Weeeee're Back!

Photo #1: Sunrise on the Gulf, one of the rewards for taking that 2 - 6 a.m. watch.

Photo #2: Beautiful afternoon clouds, one of the rewards of taking a daytime watch.

[Hilde’s log]

I am sitting below decks mourning the death of our air conditioner. It passed away quietly our last day in Pensacola, and brother do I miss it. It’s 11:00 a.m. and 93 degrees. We must be back in Seabrook!

We had a challenging and beautiful passage from Pensacola to Galveston. If I were to title the trip, I’d call it Thunderstorm Alley. Four of our six days out were plagued with storms: huge, monstrous, glorious, terrifying, and beautiful. In addition to the thunderheads and lightening, we saw several water spouts. For contrast, two of the days we were out, it was just flat calm in all directions. We hardly sailed at all the entire trip and I was so glad we thought to add two extra cans of diesel fuel to the deck. We ended up using our entire tank, plus all we had on deck, and cruised into Galveston with 8 gallons left.

All the way across the Gulf from Pensacola our days were spent playing dodge ‘em with the mountainous thunderheads and our nights were spent playing dodge ‘em with lightening bursts. We were lucky, only coming close to one big storm. That was scary enough, as the black clouds converged on our position from two directions, churning five foot seas in every direction. With life jackets donned, we alternated between sitting on the cabin sole (me praying nonstop) and sticking our heads up to see what was going on. It was more scary looking than actually dangerous (other than the lightening), with top winds of only 34 knots. The lightening, though, was ferocious for the entire trip.

Cloud to cloud lightening would light up the sky for miles, illuminating the storm clouds and the sea. The “bad” lightening was the cloud to ground sort, enormous bolts visible for miles that stabbed the sea in sudden bursts. We measured the position of the night time storms from the cloud to ground lightening, and once we determined which way the storm was headed, we went perpendicular and ran like hell. You know the saying “There are old sailors and bold sailors, but no old bold sailors.” We intend to get old.

Out of Pensacola the storms chased us south so far that we totally gave up on the fairways and just headed out to deep water. It’s so much better far off shore anyway, because it takes a lot of wind to stir up deep water. The sky was magnificent, full of the Milky Way. Most of the time we seemed to inhabit a charmed circle of clear sky, with thunderheads all the way around us. All day long I’d watch them build and collapse, like soufflés in a nautical oven.

The most appalling storm was the one we encountered when we were about 100 miles out of Galveston. The sky in front of us (landward) was dark, featureless gray, like a gray blanket over the entire horizon. At sunset and we couldn’t see the sun at all until it touched the ocean, and then it was a vermillion fireball for a few seconds before disappearing. NOAA radio reported a huge thunderstorm galloping out the ship channel from Houston to Galveston to parts SW at 30 miles per hour. I was so glad we had made such slow progress across the Gulf; otherwise we might have found ourselves in the middle of that storm coming in. It was a huge system, spewing lightening from one side of the horizon to the other. We were relieved to watch it pass to the SW as predicted (we were headed NW) and we never even had any rain from it. Another storm threatened our starboard quarter for most of the night, but it eventually faded away to the NE. I have yet how to account for the movement of storms relative to the wind direction on the boat.

Thanks to our Fugawi charts (the best charts, as far as I can tell) we knew to follow the shipping lanes (called the fairways) along the coast once we passed South Port, Louisiana, and so it was easy to stay away from the oil wells, the supply boats and the truly enormous mooring balls used by the supply ships (easily the size of a Hummer). The wells are really beautiful at night, lit up like casinos – provided they are lit up. There are occasional wells that are not lit, and those are the scary ones. That’s one reason we have made both our Gulf crossings under a full moon. We saw two unlit wells this trip.

The fairways are like sea going freeways, and are used by the commercial ships as they go to and fro. They are great to follow, because when you see a big ship coming, you pretty much know which way it is headed. We had one oil tanker cut behind us and two cut in front of us, but other than that they all behaved themselves and chugged down the road. The commercial traffic on the Gulf is terrific when you are within 100 miles of shore. We had forgotten! It was a lot like driving through a well populated country area on a highway, with the lights of the farm houses scattered all around and the lights of the 18 wheelers going up and down the road with you. Many of the captains are not native English speakers, so when you are trying to listen to the traffic on 16, language can be an issue. Actually, language is an issue when you listen to the barge traffic on the GIWW. Those men all speak with a weird southern patois/good old buddy accent that I am hard pressed to understand, and I’m from here.

Photo #3: This is what the lit oil rigs look like at night...

Photo #4: This is what they look like in the distance during the day (see that little spot?)...

Photo #5: This is what they look like up close...

Photo #6: And this is what they look like when I am not paying attention on watch and we get too close! Note the supply boat at right. That boat is enormous and it is dwarfed by the rig.

All the way across I was thrilled to be back on the Gulf. I grew up in Houston, and the Gulf is “home.” The sky looks right, the water looks right, the oil rigs look right – well, you know how home is, warts and all; there's no place like it. The Gulf is also one of the most beautiful places on earth, whether you are dodging oil wells near shore or are out on the flat expanse of blue that opens up about 150 miles out.

It was great fun to come into Galveston, despite our grueling passage in. Contrary wind and current made the water rough and because the blasted self steering died about 30 miles from the outer mark, we had to hand steer, one hour on and one hour off, for the next 12 hours. The good news is that it was blessedly cool from all the storms that passed through before we got in. We motored down the gauntlet of at least 50 ships at anchor on either side of the fairway, waiting to be called in to the Port of Houston. Raven reached the jetties about 7 a.m. and caught a rising tide into the bay. We had the yankee out and the engine on and she scooted through the jetties at 8.3 knots, past the anchored tankers and into the anchorage at Teacup, where we pulled into the closest marina for fuel. There were a couple of fishing boats tied up as well, and the fishermen and women were cleaning a catch, surrounded by a screeching cloud of gulls, pelicans, and cormorants. The birds were busy catching and eating the culls from the catch (which looked like eels), literally pulling them out of each others’ mouths.

Photo #7: Three of the over 50 anchored ships we passed just off the fairway near Galveston in dawn's early light.

Once we filled up with diesel we eased back out into the anchorage at Teacup and David checked the oil. Then we headed north up the channel for four hours to the anchorage at Red Fish Island where we spent a very hot afternoon and evening. Then this morning we came in, and our first slip at Watergate was awful. They are obviously waiting for the next storm to take out those docks, which were old, narrow, fixed, wooden, and full of splinters. Ick. David got us moved temporarily to the new floating docks, which is a much better location and easy step on-off to Raven's deck.

Photo #8: Boats anchored at Red Fish Island. The island is man-made (spoil) so there is no vegetation, no shade, and no bugs. You do have a great view of the channel traffic, as you can see. The wake from these huge ships washes over the island like the surf over the rocks on the West Coast!

It was so much fun to sail (no, motor, the wind never did cooperate) up the channel and into the bay and under the Kemah bridge. All that trip used to just terrify me and it was fun coming in and recognizing everything and not being a bit scared. Just hot. It is, after all, Texas in June.

Photo #9: Oh my gosh! It's me, steering Raven across the bay and I actually know what I'm doing! Notice the kerchief - it's soaked in ice water. It's hot.

Photo #10: then we see the Kemah boardwalk... (new roller coaster there!)

Photo #11: under the Kemah bridge...

Photo #12: Where it all started, two years, two months and 8 days ago. Our slip was opposite "Tres Amigos" here in Seabrook. Unfortunately, they were full, so we are docked at Watergate, just up the way.

Heading Out

[Hilde’s log]

We’ve enjoyed Pensacola and the splendid hospitality of our friends John and Cookie, who showed us the sights, fed us, introduced us to new friend Joyce, and even made a loan of their second car. Such luxury! It’s hard to leave friends and a lovely city and wheels, but go we must. Raven’s air conditioning bit the dust last night, and I must admit that makes it easier to push off. It was a Turkish bath in the cabin as I cooked a few meals for us to take as we head out into the Gulf tomorrow and we’ve been hanging out in the cockpit waiting for it to cool off enough to go to bed…maybe soon. It’s still 84 down here.

We will be travelling on the outside as we make our way back to Texas, down the shipping lanes, a journey of about 500 miles. Hopefully we will be chugging under the Kemah bridge in about six days. We will have a full moon and a good weather window, so we hope for a pleasant journey. We’ll be staying at the Watergate Marina at Clear Lake for about a month, and then we anticipate a move to Corpus Christi Municipal Marina, so if you pass our way, let us know. Until then ~ here’s to your dreams.

Weather Report

Photo #1: early morning in Pensacola Bay

Photo #2: Bridge over the entrance to Tampa Bay

[Hilde’s log]

We’ve been at the dock in Pensacola for a couple of days now, time enough to do a lot of sleeping, a lot of visiting with old friends Paul, John, and Cookie, and some grocery shopping. We’ll be here a week for R&R and then head on toward Texas. We go back and forth about whether to brave the barges, tankers, freighters, mosquitoes, and unfriendly rivers on the GIWW (Gulf Inland Waterway) or to head back out in the Gulf and do battle with weather, oil wells, and lots of inbound heavy traffic. The big draws for the Gulf crossing are cooler weather and a quicker transit. The big draws for the GIWW are more sleep and… well, that’s it, more sleep.

Photo #3: docked in downtown St. Petersburg

We spent a delightful three days in St. Petersburg. What a lovely, cosmopolitan city! The city marina is right downtown, and downtown St. Petersburg has something for everyone. There are a number of museums (all accessible by 25 cent trolley ride), an aquarium out on a long pier where you can feed the pelicans, beautiful parks, shops, café’s and restaurants, and even a Publix, all within walking distance of the marina. My cousin Jan lives there and she was a wonderful host, taking us to local landmarks and sharing the pool at her beautiful condominium complex. I don’t think I exaggerate when I say St. Petersburg is like a tiny Paris on Florida’s west coast and a great destination for any cruiser.

The 300 mile passage from St. Petersburg to Pensacola took three nights and 30 gallons of diesel. We motored most of the way, as the winds were light when we had them at all, and mostly dead astern. We struggle to find something to do on passage. It’s far too hot to cook anything, and we lose our appetites about two days out anyway. No one wants to be out in the sun on deck, regardless of how benign the water and wind are. Again, it’s far too hot. So we end up in the cockpit either reading or watching the weather.

Gulf clouds are endlessly fascinating, even on shore. Offshore they are simply mesmerizing, enormous, ever-changing, and guaranteed to develop into thunderstorms every afternoon. I can spend hours finding shapes in the puffy clouds; one afternoon we were surrounded by “bears”, either swimming, chasing butterflies, or floating on their backs. The clouds vary in shape, color, thickness, from wisps to scattered sheep, to high, icy veils of lace, to towering arctic mountains. In the dawn or at sunset, they seem to be illuminated from within, filled with incandescent light.

The storms are beautiful as well. Naturally, we much prefer that the storms stay well away from us. It’s hard to figure out which way a storm is moving and how fast. Sometimes they light up the sky on the distant horizon and stay there; other times they chase us. Being chased by a huge Gulf thunderstorm is absolutely no fun at all. We had a close call with a mammoth storm that developed over Tampa Bay the day we left St. Petersburg for Pensacola. By the time the storm developed it was about 5 p.m. and we were about 15 miles off shore. It started as they all do, with a large, white cauliflower cloud sailing in a clear blue sky. Ever so gently, this cloud grows, drawing to it and absorbing nearby smaller clouds. Then the mass begins to swell, upward and outward. As it grows, it absorbs heat. From time to time, all afternoon, jets of steam spurt from the cloud, it collapses, and then rebuilds. By late afternoon, it has climbed upward for thousands of feet and spread out laterally for miles. Then it drifts offshore and at some point dumps its rain on land or into the Gulf and then the clouds thin out and dissipate.

Photos below: a storm cloud cycle, captured over Pensacola Bay (same cloud, photographed over about an hour or so)

The thunderstorm that pursued us from Tampa Bay pretty much followed this pattern. The towering mountain of cloud began to collapse over the bay in the early evening, which occasioned a rare National Weather Service Alert due to high winds and torrential rain. We could see it easily from the cockpit. As the cloud collapsed, it metamorphosed into a dense, dark mushroom (like the photos you see of an atomic bomb blast) that flattened out in a circle about ten miles in diameter, dragging heavy curtains of rain in its wake, spiking lightening and high winds in all directions, and rushing toward us like a freight train at 20 knots. The procedure here is to get the hell out of Dodge at an angle perpendicular to the storm. It was daylight, so we could see, and the National Weather Service confirmed, the direction the storm was headed. Mr. P chugged hard to port and the storm swept by to starboard, thinning, finally, about 20 miles out from shore.

That night on watch I was entertained by a huge lightening storm behind us that lit up small sections of the sky in violent bursts that reminded me of films I’ve seen of night time sea battles. Huge prongs of lightening stabbed the water from the boiling clouds that were illuminated briefly with each burst. Thankfully, the storm was so far behind us I couldn’t hear the thunder. We took down the canvas anyway, so David could sleep undisturbed. Other storms popped up around us in the early hours of the morning, but most had cloud to cloud lightening which was of much less concern to me.

Although we were surrounded by scattered storms, the sky above Raven was crystal clear. I leaned back out of the cockpit, away from the bimini, and watched the Milky Way streaming above the swaying mast. I could keep track of the storm clouds by noting those sections of the horizon that blotted out the stars. The Big Dipper hung in the sky off to starboard, handle raised into the sky and dipper poised over the water. Sometime around 4 a.m. the dipper finally brushed the surface of the sea. The sky was so bright with stars; it was easy to see all sorts of constellations. I don’t know any of the classic constellations and so had fun naming my own. The brightest were a couple of crawfish clawing their way up to midheaven.

The last night out we dodged two storms, both of which started on shore near Pensacola and Mobile and headed our way. Both were “sea battle” lightening storms that produced jagged lightening and grumbling bursts of thunder. We managed to avoid both of them, although the second storm, moving almost as slowly as we were, wandered into Pensacola Bay in front of us as the sun rose behind us. Yet another storm cooked itself into being as we approached and we snapped photos of it as it built and finally burst into steam. Both these storms produced water spouts (tornadoes) that snaked their way toward the water from the distended bellies of the storms and smoked across the water for a number of minutes before being reabsorbed. Water spouts are really scary and we were grateful that they showed up in daylight where we could see them and move off in another direction!

Our approach continued across the milky calm water of the bay. We turned off the motor for awhile so David could check the oil and were joined by about 15 dolphins. They swam right up to the boat, and the early morning silence was broken only by their huffing breaths and the slight disturbance of the water as they dove and circled, hunting their breakfast. Some of them looked quite small; I am guessing it was a family group with some youngsters in tow.

Yet again, we have been amazingly lucky. The only affect on Raven’s crew from all these thunderheads was a wash of cooler air left by the rain and the chance to take some amazing photos.

Cayo Costa, June 3, 2008

Photo #1: Sunset at Cayo Costa

[Hilde’s log]

Cruising attire has become a lot more casual since we arrived in Florida from the Bahamas. When we’re close to others in an anchorage or marina we suffer in shorts and t-shirts and sandals. The instant we manage to elude our fellow humans, all those clothes end up in a heap in the laundry basket. Folks, it is hot. For example, it is almost 8 p.m. as I write this in the cabin and the thermometer (at which I try not to look) shows 88. It’s probably 8 to 10 degrees cooler in the cockpit, where David is milking the sunset for enough light to read his book. We hope we are anchored far enough from shore to be invisible to the insect life out here (just off the ICW channel close to the island park of Cayo Costa).

Amazingly enough, “hot” is uncomfortable only if I (i) wear clothes or (ii) go into the cabin. As long as I am in the fresh breeze with little or nothing on, I’m quite comfortable. Yesterday we spent the day at Ft. Myers Beach, Florida, in the city mooring field. David finished some boat chores, and when he was done, I was determined to clean up a bit below. While he worked, I sat in the cockpit in civilized attire and read. It was about 90, but a breeze was blowing and Raven’s cockpit curtains kept the sun off while allowing the breeze to waft across the boat. I was perfectly comfortable. The instant I went below, the heat became stifling and I lost all the water I’d drunk that day (a considerable amount) to perspiration. Who am I kidding? It was sweat! Running in rivulets down my back, under my arms, and even off the end of my nose! Needless to say, as I swept and damp mopped the cabin floor, I became more and more irritable. I barely managed to last until we loaded the dinghy with laundry and bath items and took off for the bath house and laundry room maintained by Matanzas Marina.

What a glorious feeling to step into the air conditioned laundry! Marathon is a great place, but they have no air conditioning, and bathing in their showers in the summer is a lot like taking a Turkish bath, even though all my showers there were in cold (read: tepid) water. At Ft. Myers, the laundry and the bathrooms are air conditioned. The bathrooms look like hotel bathrooms, with tiled floors, sinks, and mirrors. Both of them were sparkling clean and one of them even had a tub! You can get dressed in comfort, without every piece of clothing sticking to your body. Again, a huge contrast to Marathon. The baths there are filthy. No algae or anything, but plenty of dirt tracked in and left on the floors and years of dirty hand and fingerprints on the walls, as if every boater there had changed engine oil before coming up to bathe. Marathon mooring balls (off season) were $20 per night. Ft. Myers was $13. Go figure. Perhaps it has to do with Marathon’s brand new mooring field, which is quite impressive and regularly inspected. It can’t be the facilities. I loved Marathon, but I must admit, Ft. Myers is my new favorite Florida port.

Ft. Myers has a great mooring field as well, less than two years old. The balls are especially welcome due to the strong current that runs there, turning the boats 180 degrees every six hours. Across the channel from us and on the other side of a large sand bar were about 20 shrimpers. They stayed tied up while we were there, which was a bit of a disappointment. I wanted to see them leave in the early morning. Perhaps there is a season on shrimp. It’s a working port, with large and small work boats and a Coast Guard station, as well as lots of private fishing boats and pleasure craft. The Gulf side beaches were covered with happy vacationers, but there are no over large hotels or other obvious tourist spots in Matanzas Pass, where the mooring field is located. Instead there are several live music tiki bars and one great band played under the roof of a huge open air aluminum building that looks as though it earns its way as a commercial fish market during the week.

The mooring field is also home to many snub nosed gray dolphins who came in each evening and morning to feed or maybe just to hang out. They floated close to the surface of the water with their dorsal fins exposed and moved slowly up and down the river, huffing noisily as they took deep breaths. They’d pass within ten feet of us, singly or in groups of two or three, like people out for an evening stroll. We had a terrific rain last night and afterward, as I lay in the v-berth enjoying a beautifully cool breeze, I listened to the dolphins huff and puff their way up and down beside the boat.

We ate out our first night in Ft. Myers, just to get cooked food in a cool room. We’ve had to motor a lot the last few days, and motoring bakes the interior of the boat until it’s well over 90 at night when we stop. Even after opening all the port lights and hatches, it takes a long time for it to cool down because the hot engine continues to radiate heat through the hull. The heat effectively discourages me from doing any cooking. We aren’t hungry for the most part, anyway, until we walk into an air conditioned space. When we are able to sail, we’re still out in the heat all day (under the bimini, of course) but there is very little engine activity to heat up the cabin and the breeze keeps us comfortable.

Photo #2: Thunderhead across our anchorage at Cayo Costa

The thunderstorms help. A big one swept by us to the east this afternoon as we approached land. None of them have bothered me at all for a long time, but this afternoon was different. As I watched the storm develop, my hackles went up and I seriously did not want to turn east and head toward it. About the time we approached our turn, the Coast Guard announced that a water spout had been sighted near our location. A water spout is a tornado on water, and not anything anyone wants to be near. The Coast Guard announcer, some young woman, rattled off the coordinates in such a rush that even though I had pen and paper to hand, I couldn’t get all the numbers. I was some kind of angry. I hailed the Coast Guard on 16, told them there was no way I could write down the numbers when she spoke them so quickly, and asked her to repeat the coordinates. About a minute later, she did. Sure enough, those water spouts were right about where we are anchored tonight!

But about 10 minutes later, my feelings of foreboding disappeared and the storm moved off slowly to the east, taking its water spouts with it. As we approached the cut, we moved through a fleet of small fishermen and clouds of sea birds who were all doing their best to catch the hundreds of fish that were shoaling in the cut. Not one of them moved a foot for any silly storm, water spout or not.

Up the West Coast of Florida

Photo #1: Raven heads into the Gulf, under Seven Mile Bridge, just west of Marathon

[Hilde’s log]

May 31, 2008

What a lovely surprise we had our last day in Marathon. We checked in on the cruiser’s net as a departing vessel, and who should hail us but Matt and Linda on Worth W8N4! We hadn’t seen them since Coco Beach, back in January. They settled in at Marathon in January and loved it so much they’ve decided to stay for the long term. We enjoyed dinner together and then Linda took me with her to Bingo night at the local VFW hall. I had a great time stamping my sheets, and came close in four games, but never managed to win. Rats. Another first, for my life’s “firsts” list. Many thanks to Linda and Matt for a lovely evening. And to think, we’d been there a week and had no idea they were there. All the folks at Marathon have gone out of their way to be friendly and helpful, from the City Marina staff to the bridge tender. I’m glad we visited and equally glad we visited in the off season. From photos we’ve seen, the harbor is completely full of boats in the winter and the dinghy dock is three and four deep in dinghies, all of which is a testament to Marathon’s success in luring cruisers. It’s the Velcro Beach of the Keys.

We’re wending our way up the west coast of Florida, pausing tonight in an anchorage off the channel in Gordon’s Pass, a bit south of Naples. We crept in about 4 p.m., fighting a one knot current in a narrow passage with shoaling and shallows to contend with. David cleverly thought to call Boat U.S. on VHF 16 for local knowledge about this anchorage and they provided us with exactly the information we wanted: keep very close to the west side of the channel and expect shallower than normal lows at low tide. Raven is floating in a canal type subdivision, among some beautiful and expensive homes with boats parked at the “curb”. We’ve been entertained by all sorts of canal traffic, including a sailboat, a dinghy, a hundred foot yacht, a sightseeing boat, and a huge catamaran with about 30 people on board. Perhaps we were part of the sights they were seeing – two hot, sticky people enjoying snacks and a cold drink on deck. Dark skies have hovered around us all afternoon, but so far we’ve had only a bit of cool wind and no storms. It’s quiet now, and close, and hot, so we may get one yet.

Photo #2: our anchorage at Little Shark River

Our suburban anchorage tonight is an extreme contrast with the anchorages of the last two nights. Both nights we were snuggled up to the edge of the Everglades National Park. Our first night’s anchorage was just inside the bend of Little Shark River. I could see we were approaching a river, because the turquoise water changed to dark olive and we felt the current pushing us back. The half circle cove sheltered another sailboat, and that was all the company we had, all night. Despite the lure of the tree lined river that slipped off into the distance, we elected to drop anchor as near the mouth of the river as possible, due to our expectation of being eaten alive by mosquitoes. It was hot and humid and we were hungry and thirsty from our long day on the water, so I made us a couple of shandies (and English drink of ½ beer and ½ ginger ale or other light soda – sounds awful, but it’s a great drink). We slammed those down and the next thing we knew, we were napping. About an hour later I woke up and made the quickest dinner I could think of, we slammed that down, and then darn if we didn’t pass out again. I think it was about 8 p.m. at that point and I didn’t stir until about 7 the next morning. I haven’t slept that hard in months. I think it had partly to do with the profound quiet that surrounded us. For miles and miles on every side there was only mangrove forest and sea and the critters that call the Everglades home. No electricity, no motors, no voices, just silence and old trees and a few dolphins chasing fish in the shallows.

We were right about the mosquitoes – the next morning there were about 30 on each port light screen, clutching the mesh, drooling at the prospect of such a tasty breakfast. We wore our long pants and shirts and applied Skin so Soft liberally on all exposed areas before climbing out of the cabin, and wasted no time in setting out into the insect free gulf. About a dozen enterprising fellows found their way into the cabin as we emerged and enjoyed me thoroughly the next night.

Photo #3: Thunderhead behind us (note the rain dumping into the Gulf)

The next night found us in the midst of the Thousand Islands part of the western Florida coast. We motored into an anchorage at Indian Key about three steps ahead of a large thunderstorm. We’d been dodging storms for two days. When I’m travelling in the day time, storms are interesting. Since they are visible, they are mostly missable, or at least we don’t get snuck up on. We watch them build all day. In the early morning, there is a ruffle of white cloud that parallels the land. As the morning moves along, the clouds get larger and puffier, building into an impressive white bank of cumulus clouds. The clouds are magical, making the most fantastical shapes, and I entertain myself for hours, seeing all sorts of animals evolve and fade away in the bright blue sky. Then about 2 p.m., the clouds begin to roll off the land and over the water. By now, they have built themselves into towering white mountains, the tops of which are constantly exploding like very slow popping popcorn. Finally, they begin to go gray and black underneath, the darkness builds up into the sky, and then the torrential rains spill to the earth. The thunderheads drag the rain in sheets behind them like long skirts. From the water we could see probably four to six storms at any one time as we sailed along the coast. A couple of times we hove to and waited, but the storms we were expecting swept by us to starboard or to port with just a gust of wind and quick shower to mark their passing.

We had successfully ducked every one of them by yesterday afternoon, and I made the mistake of saying “I’m so glad we’ve been able to duck all these thunderstorms, aren’t you?” Red flag to a rain god, who promptly defied NOAA and sent his storm north, rather than west (all the others had grumbled their way west, as if they were on a lead). By the time we realized this storm was going to get us, we were chugging up the outflowing river into the Everglades against a really strong current. I had the throttle wheezing at 2500 rpm and we staggered along at 4.5 knots, not only fighting current, but also 18 knot winds. It was like hurrying in slow motion, or one of those dreams where your arms and legs are too heavy to lift as you try to run for your life. It didn’t help to watch the local fishing boats streak past us, engines blazing, as they raced upriver toward Everglades City and shelter. As we came around the bend to the anchorage, the black sky covered us, and we could see a thick curtain of rain advancing toward us across the water, completely obliterating the scenery behind it. The storm nailed us just as David dropped the hook, and we got soaked. Actually, once I realized there wasn’t any lightening, the rain was truly refreshing. I did freak out a bit, as Raven remaining beam to the wind, instead of feathering up, but that turned out to be the current. No one else was out and we had the anchorage to ourselves so we didn’t worry much on a 10 to 1 scope.

Photo # 4 and 5: our anchorage in Gordon's pass as the stom develops and then arrives

We were close to Everglades City, but weren’t even tempted to explore (mosquitoes again). We agree that a return trip in the depths of January is a distinct possibility, because the area is simply gorgeous.