Stuart to St Pete

Storms over Stuart

We ended up having a great few days in Stuart. One of the highlights was a visit from friends, Todd and Mai, whom we met several years ago on a dive trip in Indonesia. Over the years we’ve kept in touch on FB and have both moved from CA to FL. It was wonderful to reconnect!

Originally, we’d thought that we would stay in Stuart until Tuesday or Wednesday, letting Alberto clear through, the wind/seas calm down, and the lake come up – then we could decide whether we’d go through or around Florida to get home. But then we had a very serendipitous encounter and we found ourselves fleeing Stuart on very short notice!

Sunday evening Martin and I took advantage of 20 minutes of rainlessness to enjoy a brief happy hour on the flybridge. While up there, some folks came walking by and introduced themselves – they were from St Pete and one gentleman, Mark, is a friend of Jim’s as well. We got to talking and he told us that he’d just come through the lake and that there was plenty of water but that there’s a railroad bridge on the east side of Lake Okeechobee that’s going down for repairs. He was told that passage through would be challenging to impossible over the next couple of weeks. Whoa!! I’d read on the Waterway Guide that the Ortona Lock was undergoing repairs in a week or so and would be down but we still had plenty of time to get through before that. I’d heard nothing of the Indiantown RR bridge.

Monday morning we called the bridge and sure enough, we were told to “come through today or be prepared to wait hours to try to get through once work starts on Tuesday”. Yikes.  Martin and I aren’t the best at spontenaity, we like to have a plan and try to stick to it which, unfortunately, doesn’t work well with boating in general. But we managed to come to a decision and act quickly – it was helpful to have Jim with us too! We wanted a mid to rising tide while going up to the Stuart Lock and it happened to be high tide when we made the decision to go so we had to act fast if we wanted to catch a falling highish tide. We managed to return a rental car, check out of the marina and cast off within 45 minutes – we’re so proud!

The rest of day couldn’t have gone better! We made the first lock just as it’d released folks to the east side and passed right through -raising up 14.6 feet

Entering locks

Unhappy reptile in the lock!

Then we got to the infamous RR bridge and it was open so we passed through there. Indiantown Marina wasn’t responding to phone calls or the VHF so we figured we’d tie up to the dolphins at the Mayaca Lock. We got there around 3:00 and they were just locking a few boats through coming east. It was pretty blowy but we figured we could push on and make it to Roland & Mary Martin’s Marina before nightfall so decided to keep going through Lake Ochechobee. And the lake was dis.gust.ing. It was pretty windy and as NOAA said, it was “moderately choppy”. We had, quite literally, black water spraying up over the bow and all over the boat for a few hours. B needed a good rinsing when we got in. Amazingly, it didn’t rain one bit the entire day which we were happy for – we’d been worried that we could have gotten hit with a squall that day.

Looked like a big ol’ milkshake!

We arrived at Roland Martin’s around 6:30 and tied up to the dock. After attending to Blossom for a bit (nasty dirty) we cleaned up and enjoyed dinner at the restaurant there.

No, none of us had the gator for dinner 😊

This morning we awoke to welcomed, sunny blue skies, it was nice to have the break. We weren’t sure where we’d stop for the day, again, thinking we could pick River Forest, La Belle, Calusa Jack’s or Ft Myers depending on our speed, weather and dockage availability.

River Forest

We played a sort of “eye spy” game as we cruised along through Florida. Our tally was: 1 hawk (who flew very close by the boat and was gorgeous), several cows, herds of horses + a donkey, 1 bald eagle, several osprey, anhingas, 2 raccoons, 1 wild turkey, 2 turtles, 2 manatee, 1 live gator sunning, 1 live gator swimming, and 1, I kid you not, enormous headless gator body being eaten by half a dozen buzzards!!  It must have been killed by a propeller?  

Ft Myers

We made incredible time and found ourselves arriving into Ft Myers around 5:15pm. The municipal marina had space for us so we decided to stay there for a night or two. The marina is right next to downtown and we were well protected on the inside dock. We’d definitely stay there again. We weathered a rainy gray day and then woke up to blue skies and a calm wind on Thursday – a perfect day to go home!

West coast of Florida

Mellow trip w/ Martin on watch

The trip up the coast was largely uneventful. Seas were wonderfully calm and somehow we managed another transit day with no rain or storms. My first engine room check I did notice that we were low on hydraulic oil. A bit of searching and we found the starboard stabilizer cylinder was leaking. Martin locked the fin and we continued on – the seas were calm and we didn’t really notice we were down a stabilizer.

St Pete in the distance – almost home!

By the time we arrived in the bay it was dead calm and amazingly beautiful. The water looked like velvet. The best thing was that we were in and tied to the transient dock at 11:55pm so we made it back to St Pete in May – if only by 5 minutes 😊 

What a morning view!

The next morning we had our inspection (to get our permanent slip assignment. We gave B a thorough wash down and moved to her new home. Et voila!

Blossom at the fuel dock (thank you Diane for the photo!)

Blossom in her new home

The trip was a bit of a frustrating with the rainy, windy weather but it was great to be back aboard and to get Blossom back to Florida. We can’t thank Jim enough – he’s the best and we so appreciate his help getting us home!

And now it’s summer time… Blossom will spend part of the summer in St Pete and part in River Forest while we’re traveling (River Forest is our hurricane plan for the season). It’s only a 36 hour trip so we can bring her back and forth as weather permits.

Boat Business: A few leaky issues:

• The sump pump for the condensate on the AC compressors is leaking a little bit. Another task for St Pete.
• The fresh water faucet on the foredeck has a slight leak.
• The starboard stabilizer cylinder has sprung a leak. We lost a bit of oil on the trip up. We spoke with an ABT tech and he'll be coming Tuesday.

Charleston to Stuart, FL

We’re getting closer to home, one passage at a time, one storm at a time!

While we love Charleston, we'd spent a rainy week there and were itching to move on. I’d been glued to the weather and there were early warnings of a possible tropical disturbance developing in the Gulf later in the week. So we decided we should leave and get further south even if the conditions were a bit bumpy. And they were! We left Monday morning and pushed through beamy/head seas – conditions which make Blossom hobby horse. Conditions varied over the 52-hour passage as we crept along the coast with it calming down significantly the last 8 hours or so. No one got sick though and having 8 hours to rest between shifts was a God-send. I even managed to take a shower and only bruised one side of my body 😉

A Brown Boobie took a rest on our bow the first evening. He spent an hour grooming his feathers and I think he was planning on spending the night. Unfortunately, we turned a bit east and it got too bumpy for him to hold on.

Very pretty bird

When we left, we weren’t really sure where we’d be stopping, just that we wanted to make it to Cape Canaveral or further south.  We decided to stop in Stuart though we probably could have gone another half day to Ft Lauderdale. Part of the reason we stopped in Stuart is that we’re eyeing Lake Okeechobee. It’s possible to cut through the state through the lake if it’s high enough. That would cut our trip short by about 250 miles and we wouldn’t need to wait for the seas to calm down after the storm… It looks like we might have made the right decision – the lake has been coming up every day and central Florida is looking at getting 6-10 inches of rain over the long weekend. (Yikes!)

Sunset Bay Marina had a slip available for us which was great – I was worried it would be hard to get a slip over the holiday weekend. I think we got lucky as the marina is pretty darn full! It’s weird being back in Stuart – we lived here for 7 months back in 2014 while commissioning Blossom and haven’t been back since. We ended up arriving at dead low tide and were warned off passing through the crossroads area of the ICW. So we dropped anchor and waited for the tide to come in. After chatting with Sea Tow and a couple boats passing by we decided to drop Petal and do some sounding.

Martin and Jim checking depths

By now it was mid-tide rising and the guys saw plenty of water. We passed through with 1.5 under the keel at it’s shallowest. Boating in Florida is an exercise is navigating shallow water!

Going through the Roosevelt Bridge – just ahead of some wet weather!

We’ve never stayed at Sunset Bay though we’ve eaten at the restaurant there several times. It’s a pretty marina and it’s just a 5 minute walk into the cute downtown area from there. We pulled in to a dock filled with Nordhavns and Krogans and bumped into our water maker technician and later, the commissioning manager who commissioned Blossom.

As usual, we're enjoying one of our favorite aspects of cruising - the community! We passed by a Nordy on our way down here from the west coast of Florida and had a great chat on the radio. Then we met an awesome couple on another Nordy here at Sunset and found we had a number of cruising friends in common... It's such a small community of friendly, interesting people!

We’re happy to be here and able to ride out the weekend in comfort. The storm has in fact developed into a subtropical storm and is currently the first named storm of the season - Alberto. Hopefully it won’t strengthen beyond a Tropical Storm before it hits landfall on the northern Gulf coast. With crazy rainfall expected throughout Florida, we’re assuming the lake will be nice and deep by early next week when we hope to cross.

Boat Business:

• Our 9k gen died on the passage down. Martin found that a breaker had failed. The same thing happened in 2014 so we had a spare.
• Jim replaced the filters in the air handlers and sneezing seems to have lessoned on board. I’m still finding yellow dust in nooks and crannies…

Bahamas, Here We Come!

Our last few days in Key West were fantastic. We had a great time hanging out with Rick & Michelle. Michelle and I took the kayaks out one morning and explored the NW side of the island. Then we went for a jet ski ride in the afternoon. This time the weather was more settled so they took us all around the island. It was pretty bumpy on the south side and we returned completely soaked and thoroughly high on adrenaline. It was a blast!

Kayaking with Michelle

Michelle ready for speed on the jet ski

In the evening we barbequed some mutton snapper that Moose had caught the day before and generously given us. It was delicious. We hope to do some fishing this year in the Bahamas and as avid fisherfolks, Rick & Michelle had some great tips for us and even gave us a couple of primo lures! Now the pressure is on to land a mahi J

Ghost Rider heading home, we were so sad to see them leave!

On Thursday, Rick & Michelle left and Jim arrived. We’ve decided to use our first month in the Bahamas to push ourselves a bit. To help us achieve this, we’re bringing our training captain, Jim Mobley, back aboard for a while. We have several goals that we’d like to achieve while we have Jim with us. Primary among these is to get me more proficient in operating Blossom. We’re going to try to sneak into some very shallow places, give fishing a try and hope to finally get scuba diving off the dinghy as well.  Jim has done a lot of cruising in the Bahamas with boats smaller and larger than ours and we’re looking forward to learning and enjoying the islands with him.

We spent Thursday night planning our passage. Unfortunately, there’s a storm brewing northeast of the Bahamas so we’re aiming to get to Georgetown as quickly as we can. We hope to check in, get our sim card and then sit the winds out there. We’ll head out as soon as we can to visit some out islands once it’s calmed down. At least that’s what we think we’ll be doing at this point - cruising plans being written in sand at low tide and all… We’d like to explore new territory in April and then we’ll be back visiting some of our favorite places in the Exumas in May when our friends and family come visiting.

Today was a crazy day of provisioning for the next two months, picking up some last minute fishing paraphernalia and getting Blossom ready for a 54-hour passage.

I had just enough room to squeeze into the back seat!

Next time, we’ll be saying hi from turquoise water…

Boat Business:

• Leak in chilled water loop. It remains elusive. We may just fill it up every couple of days, we’re not sure where to go from here.
• Impellers. Martin changed the impellers on the 2 gen sets and the wing engine. It was a general maintenance task but was timely. The 9k gen impeller was starting to fall apart.
• Water makers. Both have been commissioned and are ready to get to work.
• Fishing gear. We’ve dug out our gear and we’re ready to go! John Hoffman helped us gear up when we commissioned and he steered us right, we have 2 great rods and several lures. We picked up a fish card because how do you even know what is edible if you catch it? Or if it’s the right size? Now we have everything we need, we just need to give it a go!
• Provisioning. We have enough food for two months with 3+ persons aboard. It’s amazing how much you can stuff, stow and hide on this boat. We’re using lockers/hidey holes we’ve never used before.

Key West - Part II

Key West – Part II

The second half of our stay in Key West has been fabulous, fun, and filled with friends and family.

My Mom arrived a few days after we returned from England. We had a list of activities that we wanted to explore and boy did we! Our friend Moose told us about the show, The Producers, which was playing in town. I was able to get tickets (the show sold out every night as I understand) and we had a great night out. The show was fantastic and we all agreed that we hadn’t laughed so hard in a very long time.  We enjoyed a pre-show dinner at our favorite Cuban restaurant which just happened to be next to the theatre.

Martin and his new hat at Meson Pepe

We thought it would be fun to tour the island from sea as well so we took a 90-minute jet ski tour with Fury. I laughed/screamed so much that I had a sore throat. It was a bit windy and we had an awesome and thrilling time.

Mom, ready to go

Mom, tearing up the bay

Martin, stretching out his legs

Whenever we’re in Key West, Mom and I like to visit the KeyWest Butterfly & Nature Conservatory. I got a few fun pics!

This is an Atlas Moth. It had a 7-8 inch wingspan. They only live for about a week so we were very fortunate to get to see it.

Atlas Moth

To keep it interesting and enjoy all that Key West has to offer, we took Mom to a drag show. Can you believe, she’d never been to one!  We met the girls before the show and took a couple of pictures.

Elle, Mom and a photo bombing Inga

Mom and Inga

Elle is very good at splits

It was hard to make reservations for a few activities because of spring break – lots of things were sold out. So I was especially happy that we were able to sign up for a trip to the Dry Tortugas. We spent a week there last January and thought it was amazing though it was cold and windy (we got weathered in, that’s why we were there so long). So we thought we take the “quick way” this time and fly out so Mom could experience it and we could get some snorkeling in.  The water was *very* cold but we did get in and do a bit of snorkeling. The flight was amazing – the views were beautiful and we saw dozens of turtles. It was a most amazing day!

Martin really enjoyed the plane ride and even got to sit in the cockpit on the way back

Martin & Mom ready to fly

Garden Key

Blossom in her slip at The Galleon Marina

We also enjoyed just walking around town people watching and taking in the sun and fun…

A local tree

Mom and a tasty mango drink

With so much going on, we didn't get much quilting done, however, we did manage to finally watch the final season of Downton Abbey and get a bit of hand applique done. 

Our second week back we were joined by my cousin Jeff and his family, Amy, Jake & Kelsey for a few days.

Jeff & Amy

We had a great time with them! We walked around Duval & Mallory Square, had an amazing breakfast at Blue Heaven, and toured El Galleon, a full size replica of a 16^th century Spanish Galleon. It was only here for a few days so we were really fortunate to get to see her.

Sailing into the sunset at Mallory Square

She’s Huge and stands taller than any ship in the bight

Cool pic of her lines and rigging

A fool, bored or completely crazy?

We enjoyed dinner out with serious head gear…

Kelsey

Jake being very serious

Amy

Who is that man?

Mom

Addition to the hat...

And of course we enjoyed hanging out on Blossom…

Kelsey

Jake & Martin

Jeff & Amy

We’ve also been having a wonderful time with our friends Rick and Michelle from Ghost Rider. They arrived this week too.

Ghost Rider coming in to the Bight

One evening we had a barbeque on Blossom with the whole gang and Rick & Michelle. Dinner for 9 in the cockpit and we all fit!

Now it’s Tuesday and all our family has headed back north. Rick and Michelle will be here for a few more days though and we’re looking forward to spending more time with them. We had a wonderful dinner last night aboard Ghost Rider (home made bolognese, omg it was fabulous).  This morning, Michelle and I decided to test out the new SUPs.  We checked out the Bight and even ventured out onto the other side of the breakwater!

We were surprised to see quite a bit of under water life around the inside of the breakwater. There were some gorgeous Queen Angel fish and a squid! I wonder if his air bladder wasn’t working because he stayed on the surface and didn’t dive down to get away.

We're rockin' it!

Michelle paddling and Martin on the bow

Squid

We've had a great time in Key West and we're looking forward to the next few days, continuing to enjoy the town. We'll also be provisioning and wrapping up any business that needs to be taken care of since we'll be out of the country for 2 months. The current plan is to head out on Saturday for the Bahamas, weather permitting. We'll be finalizing our route this Friday. I’ll get one last blog entry out before we leave with info about our Bahama trip.

Boat Business: We’ve been trying to wrap up our to-do list before we head out.

• Snaps. Martin finished adding snaps to our window mesh screens. We just put them on the corners. Those, along with the suction cups should work really well.
• Air filters: We changed out all the air handler filters and added an anti-mold tablet to air handler pans while at it.

Looks like Blossom is eating him alive!

• Anemometer. Our anemometer, or “windometer” as I refer it, has been changed out. The old one was giving us some very strange readings, either under reporting wind velocity or showing wild variations in gusting winds.
• Changed transmission oil on the main engine.
• Reorganized the lazarette.
• Tempered water loop. We’ve found that we have a leak in our AC system but haven’t been able to track it down yet.