Saturday, May 28, 2016

Sea Monkeys to C-dock

Ok.....remember these adds about
Sea-Monkeys all over comic books and 
MAD magazine?

"Own a bowlful of happiness---Instant Pets!"

"So eager to please.  They can even be trained"

"Always clowning around, these frolicsome pets swim, stunt and play games with each other."


Well.....here's the fun fact truth about these critters (isn't google wonderful for explaining these childhood questions)


They are actually brine shrimp.  That "frolicsome" activity is either the males fighting or a male/female having some "mommy & daddy" fun that can last for....days.  Yep....days.  Males have beards....females do not.
 They don't have smiling human faces or cute little pot bellies....they don't even have crowns on their heads.  
They are itty bitty shrimp....that's it.

They breathe through their feet....and are born with one eye, but grow two more upon maturity.  The "train your pets" part is that they naturally gravitate towards your finger and/or a flashlight.  So.....you're wondering what this all has to do with Tim and Leslie's great adventure?  

Another skunked metal detecting trip to the beach
 We had arrived the end of April back from the Bahamas to Boot Key Harbor, Marathon Florida Keys.  It had gotten very....very....very warm the last 2 weeks .....uncomfortably muggy and sticky.  Even a dinghy trip to the beach and a dip in the ocean was like bath water.  The sultry night air made for sweaty sleeping.....sweat and wet was the tropical look of the daily existence. 




After a month of sitting on a mooring ball in Boot Key Harbor, the growth on the bottom of the boat was ASTOUNDING.....fuzzy, hairy things and small barnacles the size of thumbtacks. 
Typical Boot Key Harbor dinghy---our's wasn't this bad
 In many cases, months of unchecked growth leads to very large gnarly dreadlocked beards hanging underneath.....which actually resemble some of the salty-bearded boat owners of Boot Key Harbor life.....love this laid back harbor.  Anyway......two days before departing we dove in the water with fins, mask and snorkels to shave the crud off....water was murky, dense and dark green.... 
Bahamas waters---see anchor 12ft down





(miss that blue clear water of the Bahamas). 
 We went at it with plastic scrapers.  After an hour, we emerged to find some of that "crud" stuck on and inside our swimsuits.....and then I noticed some of the particles were itchy and wiggling......yup, you guessed it....Sea Monkeys.  Eeeuuuwww.  A shower rinse on the swim platform left a bunch of 'em dry and stuck dead everywhere.  
Learn something new everyday.


Here's a short video of a pot-luck "Dinghy Drift" in the middle of 
Boot Key Harbor one night....



C-dock mates reunion in the Keys
On the fun side of things, we had a great time and rendezvous in Boot Key Harbor with several of our C-dock friends from our marina...5 other boats to be exact.  We're all on a life path of filling dreams and making memories.

More C-dock crazy







After checking several weather resources, we happily departed Marathon on Tuesday morning May 24th with one of our C-dock friends, Kacy and Larry on S/V Providence..... heading 215nm north
Sailing with Providence--Kacy and Larry
back to Regatta Pointe Marina.  It would take 2-3 days traveling an average of 5mph.  We buddy-boated for a day and a night across the Florida Bay--notoriously known as crab-trap-hell---but easy now with the crab season over....and further up the west coast of southern Florida.  It was a banner day with beautiful cloud formations, dolphins and flying fish.  A manageable rain shower followed a beautiful sunset as we sailed on through the pearl moon-lit darkness of the night off the Everglades. 
Tim loves and does better than me on these overnight sails......my beauty becomes the beast without sleep.  Nonetheless, we take shifts of 2-3 hours each.   All night long we watched a spectacular lightening storm dancing through the gigantic cumulus clouds to the south.....as Scorpio chased Mars across the sky westward. 

About 3am, we communicated via VHF radio to our buddy-boat, Providence, as they peeled off towards Ft Meyers anchorage for the next night, while we sailed Fiesta on further north to stop in one of our favorite anchorages in Pelican Bay, near Charlotte Harbor, mid way up Florida west coast.  In bed and conked out by 8:30pm....up at 6am to start the final 70 mile leg of our 6 month journey.  It was another picture perfect day of sailing Fiesta....feeling confident and loving this life.....until....the last 7 miles up and around Anna Maria Island into Tampa Bay.  It was the 3 hour jaunt from hell with 19kt winds on the nose and waves smashing and bashing us backwards.  Fiesta and our amazing Yanmar engine rode that wild hobby horse with determination. Welcome back to reality.  It's in these tough times that Tim takes the helm with strength and perseverance and I tend to whine and curl up in the cockpit corner wishing it over.....or wishing I was a dolphin under water watching from a another realm.   We joke about me being the "Captain" and he the "Admiral"....either way, it's really good to have back-ups and onboard support. 

Back home on C-dock in Regatta Pt Marina
It's been 6 months since we left the marina docks the 28th of November.....4.5 months of it spent wandering around the Bahamas. 

 Ya know, it's all about the journey, not the destination....and where one journey seems to end, another one begins...starting all over again.  
Phases and stages.

We have decided to dock the boat in Regatta Pointe Marina in Palmetto, FL instead of St Petersburg City marina---where we are still on a wait list anyway.  We will be fixing onboard projects for a month....plugged into the dock for air conditioning, thank god.  Around the first of July we will return to Taos for the next 4 months (or longer) to housesit for some friends leaving for Thailand.  We also will be looking for jobs......anyone got one?  

Stay tuned....as we continue looking for "what's next?"

Happy sails and trails!


Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Sailing Angels

"Sailing Angels"

Tim's latest video
Song written and sung by our good friend 
Shake Russell


TimReevesVideo on youtube.com



Wednesday, May 4, 2016

It's all about da love.....and rum

After 8 nights in the protected harbor of Hatchet Bay in Eleuthera, we busted out one fair day and made our way westbound 16 miles across to Current Cut.....a gap in the islands with a monstrous current....so get your ducks in a row and watch your p's and q's.  We did.....we made sure the tide/current AND wind were in sync flowing with us....we clocked our fastest speed yet at 11 knots (12.6mph)------yeah Fiesta!! woohoo!




Spanish Wells
We were on our way to the very northern island in the Eleuthera chain called Spanish Wells.  It's claim to fame is the largest fishing fleet in the Bahamas for lobsters----and many other fish varieties. It was a culture shock on several levels.  First was the clean and well kept appearance of the soft pastel colored houses.  Second, was that the citizens were all white Bahamians.....descendants of the British Loyalists that fled other parts of the Bahamas when a slave uprising drove them out in the mid 1800's.  It soon became all to obvious to us that there was a definite gene strain common to all.....not only was there a physical similarity with the family name of Pinder everywhere.....but there was this....accent....unlike anything I've ever heard.  I kept expecting a mid-west or Texas accent to come out of these common looking white folks.....but instead, it was truly indescribable.  A linguist would have a blast with this one.  One young waitress pronounced Bahamas.....as Bee-yamas....very cute if not quirky.

S/V Grateful (Dead)---farewell Jamie and Niki
But here's the best part of our stop in Spanish Wells.....the first night we had just crawled into the V-berth bed and I checked phone messages.  Lo and behold, an old childhood friend was anchored in the same harbor....about 150 yards out from us....and they were leaving early in the morning to catch up with us in the last harbor we had just left!!!!  Out of bed.....lower the dinghy down and reinstall the gas tank....start it up and off we went in the dark to a distant catamaran with a fading light shining from the cabin. It was a great reunion of Elenbaas and Wyly that our partying parents in the 1960's would have been proud of.

Tim, Leslie, Niki and Jamie Elenbaas--sailors passing in the night
We hung together for a couple of days exploring the island, reminiscing old times and catching up on the current news.  This was yet another amazing "large ocean....small world" story.  
Jamie and Niki will continue on through the Bahamas.....down to the eastern Caribbean....and eventually over to the Mediterranean....and onward.  

Sail safely my friends.....may the winds favor your wandering direction.



I tell ya......this whole trip has been about the journey.....not the destination. 


Dolphins off the bow
There's been some high hi's......and low lo's.....as with everything in life.  The lo side of this life is the farewells....it's hard to see a boat pull out of harbor.  It sets in a certain melancholy that says.....time to move on too.  And so we did. 













We took our departure from Spanish Wells....westbound to the beautiful Berry Islands.....and found serenity surrounded by turquoise blue for 7 days.
Berry Islands.....or is it Gilligan's Island?
The conch critter is still in there!  


Another secret deep blue hole--Hoffman's Cay

  


Great Harbor Cay--north Berry Islands









We spent 4 nights in Great Harbor Cay waiting for a weather window for a 76 mile passage (19 hours) over to the Bimini Islands.....but made a quick decision to leave one afternoon around 3pm and go all night with a full moon.  It was one of those difficult passages.....though the winds were a perfect 10-15kts, the rolling waves on our beam threw us around quite a bit....thank goodness for that full moon to keep us oriented.
 We arrived in Cat Cay anchorage at 10am.....wiped out.  
Final Bahamian Island.....Cat Cay---south of Bimini

Gulf Stream---pics can't capture those steep waves....
 This was our final stop in the Bahamas......time to go home for real.  We slept all day and spent an extra day and night resting and waiting for that picture perfect window to cross the BIG river.....the Gulf Stream.....back to Florida...70 nm.  It was Friday April 22 (oops...mariner taboo says never leave a harbor on Friday)....when we woke up, the winds were on the frisky side for a GS crossing....SE at 15-20kts....which means the waves will also be high......but we went for it....because the next few days were going to be calm.....and we're not into motoring for the next 60 miles.  With a reefed mainsail and full jib, we made 6-7kts for the first part of the day.  Winds were actually perfect, but the waves were exhilarating....with the taller ones hitting us on the broadside at about 10 feet. The weather experts predicted these waves to be 4-6ft....because they take the average height of the highest 1/3 of the waves--- individual waves may be more than twice this height.  Nonetheless, we were so happy to have an Island Packet yacht that day....we sailed her strong and she handled it beautifully.  To compensate for the strong GS current, we steered 25 degrees southwest-ward off our direct 240 degree bearing for 8 hours, until we finally felt the Gulf Stream push against us dropping our speed to 2-3kts....oh yeah, here she is.  So we had to fall off northward of our intended bearing to make any way.  There's nothing that says...."Gulf Stream River here!"  
Gulf Stream approx location

The edges move around east and west over the 2000ft deep trench.  You just know it when the compass and speed goes weird. 

Anyway, long after a beautiful sunset we pulled into Key Largo to the northside of Rodriquez Key and dropped the hook among a dozen sleeping boats at 11pm.....exhausted.  The downstairs salon area looked like a war zone......there was stuff everywhere.  Even when I thought everything had been tucked away or battened down, the mighty ocean showed me different.  The mighty ocean.....keeping sailors humble for centuries....and chasing that bottle of rum.  

This current blog is being reported to you from the warm and secure bosom of Boot Key Harbor in Marathon, Florida Keys....where we will hang for the next month....on a mooring ball.

Here we have run into several of our crazy neighbors from C-dock in our home marina of Regatta Point.....and more are enroute on there way here....it's gonna be fun to see them all again.  As of today, we are scheduled to return to Palmetto,FL (Regatta Point Marina) by June 1st.....and then decide where our future will be from there.....
       
Last note observations.....there are a few things we would like to include after our 4.5 months in the Bahamas.  First of all is the abundance of friendliness of the citizens.  Except for one tyrant in one harbor, the general majority of Bahamians are "all about da love".  It's customary to say "hello!"  to everyone you pass....it is so warm and friendly.
Also remarkable here is the security we felt while drifting around.  At no time did we feel ourselves or Fiesta or our dinghy in jeopardy. (though we did not visit Nassau, Freeport or Marsh Harbor where caution is prudent) 

Another note of interest was the availability of fresh veggies.  Most come from afar and always via the Mailboat, though that's typical anywhere in the world these days. We ate very well supplying our meals from the the little mom and pop stores all over the islands.  We actually both ate well, lost weight and gained muscle 
in this live-aboard transient lifestyle.

Lastly, because we don't favor the drama side of life, we went prepared and though there was a daily risk to everything we did, we stayed on the cautious side of that fulcrum.   With due diligence on engine and boat maintenance, we had only three minor repairs....and returned happy and satisfied with a journey of 1138 nautical miles 
(=1309 standard miles) All those miles and only $300 spent on diesel.
Well done....now let's have some rum!