won’t feel so cranky about the boat situation. I went back and got the motor running after I pulled the spark plug and cleaned it. I guess the motor somehow got super flooded and fowled the spark.

The boat got back to dock so it was a successful trip.

The Atlantic

7/4/2006: 7hrs: 16 miles: CO invited a friend of hers, to go with us to Bahia Honda. She had never been sailing before, so we had a green crew to do a bridge crossing. Where we have to anchor, lower the mast, motor under the bridge, anchor, and raise the mast. I’ve never done it before, so it was going to be a learning experience.

The wind was NE-E at a solid 10mph, white caps. We sailed down Bogie channel pretty fast and fun, anchored by the bridge, but it was too rough to lower the mast. So we motored to shallow water and lowered it. We then motored under the bridge, anchored and put the mast back up. Not too many problems, need to make some adjustments and modifications to the rigging to make it go faster, but over all very successful.

We sailed up wind in 1-2 foot seas. Waves were breaking over the bow every now and again. I was a little nervous, but the girls were having fun. We made a few long tacks and made it to the beach in about 2 hours, which was about 6-7 miles away.
We anchored in shallow water and went swimming, ate hotdogs, and just lounged around on the boat. I put up a tarp over the cockpit, to block the sun. perfecto.

On the way back we had some trouble running with the wind. I couldn’t get the boat turned around to go away from the bridge. It’s hard to explain, but we finally did it and started scooting right along. The waves rolling under us felt very strange, almost like the boat was going to turn over a couple times. If any body was to get sea sick that would have been the time.

I sailed close to the bridge so we wouldn’t have to motor very far once we lowered the mast. We threw the anchor out and it got wrapped around the front sail. I climbed up front to unwrap the anchor while the wind was trying to push us into the bridge. The rope that rolls up the front sail was also tangled. So I had the anchor rope around the back of my head keeping it off the front sail while I untangle it. The front sail in the mean time was flapping like a loose tarp on a trailer, slapping me in the head. The girl that was sailing with us wanted to help, so she grabbed a hold of the front sail and tried to keep it off my head.

There is only one problem with her help. If you don’t let the sails flap, then they catch the wind and the boat starts sailing. We started sailing toward land! I felt the anchor pulling really hard on the back of my neck and start grinding down my back. What is going on!?

I looked at the anchor and we were now pulling it across the bottom. My brain exploded into high computing power to figure this one out, I’m yelling at Christine to keep the tiller straight and she’s yelling “I am!” I finally turned around and saw the girl holding the front sail tight.

I told her to release the sail as sweet and tender as I possible could, but sounded like one of my Ranger Instructors yelling at me for puking all over him. Needless to say, she released the sail and I got up and accessed the new situation. We were now closer to the bridge and drifting towards it and the anchor was not catching. Not enough time to dive in and set the anchor that may not even reach the bottom now. The motor didn’t crank the last time I tried (That was another explosion I didn’t want to talk about.) The only thing left to do was sail out of there immediately, …hopefully.

I went to the back and asked CO to pull up the anchor, politely. I set the sail and we were moving out of the impact area. I sailed about a half a mile away from that stupid bridge and found some shallow water. We threw the anchor out, untangled everything and lowered the mast. Now I just got to get the motor cranked.

After pulling the cord a few thousand times, I decided to check the gas. Out of gas. I let the crew complain a little before I pulled out the extra gas tank and filled up the motor. I felt the weight of 36 years of experience coming into play at that moment. The feeling of poring gas into that tank was kinda like 100 bad shots of golf being erase by 1 good one.

The motor cranked up and we headed home. Under the bridge and up the channel as the sun was getting low in the sky. I was freaked, frazzled, withered and nerve wracked. We were cruising at a steady 7mph, so I decided to motor the rest of the way home. The crew needed a break and we still got to go watch fireworks. Overall it was a successful day. Simply getting the boat back to the dock makes it a successful day. I felt like I passed my sea trails, but I need to put her in dry dock for some modifications. Try to cut down on the explosion factor.

training

7/2/2006: CO and I went out again, the wind was about 10 mph out of the SE. We practiced 2 man overboard drills. The first had a small explosion in it, but the second one was fast and smooth. A storm was rolling in so we tried to go south around it. CO opened the jib for the first time, but the wind picked up and I needed to tack in order to miss land. So we just turned into the wind, dropped anchor, rolled up the jib, dropped the main and practiced making a little shelter using the boom to ride out the storm. I thought it was real cozy, but cozy was not what CO was thinking. It started lightning and we went in. This all happened in about 1 hour. CO did work the main sheet some, while I worked the tiller, she did good.

CO's first time

6/30/06: Took Christine out for the first time and the wind was blowing about 10 knots from the east. I kept the boat flat and only used the main sail. CO loved it. I showed her how easy it is to turn over if your not constantly mindful of how much the sail faces the wind. I didn’t tip the boat over, I just got it up on it’s side a little. Sailed about an hour.