Sweltering in Marathon

Photos #1 and 2: down Government Cut, past the cargo ships, to Miami

Photo #3: Now that's a fender...

[Hilde’s log]

Ah, mangroves, heat, and no-see-ums. We must be in Florida! Raven is back in the Florida Keys, after two years. It took persistence to get here. After an overnight from West End to Miami, we pulled in to Mia Marina, close to the Port of Miami where we had to check in with the powers that be to re-enter the US legally. Fortunately, they gave us 24 hours to show ourselves. The minute Raven slid into her slip and the a/c was hooked up, her crew started sleeping. We were simply exhausted. It wasn’t just the lack of sleep from the overnight; it was riding the constant motion of three to four foot cross-hatched swells and wind-driven waves as we bumped past Bimini and then across the Gulf Stream. David likened it to riding a mechanical bull for 15 hours. The ocean pitched us, tossed us, and threw us up in the air without respite, from Bimini well into Government Cut.

The overnight was interesting, aside from the rough ride. We enjoyed a beautiful full moon, which helped me to miss a huge tanker that crossed our bow. I was half asleep and staring stupidly at the tanker’s port light expecting it to pass to starboard (I really was asleep with my eyes open) when suddenly the moon illuminated its length as it rose up in solid silhouette in front of us. It was a “David!!” moment. We were never in danger; it was just a close encounter that jolted me awake with a start. A couple of hours later, just east of the Gulf Stream, a spotlight suddenly illuminated the cockpit and we were hailed by the Coast Guard. After reading them passport numbers and certificate numbers and giving names and other personal information they wished us a good night and left us to lurch our way to Miami without further ado. I’m so glad they decided not to board us to check for life vests or something; in that sea they’d have knocked holes in the gel coat, fenders or no.

The morning after our arrival in Miami, we took a taxi to the Port of Miami building, dressed in our best and sporting the ship’s papers. Finding the office was the hardest part. A bored official took our papers, looked at our passports, handed them back, and turned to another task. They didn’t stamp our passports, and although we both had to report to the office, no one even looked at me. I guess if you show up, they figure you’re okay. Quien sabe?

We enjoyed the part of Miami that was near the marina. After a Starbucks, we wandered an open air market admiring all sorts of goods on display before settling down to lunch at a dockside café. Late in the afternoon we set out for an anchorage close to Hurricane Harbor in Biscayne Bay, where we parked for two nights while we rested. It was ridiculous: we’d get up, eat something, do very little for about two hours, and then go back to sleep. We must have had ten naps between us over the weekend we were there. David did manage several boat chores during the hours he was awake; I didn’t manage a thing. The air was hot and hazy and several times we were really bothered by thick smoke that poured over the bay from the wild fires in the Everglades.

Photo #4: Miami skyline from Biscayne Bay. It was gorgeous at night, with all the lights.

Other than sleeping and watching David whack at the boat, I spent my time looking out at over a hundred (mostly power) boats that anchored near us. Both Saturday and Sunday morning, they appeared like magic about breakfast time and then they disappeared again as the sun began to dip over the horizon in the evening. Teens, families with kids, and boats full of adults came to anchor out and play on and around the shallow waters covering a nearby sandbar. The kids spent all their time leaping from the swim platforms into the water, the teens zoomed by in small power boats or on jet skis, and the old folks lay back in the shade with a cold drink and watched their progeny or else sat their with fishing poles out, looking hopeful. We had the place to ourselves from dusk until dawn, and it was beautifully empty when we pulled out Monday morning early to head down to Rodriguez Key.

Photos #5-7: Stiltsville, beside Biscayne Channel

The most interesting thing we saw on that leg of the trip was a place the chart called “Stiltsville.” As its name implies, Stiltsville is made up of maybe ten houses built on stilts, scattered along a stretch of the southern channel that leads from Biscayne Bay to Hawk Channel on the Atlantic (Biscayne Channel). The houses looked abandoned for the most part, with windows boarded up. Some of the foundation piers looked well cared for, but others looked as though a good blow would send the house straight into the bay.

Stiltsville was about it for entertainment on our trip south other than the colors of the water in Hawk Channel. I saw the same beautiful dark blue and turquoise striped water that I’ve been used to seeing in the Bahamas, as well as an equally beautiful jade and evergreen Florida variation. Those strips of clear, jewel-colored water were surrounded by regular green ocean in many places. I have no idea what causes the colors of the sea to change, and especially cannot guess why the neon colors are blue and turquoise in one place and then jade and evergreen just a short distance away. The trip to Rodriguez Key was 40+ miles pretty much straight into the 15-20 knot wind. We motor sailed with the staysail at 30 degrees to the wind when we could, but still arrived minutes before sunset after a 13 hour trip. Silver moonlight bathed the open vista to the east as we sat in the cockpit with a well earned drink, and I decided that was my idea of a night passage: at anchor in a still lagoon under a bright moon with a drink in my hand.

The next day we soldiered on to Channel Five, tacking back and forth over a 25 mile route. It was a terrific ten hour sail, Raven heeled with all her canvas out. All that tacking added a lot of distance to the trip and we arrived at the anchorage at sunset yet again. The last day of our march to Marathon was a slog, motoring straight into 16 knot wind most of the way, with a couple of hours of motor sailing thrown in. We paused at the Marathon Marina fuel dock to tank up with diesel and water, and then we nabbed a mooring ball in the sparsely populated mooring field and celebrated our arrival with rum and coke. It was pretty warm the whole trip, mid 80s making the breeze welcome, and the heat baked us but good once we tied up here. Both of us are glad to see the sun go down. It’s hard to remember how much I hated the cold up north!

We rented a car for three days, so in addition to luxurious meals in the local (air conditioned) diners, trips to the (air conditioned) Publix supermarket to re-provision (read: find David a bag of potato chips), and the usual laundry and showers, we have also visited the (partially air conditioned) Turtle Hospital and the (partially air conditioned) Crane Point Museum and Nature Center. You can find out about the Turtle Hospital at http://www.turtlehospital.org/ and about the museum and nature preserve at Crane Point at http://www.cranepoint.net/ . Both are well worth a visit and these sites have lots of photos.

Photo #8: One of the turtle patients, in a separate tank

Photo #9: Two bubble butts in the big pool. You can see a weight on one's back.

Photo #10: In hopes of a snack from the tourists...

The turtle hospital was my favorite. I got to see about 40 huge sea turtles up close and personal. Some are permanent residents, because of the nature of their injuries, but most are thankfully just passing through. The staff treats everything from tumors to fishing line entanglements (please, please, if you are fisher-folk, be sure to retrieve all your line – floating filament causes terrible suffering for the wildlife that runs afoul of it) to shark attacks to a really weird condition that results in the turtle having excess air forced into the space between its body and its shell. The large bubble of air keeps the turtle from diving. It’s as if they are wearing a floatie. The staff call these unfortunates “bubble butts” which is a funny name for an un-funny condition, usually caused by a collision with a boat. The trapped air means these turtles have to be lifelong residents of the hospital, because they can’t dive for food. The staff can’t drill holes in the shell to let the air out because a turtle’s spine and skeleton are pretty much welded to its shell. For now, the staff attach weights on the turtles’ shells, so they can dive a little and have a more normal life. The bubble butts all live in a large salt water pool with fish and other maimed turtles, but it’s not much like having the run of the sea. You can’t imagine how huge some of these turtles are. The loggerheads have heads the size of softballs and larger. These are the turtles we saw in the Bahamas.

We should be here through next Wednesday. Then, always depending on the winds and weather, we’ll be off up the west coast of Florida, headed toward Ft. Meyers, Tampa/St. Petersburg, and Pensacola.

Great Sail from Great Sale Cay

[Hilde’s log]

May 13, 2008

One of the great things about Raven – no, the greatest thing about Raven – is the way she sails. She is at home in the water, regardless of the conditions. That came home to me, yet again, as we made our way from Hawksbill Cay to Great Sale Cay day before yesterday. The morning dawned with a gentle 10 knot breeze that gradually strengthened over the course of the afternoon to 18 and 20 knots. We sailed much of the way, which I like to imagine makes Raven happy. She’s like a dog running free on the beach, just bounding along with her canvas flying. It’s like riding a magic carpet. The sail was a smooth one until we reached Carter’s Cays, at which time the three and four foot seas began to stack and the waves began to bounce into each other. The rough water didn’t affect Raven at all, except for slowing her down. This is the same rough ride we experienced going the opposite direction over this stretch of the bank when we first arrived in the Bahamas. I wonder if perhaps that corner of the bank is where a couple of undersea rivers run into each other. A bit farther on we made the turn to port to approach Great Sale, lost our angle on the wind, and had to proceed under power.

Mr. P (the Perkins engine) responded well to the challenge, proving that the overheating issue is behind us, and we trudged forward, beating into 20 knot winds at a snail’s pace. I steered into the wind for about two hours, making little headway. David had time for a nap after we made the turn and we had barely passed Little Sale Cay when he woke up to relieve me. I got my book, settling down for the rest of the trip which looked to be a long one. David interrupted my reading to say, “I think we’re going to have some weather.” I really hate it when he says that, and I really hated it a lot when I got a look at the storm clouds that were approaching. They covered the sky to the southwest, although it looked like we might squeak by the major part of the system. We hurried to secure everything and put on our life vests. There’s no way to know how hard “weather” is going to blow. Raven chugged ahead on auto-pilot (there was no sea room to heave to) and the leading edge of the storm spread over the sky like a dark blanket.

I was mesmerized by the clouds. Thick and dark with a ragged edge, they produced the most fantastical shapes. At one point, the edge of the foremost black cloud folded over itself, like a hood, and then the face of a beautiful woman appeared in the hood, staring down solemnly at the water, her face seemingly only inches from its surface. She slowly dissolved into other shapes as the darkness poured over us, blotting out the blue sky. We never manage to have the camera ready when something amazing like that happens, but David did get a few photos of the clouds.

Behind the first line of black clouds were sheets of rain, hiding everything behind a gray curtain. Heavy rain peppered us for only about five minutes, as the wind gusted to the low thirties, and the turquoise water around us rose up in steep six to eight foot waves, each crested with white foam. As we hoped, most of the storm passed by to starboard, and we only caught its tip. The rain and wind lasted about 20 minutes and we proceeded safely to the anchorage at Great Sale in choppy seas.

The amazing thing? If I had closed my eyes, I wouldn’t have been able to tell we were in any sort of weather at all from the motion of the boat. Raven simply kept on going under the auto-pilot as she had been going for the last few hours – she didn’t shudder, change course, or change her position on the water in the slightest. I felt perfectly safe, and I am a huge chicken.

We anchored in some stiff wind, letting out around 130 feet of chain. The wind howled all night (another night of anchor watch), from 25 to 35 knots, and we were grateful that there were only seven boats at anchor with us. Nobody dragged, which was amazing, considering how hard it blew and the fact that the wind changed direction from south to west over the course of the night. The next day it kept blowing, not dipping below 20 knots until well into late afternoon. Amazingly enough, two boats elected to leave the anchorage in the strong (28+ knots) west wind. They must have had a heck of a ride, with the way the water was churned up. Late in the day, the wind died altogether, and this morning as we left Great Sale for West End, the sea was flat, the breeze light, and we had to motor sail to get here in one day.

And Raven? Why, she just took it all in her stride, as usual. She’s at the dock tonight, dozing and dreaming, her sails furled and her decks washed with fresh water.

Birthday Boy and Other Tales

[Hilde’s log]

Yes, that’s right, David had a birthday yesterday, May 6th! We celebrated by taking on water, so we could clean up for lunch at Mangoes. We’ve been being very careful with water for about 10 days, and extremely careful with water for the last three days. The charge here is $20 per 100 gallons or less, so we wanted to be as empty as possible before filling up (we carry 80 gallons in the tanks and another 18 gallons on deck). In addition to being cheap, we wanted to give David’s hand a chance to heal before exercising it too much. All went well at the marina dock, David didn’t strain his hand, we filled up, and then we celebrated with baths and shampoos. Once we were slicked up (I even wore make-up) we enjoyed lunch at Mangoes and then spent the afternoon in the cockpit listening to a CD of Calypso music and recovering from having eaten fried food. It is pathetic when your sundowner is Alka-Seltzer and you enjoy it.

The latest equipment crash is the Garmin chart plotter, which has suddenly developed wavy lines over half the screen. There is a friendly and efficient electronics store in Marsh Harbour called Merlin’s (yellow building, second story, north side of the harbor). David took the Garmin there and was told it often takes 10 days to three weeks for a repair to be effected. That’s pretty discouraging. While waiting for Merlin’s to contact Garmin and get back to us, David has been using the internet connection to look for less expensive alternatives. It’s no fun to shell out $100 for each unlock code on our 2006 Garmin CD. Not only are we paying a lot, we’re paying for two year old maps. He found a very interesting site at http://www.earthnc.com/ which has the latest in marine maps/technology powered by Google. If you click on the site, you can watch a YouTube promotional video. I think you will be amazed and delighted at the possibilities. For example, we spent about an hour zooming into the Houston ship channel where we not only saw all the real-time commercial boat traffic (powered by AIS), but also discovered that they have mapped the hundreds of oil wells out there.

While we sit here at anchor, we spend a lot of time talking about modifications to Raven that would reduce the degree to which life on board resembles camping. My major gripe is not lack of space for provisions. We can pack enough food for three to four months in the space we have. So far, we have never been away from land for more than 10 days, so other than the cost of re-stocking in a place where food is more expensive (like the Bahamas), food storage does not seem to be a problem.

Personal storage, on the other hand, has been a problem. We have two hanging lockers near the bow of the boat. One of them functions pretty well, holding jackets and foul weather gear and David’s trousers with no difficulty. The other one is far too shallow. Even though the front part of the locker is deep enough, the back part is the sloping shape of the hull, which means that the tails of my shirts, etc., get crammed up and wrinkled. Both of us have clothes in the open shelves that line each side of the v-berth, but that is an inconvenient and messy arrangement. Even if I didn’t have too many clothes (I over packed tops, like I over packed food), they are just sitting there on the open shelves. My side looks messy and disorganized (because it is messy and disorganized). David’s side is neat as a pin and all his clothes are folded in plastic boxes, but I don’t like looking at his side, either. It’s like living in a pantry. So for the re-fit, I want my locker converted to shelves and I want closed compartments on either side of the v-berth so I don’t have to look at the items stored there.

Then there is (drum roll) the bed. Gee. What can I say? It’s v-shaped. That means you better like snuggling feet at night. The cushions that came with the boat were inadequate in the extreme. One hip or the other always ended up resting on the wooden frame of the v-berth insert and the cushioned part got flatter and flatter. In New Bern we bought memory foam, made a cover for it with a sheet, lay that on top of the cushions, and covered the whole area with another sheet. It’s much more comfortable, but the foam tends to wad up in the middle and it’s really a pain to access the v-berth storage areas where we keep tools, etc. Our friends on Anastasia sprang for a custom mattress for their v-berth and they told us it was absolutely worth the hefty price tag. We still aren’t sure how to pamper our old bodies and still have access to the storage area. A hinged mattress? Wouldn’t I still end up in the seam?

I’d also like to put sliding doors on the port and starboard storage areas in the saloon. The port side (mine) carries spices, extra meds, Kleenex, books, magazines, etc. The starboard side (David’s) carries his books, the (really small) stereo speakers, maps, sailing books, and bits of wire for hooking up this and that. Again, the open storage makes it feel as though I am living in a pantry.

David came up with an ingenious solution to the counter space issue in the galley. Imagine having to prepare your meals on top of the ice chest that holds all your fresh food and you will understand why I need more counter space. He proposed a hinged door between the sink and the nav station that you could fold down and secure when not in use. Genius, no? So far, no workable ideas present themselves to solve the fact that the refrigerator is just an electric cooler. Viking Rose has a real fridge with shelves. Sigh.

And finally, we have got to replace the seat cushions. Poor old things, they are just flabby.

Great ideas for a refit. But first, we need to find a small oil well to pay for it. Talking about refits, etc. leads us to the conclusion that perhaps there is a big difference between a cruising boat and a live aboard boat. A cruising boat is designed for trips with a foreseeable end, somewhere between a weekend and a couple of years. A live aboard boat means you don't go home, you are home, permanently. We'll cogitate some more and get back to you.

Mired in Marsh Harbour

[Hilde’s log]

We’re still in Marsh Harbour and I’m beginning to feel about it the way I felt about Vero Beach, Florida. We’ve been here ‘way too long to suit me. There have been some bright spots, like meeting up with long time cruising buddies Jeff and Peggy on Moonstruck and enjoying simply superb weather, but mostly it’s been on the frustrating side – as frustrating as leisure in a pretty port can be. David was kept busy a few days with our engine. While he clattered and clanked under the hood, I did mundane chores and volunteered a couple of days at a local charity.

“Buck a Book” is a local charity that support the “wild horses of Abaco.” Descended from the time of Columbus, if the more glamorous claim is true, these horses have been here at least a hundred years, and probably a lot longer. They are a distinct type of horse not found anywhere else, “a sub-group of the Spanish Barb breed,” and some of the local folk are trying to keep them from disappearing altogether. It’s a difficult task – while they roam wild on the island, they are confined to a nature preserve and must be looked after when natural disasters occur (fire and big storms) and they must be preserved from local poachers. There are only eight of these horses left, four stallions and four mares. For some reason, the mares are unable to bring their pregnancies to term, so there have been no foals for some time. To help finance its efforts to protect the horses, the non-profit runs a used book store. They take donations of books and DVDs from cruisers and the local community. They resell the books for a dollar apiece, and they rent the DVDs for a dollar apiece. They pull in about $200 - $300 a week, using only volunteer help. If your interest is piqued, look them up at http://www.arkwild.org/. They’ve had a rough week, as all the pasture for the horses has burned in a rash of wildfires.

On the theory that anything is more fun than watching David fix the engine, I volunteered to run the bookstore for a couple of days. The store is housed in a container, something along the order of a pod, that’s about 20 x 15. Like a pod, it opens only at the end. It’s lined with bookshelves and DVD racks and I guess they have about 1,000 titles at any one time. It’s a boon for the cruising community, because most cruisers devour books at an alarming rate. One of the perks of the job is getting to make the Buck a Book announcement on the morning “cruiser’s net” – kind of a cruisers’ radio show on VHF 68. So I got to write a little script and read it on the air two days in a row. I’ve now had 4 of my allotted 15 minutes of fame. It was fun – anyone know of a radio station that needs an announcer? And in there somewhere, David and I had a wonderful 8th anniversary.

The second half of the week kinda went downhill. Despite the excitement of fixing one problem with the engine and deciding the other one would hold for awhile, we started really worrying about our time window and our cash flow and the overall state of the boat. Things got kind of depressing around here as we talked over our options. It’s a great idea to keep moving when you are cruising, because the minute you stop, all your worries catch up to you and start yammering. I think I have conclusively proved that worries travel at less than 5 knots.

While we were tussling with real world problems, David came down with a painful bout of tendonitis in his left hand. Being here at Marsh Harbour, it was not difficult to find a doctor. The doctor prescribed cortisone and anti inflammatories and “bed rest” for his hand. When you stop to realize that David uses his hand for everything, and that we use David for everything related to sailing or moving the boat, you will see that this is a huge difficulty. We get to shore and back with me steering the dinghy, but there’s no question of moving Raven or going snorkeling with his hand out of commission. (Snorkeling involves taking the dinghy out, mooring it to a ball, and getting in and out of the dinghy, so there is a lot of “hands-on” to it.) Hopefully, it will be better in a few days – it is already much less painful.

However – I don’t want to take any protracted sails with my cap’n in anything less than really, really good shape. I rely on his strength and coordination to manhandle the boat while I steer (as in sails, lines, anchoring, dock work). It’s one thing when you are puttering around the ICW and a whole ‘nother beast when you are out on Big Water.

So – it feels kind of like the last straw. We are regrouping and thinking of going home for a couple of years. Raven needs repairs and upgrades and the cruising kitty is really, really low. And our seasonal window is almost gone. I don’t want to hurry or be on a forced march or be worried about money for the next six months. As of today (check back at the end of the week when, if we have not killed each other from being trapped on the boat for a solid week) we may have a different plan. For the moment, we are reading, listening to podcasts, eating junk, and glowering at the view since all we can do right now is look at it.

We will have fun going home, as we will go back to the Florida Keys and travel up the west coast of Florida and across the Gulf Coast states, which we have not done before. For those of you who don’t know, we went straight across the Gulf from Seabrook to Key West when we left two years ago. I don’t want to repeat that trip because we were so tired when we got to Key West – going the other way, we’d be in the oil fields when we were really tired and that would be really scary. So there are a lot of adventures ahead. But like any road trip, it’s never as much fun when you’d headed back.

Lynyard Cay, Abacos

Photo #1: The beach!
Photo #2: For want of a better term, this was a nest of hermit crabs - there were probably 50 of them in a pile. We noticed them because they were scrabbling around, leaving the small depression where we found them and headed off somewhere else. They were all sizes. This is one of the big ones. The little ones were about the size of the tip of my little finger.

Photo #3: Another section of beach - you can just see the site of a campfire on the right where people have come ashore for good times. This is where I hopped off the boat and swam toward the beach.

Photo #4: The islands are covered with thick scrubby brush. You walk from one side to the other on the trails other people have made. There was a lot of trash on the ocean side of Lynyard Cay, mostly plastic rubbish.

Photo #5: In the background you can see smoke from some of the wild fires. It's very, very dry here right now and the locals are waiting for the summer rains to soothe the land.