Getting ready to set out again
28 October 2012 | Palm Harbor Marina, Pensacola Fl
John and Ann
No, that's not John up the mast
After a one year hiatus, Jascat is ready to set out cruising again. This time the goal is to move Jascat from Pensacola to southern Florida, preferably Ft Myers although anywhere south of Tampa will do. We have given ourselves until Nov 13th to complete the move. That's 2 weeks to make around 400 nautical miles, which should be a piece of cake even for a sailboat averaging 4 to 6 knots. But of course it all depends on weather.
Right now, we're sitting out a cold front that, if predictions come true, will go down in history as part of one of the great storms. This is the cold front that is going to meet hurricane Sandy somewhere on the East Coast. Other than dropping the temperature from the 80's to the 60's and causing the wind to blow 20 mph for a couple of days here in Pensacola, the front didn't have much effect on us. Hurricane Sandy won't either. It's now several hundred miles north of us.
We have been in Pensacola since last Wednesday finishing up big and little jobs getting the boat ready to go on a 3 week adventure. We have a rigger coming back tomorrow (Monday) to replace the LED navigational light at the top of the mast (see above). The one he put in Friday didn't last through the weekend. You should see that guy scramble up and down the mast-- most impressive, and he still had a hand or two to do some work.
Tomorrow we also have to figure out how to lift a new dinghy up onto the davits, as well as get it registered in Florida. The old dinghy suffered a structural failure sometime over the past two weeks. Pensacola had heavy rain while we were gone and it appears that the dinghy filled up with water (we forgot to remove the drain plug). While that shouldn't have been a problem, the transom broke loose which in turn caused one side of the seats to pull out. Bad Chinese glue apparently. We decided we couldn't trust the rest of the glue joints, so we got a new dinghy, and sold the "broken one" at a flea market (in a West Marine Parking Lot) on Saturday.