Friday, May 1, 2009

We made it as far as Ft. Pierce last night just before dark at 7 ish to an anchorage outside of Harbortown Marina. The fuel dock closed at 6:30 and we couldn’t get there by that time. We took a dinghy ride in to the marina for Roxy and I told Darrell that I thought that the water was deep enough to cut across the anchorage and we WENT AGROUND in the dinghy!!!! Darrell had to “walk” the boat out to deeper water - of course me and Roxy stayed dry - HA! It was so shallow that only about 1-2 inches of the bottom of his shorts even got wet!!! Yes, he was not real happy with me. When we left the next morning, the sailboat anchored where tried to cut acorss the the night before was aground and trying to get himself off. We got fueal that morning and decided to take Alibi out to sea to see what she would do. Dick told us “now when you decide to go outside be sure to tie everything down real well”. We went through the Ft. Pierce inlet and it was four foot waves in short succession and I tried to go too fast through them. I almost beat Darrell up in the cockpit! The dinghy needed more tie-downs since she had lost air during the trip. I had take care of the inside since I was used to stowing things in a camper for rough traveling roads. Anyway - we now know what Dick meant!!!!!!
Well she really sails nice! She was so happy to spread her sails and run up the coast of Florida - really down the coast! You could tell that she was happy to be back on the water. When the day was fading and it got close to time to look for an anchorage, I let Darrell talk me into a “night” sail. So we just kept going. We motor sailed a lot but could make good (as good) speed without the motor. Fastest speed noted was 8 Kts but the average speed was about 6 kts. We were both worried that I wouldn’t be able to sleep so Darrell took most of the Helm hours. I did get about 1 ½ hours of sleep and felt GOOD after I got up. I took the helm and we made “NO Name Harbor” at around 8-9 am. For those who don’t have a chart, this is in Biscayne Bay just south of Miami - we were in our backyard - finally!!!. Darrell was worn out from the night sail and needed rest BADLY! I took the helm again (after taking Roxy ashore) and we started the last leg into Key Largo. We arrived by 7 PM to find our mooring was GONE! We thought that a boat was there when we arrived was taking it because there was a lot of mud stirred up. Anyway we dropped the anchor and stayed on the boat that night.