Boring or Exciting

Wed Morning Feb 4 to Thurs Morning Feb 5, 2015
Starting from Marathon Ending at Ft. Myers Beach FL


We left the anchorage in Marathon and went under 7 Mile Bridge and put up the sails. It was a little wishy washy because we were taking waves on our side but still a pretty decent sailing day. Sunny, good wind speed and to be honest it was a tad boring. We did not see land most of the day and I lost cell phone reception. I know we were at least 13 miles off shore so guess that was the problem. We soon were in a forest of crab pot buoys. We gave up dodging them and just kept on sailing.

About dusk we were joined by 7 or 8 dolphin. They stayed close beside the boat weaving back and forth under the bowsprit. They were squeaking and snorting and jumping. They stayed even when Lee stood on the bowsprit. He finally froze out and got back in the cockpit. Where is a camcorder when  you want one?

We finally lost wind speed, some time after dark.  It went down to 5 and we were doing 2.5 kts so we finally turned on the motor. We knew rain was expected sometime between midnight and dawn so were not surprised when it started raining around 4 am. What we didn't expect was what followed around 5 am. The wind came at us on our bow at 30 kts. Lightning flashed everywhere. Rain poured as if the sky opened up. Waves crashed over the life lines throwing us up and down like a bathtub toy. This lasted a couple of hours. Motoring at 4.5 -5 knots before the winds the wind blew so hard at our bow at times we were making 00.0 kts. We looked at our track on the computer this morning and it looks like at times it was actually counteracting the motor enough to push us backwards.  I worried the lightning would knock out our instruments as we have had lightning damage twice with the boat just sitting in our slip. We lost sleep and got wet but neither of us got panicky, just unhappy. Guess boat and humans passed that test.  That will teach me to say that sailing on an easy sunny day is getting boring. I sure was not bored at 5;30 this morning.

We finally arrived at Ft Myer Beach where we were going to pick up a mooring ball about 9;30 or 10 this morning and all the moorings were taken. There was a shallow anchorage for maybe 2 or 3 boats and we dropped anchor in 5.7 ft of water. Mark and Judy were a couple of hours behind us and they found a bit deeper spot near us, too. I plan to nap most of the day as no one got much sleep last night.