The above quote is from one of my favorite characters from Richard Russo’s novel, Nobody's Fool. The quote captures the essence of trying to decide when and how to set off on a long voyage and the book title is also a goal of ours.
We have a possible weather window to the Bahamas this weekend and we have a Looper buddy boat, Harbour Reach, waiting for us in Ft. Lauderdale but we have to get there from Marathon—for a slow trawler boat it can take 2-3 days. We had hoped to leave yesterday and were all decked out but still at the dock due to a small craft warning with 15-20 knot winds on Florida Bay, the non-ocean side of the Keys. We have a general rule not to journey out with a small craft warning so we channeled our pent-up adrenaline into walking to West Marine and the Inflatable Boat store, where we met fellow Loopers, Bill from Tortuga and Dave from See Ya'. We topped it off with lunch at Keys Fisheries which gave us a chance to check out the Bay and find out that the wind had declined by 2pm.
Today Bob and I as well as Jeannette and Charlie on Highlander were up at 5am to check out the weather conditions to determine if it was a go. Here’s where it gets tough—same 15-20 knot wind forecast from the NE/E but for some reason, the conditions had been downgraded to a small craft advisory so this is a grey area for our above rule. What do we do—any boater doing a longer journey has had this discussion. You review all the data, discuss all the possible outcomes and then make the decision sometimes on gut feel. You guessed it—Baby Grand and Highlander decided to go for it. With help from Pat and Ted on South Shore, we got out of our very tight side tie dock. Thank you so much for getting up at 6am to help us.
Today turned out to be windier all day than yesterday but was manageable as we had wind on the bow and not the dreaded beam seas except at the 7 Mile Bridge. We powered through and entered FL Bay with wind on the nose of 20 knots and into the shallow 5-8 foot waters. Great Lakes boaters never get accustomed to this skinny water.
We were helped on our journey by boats going south who could let us know about the waters ahead. We talked with veteran Loopers, Foreign Exchange and Sea Dog as well as a sailboat couple on Osprey with a 5 foot draft. They confirmed that 5 feet was the lowest depth in the channels but you had to make sure to stay in the channel. All urged us to favor the Everglades side especially around the Long Key and Bowleg Cuts to avoid the multitude of crab pots that were everywhere today.
Florida Bay has a number of narrow shallow sections that are marked well with buoys but we had concern that with the building 22 knot wind, waves, crab pots and tide lowering after noon that we would have some difficulty. The above advice was correct and when we saw the islands in the Everglades section, it reminded us of our home port of the
Apostle Island in Lake Superior but who knows what kind of creatures inhabit these islands.
With Baby Grand in the lead, we traversed one skinny narrow section at a time—Bowleg Cut and Steamboat Channel with the lowest depth of 4 foot 7 inches here. The sun and clouds started playing tricks on us and turned the green water into an Army camouflage pattern which made it hard to see depths and then dumped a spritz of rain on us. About this time, our flybridge Chartplotter decided to go off duty for awhile but we were able to reboot it in record time.
We continued north through the Cowpen Cut which initially looks like you are going to go right up on land. Bob issued a Security on the radio before we entered and right there was a dredge coming full steam at us. Phewwww….. Depths were ok and then we entered the Upper Crossbank and did serpentine maneuvers around shallow areas while the wind howled.
We passed Key Largo and looked longingly towards shore but it was low tide and we had to continue to Buttonwood Sound as the winds increased more. We beheld a lovely sight of a sailboat running downwind in this section and although it was narrow, depths were 8 feet.
We had planned to journey as far as Jewfish Creek for an anchorage but passed Tarpon Basin at Milemarker 48 A and decided to anchor here at 3:30pm. We are all relaxing now enjoying a very secure anchorage and preparing for another day of adventure tomorrow.
We have a possible weather window to the Bahamas this weekend and we have a Looper buddy boat, Harbour Reach, waiting for us in Ft. Lauderdale but we have to get there from Marathon—for a slow trawler boat it can take 2-3 days. We had hoped to leave yesterday and were all decked out but still at the dock due to a small craft warning with 15-20 knot winds on Florida Bay, the non-ocean side of the Keys. We have a general rule not to journey out with a small craft warning so we channeled our pent-up adrenaline into walking to West Marine and the Inflatable Boat store, where we met fellow Loopers, Bill from Tortuga and Dave from See Ya'. We topped it off with lunch at Keys Fisheries which gave us a chance to check out the Bay and find out that the wind had declined by 2pm.
Today Bob and I as well as Jeannette and Charlie on Highlander were up at 5am to check out the weather conditions to determine if it was a go. Here’s where it gets tough—same 15-20 knot wind forecast from the NE/E but for some reason, the conditions had been downgraded to a small craft advisory so this is a grey area for our above rule. What do we do—any boater doing a longer journey has had this discussion. You review all the data, discuss all the possible outcomes and then make the decision sometimes on gut feel. You guessed it—Baby Grand and Highlander decided to go for it. With help from Pat and Ted on South Shore, we got out of our very tight side tie dock. Thank you so much for getting up at 6am to help us.
Today turned out to be windier all day than yesterday but was manageable as we had wind on the bow and not the dreaded beam seas except at the 7 Mile Bridge. We powered through and entered FL Bay with wind on the nose of 20 knots and into the shallow 5-8 foot waters. Great Lakes boaters never get accustomed to this skinny water.
We were helped on our journey by boats going south who could let us know about the waters ahead. We talked with veteran Loopers, Foreign Exchange and Sea Dog as well as a sailboat couple on Osprey with a 5 foot draft. They confirmed that 5 feet was the lowest depth in the channels but you had to make sure to stay in the channel. All urged us to favor the Everglades side especially around the Long Key and Bowleg Cuts to avoid the multitude of crab pots that were everywhere today.
Florida Bay has a number of narrow shallow sections that are marked well with buoys but we had concern that with the building 22 knot wind, waves, crab pots and tide lowering after noon that we would have some difficulty. The above advice was correct and when we saw the islands in the Everglades section, it reminded us of our home port of the
Apostle Island in Lake Superior but who knows what kind of creatures inhabit these islands.
With Baby Grand in the lead, we traversed one skinny narrow section at a time—Bowleg Cut and Steamboat Channel with the lowest depth of 4 foot 7 inches here. The sun and clouds started playing tricks on us and turned the green water into an Army camouflage pattern which made it hard to see depths and then dumped a spritz of rain on us. About this time, our flybridge Chartplotter decided to go off duty for awhile but we were able to reboot it in record time.
We continued north through the Cowpen Cut which initially looks like you are going to go right up on land. Bob issued a Security on the radio before we entered and right there was a dredge coming full steam at us. Phewwww….. Depths were ok and then we entered the Upper Crossbank and did serpentine maneuvers around shallow areas while the wind howled.
We passed Key Largo and looked longingly towards shore but it was low tide and we had to continue to Buttonwood Sound as the winds increased more. We beheld a lovely sight of a sailboat running downwind in this section and although it was narrow, depths were 8 feet.
We had planned to journey as far as Jewfish Creek for an anchorage but passed Tarpon Basin at Milemarker 48 A and decided to anchor here at 3:30pm. We are all relaxing now enjoying a very secure anchorage and preparing for another day of adventure tomorrow.
