No Name Harbor to Ft. Lauderdale

It was a great day for sailing, and we were finally able to get the sails up! Jacob did so much work on the halyards while we were in Marathon that we were able to put up both the jib and the staysail. Unfortunately the Main halyard was twisted so we weren’t able to get that one up. 

We pulled in nice and early to Las Olas Marina right downtown. We were a little worried that this was going to be a very expensive week with all the marinas we'd called charging over $3 a foot per night. Thankfully we found this municipal marina which is much more reasonably priced. 

I really wanted to stay at a marina because of the heat. We have air conditioning but it only works when we are plugged in. The days have been getting up to 85 degrees and that makes it really sticky in the boat! Since it was Mother’s Day, Jacob let me twist his arm and find a marina. 

side tied in No Name Harbor, giving Sweet Pea one last potty break before we hit the road

story time with Daddy

The staysail and the jib

Audrey did some rainbow looming for Sweet Pea on the trip

1st Overnight Passage - Marathon to No Name Harbor

We did our first overnight… on purpose.

The plan was to leave Marathon on Friday afternoon as soon as Jacob could get off of work, bypass Rodriguez Key, and make it to No Name Harbor (one of our favorite anchorages on the way down).

We had planned to have Jacob take the first shift, and then wake me around 3:00,  but Jacob didn’t want to leave the helm so he let me sleep until we were pulling in to No Name Harbor and he didn’t sleep at all. It made for sort of a rough day in No Name Harbor. We decided to side tie to the sea wall instead of anchoring in the harbor.

We are getting pretty good at docking and un-docking. The sea wall was nice because we didn’t have to stick Sweet Pea in the dinghy. She could easily get off and walk around the beautiful state park. We ate at the Cuban restaurant overlooking the harbor.  Not very good food, but the view is awesome.

The four of us also walked over to the beach and played for a while. The state park doesn’t allow anyone to stay tied to the wall overnight, so we decided to anchor just outside the harbor in order to get a nicer breeze. We had a beautiful sleep with a fresh breeze blowing through the cabin, and only had to get up once at 2:00 for an anchor drag alarm that turned out to nothing but the tide changing. It was good though, because being as close to the beach as we were to our anchor, we needed to know.

Dolphins off the starboard bow.

playing at the beach

Shade cloths

Our shade cloths, in four thousand eight words:

A Marvelous Month in Marathon

Audrey piloting the boat. 

I have had a long absence from working on the blog. Once we got to Marathon everything else seemed to be much more important and I let it fall by the wayside.

Marathon was as wonderful as I was hoping it would be. Instead of the city mooring field we had planned on, we ended up staying at a beautiful marina at the entrance to Boot Key Harbor (because of our fuel system problems). The marina had a gorgeous saline pool and super nice people. We really enjoyed the whole trip. The entire island is only 7 miles long, and the taxis are a $5 flat fee anywhere on the island, so the girls and I cabbed it all over, and I don’t think we missed anything we had been hoping to do.

We spent Easter there

kayaking off of Sombrero Beach

They can be really sweet sisters sometimes! 

too cool for the pool

sunset at the marina

We played with the local homeschool group and some other marina kids too. That was one of the big draws of Marathon for us. We had heard about all of the great homeschool kids there and the activities for them. We weren’t disappointed! The girls participated in homeschool PE, homeschool gymnastics and even had a few playdates! Overall it was a very successful kid trip.

the girls working on their backbends

ice cream date! 

more gymnastics

My dad visited for almost 2 weeks. We really explored the Keys while he was with us, including the famous Lorelei restaurant on Islamorada, where our Lorelei was famous. We also went to Theater of the Sea. It was such a cool place. A very small marine animal park where we were able to get really close to the animals. The girls volunteered to participate in the shows, and my dad took us swimming with the dolphins. Happy birthday to me :). The girls and I still can’t stop talking about the experience! The dolphins are HUGE in person, but there was no fear. They are so gentle and it was pretty magical!

giving Grampsy a backrub

ready for lunch at the Lorelei

Anne's Beach

mango tree

Me and my Dad. 

goofing around in Key West

biplane rides with Grampsy

a view of Marathon from above

Lorelei helping with the sea lion show at Theater of the Sea

cooling off

hugging dolphins

Theater of the Sea

Audrey catching a ride

More Sombrero Beach

relaxing on the boom

making friends with flamingos on our second trip to Key West

I already can't wait to go back!

Heading north

Tomorrow afternoon we're heading north.  We're shooting for the mooring field at Crandon Marina on the north end of Key Biscayne by midday Saturday.  But if we're tired maybe we'll stop at Rodriguez.

This evening

And...radar reflector!

A night in the life

Beautiful evening.  Luxuriously caressing breeze.  Two anchor lights past the point, oceanside.  Flickering shadows from tiki torches ashore.  Distant lightning toward Cuba.  I'm glad we're not out there...

Sombrero Reef

We took a quick trip 5 miles out to Sombrero Reef on Saturday.  We wanted to see how the fuel system would hold up to some bouncy conditions and it did pretty well. At this point I'd really prefer to see the needle remain hard against the bottom of the 0 mark.  Instead it moved to the top of that mark.  I think that's still pretty good.  I think our rule until we know better about the fuel situation will just be that we're not going if we wouldn't be comfortable doing it under sail, at least on the outside.   That way even if we do lose the the engine, we should be in a position to get where we need to be without it.  

We also got the staysail up on the furler and used it for the first time Saturday. It did really nicely.  I'm very happy with it.