No Sail :(

Sometimes, you go with the flow, even if the flow is not in your favor but in hope of things getting better.

After a week of being a sick puppy, our planned sailing trip on Biscayne Bay over the first weekend of March was something to look forward to. Ever optimistic, the sailflow forecast was in the high range for us the entire weekend. Only Sunday looked like a go nowhere day, so we prepped JD for the trip down to Black Point Marina with planned start of the tow somewhere around Noon Friday March 2nd.

Anticipating a later than normal start reduced a lot of the self imposed stress that goes with getting the boat ready to trail. We take this stuff really seriously. All too often, we hear of boats that were in accidents because they were not secured to their trailer. We use 2" Ratcheted Tie Downs, one at the bow the other across the stern. JD is not going shift on our trailer!

It seems we also have a thing for 'Bags', Peggy is not a pack rat, no way! but we do have a lot of bags on the boat. 4 sail bags, 2 clothing bags, 3 bags of electronics, books, 'stuff', a Meds bag (about to be cloned), a bag for the canvas when not towing the boat. Then there is the food, two bags of non-perishables (crackers, wine, rice, tuna, G2, fruit cups, etc. etc. 3 bags of bottled water (in addition to the 40gallons we carry in the tanks). Bedding, Towels, Kitchen towels... the list goes on and on.

Ok, time to get this off my chest, I detest bags loafing around in the cabin. They are always in the way, get moved a dozen times a day, and of course, which bag is what in? A boat is really one of those places where everything has a place. It makes life on board so much easier, easier still if everyone knows where those places are!

Back to the weekend... Boat loaded, lunch break at home, last thing to do is unplug the electrical connection to the boat and pull her out to the street, close up the house, set the Tom Tom for our destination and head south!

Miami is a great place to launch your boat from if you live in SoFla, they have an annual state park parking permit, only costs us $85 a year and we leave JD's trailer there at least 20 nights each year, and the facilities are excellent. We renew in Februay/March each year with pleasure. And the staff at the Dockmaster's office are great, we take a slip at Black Point several times each year too. Of course, it is only a 30 minute transit to Biscayne Bay which is really one of the best sailing venues in South Florida.

So, Friday night, after renewing our permit, we launched JD, parked up the truck and trailer, and headed out the channel to watch the Sun go down as we motored over to Sand Key on the north end of Elliot Key on the east side of Biscayne Bay. It's about a 2 hour motor from the marina to the anchorage.

It was dark as we approached the anchorage, running lights on, and not many boats at anchor, so plenty of space to drop the hook. Cloudy darkness, could barely see the anchorage marker bouys until they were less than 30' away. Wind had picked up very little, looked like it was going to be a nice night, our new anchor rode has an additional 20' of chain, so I put out a total of about 100' of rode, our anchor is suited to the sandy bottom over there, most of the time.

After dinner, we set the anchor alarm on the handheld backup GPS and turned in... pooped! Slept like a log in a valley... till around midnight! Wind had picked up, anchor dragged, alarm went off. We have been here before, so no panic. A quick look around outside to confirm we were not heading towards anything that would complain or mark us. Then I pulled on the rode and felt the anchor just sliding across the bottom, dang! we were probably in a grassy area. A few minutes of pulling the rode in, then with the chain in hand, I set the 2nd anchor and felt them dig in as I gave the boat some slack to allow it to move downwind, then a few heavy tugs, barely able to hold the rode, and I was satisfied the anchor was holding. With two anchors out 20' apart, I reset the anchor alarm and headed back to the bunk. Sleep came quickly.

Dawn arrived with some fresh winds from the South. Adjusted the solar panel to gather the early morning Sun low on the horizon, 1.1amp, plenty to take the pressure off the batteries while running our new Dometic Freezer, held -1C easily. Breakfast of corned beef hash, eggs, tomatoes, toast and some piping hot coffee. Great start of the day.

Pegs was showing signs of the bug that I had last week :( and weather reports didn't look too great), so I suggested that we take the day off, loaf around, read some books, watch the other boaters screw up and just do not a lot. Peggy signed up for that excursion!

During the day we saw several larger power boats drop anchor and not a lot of rode. Now if you don't know the area, it's only about 10' deep in the middle of the Bay, the water just outside the anchorage is maybe 7', inside it goes down to as little as 4 feet. So you don't need a lot of rode. In 7' of water with 4' of bow height, a total of 11 feet, it's recommended to have 7:1 rode, ie. 77'. With only 4' of water and 4' to the bow, they should have a total rode of 44'. For us, we typically put down 80' of rode in 5' of water just to be safe. These power boats were probably putting about 20' out! Just not going to work! and it didn't most of the time. One large boat, draped with bikini babes was headed our way pretty quickly. A few shouts to the skipper and he finally figured out he was dragging. I bet he had one heck of a nice GPS on board, complete with anchor alarm! Duh! We watched them for over an hour as they tried and tried to get a grip on the bottom, finally they gave up and pulled anchor and turned towards Miami.

More later.