Author: ortolancat

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Passing the time in Boot Key Harbor

Ah, protected Boot Key Harbor, the home of so many for varying durations throughout the year. The Municipal Marina controls 229 mooring balls, all hurricane rated. The balls are regularly inspected and repaired as needed. A handout describes the three approved ways to attach your lines to the pennant. Picking up a mooring has become, dare I jinx things, a piece of cake for us ever since we acquired our super-duper stainless hook during our long stay here last Feb/March. After using the boat hook to pick up the pennant, being sure to reach through the dolphin strikers properly, I just clip the hook to the hard plastic eye of the pennant. The hook is attached to our anchor bridle which is attached to the cleats on the bows. Marinas don’t want you to use anything metal to attach yourself to the pennant, so we trade the bridle with the hook for lines that are fastened at the cleats and out to the eye of the pennant.

From the time we arrived until Tuesday morning, the wind kept up its 15-22kts (never saw 30 though) and Russ was in regular communications with The Hearth, the hospital and then the convalescent/rehab facility, his brother, brother-in-law, the movers and no doubt a few others. Good thing we weren’t on the move. We hiked the mile to Publix a couple of times, picking up On Stranger Tides from the Blockbuster box. By Tuesday afternoon all our packages had arrived and Russ re-installed the port A/C circuit board to be sure it worked. All kinds of progress, except the reason we were here in the first place; the sail drive seal issue. No word.

The view from Ortolan

Crappy way to begin your day

The other night I lamented the lack of photo opps. Well you know the saying, “be careful what you wish for”… the next morning we woke up to a 45ft monohull aground off the channel less than ½ a football field away. Am ashamed to say, I jumped right up to get a look and soon after, a photo. After trying to figure out how he got into that predicament we checked the tide to see that the grounding occurred near high tide. Several helpful boaters- or maybe they were just curious, went over to offer assistance, then left. I thought for sure I’d be taking another photo later on showing this guy way, way heeled over. But no, TowBoat U.S. showed up and got him free- not completely free- you can bet it cost-ed; oh, maybe like most monohulls he had unlimited towing!

The dolphins have stayed away, although I saw an amazing sight about 80 ft off our stern; a stingray jumped out of the water, twice. I don’t think anything was chasing him, so perhaps he was after a tasty lunch. The water is 8 ft deep and a milky green. At best you can see down about 3 ft but the sun was at an angle such that I could see him in the water; nothing was chasing this guy.

With life a bit boring right now, we’ve resorted to  dinghy watching. I think most people know that the most common color for inflatable dinghies is dull and boring gray, gray or even gray. Imagine seeing a bright yellow one! We’d just gotten out of ours at the dock when the owner of Sunshine Yellow comes along, “nice dinghy chaps.”  I have to confess that all the work was worth it for those things because they are a great conversation piece. Decent job in sun protection too. Will they protect the dinghy itself from the dangers of a crazy driver or a marine bivalve-covered pier remains to be seen; or not.

Bunting snuggles up to Sunshine Yellow

We chat about his and ours. His being an Alaska model with a special gray material along the rub rail and covering the underside. The elements being a tad tougher in Alaska gives companies a reason to develop better materials and construction methods. This particular dinghy was the owner’s second one, the first came apart. Why ? I’ll give you a clue. Heat. The glue that worked so well in chilly Alaska fell apart in Florida. The replacement is a test model of sorts to see if the re-formulated glue holds up.

Read some bummer news on the CruisersForum the other day that Bob Bitchin’ has sold Lats & Atts to SFO (whatever that is); Stocks, Futures and Options came up on Google, but how about San Francisco Offshore? or Sailing Fun Obsession. The sale was announced at the recent St. Pete Boat Show.  Bob is a one-of-a kind guy with a life many adventurous folk would envy.  May he remain involved with the mag for at least three more years… until our just renewed subscription runs out!

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Two day sail to Marathon, FL

A Miami style yacht

More time at the helm. Adding that to my list of minor accomplishments; the first being able to start the dinghy with that pull-string that always seems to be locked in place!  A forecast for NE at 10-15 gave us hope for a couple decent sailing days down to Marathon. I really enjoy the easy sailing in Biscayne Bay; after Key Largo the water gets skinny in many places and the pots are everywhere- even in the channel, which mostly is nothing more than a magenta line with a heading.

A Keys style yacht

Thursday was near perfect and we were in the extremely rare travel mode of “let’s see how far we get.” I had 3 spots picked out, one for each wind possibility: virtually none, some and plenty. The promise of “plenty” that greeted us in the morning, dwindled steadily and left us with our second anchoring choice. I was more than okay with that as it was our preferred spot due to north wind protection. We basked in the easy sailing, mostly moving along at 6kts in 8kts of wind. Sweet, and yes true, thanks to a great angle to the wind- I can’t say exactly what though because we don’t have our Garmin wind direction indicator- remember?  We felt good; plans had been made to get the sail drive work done on Monday/Tues and we had several packages on their way to us, one being that wind thingy.  West Marine called to say it arrived at the store; such a nice feature they have called “ship to store”. The air conditioner circuit board would be replaced under warranty- yippee!! – and sent to us at Boot Key City Marina.

Before anchoring we calibrated our compass which had a long history of not agreeing to the electronic compass nor the GPS heading compass. For those as compass-ly challenged as I, don’t worry if this makes no sense. What we had to do was travel slowly in all four directions and use a non-magnetic tool to adjust the compass to the others. End result was close with room for improvement. By 4pm we’d anchored and were enjoying sundowners on the stern as the sun set. Ah, life IS good. As we finished up, I heard the iPhone “strum” ring; Benj was calling.  His flight to CT out of Miami had been changed an hour and a quarter earlier. Um, that would make a flight back from Nassau more difficult to connect with the Miami one. Oh well, we’ll figure out something if we are lucky enough to cross with him in December.

The next phone call bummed us out. For the second night in a row, Russ’s dad fell getting up from the dinner table. A trip to the clinic and then to the hospital for observation; not looking for fun times for any Rackliffe for the next few days.

Friday gave me oodles of time at the wheel as Russ spent half the day on the phone dealing with sail drive and Dad stuff.  Managed to squeeze in water making before the onslaught of phone calls began.  The short version of the sail drive story- yes, I am going to try-is Yanmar won’t give the go-ahead for any parts to be ordered or work performed until the yard has a look-see. Maybe warranty, maybe not. If not, our nickel. We’ve been dealing with this particular issue since before buying the boat and now it’s south vs north. The southern distributor has never heard of the fix that the northern one has had to do on several sail drives. By the end of the day Friday we had emails indicating a willingness to open talks with the other side. No way will this be our nickel. We’ll have the work done in summer- up north if it comes to that.

All in all, a decent sailing day and I skimmed by only one pot that bounced along the starboard hull a few times. The little buoys here are round and mostly quite colorful; easy to see. Russ was forced to turn the engines on for the final hour and ½ so that we could make the mooring field by sundown. With the next few days’ forecast looking like this: wind NE 20-30, I was happy with our good timing for a stay in Boot Key Harbor.