[Hilde’s log]
In order to leave
Factory Bay Tuesday, we spent Monday at the dock, having the radar scanner re-installed and getting a spa treatment (bottom job) for Raven.
In warm waters especially, sea growth and critters will foul the
bottom of a boat, eating away at the bottom paint if allowed to
remain, and slowing her top speed. It takes quite a scrubbing to wash
away the barnacles, sea growth, and sometimes even oysters that
attach themselves. While all that was going on, I took the trash
ashore and did a farewell load of laundry and dreaded our return to
the pumpout station.
Before Hurricane
Irma, they tell me, the pumpout was located on an actual dock. Irma
ripped that dock away, so now you approach a row of tall pilings,
none of which sports a cleat. If the dock attendant is there, you
toss him a line and he pulls you toward the pilings, where you tie
off by wrapping lines around the posts. Last time we did it, the
attendant was not there, and we had more cowboy mooring, with
David leaping off the side of the boat with a line in his hand. Not
fun for me! This time, it was relatively easy, probably because I had
worried the whole thing to a frazzle in my mind for the preceding
seven hours (ha).
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| Rigger with his tool bag. |
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| Installing the radar dome. |
As we settled back
to anchor in the late afternoon, we agreed that we had been blessed
with this anchorage. The anchorage itself has plenty of water (about
10 feet overall), good holding, and easy access to the Island. The
folks at Rose Marina were, to a person, friendly and helpful, and had
local knowledge of good riggers and a good diver to help us fix the
radar and get ready for the next leg of the voyage. For a $5 day use
fee, we could tie up the dinghy at the marina, and use their showers
and laundry. We found groceries, eateries, shopping, and church all
within walking distance of the marina. Occasionally, we could afford
a car, although I warn you, high season prices for a car on Marco
Island can cause seizures in the unprepared.
The weather has been
ridiculous – day after day of perfection. Blue skies, cool breezes,
warm (and sometimes hot) sun, and sweet-smelling air (other than the
days we caught the smoke from the Naples landfill…). We lapped it
all up, from our “back porch” on the boat.
Nevertheless, we
were anxious to be on our way.
Tuesday we took a
leisurely departure from the anchorage, not getting underway until 9
a.m. Up at 7, I cooked a last-minute batch of vegetables that I
blended together for a cold salad underway, did some last minute
cleanup, and stowed things that had somehow crept out of their
storage spaces while we were at anchor. David spent the morning
laying in our route and doing last-minute chores on the deck.
Oh, the bliss of our
morning sail! Although the wind was light, we scooted along at 4.5
knots, thanks, no doubt, to the bottom job, on a flat turquoise sea.
The balmy air washed over us, the sun shone benignly, and we just
rocked along like a big cradle with wings.
I especially enjoyed
brief glimpses of wildlife, notably a 50 yard swath of leaping fish
of all shapes, sizes, and species, leaping this way and that, up and
down, left and right, as fast as they could. I assume Something Below
was having lunch, and lunch was doing its best to escape.
About the time we
approached the end of the Island, the wind gave up the ghost and we
motored for a little over an hour. Then it picked up again and we
sailed all the way to the mouth of Indian Key Pass, where we doused the
sails and motored up the river in the company of a number of fishing
boats all headed for Everglades City. Indian Key is located in the
area known as Ten Thousand Islands. No one knows exactly how many
mangrove islands are in this part of Florida (part of the
Everglades), but ten thousand may be accurate. Some are quite large,
some tiny, and all of them are covered in mangroves and (I believe)
uninhabited, except by bugs.
Sure enough, a batch
of tiny, tiny, biting bugs walked right through our screens (they
were about ½ the size of the holes in the mesh) and munched on us as
we killed them. They just committed bug suicide, as they are slow and
announce themselves with a sharp, if tiny, sting. Mush. End of feast.
Mercifully, the wind came up and scattered the little devils. They
were midges, known locally as no see ‘ems, but we could definitely
see ‘em. Imagine fine grind pepper – that’s about what they
look like.
The anchorage at
Russell Pass was simply gorgeous, if buggy. (see video) It rained some and the wind blew steadily for awhile, and the bugs left us alone. We thought
about staying a day there to enjoy the quiet, but the bugs made the
idea a lot less appealing. I laugh as I think of us shooing away a
few dozen midges. Little did we know.
The next day’s
sail was a copy of the first: four hours of perfect wind and water,
followed by four hours of motoring when the wind collapsed after
noon. For that night’s anchorage, we came into Little Shark River
at about 3 p.m., motoring up the river a ways to leave room for a
trawler that had already arrived and dropped the hook. David and I
sat up on deck, marveling at the breeze and the birds and
rhapsodizing about the cruising life. That jinxed it.
About sunset, out
came the midges, in swarms. We hightailed it below, and sure enough
we were soon joined by hundreds of midges that squeezed (or just
strolled) through the screens. We closed all the portholes and the
hatches and resigned ourselves to a warm night. We slept all right,
but in the morning we were appalled to find thousands of midges glued
to the walls and lights in the head, which made morning business a
bit tricky. I murdered them by the hundreds, both in the head and in
the cabin where they had parked, waiting for breakfast (us). We
discovered they were coming in from outside through the dorade vent,
which no longer has a mesh screen, so we stopped up that hole with
rags. It helped the inside, but when David went out to check the
anchor, he bolted back below as quickly as he could, cursing and
sweeping hundreds of midges off his legs and arms. It was horrible.
We also found
ourselves at the very bottom of the tide cycle and knew we couldn’t
leave because we had no depth. The river bank showed mud a good three
feet below the mangrove roots. So we just sat around mushing midges
and waiting for the water to come up.
At 10 o’clock,
dressed in long socks, long pants, and my hooded windbreaker, I went
out to help David. Thankfully, the anchor came right up and we
wheeled the boat out of that swamp like the hounds of hell were after
us.
The water was a bit
rougher with the wind at about 15, so we donned life jackets and
raced away. We got in a couple more hours of sailing perfection, were
visited by a number of flying fish and a couple of dolphins, and
generally blissed ourselves out. There was no way we were going to
make Marathon after that late start, so we tacked back and forth over
the rhumb line most of the day, having decided to drop the hook in
the shallows near Moser Channel around sunset, about 25 miles from
Marathon and a good five miles from shore to eliminate the bug issue.
Ha.
We have never
anchored out like that. The water in Florida Bay, where we dropped
the hook, is quite shallow, and there was no wind at all, and none
forecast. We motored along for quite awhile, hoping to escape the
crab pots, but in the end we gave up and dropped the hook in the
middle of two long lines of pots.
(Crab pots are large cages connected with cable along the shallow areas where fishermen hope to catch crabs. Each cage is marked by a floating ball, which is rather large, but doesn't look very big out in the ocean. If we are motoring, we try hard to avoid them, because you can foul your prop on the lines that tie the float to the cage.)
Even though our
evening anchorage was a good five miles from shore, guess who greeted
us as we slowed to drop the hook among trailing lines of crab pots.
You got it. Clouds of biting midges. Once the anchor set (probably an
interesting sight, had anyone been around to see it – wildly waving
arms, slapping hands, and wild whimpering), we dropped below into the
hot cabin (we’d been motoring for the last couple of hours) making
rude remarks about Florida and its tiny, toothy fauna. Both of us are
covered in bites, from head to toe. We comforted ourselves with a
sorry-for-ourselves dinner of goat cheese and jam, crackers, and
alcohol, and made plans to leave this godforsaken state behind us
with all due speed. There are no photos of this anchorage. It’s in
the middle of nowhere, between two long lines of crab pots, and
smothered with bugs. You’ll have to use your imagination.
We dropped off to
sleep about 8 p.m. I was jerked awake by a floodlight coming in the
starboard portholes. What in heaven? My sleep-fuddled brain thought,
“crab fishermen?” but it turned out to be U.S. Border Patrol and
Customs boat with three men aboard. They were very nice, very polite,
probably stopping because who drops anchor five miles from shore?
After seeing our registration and IDs, they left. I spent the
remainder of the night on the settee, where it was less hot, waking
off and on all night.
When the morning did
come, we suited up like we were going on a spacewalk to foil our
enemies – foulies top and bottom, long socks, etc. Bursting out
into the cockpit we encountered – nada. Maybe ten lonesome midges.
Figures.
A relatively short
day of motoring and dodging crab pots brought us under Seven Mile
Bridge and into Marathon today in the early afternoon. Marathon is
very, very popular with the cruising community, and getting a ball
here in the winter is iffy. We got one! No doubt a number of boats
have left for the Bahamas for spring cruising, leaving us a spot. It
looks pretty much as it did ten years ago, although Hurricane Irma
did leave her mark. Many of the boats are under repair, and some are
tethered to other boats until they are seaworthy enough to float on
their own. But if you want to head this way, it’s definitely open
for business.
