Day Two--Key West Trip

We get up about 5:30am, and start preparing to leave. Nautical twilight dawn starts about an hour before actual sunrise so that we could start motoring out towards the bridge. I am down below when I feel a sudden veering to port by my intrepid helmsman.  So I sweetly pop my head out of the cabin and say WTF?  Evidently, my sightseeing skipper was looking everywhere except at the chartplotter and we about grounded on a shoal. It would have been fun considering we were revved up to 7kts.

It's gonna be a bright, bright, sunshiny day....

We get back through the Channel Five bridge (its amazing how 10 feet of clearance above the mast can look like 10 inches when going under a bridge).

We once again set the sails 50/50 since the winds were still hanging out around 20kts. We set off. I go down briefly to take a nap, once again marvelling that my newfound sea legs are letting me do that. And then get back up topside so that Tim can finalize where we will stay (not a lot of answers forthcoming on Thanksgiving day).  Soon he pops up all excited.  I think we'll make it to Key West today! So I start throwing in waypoints and calculating distances, we are once again averaging and awesome 7.5kts
We agree, and the fun begins, let's go.

As forecasted the frontal boundary finally dissipated, and the sea settled down to it's normal 1-2 ft chop. Best of all the sun finally comes out and we have beautiful blue green water, clear sky and tunes on the radio. Life cannot get any better than this.

Look at all that dandy equipment, and the 7.3 kts on the speed!

By afternoon, the winds died down to a respectable 10-12 kts so while Tim was taking a nap, I let all the sails out. Another small victory for me. The HemiD is still keeping her speed around 7 kts, and mother nature is being agreeable by giving us a wind shift from ESE to SE, which is very beneficial since we are at the point where the Keys veer towards the West.

It was a treat to see by sea all the landmarks that I have come to know over the years.  The 7 mile bridge is impressive, of course only going 7 kts, we had her company for a while.

Ghost ship passes the 7 mile bridge..

We didn't get a visit from any dolphin, but there were plenty of fish jumping from the water. And we saw a few Man O'Wars. For awhile a frigate bird played around the boat, I think he was playing with the lift coming off our sails.

We wound up having the perfect sail by the afternoon, it gave us time to play with all our new instruments more, especially the radar which we know jackshit about.  The AIS screwed with my head a couple of times while Tim had been napping. He said he was awake for awhile being entertained by my conversations with the instruments and singing.  Of course, the entire time we have to play the lobster pot slalom, which wasn't too bad, but the season has just started. I rolled quite a few off of the hull but didn't actually snag one.

We arrived at Stock Island at a little after 4pm, it was nice to not have to worry about depth and tides to enter this marina.

We pull into our slip and had a raucous welcome crew of our new boat neighbors for the month. With much drunken enthusiasm they help us get the boat tied off. (of which I discretely redid the next morning....)  They invited us to dinner, but I promised (and bought) stuff to make a Thanksgiving dinner and I was going to make it by golly.  I sent Tim off to get the rental car and some wine for me. Evidently, he wanted to make up for the Hamstermobile, because he came back with a Mustang convertible.

So we wound up with yummy mustard herb glazed turkey breast, macadamia nut stuffing (which Tim gave two thumbs up on), coconut sweet potatoes and cinnamon/ginger glazed carrots.  Not to shabby from a galley kitchen.

We ate and then the wall hit us hard and we crashed by 8pm.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a day.