Well we arrived in Key West yesterday after a straight shot from Marco Island.

The Passage

The wave were forecast at 1 to 3 feet and they were about 3 foot with an occasional 6 footer thrown in. No matter because it was a following sea with following winds overall very comfortable.

We broke one of our whisker poles but with precision teamwork Debbie, Dad and I got off of the sail and tied to the deck without incident. I was proud of the way everybody worked together with a killer sized pole being whipped around by the sail The repair will only take four rivets. We can do it ourselves.

Of course being the new sailors we are there had to be some incident that occured and it was a bit funny. I went below to sleep shortly after dark with my father on the first watch. I slept about an hour and woke up with the boat flopping from left to right and it was horribly uncomfortable. The weather had turned bad it seemed.

I went up on deck and found nothing amiss but offered to let dad go to bed.

I saw that we were only making about 1 and a half knots on the GPS and thought that the wind had died but the fix put us right on our rhum line.(A navigation term for a line from point a to point b). The wind must have died? At least that means these horrible waves should be dieing down and we wanted to wait for daylight to make our landfall any way.

Everybody was complaining about the horrible ride we were having but went to bed.

A couple of hours later I saw another boat coming our way and wanted to make certain that he saw me and knew I was a sailboat so I flashed a light up on Paradox's beautiful sails. That was when I saw that we were heaved to. (A sailing term that describes a way of setting sails that make the boat stop and sit at an angle to the wind.

I straightened out the sails and immediately the uncomfortable ride ended. We were again surfing down the waves silently and comfortably.

Next problem. I started seeing buoys where I did not expect them. Plus they looked like they were red and 2 in a row like a channel, and I did not have an island on the map. I was afraid that I did not know where I was at. It could be a single buoy on my chart but it should be 9 miles away and yellow. I did not think I should be seeing it yet. These looked closer than 9 miles.

In that situation the only known safe water is back the way you came and I came about and went back that way to wait for daylight that came about and hour later just 10 minutes after it disappeared over the horizon.

In the daylight I only saw one buoy and it was on a huge tower explaining why I could see from 9 miles away. Oh well I and my passengers are safe. I would do it again just that way.

Landfall.

As we came around the western tip of Key West we started seeing monster power boats everywhere kicking up rooster tails 10 times as long as the boats. As we got closer we figured out that we had stumbled onto the world power boat racing championships. Moreover, the channel was closed and we were going to be forced to watch them before we could get to our marina. So much fun!

After the races we passed into the Atlantic for the first time. It is a whole different world for us after West Florida. Suddenly we have enough water everywhere for us. Well at least until the Bahamas.

We pressed on to Boca Chica marina. It has a well marked 18 foot deep channel nice! The marina has 18 feet of water, a tiki bar, grills, and a private sand beach. We were tired but had to try out the bar after a quick lunch. 2.00 beers and 2.50 well drinks. We opted for the well drinks and had enough by 4:00pm. I went to pay my tab and the bar tender said well if you wait 4 minutes it will be happy hour? I do not remember how much we drank after that, but when I woke this morning at 8:30 I was told that I went to bed at 6:30pm. Well I did only have 1 hour's sleep the night before people.

Tomorrow I will tell you about our night on Duval street tonite.