MAY 20 2017
SHARK RIVER TO MARCO ISLAND
Smokehouse Bay is a great place to spend a quiet night. It has plenty of room for about 10 boats and is well protected from wind and seas. The million dollar homes on the way in make us feel like we don’t belong, but for a night we are comfy.
It was a long day and not my favorite point of sail. The weather was fine but wind was a tailwind and is our least efficient point of sail. We wallowed for 10 hours with the diesel running at a low RPM to give us the boost we needed to keep up 5 knots. We tried altering course and shutting down the motor, but our speed dropped below 5 knots. If we go any slower on a trip this long we may arrive and have to maneuver after dark. Also my stomach told me not to extend the trip just to save 5 gallons of fuel.
We had a quiet evening and I hope a peaceful night. This morning we are suffering from post traumatic Shark River mosquito syndrome. We both woke up this morning at around 3am when our boat was shrouded in a cloud of mosquitos. If they would just shut up and not whine I might have slept until daylight. We had tried to close up the night before but there are a few leaks. Our screens are old and leaky, and most of the hatches that provide airflow on a hot night don’t have screens. An improvement we will have to fix in the future.
After swatting about 200 mosquitos that had taken residence on our white ceiling, we tucked rags in the cracks and turned on the generator and the A/C so we could finish the night’s sleep. When I went out to turn on the gas in the morning, the clouds of mosquitos attacked and I my arms and legs were covered before I could duck back into the boat. It reminded me of the north woods of Wisconsin with smaller mosquitos. Every inch of our deck and dinghy, and all of our see through hatches were covered with mosquitos lying in wait. (They do finally go to sleep). I think we chased mosquitos out of the boat today for about the first 20 or 30 miles of the trip.
May 21, 2017
ST JAMES CITY
We had a great sail. Forecasts are for sissies and the wind switched around nicely to a west wind giving us a pleasant beam reach for the last few hours of our sail. These last few days have been a challenge in sailing downwind, so it was nice to have nearly flat seas and a breeze you could use. Unfortunately there was not quite enough of it so we again helped by running the motor at a low RPM. It is such a small engine that it doesn’t use much fuel, but shortens up the trip by a few hours it is worth it. Our tank holds 90 gallons and it never goes below half.
Tonight we will celebrate our last day at sea with Phyllis and Charlie at the Waterfront Bar at St James City. This has been an amazing trip, full of ups and downs, but we are fortunate that we have been able to go to places that very few people are able to see.