As you already know (thanks Nikki for updating everyone for me), I had a little incident yesterday and trashed the data modem that enables access to the Internet. I am lucky that is all that happened since it was attached to the laptop. There were a couple of squalls I could not avoid yesterday. The first was pretty mild, where the winds picked up to about 20 kts. The second was larger and I could see the water showing signs of a stiff wind in front. I was literally in the middle of the process of reefing the main sail (bring it down some to reduce the area exposed to the wind) when it caught up to me. The boat heeled over hard about 30 degrees and pretty much everything not stowed well or tied down on the starboard side in the salon went to port, and that included the laptop. A pretty exciting 3 or 4 minutes until I was able to ease the canvas. It did not take long to ease the sails and get everything settled down, but the boat was a mess down below. Good lesson learned: ALWAYS have everything stowed securely before you set sail, no matter what the weather looks like when you leave. I know better, but apparently I need to have these things drilled into my head several times before I finally do what I know I should do. Anyway, that was effectively about a 4' drop for the laptop, which seems to be indestructible, but not so the modem. This is the second one I have trashed. It arrived in the mail this afternoon at the marina I am staying at and I am back online.

This place may sound and look familiar to you and it should. Nikki and I stayed here (and Jenni and Matt caught with us here) on the way south. At that time, all of the moorings were full with people waiting out the nasty weather and preparing to sprint across the gulf stream to the Bahamas. So we stayed on the hook and that is pretty much the same as what I am doing now except I am on a mooring and you don't need to worry about dragging anchor in a big blow as well as you get things like laundry, showers, dinghy landing privileges, picnic area, etc. It is a good value, but I have to tell you it feels a bit like camping out at Lewis and Clark Lake in Yankton. A bit too crowded for my taste, but it will serve a need for now until I head back out.

As it turns out, I could have headed out today and made some more progress. But even if I had, I would be sitting in a less convenient and poorly protected anchorage at Islamorada for 2 to 3 more days. Been there, done that ... So I hung in here and am hoping the east winds shift so I can hoist the sails and make some time heading east and eventually north.