We've been looking for the next good weather window for making the trip to the Florida Keys. As I mentioned in the previous blog entry, I've been enjoying our prolonged stay in Isla, but we really have been looking for the right opportunity to make the next trip. We are in the company of a number of boats looking for the right weather; some of those are people who also came up here from Belize the same time we did. None of us wish to repeat that experience. One boat already made the break, but encountered the same kinds of seas that we just had.
No Thank You!
We've made good use of our wait, not just enjoying the local cuisine, but also to get the headsail fixed. Another cruiser who spends the winter months here in Isla has set up a small workshop and can do sail repair. Although I do have a sewing machine on board which is designed to work on sails, I knew my machine would never make it through the multiple layers of Dacron at the foot of the sail. Bob acknowledged that the job was a lot harder than he had anticipated and cost him a lot of needles.
In the end there was a small amount of hand sewing needed - something no machine would make it through. We have a 'sailor's palm' on board so I was willing to give the final hand sewing a go. Spinnaker, being ever helpful, joined in the effort.
We got that fixed and raised. We then set to work on the staysail. While we were slogging our way up here with the staysail we noticed that the edge of the sail was really frayed. While Andrew was all set to blame the cats (sharpening their claws on the sail), I pointed out that the damage was too high for them to have done it. When we pulled the sail down to check it out we discovered that the thread has disintegrated in the UV. That was a relatively easy fix and was something my machine could do. In the past I've pictures of me sewing below with fabric everywhere and/or cats "helping" me. We didn't want to bring the whole sail down below so...
While that has kept me out of trouble, Andrew has spend about three days - yes whole days, trying to de-worm, de-virus, de-Trojan our computers. In places we haven't had computer access on the boat we've had to use Internet cafes. Oftentimes we carried our memory stick with us for documents and copies of stuff. Never Again! The memory sticks picked up junk and immediately loaded it in to the computers. We had security software loaded, but it clearly wasn't up to date or up to the task. It has been a bit of a nightmare, but it looks like we are finally winning. It really pisses me off that people write this malicious garbage - I just don't understand the mentality of these people, who are obviously very talented but choose to do malevolent things with that talent.
Any way, it looks like Sunday might be our chance to move on. Apparently we won't be making this trip alone - there are a lot of boats here who have also been waiting for a favorable forecast. We were hoping to stop off in the Dry Tortugas, but we may end up heading straight to Key West. While we both would like to see the Dry Tortugas, we'd only like to be there a couple of days. Looking at the weather forecasts, however, it looks like once we get there we could get stuck there for a while. If in doubt, we'll make straight for Key West and leave the Dry Tortugas for another time.
We'll keep you posted!