Weather

  

  With a major blizzard hitting New England and affecting our friends and family in that area I thought I'd write about weather. I've spent the last three seasons teasing (just a bit) about the weather we experience in Florida while those back home are freezing or buried in snow. You know, complaining about a cold front dropping the temperature from 85 to 75 in the day and 65 to 55 at night. See, we suffer, too.

     This is our third winter down here and each has been different from the others. There are, however, some general patterns. When a winter cold front hits Connecticut it very often trails all the way down the east coast and passes through Florida. When we're in the Keys it's the very bottom tip of the front that reaches us and has very little force. The wind shifts to the north (not the northwest like at home) and brings cooler temps (about 10 degrees lower) for about two days. Then the wind starts to clock around to the SE or SW and it warms up. In central Florida these fronts bring the temps down to the mid-40s at night. Our first season in Ft Pierce saw a week of mid-30s at night. That was no fun.

     People who want to cross the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas wait for a Norther (a cold front) to pass through and wait a little more for the wind to get at least to SE, preferably S or SW, and head across. A wind with any N in it is no fun when it is going against the north flowing Stream. Very No Fun!. Wind is called the direction it is coming from and current is called the direction it is going. A north current and a north wind oppose each other. Also not fun.

     This year was a little unusual because Highs were setting up off the Carolina coasts and staying there. That brings warmer air to New England (a SW breeze) but NE to E wind on our side of the rotation. This makes for rougher sea conditions and more moisture in the air. Not neccessarily rain in those clouds but damper. That's why we would 'complain' about the air feeling cold when the temp dropped to 75. Or 65 at night. Yep, suffering.

     Southern Florida mainly stays warm all winter while central Florida can get fairly cold at times. This year has been warmer than usual. Our first year was cooler that normal and last year was pretty average with stable pattern changes. It made it easy to get to the Bahamas. This year was doable but a little trickier. We were not going anyway.

     We may have problems as we head north. A couple of our passages are north in fairly open water and north winds make them very uncomfortable. The Nuese River, Pamlico Sound and Albermarle Sound can be very nasty in Northers. Of cousre the offshore passages of New Jersey have to wait for southerly breezes, too.

     So it's not all blue skies and warm temperatures for us. Only about three months of the winter.

Miami Beach

    
     We are in Miami Beach at a new (to us) anchorage. Just south of the Venesian Causeway near Belle Island. It's reasonably protected but it's in a high traffic area. This means are lots of rocking due to big wakes.

     We left Marathon last Wednesday and had a somewhat rough but fast sail to the Channel 5 passage under the Overseas Highway. We exited Boot Key Harbor via Sister's Creek for the first time. It's a shallow short cut to Hawk Channel, open ocean except for the well offshore reef. Then it was back to the ICW with a stop at Key Largo.

We then went to No Name Harbor again. This is a great (but small) anchorage in Baggs State Park on the south end of Key Biscayne, just inside Cape Florida. We spent three nights there but one of those nights was a Saturday, which meant crowding and multiple boats playing very loud 'music'. Each boat plays different 'music' but it's all the same type:Cuban. Loud Cuban.

While we were there we took Cleo on a couple of dinghy rides to look at some very expensive homes in the next harbor north. She's kinda getting use to the dinghy but hated when we were going fast on plane.

     It was less than two hours to Miami Beach from No Name (actually Key Biscayne is part of Miami) and we went there on Sunday to spend two nights. We went on a dinghy cruise up the Collins Canal to the waterway just east of Collins Ave. Very interesting. We also got our bikes ashore for a tour of Miami Beach. We went all the way out to the Government Cut inlet. I had never been this far south in the South Beach area. Carol has worked in the area and we both have been to USPS Conferences at the Fountainbleu a few decades ago.

     So a new anchorage has worked out pretty good. Could be better if there was a (enforced) speed limit. Oh well.

     Next extended stop is at Ft Pierce with en route stops in Ft Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.

     Up the road is a stop at Daytona to watch the Daytona 500 in person. First NASCAR race for us. Tickets for two races (for each of us) are costing us near $700. We could go cheaper but this is likely a one-time thing so we got just under 'top of the line' seats.

     Can't wait.

Marathon

     Back home in Marathon.

     What?

     We now consider Marathon one of our homes now that we no longer have any connection to a dirt dwelling. Mystic, Ft Pierce and perhaps Annapolis are other places that feel like home.

     Previous blogs have detailed how we got here this year: staying on land for quite a while for repairs and completing the sale of our former house, stopping in the Solomons and Great Bridge while Carol worked and then a pretty quick trip down to Florida. What was the strangest was being in freezing weather, then pretty cold weather and then going from Charleston to Ft Pierce in one passage and getting into very warm weather.

     It's beautiful now down here. A little warmer than is usual. A summer weather pattern for a while longer. Anyway, here are some photos from our passages to Marathon 2012.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!

 

 

 

In the Keys Again - Almost

     We are anchored in No Name Harbor, Baggs State Park, Key Biscayne, FL.

     Almost the Keys. They start at Key Largo as far as I am concerned but Key Biscayne is close enough even though it's Miami.

     Very nice protected harbor but a little popular...very crowded. We seem alright for now. Tomorrow we head to Tarpon Basin, Key Largo and the next day we should be in Marathon, our southernmost destination this year. We need to get there before the world ends on 21 December. Do I need to buy Christmas presents? Or wait?

     In Fort Pierce, with help from a consulting engineer and a consulting friend, Mike Guay, we completed rewiring of our AC electrical system and installed a new regulator on our generator. Seems to be working fine now but I've said that before. The rewiring should protect the regulator. May have done so already.

     We spent an extra night in Ft Lauderdale due to the forecast and had the chance to watch their boat parade. Too long. Too commercial. But very pretty. We didn't stay until the end. Old folks need their sleep. Some Floridiots came into our anchorage after the parade and made a heck of a racket trying to anchor while well lubricated with adult beverages. I use adult very loosely. 2100 to 2300 noise. Nice.

     Here is the photo of the submarine we encountered off of the St Mary's River. I assume they were going to our sub-base in there for work. This is obviously not in our navy.

     Next blog from Marathon!

A Real Offshore Passage

     We are now at Fort Pierce, FL visiting good friends, resupplying, doing maintenance and upgrades. We've had to find a new anchoring spot because of new islands being built in our usual spot off the City Marina of Ft Pierce. Building islands? Yep. Hey, it's Florida.

     How did we get here? Well, that's interesting.

     Our last stop had us in Charleston, SC and Ft Pierce was the next stop. That's right, no stops in between. In a (mostly) straight line, Ft Pierce is about 350 nautical miles from Charleston.

     We stayed an extra night in Charleston to allow the seas to die down a bit after the long term offshore storm we'd been dealing with and also to do a little tourist stuff. We love Charleston.

     Then we got underway. 0630. Still mostly dark, clear and cool. We leave the Ashley River, get into the main harbor and then exit by going around historic Fort Sumter. The main shipping channel is about 10nm long in order to get clear of the breakwaters and the shoals. This often a very lumpy trip and this year was no exception. Not as bad as last year but rough enough. About 3/4 down the length of the channel we can turn south. This put the seas (about 4') and the wind directly on our stern and this is not too uncomfortable for us. A straight line to Florida puts us about 50nm off the coast of Georgia and as the day went on conditions improved. Lower seas and wind. During the first day we had a very large pod of dolphins join us again and stay quite a while. Really stunning.

     Our first night at sea was pretty nice, too. Reasonably calm, not too cold. I keep referring to our first day or first night. Yep. Normally it's about 24 hours to the Florida border from Charleston or 30 hours to St Augustine but conditions were good and forecast to remain that way so we decided to keep going and spend a second night at sea and continue on to Ft Pierce inlet, the next Class A inlet available to us. Class A means 'safe' in nearly all conditions. St John's River Inlet and St Mary's River Inlet are both Class A but St Augustine Inlet is not.

     We passed by St Augustine and headed for Cape Canaveral. Things went well... until about 2300, about 10nm from the cape. It got much windier and choppier, right on the nose. Not the favorite conditions for a catamaran. Not conducive to sleeping either. We had about 8 hours of uncomfortable bouncing around. Not dangerous. Just not much fun. And very tiring.

     Our third day at sea was okay overall. Better later in the day than earlier and we were around Cape Canaveral. We arrived at Ft Pierce late in the day, checked our 'normal' anchorage and then moved to our current spot outside of Faber Cove across the ICW from downtown Ft Pierce. It's nice and protected but it's about a mile from a spot to tie up the dinghy. Not too bad a trade off.

     We got to sleep well for the first time in a few days, shower at our friends home and enjoy mostly upper 70 degree days. Hatches open at night, too. It's been way too long since the last time for that. We are looking forward to a month or two of similar days. We can only hope.

     So that's the story of of 350nm and 58 hour passage offshore. At times we were about 50nm offshore and at others just a mile or two. Carol got really into it and was willing to keep going. Maybe someday. Maybe not.

     Oh, did I mention our encounter at sea with a Chilean Navy submarine? No? Maybe next time ;>))

Myrtle Beach

     We're at a marina in the North Myrtle Beach area now. Why?

     Welllll, it's been an adventure getting here. And it's cold. Cold means not wanting to shower on the boat. Sooooo.... we're paying for a marina to have access to a hot shower, laundry and other amenities. We also had to get some paperwork notarized so a stop was in order.

     We had nice passagse from the Solomons. Pretty calm conditions. We stopped at Portsmouth, VA so Carol could get off the boat to go earn some $$$$ to keep us going. I spent 4 days at a free dock at Great Bridge, VA in the town of Chesapeake. Chesapeake is not on Chesapeake Bay so who knows why it's named that? It is a site of an important Revolutionary War battle so I was able to learn about that, get groceries and fuel and do laundry while there.

     Of course the weather took a turn for the worse while sitting. And it was worse for a while. A storm parked itself off the Carolinas and stayed. And stayed. And stayed. This made for very strong northerly winds and rough seas in the open water portions of our passages. Albemarle Sound wasn't too bad with following seas. Neither was the Alligator River. But it would not have been fun going north in those conditions. Then we had to deal with anchoring in 30+ knot winds as well as crossing the Pamlico, Bay and Neuse Rivers in atrocious conditions. Four or more foot seas, heavy rain, gusts to 40 are not our idea of fun. Yet we pressed on. Can't get to warmer weather if we're parked. And we do need warmer weather. It's been in the low to mid 40s at night, low to mid 50s in the day. With the strong winds it felt much worse.

     Now we're getting highs in the mid 60s so things are looking up. We are only a couple of days from Charleston and from there we hope the seas have layed down enough that we can make a 30 hour passage to Florida offshore.

     We can only hope.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

Afloat Finally!

   
 We are back floating in the water and we don't seem to be sinking. This is always good. The repair job is done and it was an excellent, quality job if a little on the expensive side. $19,000.

     Okay, maybe more than a little on the expensive side. Our previous boat only cost a five thousand dollars more. For that we got an entire boat. Oh, by the way, you can make an offer on that boat.

     Here is what all that money looks like. The before photos are in my previous post.

     And here we have the guys who did the work.

     Now that this ordeal is over we are heading down the Bay towards Solomons Islands where we'll stop while Carol goes off to work. I don't know when we'll ever get to the Keys and it sure is damn cold up here. Yuck!