Sailing to the Florida Keys X

December 9, 2011

Leaving Ft. Myers Beach
6:30 am
Destination:  Marco Island
Sailing time:  8 hours

Well, we got out in time…hurray!!  The day began just like all the others.  In the morning when we begin to sail the winds are great…the waves aren’t bad and sailing is easy!  When we leave, I am always at the helm while Keith is putting up the sails and trimming them as we go so that we are able to get the best speed without heeling the boat too much one way or the other.  So when we begin it’s not so bad.  Once the sails are set and Keith is satisfied with our speed he takes over at the helm and I can relax the death grip I usually keep on the wheel….LOL!  No wonder I’ve got “tennis elbow”…I am sure it’s from gripping the wheel so hard.  I do try to relax my grip but, for now I am not able to.  Especially when the seas get rough and the wind is blowing hard.  I hold on for dear life and also because I need to keep the boat from swinging around when the winds want to take it! 

So, like I said, it was a beautiful sail when we began our day.  As the day progressed and the hours passed, the winds began to pick up and it began to get cloudy.  The winds were so brisk that Keith had to reef the main sail….which is:  Reefing is a sailing maneuver intended to reduce the area of a sail on a sailboat, which can improve the sailboat’s stability and reduce the risk of capsizing, broaching, or damaging sails or hardware in strong winds.  The key is to do this BEFORE you are in strong winds…but out here in the Gulf…the winds will be really nice and they will come upon us all of a sudden.  So, when Keith is Reefing the mainsail while in strong winds it is, to me, the most scary thing while sailing!  It scares me…the winds are whipping all around us, the seas are rolling and pitching, and I am at the helm and have to turn the boat into the wind to take some of the pressure off the mainsail while Keith reefs it.  The sounds of the sail while we are trying to do this is so loud…they are flapping and slapping and it scares Maxi too!!  But, once this is done, the sailboat does sail a lot better!! 

After about 6 hours of sailing we are almost to Marco Island and are able to see it clearly on the horizon.  We are about 1.5 hours out when all of a sudden the skies open up and it begins to rain!!  Sailing on water….and water falling on us, *sigh*  Keith was at the helm and I quickly went below and took Maxi with me.  Maxi does NOT LIKE being below by himself so I had to stay with him.  When we are sailing he needs to be with both or one of us or else he gets very nervous and whiny.  Lucky for us, the rain did not last long!  But, we did have to go through several rain showers…it was like a curtain of rain.  We could see the curtain coming up…we’d go through the curtain of rain for a couple of minutes then it would be clear…then another curtain of rain, then clear.  So it wasn’t too bad…although for this, Keith is the one that was at the helm and I was below with Maxi…he might have thought it was really bad! LOL..  (I've no clue why the font color won't change on this paragraph...sorry!)

One of the things that I dislike most, is that after sailing for 8 hours we have arrived at our destination BUT, we have to go around markers.  Markers are out there to mark where the deep water is.  But many times it takes a lot longer to get into our final destination because we have to go around these markers.  Also, if we are sailing and the wind is right at the bow of the boat we have to “tack”.  Tacking or coming about is a sailing maneuver by which a sailing vessel (which is sailing approximately into the wind) turns its bow through the wind so that the direction from which the wind blows changes from one side to the other.  This maneuver takes FOREVERRRRR!!  LOL…I guess an hour of tacking isn’t that bad..it just feels bad after sailing for 8 hours!!

Right as we began going into Capri Pass the winds died off!  Yayyy…NOT!  Since the winds had died off we lowered the sails and turned the engine on and motored into the channel.  As we were motoring in we found out that there was a very strong out going tide.  This was not good since we had the engine on full throttle and still weren’t going faster then 2 knots.  The knot (pronounced not) is a unit of speed equal to one nautical mile (which is defined as 1.852 km) per hour, approximately 1.151 mph.  As you can see, that is not going fast at all and it puts extra pressure on the engine not to mention that it takes FOREVERRRR to get to where we are going!! 

Good thing is we made it just fine, a bit slow, but we made it!!  And we made it with enough day light to see where we would be anchoring for the night, barely! 

Time to relax, take a shower, make some dinner and go to bed!  Sailing is tiring, I would say that it is the same as traveling by land for about 8 hours then stopping for the night at a hotel to get some rest!

Good night…

El