Tickety Boo

The time of our LIVES!

2014-01-01T17:37:00.002-08:00

Thanks YOU!

The night before we first left on the sailing adventure, we met a couple of sailors in the marina lounge as we all watched the election results come in. (In particular there were three crew on Too Chez (http://www.sailblogs.com/member/toochez/) who all had a lot of sailing and cruising experience. The most experienced had been sailing for 40+ years. He gave the best advice we ever got on the trip “Relax, head out tomorrow and have the time of your lives.” Thanks to him and the many people we met along the way (and at home who helped us out) we DID! We set out with that attitude and you know what, we had the time of our LIVES!

Highlights

There are so many highlights but we chose to pick a few of the bigger ones.

First Day

Day 1: Something wonderful about that first day on an adventure... Assuming it is also not also the last day! Maybe Tolkien said it best: “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” There was a lot of planning the day before and the morning of for that first 20 miles. Lateef was visibly nervous leaving the dock for the second time! The first ever fuel stop a few minutes later was our 3rd docking of Tickety Boo by Lateef (not sure how much less nervous Lateef is to this day when docking). After we took off, we quickly found ourselves dancing to the music just to get out the excited/nervous energy (and partly to keep warm as it was overcast and 40 degrees). This set a great tone for use the rest of our trip. Dancing in the cockpit and enjoying the excited nervous energy.

First Anchorage: Having found a free dock (dock being a strong word for it) our first night in downtown Southport, our second night was the first time spent sleeping at anchor, and it turned out to be the best, most beautiful anchorage of our entire trip. Fortunately the tides and winds were kind to us that night, and paved the way for us to feel increasingly comfortable about dropping the hook as much as possible rather than mooring or docking. Fishing, watching the birds coming home for the night, shivering while staying on deck as long as possible to see the sunset and stars, and waking up every 2 hours to make sure we had not floated away (current was barely strong enough to turn our boat in another direction, but what did we know at this point)

St. Augustine

St. Augustine: This was the first city we stopped in and it finally dawned on us we are seeing the country by water! After two weeks of sailing every day sun up till sun down, this was the first location we stayed for more than a day. We also got a better chance to talk with the family aboard Miccoa (http://miccoasail.blogspot.com/), they had cruised here from Spain and we had been seeing them off and on since our first night aboard. Probably two of the most refreshing days we have ever had. We really didn't want to leave and hope to go back someday.

Vero Beach: The weather was finally warm! After weeks of constant cold this was the first place we where able to be warm enough in a t-shirt. Tropical weather at last! Our first mooring experience and we got to see family for Thanksgiving.

Biscayne Bay: On our ASA course trip we loved sailing in this bay! It is truly amazing place that we would like to cruise for a week or two again! So close to Miami, great fishing, clear water, calm sailing water and tropical weather. Some of our best sailing was in these waters. We can't wait to return!

Christmas at Sea

Christmas at Sea: We spent Christmas Eve catching fish/sailing and Christmas morning sailing from anchor it doesn't get much better than that! We made great food and sailed most of the day to another anchorage where we had a romantic row into shore. Wonderful sunset behind Tickety Boo!

Key West: We spent five days in Key West and really got a feel for the neighborhoods. Great walking in the older parts of town and there really is a lot to do other than just party (so maybe we will do that other stuff next time we visit). That was our New Years celebration…. just a couple days after New Years. However when cruising we are on our schedule not the rest of the worlds (most of the time).

ICW Key West - Marathon

ICW Key West – Marathon: Very few people see this part of the Keys. It is shallow (leaves out most sailboats) remote and hard to access. We saw very few boats and for days at a time and had the views all to ourselves with not another boat in sight. We saw a lot of nature, tropical sunsets and wonderful sailing. We lived the dream sailing from anchor to anchor, eating and relaxing, learning to reef and sail the boat in heavy weather, seeing sharks while snorkeling. It was wonderful.

Bootkey Harbor: Where we spent a month and met many great cruising friends! Wonderful place to learn a lot about cruising and meet wonderful people! $4 bus ride to the Key West (airport) and access to quick flights just about anywhere.

Everglades: It is mind blowing experience to be in a place that full of nature! Our whole adventure was filled with beautiful views but it seems like the Everglades perfectly connected the sun with the birds with the water with the dolphins with the trees. It all really came together.

Captiva Island

Captiva Island: One week waking up in a protected anchorage, walking across the island to the beach and generally hanging out. Fishing on the beach in crystal clear water watching the fish eat it our bait. Having beers listening to live music and watching the sunset. Dingying back to our floating home. Island cruising at its best!

St. Petersburg: A sailboaters city with all the accoutrements. Great big bay with plenty of sailing weather, lots of repair shops and great places protected anchorages a day sail away. Museums, parks and lots of fellow sailors. While waiting outside the diesel supply store some one asked if we were sailors and we ask how they knew. They said it was how we walked. So finally we have the sailing swagger.

Artemnesia (Brew & Steph): What great friends and fellow sailors. Truly take the me casa es su casa by letting us stay for days maybe even weeks at their house. Teaching us about sailing and how to cruise and still maintain a career. And just having a blast every time we get together!

People: We couldn't list all of the people that helped on this trip. From our parents and families that planted the seeds of this journey to our friends that helped at home or we met along the way. To the mechanics I spoke to on the phone, emailed to families of friends or friends of friends that gave us a hot shower, warm meal and fellowship thank you thank you thank you THANK YOU!

What would we do the same and differently? (HOW TO for dreamers)

This is really tough question to answer. The most important part is to get out there so whatever can expedite that process is what we would recommend. Unprepared preparations are probably what kills the dream most often. WTF does that mean right? You can read and ask and prepare all you want but until you actually do it - how can you ever really know what is the right prep? Many people over-prepare and never leave. In fact we found the worst naysayers were most likely to never have actually gone out and had the adventure despite their “years of experience and preparations”. Unlike the people we met actually doing it, these naysayer sailors have read the books, done the online research, probably had a sailboat but never left for more than an overnight from their slip (which was probably on an inland lake). A quick story:

Melissa went on a trip in December during one of our career break we took in the middle of our cruise. She had had dinner with a sailor who had “years of experience”. He decided to tell Melissa she was crazy (Lateef can imagine there was a slight old man sexism undertone in his attitude)! In all his years of experience we had no business going out on the water with such little training and preparation. This is the kicker. He had a sailboat on the lake that had never seen the ocean. Yep another naysayer who has “superior experience”. At that point Melissa was already a better sailor then he will probably ever be.

The biggest thing we wouldn't do differently is spend more time preparing for something we didn't know what to expect (unprepared preparations) because that would reduce our chances of untying from the dock.

We took a one week ASA cruising intro course from Ft. Lauderdale to the Keys and back. It was expensive (couple grand) but well worth it to expedite getting us to start our cruising trip. You can take the same course for less, only a couple hundred bucks a pop by taking day courses where you don’t sleep on the boat during the class. With the money you save you could buy a 18-27 foot cruiser right away which can serve as a weekend cruiser or maybe sufficient for your longer-trip cruising boat.

Different Boat?

Overall we were very happy with the size, shape and specs of the boat for the particular type of cruising we enjoy the most. We dream about a catamaran for greater headroom, space and views, but those dreams come with the hard realities of extra maintenance, 10-fold increase in upfront cost, and a few other things like docking, comfort in larger seas, etc.

There seems to be a common thing that everyone gets too big of a boat first. We noticed only a handful of cruisers with smaller boats than us (mostly solo sailers). We probably could have been fine with a smaller boat and less features/accessories on board. Lateef being 6' 5”, it was hard for us to imagine living on a smaller boat than Tickety Boo (6' 2” head room in the galley). Overall Tickety Boo was wonderful for our trip and having a smaller boat that most people meant it was less expensive to maintain and easier to dock/anchor/maneuver in tight spaces. We draft 3'6” and we can't stress this enough we LOVE A SHALLOW DRAFT FOR COASTAL CRUISING! Some of the best and least-used routes in the keys have as little as 4 – 5ft depth at low tide level with a very light chop (normally around 7 ft). There are times when we wish we could sail closer to upwind but the compromise of a shallow draft was so worth it. The ICW has many skinny spots where a 4' keel would have had us stuck in the mud until the tide started rising again.

Storage was amazing on Tickety Boo. Bayfield 29's are known for it and is one of the other reasons besides the draft we chose her. We have months of food storage and probably close to a month of water. With coastal cruising two weeks is plenty. We had a 5 gallon jug that we used for drinking water and 33 gallon tank we used for everything else. This was plenty. If we get to go to the Bahamas I would probably get 10 more gallons of water jugs which would probably last 6 weeks or more for drinking (if we had to). We never used the fridge because it used too much power. An icebox that doubled for a seat at the cockpit gave us a couple days of fresh veggies.

Engine used about 1/3 a gallon of fuel an hour. Which is pretty awesome for going from NC to Florida keys on less than 50 gallons of diesel, motoring most of the way. Sure we only did a max of 5 miles an hour but what is the hurry with all the great views!

Returning to Land

Sailors have a reputation of having a wispy look in their eyes longing for the ocean horizon. We hope that wispy look is in our eyes. The experience has changed us in rather profound ways. Sailing forced us to live in the moment: either because of fear, exasperation or just the pace of lifestyle. It felt healthy for the mind, maybe more therapy than money can buy. Depending on each other has brought us closer together. Lateef’s grandmother Mims told us that when she began her honeymoon trip canoeing for three weeks, on the first day she wondered what they could possibly talk about for three entire weeks By the end of the trip, they were so used to being together, she would even go with him on a two minute errand to keep him company. This was the first really hard part coming back: getting used to not being together all day.

This sounds trite but it’s nice being able to answer the question “Where are you from?” with “We live on a sailboat!”. Not only is that just wonderfully exciting to say but it is a real conversation starter. Our identities had evolved into being salty sailors (pirate-looking even, in the case of Lateef) and now we are not those people anymore…. or are we......? After some weeks of living on land again we realized that we are still the same people that sailed for 7 months. Just our circumstances had changed, and this helped break the depression and get us back to being excited about land life. We could be adventurous like we had been while at sea, just on land this time.

The question we hope our readers are asking is: “are we going to continue the journey or is this the end?” It is impossible to know what tomorrow brings but we hope it will involve some more sailing fun. Thanks for all the interest in our sailing adventure we hope you are inspired to have many of your own,

Tickety Boo + Melissa & Lateef

Melissa & Lateef

Tampa Bay at last

2013-04-16T17:50:00.000-07:00

After yesterday's fiasco we were happy to be on the intercoastal - it's not like we were going back out the inlet we got stuck on. We were only a few short miles from Tampa Bay. The wind was coming from the east, allowing us to motor sail to Tampa Bay along the channels. A fisherman followed us a little too closely and a line/lure we had out got tangled in his prop...something I thought would happen alot more often - and it was easy for him to clear.

In Tampa Bay, the depths vary from 9 ft - over 50 feet across the span, and so we could relax, concentrate on the scenery rather than the depth finder. Lateef put out the downrigger when we got to depths of 15 ft or greater. We caught 5 fish in a little under an hour - all too small to be edible - a few spanish mackeral, jacks and a lizard fish.

Eventually arriving in St Petersburg, we moored up in the municipal harbor - a smallish cove bordered on all sides by a concrete wall, open only to the east to get in and out. Extemely well-protected, EXCEPT..when winds come from the east, the waves funnel into the opening and then the concrete walls act as a wave echo chamber.

We left the boat by 7pm, ustrapping and lowering the hard dinghy from our sailboat to replace our broken/deflated soft dinghy as our main mode of transportation to/from shore. Hey Lateef, remember all those great times of you laboriously rowed me to shore? Just trying to relive all those times! We made our way to shore and found a English pub / curry house, finally returning to the boat by 10.

Wait, what's that? In walking back to the boat, we see things look terribly out of order. The wind from the east has picked up, and the wave echo chamber is in full effect. Our boat is bouncing wildly around, rolling around...we were getting sea sick just looking at it. After 6 months of sailing and sleeping in the boat anchored in all kinds of weather, tonight moored up 50 ft from downtown St Pete was the first night we gave in and found a nearby hotel to sleep in comfort.

Aaah. Showers, cable tv and a non-rolly large soft bed at the Hollander hotel. We showed up with nothing but ourselves....and it was great! I will admit without shame that we spent the following (relatively nonwindy) night at the same hotel, and then the next night with Stephanie & Bruno up in Tampa before heading home for a week to catch up on some work items.

Ship wrecked for two hours in Sarasota

2013-04-15T20:09:00.000-07:00

With a 35 lb anchor over one shoulder and 15 feet of chain on my other shoulder watching Melissa in Tickety Boo's cockpit trying to crank on the other anchor using a winch as Tickety Boo is being smashed into a sandbar outside of Sarasota, I could not see a way that the boat was going to escape destruction. By the way, walking against the current toward deeper water is very difficult while wrapped in an anchor and chain. At the time however I was more concerned with Melissa falling off the boat or the boat breaking while she was in it.

The day started with us heading out to sea from Venice hoping to make it to Sarasota and anchor our second to last day before Tampa Bay. Wind was not with us but we made decent time and decided to make an attempt into Sarasota. This inlet was not mentioned on our guide book however when we approached it just looked wrong. We first made an attempt to enter the southern inlet however it got too shallow..we started touching the bottom.... and the only approach was to come up and weave up right next to the beach and I didn't like the wave size. Our second attempt on the northern inlet got us stuck hard on a large sandbar.

We had to decided to either do an overnight to Tampa Bay or try to find a way into Sarasota. We made the wrong decision. Two wind surfers saw our situation and sailed up to help. One of them had sailing experience and abandoned his wind surfing equipment to board the boat and help us kedge (use the anchor to pull us off the sandbar). We tried to pull the boat out the way it came in. In the effort I was pulling with all my strength on the anchor and when the boat crashed onto the ground I ended up going overboard. This helped shake off most of the shock I was in. We couldn't make progress because the waves were too strong (pushing us back towards shore) even though the current / tide was going out. Melissa was able to contact Sea Tow and make an abandon ship bag (wallets, etc). At some point the inflatable dingy got underneath the stern of the boat and popped. The boat crashing into the sand every couple seconds (each passing wave would lift the boat up then drop it back to the ground) makes a sound which we can only compare to the sound of crushing twisting metal. Waves occasionally splashed into the cockpit when the previous wave would twist the boat parallel to the next wave.

We decided to try and pull ourselves towards the beach....slowly ....the the longer distance... to the other side of the sandbar. We could only make forward progress when the a wave would pick our boat up enough for us to quickly pull the ropes attached to the anchors, bringing the boat a little forward until the wave crashed us back to the sand. Lateef or our new windsurfer friend George would be hauling one of the anchors a little further through the sandbar while the other two of us were winching the other anchor and inching forward. After about two hours of this routine the anchor haulers were finally seeing our forward crawl was resulting in them finding places where the water was deeper. However the tide still had a few hours to go out so every passing moment meant the overall depth of the water would be a little more shallow.

In the last anchor set, I had to hang on to the anchor line because I couldn't swim against the current once I had pulled it out it into the deep water. Sea Tow showed up right when we were just starting to get into deeper water. Not sure if they saved more than a few minutes of time however they did pull us those final few feet off the sandbar and were able to retrieve the wind surf equipment that had drifted out to sea when George dropped it to help us.

Amazingly the engine that has been so finicky lately started right up. We motored against the strong current through the inlet just as the sun was setting. By sunset, we had arrived at the potential anchorage only to find that the water was pretty darn shallow. We were pretty aware of depths at this point, and running aground now, even in tame water like this would have been just about the last straw. So, we tooled around to the sailing clubs very (fortunately) empty mooring ball field and anchored right in the middle of the field. Physically we pretty much collapsed in the cockpit for an hour until Melissa rallied and made some dinner. Still trembling from the experience we slept as soon as we finished eating.

We learned a lot from this mistake. The consequences to could have been deadly or at-least ended Tickety Boo. The wind surfers that saved us said two boats had been lost on the sandbar in the last year. It seemed hopeless but we didn't give up and thanks to the knowledgable windsurfers and Tickety Boo's fine construction, our trip continues.

Venice for the night!

2013-04-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

Left for a great motor sail in the ICW arriving just after lunch at a marina in Venice, FL. This was the first time we had docked at a marina for months, since our time in Key West. Anchoring and mooring balls are much easier on the budget. We had a full afternoon to do our laundry and visit the onsite pub, fill up our boat's water and most importanly...TAKE A SHOWER! We had a good time enjoying getting clean and cleaning our clothes before taking in the town on some bikes.

As you can see from the picture above, pelican poop was pretty prolific here. It's been so long since we have docked, that we forgot about some of the downsides....the downside in this picture is that our line which is tying us to the boat is now embedded with poop. We had to wash it out the next day to get rid of the smell permeating the boat. Before this trip, I would have looked at a picture like this, appreciated the bird in the shot, and regarded it as a romantic perspective. Now I have a new view of pictures like this. Very pretty yes, but very smelly and it just gets weird when a pelican is a mere 3-4 feet from your head and staring you down all day long.

The marina did have free bikes and so we explored the downtown city area of Venice by night. Not too much nightlife, other than lots of painted turtle statues placed strategically around town.

Charlotte Harbor and the big fish!

2013-04-13T19:07:00.000-07:00

This was the big one! Our largest fish just under 30 inches. The day started out wonderfully with some nice motor sailing on the inside. We stopped a couple islands up the sail to try and clean the bottom of the boat. This was our first attempt to clean off the growth ourselves, and after spending a few weeks in Fort Myers we had some major growth on our bottom! After setting the anchor we jumped out to start scraping the bottom. After spending 10 minutes Melissa and I got back in the boat and realized there were hundreds of little critters that were crawling all over us. We had just disrupted their homes that were growing on the bottom of our boat and they were not very happy with us. Luckily the solar shower was full so we could wash off any stragglers.
We cranked back up and raised sails to head back up the ICW. The difference we noticeable in our speed right away. We finally seemed to have shaken Ft. Myers out.

As the afternoon sun was turning into the evening sun we put our fishing lines in and sailed though Charlotte Harbor. ZING!!!!!!!! There something big was on the line. In a few seconds I could feel this wasn't a little fish. When I finally got it up close to the boat we couldn't believe the size . Once we got the fish in the boat we couldn't decide if it was to big to keep. The thought of how good fresh fish would be to eat for dinner won out and we decided to keep it. However after cutting the fish up, trying to fit the filets in a one gallon bag for marinating was a challenge. Then came the challenge of eating a couple pounds of fish per person! We ate like fat piglets. Oh how delicious.

As the sun was setting we anchored in a little circular harbor. Houses all around that reminded us of our December anchorage on the east coast of florida on my birthday. As we relaxed and watched the sunset..... life is good.

A week at Captiva Island

2013-04-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

What is the purpose of this trip? So many entries we have depicted scary, frustrating, challenging, and bizarre moments, that a reader may wonder if we have bad luck or are just good at complaining. Truth be told, the scary moments are easy to depict in writing, and even easier to exaggerate. We do have fun every day, even though we may not write about it. But even taking all that out of the equation: Our week in Captiva felt like the purpose of our trip. Fishing, snorkeling, enjoying the local pubs, shelling, body surfing, reading.

A few fishing firsts this week:
- First time using a 'real' hand fishing reel aka the Cuban yo-yo. It is so fun being able to see fish through the clear water as you throw out the line, then feel the tug in your hand to bring dinner in.

Black Drum

- Catfish: We've caught plenty before, now it is not beneath us to eat them. There are two kinds of catfish: Hardhead (what we have always caught) and here there are also Gafftopsail fish (larger and more beautiful). We have discovered that catfish are relatively easy to filet, and that Hardhead catfish tastes more like chicken while the Gafftopsail tastes like a flaky white fish.

Also we learned that if your sailboat bottom is painted red and you anchor in a shallow area which causes the boat to turn on its side, then couple that with some strong wind that forces your dinghy to rub against the red bottom, it makes it look as though you have slaughtered a large animal on your dinghy. We had a sheriff pull up and ask us what that suspicious red substance was on our boat as we motored around doing dolphin and manatee sightings one morning.

Captiva was a wonderful place to stay. The island is a day trip from Ft. Myers but yet it seems hundreds of miles away. There were almost no other boaters/livaboards/cruisers...none that we met anyways. Everyday we would spend a couple hours on the computers working. Then we would ride the dinghy into the island to walk, fish and swim. Then end the day we found ourselves at the pub before riding back. Finally we would brave a solar shower and read ourselves to sleep. About every other day we would catch fish and cook it for dinner on the boat instead of stopping for a beer at the most excellent bar. Everyone seemed to be on the same island time as we were so it turned out to be a wonderful trip.

We had gotten used to enjoying the first look out of the cabin to be dolphins and manatees. At any given time during our hours of fishing (hoping to catch dinner), we could look up and watch osprey pull in fish after fish (hey, leave some for us!). Wildlife seemed to be overflowing. Eagles, ospray, pelicans and other small birds constantly diving for fish surrounded our environment. In our dinghy, we motored about the same speed with two dolphins down the river for over 30 minutes. We watched them fish their way down the channel and they watched us trade bait for empty hooks. After wiggling our way around the different creeks and inlets for a few hours, we decided to dinghy to the ocean and just hang out on the beach for a while. By the time we headed out though, it was low tide, and Melissa had to exit the boat and pull Lateef and boat through the shallow water muck to get back to the main channel. The muck had quicksand-like properties and within minutes, a very wet and muddy Melissa had lost a shoe to the sea and jumped back in the boat just in time before she was swallowed whole.

Escaping the black hole of Ft Myers

2013-04-04T19:05:00.000-07:00

Having come back from a business trip at San Francisco with renewed interest in making this next leg of our trip count, we decided to set sail ASAP to Sanibel. Why oh why is Ft Myers like a black hole? It sucked our boat in a few weeks and it's seemingly impossible to escape!

Started our engine up, and plugged away down the inlet to enter the scene of last month's crime on our engine. When arriving at the ocean, the waves picked up and the wind was almost right on our nose, as usual it seems. The barnacles that have grown on the bottom of the boat since we arrived at Ft Myers are so, so large that our speed feels nonexistent. Lateef swears we are dragging a manatee somewhere beneath our boat.

Re-entering the intercoastal to sail north behind Sanibel, the Ft Myer's black hole made another attempt: A squall approached, the only warning coming was moments before, all other boats started racing past us the opposite direction (towards Ft Myers). We donned our rain gear and prepared to get a little wet. Didn't expect close-to-hail cold drops and wind that started pushing our boat toward the Sanibel sandbars! Lateef called me on board to steer while he went up front to drop the anchor, as the wind and waves were overpowering our motor and we needed a way to stop the backward progress from beaching our boat. Right before dropping the anchor, the wind let up enough for us to head a little further and choose a spot to park that was outside of the channel and better protected from the north wind.

We didn't quite make it to our preferred anchorage, but we did make it out of Ft Myers, and sat down to eat a late lunch and play some cards. Well - an hour later the wind made a 180 degree turn from north to now coming out of the south. And the waves began to build. The weather forecast now said while the winds were strong now, they would double in speed by 2 a.m. Ft. Myers was pissed at us! There was a boat that was anchored near us and when Lateef looked over to see if it was bumping around as much as we were, he saw their bow buried under the water for a brief second. Time to go! We struggled to pull up the anchor but then made some quick northernly progress with the wind at our backs. There was really no good anchorage from our take off point until the anchorage we had originally planned to go to, and there was at this point less than 2 hours of sunlight left. 8 miles, dragging barnacles and potentially a manatee below, it was a little tight.

By the time we pulled into the anchorage area behind Captiva, it was past sunset and getting to the point of not being able to see any markers. As we motored slowly up to where we had planned to anchor there was a large barge sitting right in the middle of it! We anchored in 4-5 feet of water in a very protected area and called it a night. At least for a few hours...by 3am something awoke us. Something strange. For one, Lateef was squishing me and I was lying on the side of the hull. Number 2 is that the wind had picked up to 25 miles per hour, and waves were splashing on the side of the boat, but the boat was not budging one inch. Pots, dishes, clothes, laptops were falling all over the place.

Turns out we had anchored at high tide, and now that it was exact low tide, our boat is sitting on its side in the mud, tilted at a 45 degree angle. Yes, we were those jerks. The good news is that at least we didn't worry about dragging anchor in this wind!

We finally fell asleep at 5am again, knowing that a rising tide would float all ships. Lateef made sure we were ready to go by 8 am (at high tide) and we changed our anchorage location by a few hundred feet to make sure we were in deeper water.

50% of repairs are cleaning and 90% of the other 50% is cleaning

2013-03-12T09:34:00.000-07:00

We spent the night on the hook between Ft. Myers Beach 2 small short miles from Sanibel Island, Melissa's dream shelling destination. The anchorage was a bit rough with the wind coming from the east at around 20 mph. Plus with boat traffic and strong current, it made for a rocky night. Finally after weeks of waiting the wind is right to have a sail from Ft. Myers all night long to Tampa..our first overnight sail! We have spent the last week motor (mostly) sailing upwind and the now 48 hours of wind at our beam or downwind! Mentally prepared - CHECK! Raise the main, pull up the anchor and we are sailing straight from anchor.... the best way to start the day. Up goes the staysail and we have a good 4-5 knots, woot! We are heading upwind again just until we can get out of the channel into the gulf then it is beam reach today and downwind tonight until Tampa. Lets crank up the engine for 30 minutes since the wind temporarily died, and there is a sandbar coming up and then "bring me the horizon".

For a minute I just want to point out I love sailing! I love sailing not just on the exciting days but mostly on the days when we are doing 3 knots. Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. Just the sounds of nature and wind in the sails. It is not just romantic but it is like therapy (would be cheaper just to make an appointment with a specialist) on those calm steady windy days. I enjoy tacking upwind even for a day or two. It is those moments when the wind, waves, boat and myself agree and it all seems worth it. What is nice about a sailboat is if the engine doesn't start you can rely entirely on just sailpower. Even though this can be a very painful long and slow task when you don't necessarily plan on it, it is nice to have this ability when on the ocean. The motor is wonderful for exploring rivers, especially our motor which feels and sounds like a scene from the African Queen ---thump thump thump --- as we move though placid waters and are completely surrounded by nature.

Back to us preparing to start the engine to avoid a upcoming sandbar. It turns over and laughs at us. It laughs a while longer and pretty soon I have the cover off of it on my knees trying to stare it down. Couple of days ago we made a stop in Naples and there I took the opportunity to give our thumper some love. Changed the fuel filter, metal brushed off any rust build up, lubed and cleaned the engine and painted any lightly rusted areas. After changing the fuel filter I made sure to bleed the fuel lines to make sure there no pesky air bubbles prevented the engine from starting. Found a bolt for the secondary fuel filter that had fallen off and put that on after I was doing an inspection and cleaning. Feeling much better after all this TLC on Thumper I figured she should be running like a champ for a while. FAIL! FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL!

After 30 minutes trying not to get seasick while bleeding the lines as Melissa sailed to avoid the sandbar.. not seeing any air and maybe 10 attempts at starting thumper up including disengaging the fly wheel she finally started up. Phew!.... for like 10 seconds. Then the oil pressure alarm did not turn off. The manual says the alarm should turn off within 15 seconds. A couple minutes later I can feel my back muscles locked in stress. Again a little history. Before Naples we where in the Everglades in some really rough weather. We got into an emergency anchor and on the way out the oil pressure alarm would not turn off. At the time it was record low (30's in FL, the crazy weather just follows us!) we used some techniques we learned to get her started and I just assumed the alarm went away 10 minutes later after the engine warmed up the oil. It was a calculated risk but we had planned to just get us out of the emergency anchorage and then turn the engine off and raise the sails. The alarm went off pretty much right before we got out of the anchorage. Didn't think much of it since it didn't happen again. Until this fitful day.

As I turned the ship around heading to the nearest shore (Ft Myers) we sailed her and kept the engine on idle (still blaring a warning) just so we can navigate upwind dodging all the spring breakers zooming past. I watched a million dollar power boat pull up to my port side in the narrowest part of the channel. All the little power boats zig-zagging around us and between us, and I am wondering why the power boat pilot chooses to keep a parallel course with us. As I am under sail and trying to get into port as soon as possible I maintain course and speed it is getting dodgy with all this traffic. Melissa takes the helm (drives) as I drop the sails and on my way back I watch the million dollar yacht turn around in the chaos? Strange location to turn that size boat on the edge of the channel and with all this traffic there is almost no room. I watch as he makes no attempt to compensate for the out flowing current and the boat broadsides a channel marker, not once, not twice but three times as he attempts to move forward into the up current but then back up so he doesn't ground out of the channel. Not that I am above hitting channel markers, but the worries I have of spending $10K replacing our engine if in fact we are currently destroying it suddenly seem small compared to slamming a million bucks into a telephone pole.

The alarm goes silent just after I realize the cost of getting out the dents and scratches to that million dollar boat is more than replacing Thumper with an entirely new engine. Within 15 minutes we are on a mooring ball trying to make the best of the situation. Ft. Myers we can add to our destination, get to know the diesel repair people (generally found diesel repair people to be very kind) and go to Tampa in a couple weeks once we get everything fixed.

The day after I call a couple mechanics and everyone is booked for a week. However I get the advice to get a pressure gauge so I can see what the exact what the measurement is. I run out to get the gauge and along the way figure out how to get our dingy to plane (oh so much fun). It seems to break my foul mood over the last 24 hours (oh so sorry my sweet Melissa).

Looked up in the manual to locate the oil pressure sensor. I have to modify the connector a bit for the gauge with a needle nose pliers (kinda impressed I could do this) and I have it all hooked up. In 2 tries the engine is running! I watch the oil slowly make its way up the hose to the gauge and the pressure increase until it stops at around 45. Huh 45 which the mechanic on the phone said "should read round 40". I pick up alarm and look underneath it. I can't believe it took this many words but wait for it, wait for it.... I cleaned out the gunk, with some wd-40 and a paper towel until I saw a clean metal cylinder. I have no idea the last time this was cleaned probably years, maybe never and gunk had slowly built up in the cylinder. Fire up the engine and the alarm stopped within a second of thump-thump-thump.

We are not yet out of the woods. Sure it was good that I have a gauge that can tell me the pressure. I learned more about diesel engines. I even found out I need to replace the kill switch for the engine which might have been part of our engine starting problems. The truth is I am not sure if I really fixed anything. I know I cleaned something however will the alarm go off 2 days from now? Time will tell.

Destination: Naples

2013-03-05T20:32:00.000-08:00

Here in Marco Island, the Florida West Coast intercoastal waterway picks back up. After the oceanic adventures we've had lately, I was happy to convince Lateef to survey the beauty provided by the intercoastal waterway as advertised by our cruising guidebook. "One of the most beautiful and pristine stretches of the ICW!", it screamed. "Positively 100% nature at it's finest - a can't miss opportunity!". So, we sauntered down the ICW, keeping an eye out for nature, and also our depth, since this is reportedly one of the skinniest sections of the waterway, depth-wise.

Umm...ok, the nature was pretty awesome. But what we really noticed was a immense volumes of boat traffic speeding by in both directions constantly. How are we to see any nature if we can't take our eyes of the nearest motorboater trying to knock off a few manatees with his huge propellers? We saw about 3 sailboats, and the rest were huge volumes of fishing/motor boats and about 3 million rental pontoon boats.

I will say on the pro-nature side of the day, during a rare section of no boat traffic, some dolphins started swimming alongside our boat, and they were purposely using the holes on top of their head to spray water on us.

We arrived in downtown Naples and have booked 4 nights at a city mooring ball. Best view in this luxury town and paying $10/night. The only problem is that even at $10/night, Napes is unaffordable to our budget...mainly because there were many tasty food and beverage options on land. Over these 4 days, we ate and drank our way through the town. Our tour included but was not limited to: Old Naples Pub, which provided free unlimited pickles at each table (ate myself literally sick on them), the Saturday Farmers Market, Cooper's Farm Market (originally went there because of the name, but their produce and salsa kept us coming back for more), and this wine / beer place called Avenues that had some great decor and happy hour specials, and we met several women from the Charlotte area that happened to be in town for vacation.

The maximum number of days the city will let you stay at the mooring balls is 4, that's good because our pockets were getting too light, too fast. We did leave with a very great impression of a city that we never would have visited if it wasn't for this sailing trip.

Lostman's anchorage was appropriately named

2013-03-04T20:20:00.000-08:00

Lostman

So here we were cowering in a made up anchorage, having navigated to said anchorage trusting with blind faith in our cell phone GPS app. The howling wind screeching through our lines eventually calmed around midnight, and the choppy waves threatening to bump our anchor and drag us quickly to the very close shore diminished. A pleasant, non windy day has arrived, at last!!!! The weather forecast agrees, and we may finally reach our destination - our destination being any place with cell and/or internet signal. And drinking water would also be nice.

There were a few close calls to touching bottom on the way into the anchorage at high tide yesterday, and so we planned on leaving during the exact highest tide this morning, around 7:30. The high tide this morning is about 1 foot lower than the high tide yesterday afternoon, so it will already be tight. Despite the bitter cold temperature (well, 40 degrees, but it really does seem bitter cold for southern Florida in March), we donned our jackets and hats, crept out of our sleeping bags, and made final preparations to leave. Dolphins swimming playfully around, unaware of the cold and timeline.

CRRAAAANKKKK. The engine is trying to turn, but it is just not happening. Is it the temperature? Ok, after waiting for the air to warm up a little more, we did the old "set-the-boat-on-fire" trick. Lateef pulled out the camp stove, and we flamed the air intake on the engine for a good 30 seconds. Try again - no love. Wow, it must really be cold! Bring the flame thrower back to the action, and heat her up for a minute now. Burn a glove in the process. No crankup still! At this point, we have tried cranking her up so many times that we are worrying the batteries are being run down from all our attempts. Finally coming to terms with the fact that this is not just a temperature issue, we resort to various oaths, prayers, and old-fashioned sweet talking our boat - promising her all our worldly possessions if she would just START! I mean at this point, the tide is starting to go out again, and we are worried that we could actually get stuck on the way out, and the next window of time for a really high tide wouldn't be until around 8pm tonight.

Open flame + Engine = CRAZY

Lo and behold, Tickety Boo responds to bribery. She cranks up...and...her oil warning light also cranks up, screaming..."you IDIOTS! Turn me back off and figure out what's wrong!". We reluctantly do so, wait 5 minutes, and then crank her back up again, figuring the oil was thicker, so it was just a fluke. The good news is that she starts right up. The bad news is that the warning beep is as loud as ever. After a few more rests, and no progress, we hatch a new plan out of desperation. Whispering to each other so that she couldn't overhear us, we creep up to the warning siren and place several layers of duct tape over the speaker so that the warning doesn't pierce our ears so. Then, we pull up anchor and quickly depart, figuring we can cut the engine off once we navigate through the channel back to the ocean.

5 minutes later on our way out, our ears blocked to the muffled screams of the oil warning light, our eyes take notice of the depth finder. In spots that we had 6 feet yesterday we are now reading 4 feet. Uh oh. What will happen a few minutes later when we get to the spots that read 4 feet depth? Ooooh. We are now reading 2.4 feet, which means technically, our keel is about a foot deep in non-water material. Could it be weeds, silty water? Muck? We weren't bumping, but occasionally we got a little slow so I know we were dredging up a new channel for future cruisers. Fortunately at this point, the tide was going out so strongly that the current was our best ally for escaping, and helped push us out to freedom. On other good news fronts, our oil alarm fell silent. We hoped out loud that the alarm was faulty, or that the oil was so sluggish from the cold, but we ominously knew there was likely future oil alarm troubles ahead.

30 Degrees in the EVERGLADES!!!

Forget our troubles! We spent the next 8 hours motor sailing and sailing towards Marco Island. We finally arrive to the world of cell signal, and we are able to return calls and emails to my business partner & family assuring them of our survival.

To celebrate our good fortune, Lateef rowed us to shore. The only problem was, there were no public docks we could see (it was pitch black at this point). We mission-impossible-like tied up to the mangroves behind a retaining wall of a person's house, scaled the wall, and made our way to The Little Bar , a heavily populated tavern and restaurant located in relative obscurity and surrounded by a nice mobile home park. The best atmosphere and music we have experienced since bars in Europe, this was one of our favorite stops yet. They have delicious GROUPER BALLS, $1 per ball. We ate like fat pigs - if you have ever read the Thraxas series, we were both playing the part of the main character. More grouper balls! Where's the bread! Another round of fish! We eventually rolled out of the restaurant and back across someone's yard to our dinghy - the tide had gone out so now we had a very un-mission-impossible-like time scaling the wall and moving our now-grounded dinghy to water without attracting attention.

Whew! Enough excitement for awhile! A good night of sleep then the next stop is Naples and we are going the easy way.

Knowing what I know now I am still an idiot (Shark River to Lostmans)

2013-03-03T10:29:00.000-08:00

After what happened yesterday I would like to say we learned our lesson. I'd like to say we stayed in Shark River for a couple days and enjoyed the best of what the Everglades has to offer... BUG FREE! How often is the Everglades bug free??! Through experience comes great wisdom or some such crap, so they say. These would all be lies. I dole an ounce of blame to the boat that came into Shark River after us and told us that by mid day the following morning, the forecast of the wind and weather would calm down (via their VHF weather service, our VHF wasn't picking up any reception).

Last night was filled with listening to the dolphins and shining a flashlight to see red eyes staring back at us (crocs waiting for something to lose it grip and fall into the water never to be heard from again?). An exact mirror image of the mangrove in the water in the a.m., we sat and lazily enjoyed our breakfast and coffee. Listened to dolphins and watched the birds fly around for a few hours before leaving our wonderful, peaceful, nature filled, calm, relaxing, reflective and zen anchorage that was screaming STAY! We ignored that scream and cranked up the engine for an African Queen motor up the river.

Families of dolphins swimming through, birds fishing the banks of the river and us plowing slowly up the river watching it all. As the sun defrosted our fingers, it created clear views of the almost orange skinned mangrove. The juxtaposition to what we were about to experience.

Wiggling our way into a large bay we opened up some sail and continued to motor out into the gulf. A bit rough at first but the wind began to die and the waves began to reduce. Forecast in our favor! The goal was that as soon as possible we would tack northwest since the forecast was for the wind to be coming out of the north. Mostly we tacked west since the wind seemed to be northwest. We just motor sailed as close to the wind as we could for about 2 hours. As with yesterday the wind picked up again and the waves were not long to follow.

About 10 miles from Shark River I tried to tack west to avoid the leeshore to the east. As I turned west we hit the waves head on. Our bow went up in the air the wind would catch the staysail and pivot us further south. Wave after wave I was fighting to maintain our course at 2 knots... it just wasn't worth getting tossed around this much. We lasted about 10 minutes before we decided going 2 knots out to sea was going nowhere. Our choices were to head back to Shark River, to find an anchorage somwhere, or to continue on. Melissa found a skinny anchorage about a mile or two north. When we reached our haphazard anchorage destination, w tacked towards land and bam! the wind hit the sails and Tickety Boo took off motor sailing between 5-6 knots against the current and tight to the wind.

24 hours later I had gotten us in the same situation plus the wind is even stronger than yesterday. The waves are probably not any smaller but we have hardened a bit from yesterday and so they don't seem too bad. As we slowly turned down wind I am in the same situation we are coming in hot with even less margin for error (depth-wise) and even more speed. We're coming in a high tide, and with a 4 foot tide we figured we have a good margin of error/sufficient room under the boat. With our 3 foot 6 inch keel no problem. Except in the section of the inlet that is supposed to be 9 feet deep we seem to be varying in depth from 9 feet to 5 feet. After that I didn't look much at the depth finder gauge, I just tried to keep the boat on the course corrections Melissa was giving me.

Somehow we threaded the needle of relatively shallow water and dropped the hook in 6 feet of water. You may not have been doing the math (I can tell you I hadn't been). Melissa pointed out that with a 4 foot tide we are going to be sitting on our keel when we want to leave in the morning. I began to haul in the anchor (with lots of complaining as always) and signaled for Melissa to have the engine give me a little help. We had to relocate in a much bumpier location more exposed to the howling wind.

The new location was no more than 50 yards from the old anchorage location, but had other 2 big differences. It was in 9ft of water (meaning 5 ft depth in low tide) and the other difference was that the VHF weather radio worked! We could wait here until the we knew the weather was going to get better. We still had no cell phone signal.

For such a beautiful calm beginning, today ended up stress-filled and tense, and in reality we were extremely lucky that our GPS accurately depicted the depths of this little-used inlet so that we could navigage & anchor safely out of harms way. Picture below is of a calmer, nicer gulf that we dream about:

From the Flamingo into the mouth of the Shark

2013-03-02T18:30:00.000-08:00

From the Flamingo into the mouth of the Shark is not only our physical location but also a metaphor for the day. Safety on the seas is first and foremost: pay attention to and know the weather. From all the books I have read to the forum posts the most dangerous thing is trying to adhere to a schedule. You would have to be some combination of suicidal and idiotic to go out in bad weather. I guess I am that kind of idiot. At one point today ss I looked up to the right of me at a wall of water and then to the left of me up at a wall of water a couple things crossed my mind: (1) a review of a Bayfield 29 (Tickety Boo's make and model) "The cockpit also seems designed to hold a tremendous amount of water,with only two average size (1.5" maybe? Less?) drains to let it all out", (2) with the waves this big this close to shore how deep is the water and finally (3) why the f@#$ did we leave Flamingo! That was the last of the focused thought(s) I had before I had put all my mental and physical energy into sailing into the mouth of Shark river.

Top 5 things I did wrong:

Didn't write down my plan
Didn't follow my plan (ok to change the plan for a good reason)
Didn't write down the weather
Didn't follow the weather I remembered
Didn't set up and practice with all safety equipment

The Plan

Originally the plan was to sail east from Bahia Honda Key to Long Key, spend the night then sail northwest to Flamingo and wait out the bad weather. We didn't make it to Long Key so we headed to Flamingo directly from Marathon, no big deal just lots of tacking and motoring more. So now we are west of Flamingo and we leave to head up into the everglades Why change the plan...why not go to Flamingo? There was no change in the weather forecast we knew of. I should have better documented and thought through the plan.

The Weather

This could have been because we had never been out of VHF, cell or site of land before. However we didn't have an updated weather report! Why hadn't I just written it down in the log book? We had been trained in our bareboat class to write weather information down everyday! Wonder why? We had just done 30 miles pretty much upwind yesterday so why not today? A lot of this is lack of experience but really, I mean really?

Safety Equipment

The others I can chalk up to lack of experience but I want to write this one down to embarrass myself into not screwing this up again. We have worn our life jackets a couple of times and we make sure everything else is up to date however there is one piece of equipment we hadn't used yet. Harnesses and safety line. These keep you attached to the boat and above the water (assuming you don't want to drown like a gentleman or was that englishman) if you fall off or are swept out of the boat by a wave (yes this can happen). The harnesses have built in life jackets that blow up; however the idea is you never need them because you never actually end up deep enough in the water to need to float. We had spent so much time on the intercoastal water way that I got out of thinking about setting up the safety line and putting on the harness. Even though this should be done before we go out on any significant body of water. There it is my guilt in black and white.

Play by Play

We spent a pretty bumpy night west of Flamingo, woke up and got underway heading west and at one point under sail only. The winds died (change in the weather!) so we started the motor and then motor sailed. A little in the wind for a while but the waves went from bumpy to large pretty quickly. They really started to build as the tide switched and the winds picked up. Around noon we had only made about 10 miles of progress when things started to get really bumpy. By 1 pm we found shark river as the closest 'emergency' anchor and the level of stress was very high (diamond making material). Waves had started splashing on the bow with facefuls of water on me by noon.

Tacked had worked until noon when the headwinds were so choppy it was hard to make any progress without wanting to drop chow. The winds had picked up to the point the bow was starting to get thrown downwind every wave we hit. The deck had water flowing down it every wave. By 1pm there was no more excitement just tense moment after tense moment.

Sailing Tickety Boo in these conditions was not rough with the sails up. She is an amazing boat. The sails stabilized her when in heavy weather. At times amazingly so. However with 20+ knots winds as close hauled to the wind as I could keep her she was getting pretty uncomfortable. I tried to keep as tight to the wind as possible to reduce getting blown into the leeshore. The winds were strong enough we were doing 5 knots into the waves which usually we are only doing 2-3 knots. There were moments it felt exciting like we had pushed our skills and the boat to the limit but we would quickly be bounced into feeling I was over my head (if I wasn't so tense the ride was probably pretty amazing she is such a wonderful boat in heavy weather).

The last 30 minutes was the roughest. Trying to time arriving at the anchor spot without being pushed into shore was hard but as we got closer I was starting to realize I was going to be able to do it. Land to my right and wind howling to my left. The closer we got to shore, the more the current of Shark river was creating larger and larger waves. Reminded me more of my white water kayaking days playing in rapids with the same proportions aka the waves were like 4x bigger!. Aiming for the mouth of the shark river I knew eventually I would have to turn down wind. With reefed main and staysail up, I didn't want to go up and drop the sail because without the harness I wasn't sure if I could hang on. We also needed the sails up for the speed in the water or else we would be pushed into shore with just engine power. I also knew if I turned downwind too fast we would probably end up running aground after broaching (turning into a kite and getting pushed violently and uncontrollably out of control). I kept the left upwind marker to the channel right in front of me until I had to turn or I would have run aground on the north side of the channel. If we broached I would have a little more time before we ran aground on the south side of the channel. So I turned and tried to ease the main at the same time. Melissa my trusty navigator had to yell to get her voice over the sound of the wind. At one point we were cresting a wave as I was turning downwind the boat heeled one of those deep heels I thought we were about to broach I was focused on easing the main and Melissa must have grabbed the wheel to keep us from grounding north of the channel. At some point I noticed we were doing 7 knots heading into Shark River. Somehow we threaded the needle into the mouth of the Shark river.

It felt as if we had run up on the sand the way everything slowed down once we hit the calm water protected by the mouth of the river. I got up and dropped the sails as Melissa drove us into the river. Melissa drove Tickety Boo around the bend to a nice quite protected spot that was almost glass to drop anchor. After dropping the anchor we sat in the cockpit with our last two cold beers taking deep breaths as we slowly stopped shaking.

Retrospective

Melissa the love of my life

After a few days thinking about it seems so obvious! Who would risk the love of your life? The choices in realtime are not so clear especially to the novice like myself. How does the risk / reward of driving a car compare to sailing Tickety Boo? I was always honest with people about the risk of our trip "the worst thing that could happen is we could die". I still think living is worth dying for.

Shark River the wonderful

After calming down we found ourselves in top 3 anchorages of our trip. The wildlife was amazing, just breath taking. From sea turtles, dolphins to manatees it was just smack full of wildlife. Watching the sun go down and listening to the flock of birds wings fly over head was exactly what we needed. The Everglades is totally worth preserving!

Some needed stress relief

Marathon to West of Flamingo the tacky way

2013-03-01T18:10:00.000-08:00

Nose upwind into the ocean

Up at dawn to get a good start for a 30+ mile sail to Flamingo located at the very southern tip of the Everglades. We had some LED lights to pickup at the Marathon City Marina and took the opportunity to refill our waters. Smooth docking and escape, but as I drove out I hit a marker! Yep green marker that was luckily wood instead of metal. Took a little paint off the port side of Tickety Boo and woke me up! I have had my share of close calls because the mast can sometimes sit right in the way of a marker but as long as you are paying attention this really isn't an issue. Within a 100 yards - the only place we have run aground and had to back out of I also hit a marker! The fact there is 300 boats watching us both times only adds insult to injury (that would be my injured ego)!

Out of site of land for the first time

We got through the bridge and had to start our tacking up wind. Slowly we went out of site of land for the first time. Even though there was land to our north, east and south there is something about sailing out past the site of land for the first time. No cell phone, no VHF radio and once out of site of any boats you realize you are out there (aka at the mercy of the sea). Watching our position track on the navigation application we have on our tablet gave us a lot of comfort. I wondered if our electronics stopped working what level of stress I would have been in.

Melissa catches a Blue Runner Jack

Fishing was somewhat successful. We caught two Blue Runner Jack's. They make great bait fish but this one was big enough to eat. Unfortunately we didn't eat it. I tossed it back thinking we had plenty of day to catch more fish. We fished the rest of the day and caught nothing else but that is fishing for you.

Can you drive I have to pee!

We tacked for the better part of 8 hours before cranking up the engine and heading straight upwind. For almost another 4 hours! Yep 12 hours is a long day working upwind. We motored into the night until it was pretty dark. Actually pitch black with no moon, abundant clouds and no light pollution. We turned on the light on the depth sounder and motored for an hour in the dark before dropping anchor in what we hopped was a pretty protected location from the northern winds.

Bahia Honda Key to Sisters Creek (Marathon)

2013-02-28T17:54:00.000-08:00

Woke in the morning to the splashing of the bow in the waves. Then the eventual rolling got us up with little sleep from the rough night before. How quickly we forget the comforts of a quiet anchorage! After breakfast decided to check the batteries to see how much power we used the night before. More than we should have! So on my knees bent over with my head in the electrical compartment rolling... I had had enough! Not just frustrated with the constant broken electric system but also about to put last night's dinner and this morning's breakfast in the electric compartment so it was time to get some fresh air.

After putting electric system back together we had had enough rocking and rolling for a while. Told Artemnesia we decided to take up anchor and head to sisters creek before we left for the west coast of Florida the next day. The said they were ready to head out also.

Hoisted the main and sailed from anchor, even with the waves - so started of with a good close haul in some decent waves. Tickety boo was amazing...she sat down and extremely comfortably cruised. Even when we hit much bigger waves than we were anchored in she felt great at 4.5 knots she just lightly moved over the rollers and occasionally splashed though them. Artemnesia blew by us quickly after they dropped the hammer down partly because she is designed to sail upwind but mostly because of the much more experienced crew. After one of our best sailing days we were so excited to sail up the west coast.

Dropped the anchor in Sisters Creek which is in Marathon. Since the wind was out of the north there was no alternative place close enough to anchor in. Originally we had planned to sail to Long Key and then when the wind switched from north west to north east the next day we could have a broad reach up to Flamingo. However fighting electrical stuff most of the morning would mean a more upwind sail tomorrow but we could stop in to pick up a few things in Marathon. What a wonderful location to anchor. Peaceful and quite. We slept wonderfully!

Bumpy night in Bahia Honda with Artamnesia (Bruno & Steph)

2013-02-27T17:33:00.000-08:00

Artemnesia

It was time to leave Marathon! Finally after over a month of repairs and waiting on weather we decided to do an overnight to make sure all was good. Artemnesia sailed along with us, crewed by Steph & Bruno so they could get out of Marathon for an overnight. Was a bit of a motor upwind for 11 miles to get there and a very bumpy anchor. Warm day winds out of the south west. Got a bit of sail up near the end of the trip but dropped sail and motored up and dropped the hook.

Swimming Tickety Boo's Anchor

I jumped in the water to swim the anchor. The water was lovely! A little sad to see so much dead coral but there is still some fish and the water felt great. What was at the end of the rode was an anchor sitting on top of some hard ground. Luckily the coral bed had a hump the anchor was caught on. And we had a good 100 miles before we would drag into the Bahamas since the wind was blowing from the north.

Anchor not set properly :(

It was such a rocking and rolling anchor that we went to get shallower and dropped again which was better but still pretty rough. Artemnesia stayed back since she is a deep keeled boat. The crew of Artemnesia joined us and we ate a great meal thanks to Steph's delicious cabbage dish (Bubbles and Squeak?) which we decided we need to learn more how to prepare cabbage. We seemed to be having a little too much fun (if that is possible) with the crew of Artamnesia. We will definitely have to sail with them as often as we can!

The rocking and rolling continued and just seemed to get worse. Our worse night of rolling that is for sure! We tend to swing back and forth a lot at anchor which means the waves hit us sideways and we roll. Luckily we were both lying down with our eyes closed or we would have been sick.

Socializing and boats

2013-02-04T10:52:00.000-08:00

Socialization is something not really available to us when we anchor out and I have been recently concerned with our hermiting tendencies that have developed over the past month or so. The past few weeks have put my fears to rest!. First, we left the boat for a week to go back to Charlotte and catch up on taxes and with a few friends. Lateef then flew to West Palm Beach to work on a forensics project and I joined a few days later. As usual, we enjoyed some social time with our Aunts Pat & Margie.

On our way back to the boat we stopped in Ft. Lauderdale at the last second to see our friends Daniel & Yara. Plus we all had to pay a visit to old buddy Southport Raw Bar for the most delicious shrimp & clams ever! Our goof up in not realizing this was the weekend that the Lagerlofs were in town but we found 1 day too late.

Finally back at the mooring ball field, we hitched a ride back to our boat and were immediatly thrown back into the social fray here with the 300 or so other boats moored up. Met some neighbors Rachel & Clauss and we joined them for a free music concert at the tiki hut. Great music, dancing, and fun! Since then we've been hanging out with them for dinghy fishing trips, boat repair advice, dinners and drinks.

Another couple very similar to us are here and are planning to play some tennis and cribbage (thanks mom) with them when they arrive back from their consulting jobs next week. Also since he is from England he was able to confirm tickety boo as an appropriate choice of names for our boat.

Then there is Mike & Jake, other neighbors on a Leopard 43 catamaran. They escorted us to the Saturday flea market which actually is more like a wholesale goods marine market and a farmers market. In killing the batteries of our boat many times over the past week, Lateef has befriended several nice boaters who have each helped once or twice to charge the battery back up (then subsequently our broken bilge re-drains it).

Cruising is extensively a cycle of making new friends and reconnecting with old ones in a different port. Just another surprising thing about this lifestyle. We thought it would be long days sitting and reading until our pet peeves drove us to land. However it turns out it will probably be the opposite in which we will be head out just so we can get some reading done and spend enough time to drive each other crazier.

There a f@$#%ing hole in our boat!

2013-02-02T10:33:00.000-08:00

I am struggling to figure out how to clearly explain the path of events that got to this point: Where I am wondering why antifreeze or due to the bright aqua color, maybe hydraulic fluid, is flowing from the bottom of our boat bilge like a 2 inch geyser. First reaction: plug hole with finger. Unplugging and replugging the hole with my finger several time, it takes a few seconds to figure out this bright neon green liquid is actually beautiful Boot Key harbor WATER! True panic is so poorly represented in horror movies: grown men running and screaming like 4 year old girls. Not that I am above that, however it takes a while before I stop panicking enough to run around screaming, and as you can see in the above picture, the boat was in such disarray at this point, there's not a whole lot of room to run around. How did I end up with a screw driver in my right hand, the bottom of a bilge pump in my left, my left index finger plugging a hole in the bottom of our boat and warm yellow liquid flowing down my leg?

There is a long list of things I am afraid of while cruising however #1 is Melissa falling overboard and probably #2 is water flowing into the boat below the water line. Lets see: I have just removed the old broken bilge pump, part of which is in my left hand, the new bilge pump one is just out of reach, I have a screw driver in my right hand, my back is hurting and I am fearing what bodily control I will lose next. If I move to reach the new bilge pump bottom so I can put the screw back in I will have to take my left index finger out of the hole. Freakishly long arms or not, I have to do this at some point. Consciously pulling my finger out of the geyser so the boat is "sinking" took a lot of will power. I can't believe I am writing this but "luckily" the bright neon made it easy to place the new bottom of the bilge pump over the hole and put the screw back in it. Head in the bilge staring for a few seconds starting to feel very uncomfortable waiting to see if water was flowing in, I took a breath. AAAaahhh. That was the problem. I hadn't been breathing since I realized the boat was sinking.

I had just cleaned out the leftover couple quarts of water from the bilge because we had a bad pump. Basically our bilge acts like a trap for all dirt, being at the bottom of the boat and even though I cleaned it a month ago there is a hard to reach area below the fuel tank that I can't get my hand under to clean. So it just tends to be a little dirty. The electric sensor on the bilge seemed to just go off randomly, mainly when we were not on the boat. Draining the batteries. This seemed to be because the sensor got dirty. I tried to clean the sensor and it still would go off. Time to get old school and replace the bilge with a float version.

Before we had gotten the pump I had cleaned out the battery area trying to figure out what was going on. We had a bad battery plus the wiring is a mess. There was a lot of dirt in the battery area so I cleaned that out hoping to start a reorganization of our electrical system. We have decided to invest in some solar panels and new house batteries (power for everything except to start the engine). The wiring is pretty impossible to figure out at the moment (see photo above). However before we do all that we first need to fix the bilge pump that is draining our batteries. (Bilge pump was replaced in October last year).

Back to cushions pulled out, battery almost dead, electric cables a mess, Melissa on deck watching a helicopter land which is also blocking out any sounds (lateef's screams of sadness and despair) from below, my hands full of tools and contributing bodily fluids to the bilge. After putting the new bilge pump in Melissa came down explaining I had missed seeing a chopper land and wondered why I looked like I had seen a ghost. "Nothing to worry about dear". Well that is what I wish I said if I were more of a manly man but instead I spilled it all out like I had just slain a dragon. After some swapping out and crimping of electric cables I flicked the bilge and it turned on! I cleaned up my work area and sat in the cockpit to try to calm myself with a beer and ponder how to fix a hole in a boat underwater?

We have discussed how the hole got there? We can only speculate before we purchased the boat someone installed the bilge pump while it was on dry land. Not noticing that they drilled a hole right though the bottom of the boat. And no one noticed when it was relaunched since with the screw in it it doesn't leak. We have completed a round of cleaning the bilge area and replacing the pump - two tasks off the list. Added to our task list is fixing a hole in the bottom of the boat! Project list never gets smaller just the names of projects change.

Bohia Honda

2013-01-11T07:12:00.000-08:00

After escaping the windy anchorage at Big Pine, we settled into one behind the Bohia Honda state park. Most people visit the side fronting the ocean, but our boat draft is shallow enough to visit the other side, and we snugged up close to the shoreline in about 4' of water to avoid most of the wind. Compared to our anchorage the past few nights, it was a peaceful dream!
We rowed into shore and spent a few hours exploring the shore (which we had all to ourselves), throwing the cast net and catching various sea creatures. There was not an actual dry sand beach, but there was soft white sand under about 6'' to 1'' of clear water before the mangroves encroached . We walked through the shallow waters, caught some pin fish for bait, then a stone crab and a blue crab for dinner. After bringing them back to the boat later that evening, the crabs looks a little small so we pardoned the little guys and let them back in the water.

We also donned our snorkel gear and swam from the shore out to our boat to look at the two anchors we dropped. The water was pretty clear, and we found that our anchors hadn't really set so Lateef dove down and hand-set them.

The next day we headed back out to the 'shore' where we once again practiced the cast net on a curious barracuda who laughed in our general direction when we aimed the net for him. With big winds coming over the next few days, we reluctantly left our anchorage and made our way to the mooring ball field in Marathon.

We sailed from anchor, most of the way there, and didn't have to turn on the engine until we got to 7 mile bridge. After the bridge, our progress was excruciatingly slow as we were fighting the ocean current but got to the mooring ball field within a few hours. Another first today! After careful navigation for over 1,000 miles we finally RAN AGROUND. Not just ran-aground-but-powered-through-the-mucky-bottom (like we have done several times). Ran aground as in hard stop... putting the boat in forward and reverse produced no motion. And of course, this was right next to the mooring field so we had plenty of observers. Finally I moved to the front of the boat, and the transfer of such a sizable mass such as myself allowed the boat to adjust so Lateef was able to back the boat up and get us parked on a mooring ball in deeper water.

Little Pine to Bohia Honda

2013-01-10T07:50:00.000-08:00

After spending two nights with the wind howling though the rigging at 20+ knots, it was time to make a move. We decided to try for another sail day to Bohia Honda key which is only a couple miles but is a little upwind. With 20+ knot winds it meant learning how to reef the main, something we probably should have learned about 2 months ago. For those who don't know a reef is a way to reduce the sail area and thus reducing the "oh my god, oh my god we are all going to die" feeling when the boat heels 25%+. If you have too much wind in the sail it will "broach" which basically turns a sail into a kite skipping across the wave downwind. As long as downwind is the direction you want to go that is not a problem but if there is land downwind that may not make for a fun sail! Anyway we reefed the main after a couple of adjustments and attempts.
Melissa pointed out the current wind level was the level of scary that is closer to excitement than diaper change now that we reefed the main. This I also found to be true and I wonder what it would be like trying to reef the main at sea instead of at anchor. I now better understand all the advice to reef way before you need to. I have found it is hard enough to hang on to the boat with my legs and one arm while trying to raise the sail with the other arm. More practice needed before we head out to sea and need to reef.

Little Pine Key Sailing Anchor to Anchor

2013-01-08T11:33:00.000-08:00

It was one of those magical days. We sailed from anchor to anchor - engine never turned on, such a pleasant experience! The total distance was probably only about 8 miles or so and it was only about 2 hours of sailing. This was my first hand set anchor that we didn't use the engine to back down on. Luckily the weather was right and we took a snorkel around to check the anchor and verified it was nicely buried. Then we snorkeled over to check out a crab trap nearby. As we approached, a little hammerhead paid us a visit. Upon sighting the shark, Melissa promptly turned around and walked on water back to the boat. We eventually returned back to the crab trap so she could symbolically prove she wasn't scared.

I took the opportunity to look under the boat and clean off a little bit of gunk that had built up. Wasn't bad except for one side that had some organic matter stuck on it I was able to clean most of it off. I am not sure why the port side had the growth but I decided to wipe down the rest of the hull because a little film had built up over the last 3 months or so.

Jewfish Basin to Spanish Channel

2013-01-07T11:24:00.000-08:00

We started the day full of sail and thought we might try tacking our way to Big Pine Key. After the morning of sailing and only making a couple miles headway we decided we would crank the engine on because of the big winds that are forecast to beat West which is pretty much right on the nose for the next week. Still timid of the 20+ winds I thought we'd hide out around Big Pine / Marathon area until next week and the weather is hopefully better.

Four hours of motoring against the wind and current we finally turned south with the sails up and motor sailed between 6 and 7 knots all the way to the anchor. Hands down the most amazing sunset we have seen yet. We sat until the stars were up just so we could enjoy it all.

It was a bumpy start to the night. Since Georgia, we haven't had that much wave action while trying to sleep. I had forgotten how bumpy sleeping out could be. The anchor held nicely and wasn't that nervous if we did drag in this location since we were the only boat within sight. The winds eventually died down and we got a good night sleep. I almost always get sleep after being out on the water all day.

Key West to Jewfish Basin and rationalizing dinghy with a motor

2013-01-06T10:51:00.000-08:00

After a couple days of the easy life it was time for us to back into the wild! After changing the oil and getting some more diesel parts we left to head to anchor a night before heading back east. We have decided to get an inflatable dinghy and an outboard motor for it so we can get access to more ports and snorkel from it. We tried to get away with as little and simple of things that we can on our trip. Rowing the dinghy is great exercise and I would like to do it more however it is pretty limiting. In a way partly because of its size... it's too small and we are too large. I happen to be a very large person and even though not too fat, the length makes it uncomfortable for me to squeeze my feet under the seat and I can't row full strokes without punching Melissa out.

Key West we had to stay at a dock because there was no anchorage or mooring close enough for me to row into. If we put the water filler upper container in the dinghy (5 gallons so 40 lbs) we are over the weight limit of our dinghy. Even though our boat has 3 1/2 foot draft so we can go many places most boats can't, we still like to anchor in protected places which might be a couple miles from a good swimming or fishing spot. Thus we have decided to head back east to find a motor and inflatable dinghy.

Part of the reason I didn't want to have a motor was I wanted to focus on just one engine to keep running. I am not a purist on some recreation of exploration from a couple hundred years ago. Part conservation, part laziness....when we sail we don't use diesel and I don't need to feed it or spend as much time working on it when it is rarely used. More importantly sailing is so much more fun and enjoyable than motoring that it is worth waiting for. Also this will allow for us to enjoy anchors and moorings for longer without having to go into port as often to get supplies or a break.

With half the day gone we had our eyes on an anchor just after entering the ICW and so we sailed most of the way there until the end where we had to motor into the wind a couple miles to our anchorage. Still in site of the tops of cruise ships (they are massive and can see them like 10 miles away) we enjoyed the peace on the hook again.

Key WEST!!

2013-01-03T21:02:00.000-08:00

Finally the weather is right to go to Key West! With the engine still shaky I made sure we had some alternative places we could stop before Key West in case there is no engine and the wind was insufficient to blow us all the way. We had an early start around 7, which has been unusual for us lately but we were motivated to make landfall today.

Dolphins were swarming us today in the ocean, and it seems they are doubled in length and girth from those northern dolphins. The wind was generally lackluster today, and so we motored the whole way, fortunately for us our engine sounds and acts happy at 1,500 RPM, and by mid-afternoon we arrived in Key West.
Probably the closest we have come to running aground is trying to dock at the city docks. The instructions given by an employee were wrong. Luckily we turned while we could still push though the mud and finally found the dock. We are better at docking since we started I noticed since it seemed like a non event.
We spent 4 nights in Key West. Two at the city marina and 2 at Galleon resort (amazing what pools and clean bathrooms will do to revive a person). After being at anchor for a couple days coming into port is always fun. Mostly we walked Key West neighborhoods as an activity. Second we did boat tasks and third we enjoyed some night life. The 2 nights we spent at Galleon we enjoyed the sunset watching the schooners rail round the harbor.
Most of our days we spent wondering the town on foot. One of our favorite activities in any city. The older neighborhoods are really nice even in such a touristy place as Key West. This is also where the best food can be found. The amazing how just a couple blocks from where the cruise ship is docked you can find some authentic Key West neighborhoods. For us the list is pretty small of places but were good.
First for that first pint (or few) after docking we found The Porch to be wonderful (actually amazing since it is basically right off Duval street). After our second day visit the bar tender recommended we check out 2 Cents which had some amazing "bar food". We just had an appetizer at 2 Cents since the food was pretty pricy. The best quick Pizza and Gelato was at Duetto! There was another place call like allwood or something that had a wood fired pizza but we didn't get a chance to check it out.
We found a good bakery for bread which we made sure to get before we left and a good fish market which I ended up getting some Cobia and cooking it on our grill one night. However by and large being 90 miles from land has the consequence of a limited supply of fresh food. Even though I assume most food came from the sea or was grown on the Keys themselves it seems that is no longer the case.
We had a great time and are looking forward to a return trip. Hopefully we will stop by again if we ever go to the dry tortugas.

Big Pine to Summerland Key

2013-01-01T20:29:00.000-08:00

We decided to anchor a couple miles west from our Big Pine anchorage. The first two nights we stayed in a nice location protected from the north wind. However the wind was changing to the east and so yesterday afternoon we moved less than a mile east to be closer to the shore. I could see some boats already anchored so figured I would go near them since it was a very protected area from the wind and it looked like a smart location for the weather. As we approached, the boats looked worse and worse. Eventually a strange-looking and very obese man popped out of his boat (which was completely covered in bird poop) and started yelling that we were too close to his boat. We quickly moved away from the crazy man and anchored in a less-than ideal location for the wind but more importantly, we wanted to get away from the hermit. Today we traveled to an anchorage a couple miles away (inching to Key West) and was really protected in shallow water. Our 3'6" draft is nice to have when ducking in a little harbor that is protected from most wind.

I kept the engine below 1,500 rpms and raised the staysail to give a little boost. The winds had started to calm but the seas were still a lot larger than I am comfortable with. It was a part of the keys we could stay close to shore and since we were only moving a couple miles west we didn't get out into the 4+ foot waves. When I did increase the throttle the engine started to increase rpms but would soon slowly fall down. Would increase all the way to almost 3,000 rpms not under load, only in neutral. Grrr. We are not half way between Key West and Marathon. The winds are coming from the east so I hope we can sail to Key West tomorrow because I can't rely on the engine. After yet another swim and even got Melissa in the water so she could see with her own eye the prop was free of anything. I am still concerned about it being a bent shaft.

The natural beauty of the keys is constant. Between the wonderful clouds to the clear water to mangrove covered keys it is almost always picturesque. I seem to take manly pictures of sunsets it would appear. During the day I am usually engaged in some task or another enjoying the view every moment I get. At the end of the day I am letting the days events wash over me I capture a photo maybe it is just because of opportunity. I feel I can read the sunsets better now, the complexity of light, clouds, water and land seemed to have increased in depth. I wonder just by spending more time observing the sunsets I have learned how to comprehend them more just like a child learning to read books.

New Years at Sea (anchor)

2012-12-31T20:00:00.000-08:00

After a day being tossed around the cockpit (which at 220 lbs. it is amazing how I get thrown about) we decided not to venture down further and instead wait out the weather. Especially with our engine that does not seem to be working correctly. Getting into James Baldwin "Across Islands and Oceans" I remember he mentions that the sails help stabilize the boat in the sea which is something we haven't tried much since it is really hard to get and stay on the deck long enough to raise the sails when it seems like something is trying to throw you off the boat.
We spent half of each of the last two days working on the engine and the other half reading and playing cards. This was the first time we have actually stayed on the boat at anchor all day and without going off the boat or driving to another location. The wind was howling outside while we read our diesel engine books and worked on the fuel system. We changed the fuel filter and spent a long time bleeding the fuel lines. There was a lot of black gunk in the bowl below the filter which after putting a little bleach on and then wd-40 we figured out it was nonorganic (thanks, This Old Boat book). Also I noticed some water in the bowl which fortunately was filtered out but never a good sign that water was in the fuel tank. Old fuel, water and old boats tend to have this type of gunk in the tanks. Sloshing around in the ocean does wonders for stirring up the stuff in fuel tank.

Even after doing this I am not completely convinced it is the fuel system. The engine runs fine until I put it into gear. My big fear is that our engine revving problem is a bent propellor shaft. Even though I can spin the shaft by hand from outside (snorkled in the water to try) and in it seems strange that it only happens under load.

How did these days vanish? It is strange to think that all the sudden it is New Years! We had planned to make a run for Key West for the big celebrations. Shoot we had planned to stay up until midnight but somehow we ended up a sleep probably around 10!

Happy New Year! I screamed out at one point right after dark. I hope the fish enjoyed it because the closest people were car lights faintly miles away crossing a bridge. Amazing another year Melissa has not strangled me, something I am truely thankful for.