Wayward Sun Sailing

First group of dolphins, these were two little ones from the group.

We ended up getting splashed earlier than expected on Monday and they were fine with not charging us for the unopened gallon of paint, we'll have to deal with Pettit for the other two when we get home. Had a nice sail down to Key West and got anchored around 2 or so and just hung out on board ready for our early departure home Tuesday morning.

Well the best laid plans seem to not always work out and Key West has a habit of getting me back for calling it Key Weird. This is the second time we were delayed leaving 2 hours on a long trip where we needed to leave early. Last time was when we were heading to Mexico as soon as we dropped the mooring line and started heading out of Garrison Bight a heavy fog set in leaving us no choice, but to anchor on the other side in the anchorage for a couple hours. The cruise ships come in early and no way was I hitting one of them in the fog. Even with radar we didn't want to take any chances so waited until the coast was clear and headed out only to find there was no fog at all in the Atlantic, weird!

Anyway, this time we started down through the anchorage and there was a cruise ship coming in so I slowed a bit and heard a strange noise. Last time I heard it was backing out of the slip a few years back and the raw water intake was clogged. So I looked over and just saw grey smoke coming out with very little water and yelled to the Capt'n. So he yells, shut it down, shut it down so I did and we were now drifting into the southern anchorage and very shallow water coming up. I'm yelling we gotta drop the hook and finally he agrees and we do so. Well we have forgotten to clean the raw water strainer the last couple times we were supposed to and it was pretty clogged so we thought great that was the problem. Up anchor again and start heading for the inlet and still doesn't sound completely right and not as much water as we think it should be. Temp is up to 160 where it never goes above 150 so again, we squeeze into the southernmost anchorage and drop the hook. So Capt'n says he's going to change the Impeller and while doing so the automatic bilge pump starts going off. I hand pump until it stops then it starts right up again. Capt'n says we have to have water coming in somewhere look around. Well knowing we just worked all the through hulls and sprayed them I'm worried something went wrong, but what. So I run around and check them all (which is not easy some are under the bed) and they are all dry. I take off the front cover to the engine and move the bilge pump hose around a bit and go back up and pump manually. This time it seems to be pumping water and the auto pump finally stops. Capt'n calls Caribbean Soul Bob to see if he has any ideas if it wasn't the impeller since the old one still looks good. Bob has a couple good ideas, as usual and we'll try them next if this didn't work. So fire up the engine and finally the exhaust water looks normal and no smoke this time. Now we are two hours behind schedule and not very happy, but we have some nice wind for sailing.

We were able to sail until around 5 PM doing over 6 knots until the wind finally died. We need to maintain a 6 knot average in order to make Palmetto in the daylight so 2 or 3 knots isn't going to do it. We fire up the engine and motor sail and start our shifts at 8 PM, mine being 1st of course. Winds had calmed way down and the seas were tiny just about 1 or 2' and I'm thinking wow it could be completely flat soon and nice for sleeping below at least for a bit. Capt'n takes over around 10 PM and I tell him the winds are supposed to pick up around 11 PM to about 18 knots gusting to 22. For once they were somewhat right, pick up they did, but by midnight they were 28 knots sustained gusting to 33 or 34 +. We were down to the main and stay sail and doing over 7+ knots surfing into the 8's, which was good for making up time, but not good since high winds create ugly seas offshore. I took over at midnight and think that was one of my worst shifts, no sooner did I get on deck and get clamped in and a huge wave broke in the cockpit completely soaking me. Luckily had a raincoat on, but still soaked for the most part. The seas were pretty big, hard to see in the dark, but they would roll WS over almost to her rails and she'd pop back up. Of course, the auto pilot's like no way am I steering through this, he'd steer for about 5 minutes at a time, enough to give you a little break and that's it. Capt'n came on at 2 am for his next shift and as soon as I got below I heard him yell OMG so I run up, here it's just another big wave knocking us over pretty far that he wasn't expecting. By 5 am the wind and seas started calming down and it wasn't too bad again. By 11 am there was virtually no wind again and calm seas as we made our way up past Venice and Englewood, with dolphins playing off the bow numerous times welcoming us home (at least I think so :) )

Finally got into the Manatee river about 3 pm and you guessed it, it's blowing out of the east directly where we are heading about 18 knots. The good part is the marina is protected from the east and if anything it'll just blow us back a bit coming in. We had left old aft lines on our two back slip pilings and since they didn't rent out our slip had hoped they would be there since the pilings are like 12' tall and almost impossible to get a line over the top coming in. I look and no such luck someone had taken them, so Capt'n suggests just wrapping the line around the piling on the bottom, basically hugging it to get it around while we are on our way in. I think he's crazy, but it works and soon we are completely tied up with no problems.

Oh, forgot the engine quit again off of Siesta Key and we had to switch to port again like the last time. We are now thinking we got some bad fuel and it's gunked up the filters again, luckily we hadn't run much on port so it was good enough to get us into the slip.

So that's it for a while, we are home and WS finally gets a nice well deserved rest in her slip.