2/13/15
Marathon FL
Posted by Bill

I have realized a full recovery…yay!! Tricia is not feeling 100% but she is close, and we have been out and about again. We have been working on boat projects most of the week, changing oil in the generator, changing oil in the outboard engine (dinghy engine), sanding teak, polishing stainless steel. Yesterday we took our bikes and went to K-Mart and the grocery store. It still amazes me that it takes an entire afternoon just to go to the grocery store!

We stopped by Boot Key Harbor, which is the mooring field that is run by the City of Marathon. They maintain 226 mooring buoys that you can rent, have restrooms and workrooms to do projects. It is always full this time of year, and there is a waiting list of about 20 boats waiting to get a mooring. Here is a picture of the dinghy dock at Boot Key:

There are a lot of boats waiting for a weather window to jump to the Bahamas. Typically, you want light winds with no northerly component. Winds with a north component oppose the Gulf Stream and cause a nasty sea state that no one wants to transit. This year, there has not been very many weather windows in January or February. Winds that usually clock through the north in a day or two, have been sitting out of the north for four or five days at a time, abating only for a couple of days and then going back to north again. It has been a very rare pattern for this area. Those of you living up north can understand why this is so…the storms up there have been relentless. You not only need good weather for a crossing, but depending where you are landing in the Bahamas, you need a few days of good weather to get somewhere that has some protection from the north winds. All of this has caused a pretty good back up of boats from Fort Lauderdale to the keys, all waiting for a window. I am glad we did not plan on crossing until later as the weather has been pretty rough in the Bahamas so far this winter.

The north winds cause us to rock and roll at the dock, but other than that, the weather here is really nice. Most every day looks like this:

Locals have been bitching because the temps have only been in the 70s during the day and mid to high 60s at night this winter. I know we aren’t bitching! The people here at Harbour Cay Club area really nice and we have made some good friends. Everyone pitches in to help when ever anyone is needing it. The other day people pitched in to help Dr Frank go up the mast:

We met Tricia’s friend Shelly for lunch at Brudines and saw this sailboat being towed in for repair. It was dis-masted, the mast broken off at the spreaders:

That really makes for a bad day!