Sailing Miles

Video of a Challenging Day

Click here to see a Facebook post about this endangered critter. In the arena of "how wacky has Danny's hair gotten in retirement?": I gave up on the long mustache. Sam Elliot doesn't need to worry about me taking his gig.  I missed my lips,  Cindy  missed my lips, all my food tasted like a lip ferret. As long as I was trimming, I took a swipe at the crazy-old-man eyebrows. I planned to use them for shade in a couple of months. Oh well.   Yesterday Cindy said she was trying to talk to me, but my hair was distracting her. Then  Stephen  chimed in that it looks like a really loose toupe. Great. Thanks Steve. Now I can't talk to my wife anymore. Li

Bahía Honda Key anchorage was the closest we have stayed to a beach. The swimming area was only sixty yards away! However, it was 67° with 28 kts of wind. That comes to a wind chill of nah, nevermind. So we set our sights on Marathon,  Florida, and enjoyed our sunset anchorage off Vaca Key. https://bahiahondapark.com/

We made it to Key West! We are getting provisions, doing repairs, and planning for our Bahamas crossing. I also challenged Cindy to a "campy" photo contest. She's winning, with a video of a floating tiki bar going two knots through the channel. Here's a few, so far, along with some random flower photos. I'm not sure why GoogleMaps thinks we sailed down US 1 for a while. "Uhm, yeah. I'll take the Mullet. To go. Customers waiting for a table. I winked back. Is that flirting? We love this tree. It's like its own eco-system. I think a parking ticket on the window would add. Sponge Bob? We picked up a few boat items... Key West Social Club? Their recruiting departments have different approaches.

Buying a large boat, and learning all the systems, can be nerve-wracking. Especially if she is an older boat, and many of the "learning experiences" involve repairs or upgrades. Our trucking experience has taught Cindy and I to be vigilant about changes in how things work, a change means something may have broken. For instance, if black smoke suddenly starts billowing from under the hood, something may be amiss. That visual clue is a message that we need to check something out. The changes also include if a new sound pops up. Neither one of us could abide a new rattle while we were on our sleeper break. That noise had to be discovered and stopped! It might be simple, like a zipper tapping on a plastic closet door, or it could be serious, like a chain slipping of the chain-hanger about to go under a drive tire. The worst-case scenario is what keeps us up, I guess. We can even sleep with a sound going on, as long as we know what it is. When we got to Florida in our 1989 Ste...

A short sail today, although the weather was great for sailing. We went from Rodriguez Key to Hen and Chickens Reef to snorkel, and maybe dive. The seas were a bit too heavy to moor off to one of the buoys provided by the state of Florida and get in the water, so we passed on by. We found a very crowded anchorage near Long Key. We were the only boat. It took us some time to find a place we could fit between the huge number of crabpots! We saw two loggerhead turtles and a huge man o' war while underway. The sea was an amazing color, after last night's heavy wind. forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/16040246