Saturday 11 April 2009
As Key West and our connectivity fade over the horizon astern of us, I am turning to Word as a repository for the Chronicles of Calypso. I’ll copy all this into the blog when we get back to “civilization.”
We have just exited Northwest Channel, which leads, you guessed it, NW out of KW. We experienced little winds and a foot or so of wave and swell as we ran down the south coast of Key West. If it had been a flat calm, we would have gone the shorter route to the Dry Tortugas south of the shoals separating the Atlantic from Florida Bay.
For now, we are in very calm waters headed west. By 1100 we are alone on an aqua-marine sea about 30 feet deep. We can see none of the very flat parts of the Marquesas Keys 7 miles SW. We dodge the occasional lobster or crab pot buoy as the only sign of civilization. Weather is mostly cloudy and hazy with a light breeze from the south. Temperature in the cabin is 75, and we have the windows and doors open for perfect comfort.
We just crossed an area designated as a danger zone. Surface navigation is unrestricted, but no anchoring or other bottom activity is allowed due to bottom mines! Hmmmmm.
1520 and we have both had a nap; me on the settee; Mary leaning over on me on the pilot bench. Saw a fast catamaran loaded up with tourists heading for Key West via the southern route. We are in the strait between the end of the shoals and the Dry Tortugas with light winds and 1- to 2-foot seas off the port bow – no spray on deck this trip. Should begin to see some of top of Fort Jefferson in the next hour or so.
1635 – fort ho! A long low blocky shape has appeared through the haze at 3 miles. Pretty crummy visibility, if you ask me. Anyway, the electronics didn’t lie; there is something out here.
There is a sailboat about 2 miles ahead us us apparently headed into the park. We should catch up before too long.
We moored alongside the Fort Jefferson visitor pier (2-hour maximum) at 1715 and immediately went to the credit card satellite telephone there and tried to make a call to brother Jim to cancel our float plan. After over a half hour of conversation with the sat phone technical support people, it became obvious that the credit method was not going to work, and they finally agreed to connect us on an emergency basis. Anyway, we were able to let people know where we are.
By 1835, we were anchored with our old-fashioned fisherman anchor and wandering about amongst the half dozen or so vessels already inhabiting the limited area. From our vantage point, we were able to see a spectacular sunset behind the Loggerhead Key lighthouse.
The fort is closed at sunset, but the lights on the pier were on for a couple of hours afterward while some park employees and contract New England brick masons gathered to fish and chat. Later, the looming bulk of the fort was blacked out but for a lone light seen through one of the second story embrasures.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
We went to sleep with a light wind out of the east and some rolling, but during the night I woke up to find the water surface glassy calm. Today has seen a pretty steady east wind and moderate rolling. Our Magma flopper stopper could probably use a twin on the other side, but as it is, I am sure it is helping reduce the rolling.
We got the dinghy launched and went to the dinghy beach before the tourist catamaran ferries from Key West arrived at 1030. We “spectated” while they moored to the pier and disembarked their crowd and then joined the guided tour of the fort given by the tour guide brought along by the ferry line. After the tour, we returned to the boat for lunch and then went back ashore shortly before the ferries left.
We found out that Fort Jefferson is the biggest masonry structure in the world after the Great Wall of China. Abandoned in the late 1800s as obsolete. It suffered hurricane damage and neglect as well as damage from it own iron embrasure covers, which swelled under the brick as they corroded causing the brick exterior to be spalled off into the moat. That damage is now being addressed in part.
We accosted the much-vaunted National Park Service historian (a double masters degree in fortification design and architecture) and talked him into a tour for the boaters beginning tomorrow at 0900. He says that will give us time for a good session before the ferry boats arrive – it being a bit awkward for him to be giving tours at the same time the ferry boat guides are taking their charges around.
In the afternoon hours, we walked around the entire moat wall and then into the fort to look at areas we’d missed earlier. Then we informed the other boats in the anchorage of the special tour tomorrow as we made our way back home.
As we are expecting a bit more wind tomorrow and into Tuesday, I felt it wise to add out 40-pound CQR anchor and 120 feet of chain to the old fisherman anchor we put down yesterday, which has 20 feet of chain and 120 feet of 5/8-inch twisted anchor rode out. They are about 60 degrees apart off the bow to the east and southeast. I will sleep better now.
Surprisingly, I am getting clear broadcasts from the marine VHF weather channels. Mary even has a good FM music station on the entertainment radio system. Unfortunately, the weather forecasts are not as mild as what I was getting from the computer websites before we left Key West. The best time to leave here this week still looks to be Tuesday night, but we will have 10-15 knots of wind astern with probably 2-4 foot seas – NOT the seas state I would like, but better than being from off a beam or the bow.
We heard the good news that the captain of a high jacked US freighter off Somalia was rescued after Navy SEALs shot and killed three of the pirates. Through a complex series of events, the captain had ended up as a hostage of the pirates in one of his ship’s lifeboats while his ship steamed off to its destination after USS Bainbridge showed up on the scene. It was from the Bainbridge that the SEAL snipers snuffed out the pirates. Thank goodness AMERICA responded in an appropriate manner. Hopefully, we’ll see a lot more dead and captured pirates in the future. I was yelling in approval and sounding the ship’s whistle. Hoo-rah!
As dusk settled in well, I was out on deck and happened to look down into the water to see a LARGER brown shape approaching the boat. I was initially in mind of calling it a nurse shark due to the general shape, but after it settled into a position just under the swim platform, it became evident we had been adopted by a 6-foot long grouper. It hung out with us for an hour or so before we noticed it gone.
Monday 13 April 2009
Winds were brisk in the 15 MPH range this morning making launching the dinghy a bit interesting, but we had an appointment with Chris Zeigler, the fort historian for a special tour for the boaters. We both ended up a bit wet as we made our landing on the course sand dinghy beach where the surf wanted to fill up the dinghy from astern – we had to hurry to drag the dink up on the sand.
Mary and I had listed a bunch of questions we wanted him to answer, and I posed them to him at appropriate times in his tour. It was a real treat to get the expert to our small group of boaters. It was especially interesting to hear him talk about how his small apartment in one of the lower level gun casemates leaks during the infrequent rains much as described in the letters home from soldiers 150 years ago. He says the cement securing the brickwork also tends to drop small bits of grit into his cereal bowl; so he keeps his food and electronics covered all the time. Rangers do a 10-day “on” hitch followed by a 4-day off stretch in Key West.
Mary got into the small souvenir shop before we went back to the boat to ride out whatever the weather decided to throw at us. As we were finishing up placing the dinghy in its cradle, I heard a startled expression from Mary who had gone around to the starboard side. I was surprised to see a full-sized brown pelican standing on deck staring us down. It didn’t seem too concerned, but after the visit was appropriately documented via photographic evidence, the thing was coaxed onto the cap rail for a clumsy, but effective take-off (after depositing a small gift, which was promptly washed over board).
Our afternoon entertainment has evolved to time spent with binoculars in hand watching the new arrivals seek safe holding ground in the limited anchorage area. We now have 20 boats here, and at least one of them in uncomfortably close to Calypso. Our two anchors out off the bow will make for an interesting recovery tomorrow as we must veer closer to boats on either side of us to get over the top of the anchors to break them out of the bottom. Oh, well, that’s for tomorrow. For now the winds are down to about 12 MPH, and we can see some moderation of the rolling we have been putting up with – I hope that continues.
So here I am in the middle of nowhere cooking a couple of hamburgers as the sun sets when this guys approaches us from astern in his dinghy clearly intent on direct communication. “Hey, it’s me, Tommy Poppell,” he says. It was none other than our past commodore of the Panama City Coastal Cruisers on his way to Mexico. I told him about the couple in the sailboat off our starboard bow who had just come in from Honduras. This place is a real crossroads.
Tommy stayed for just a few minutes at the swim step, too tired to climb aboard, and relayed his tale of woe about a 24-hour trip into the wind in 12-foot seas from Fort Myers in his sailboat. Goodness, that’s like having to walk uphill both ways to school as a kid, through the snow. He said he’d had to use 12 gallons of his precious 42 gallons of diesel and was considering going to Key West to refuel. I offered him all he could take, but for now he has demurred. We’ll talk some tomorrow.
Later on, we had disappointing weather forecasts from the several NOAA weather stations (Naples, Tampa, and Key West) that I can hear. There is a strong front moving through central Florida cutting off our route to the mainland. Seas are not predicted to really settle down between the wind shifts associated with fronts, and even if they were to do so, predicting just the right hour to depart in the face of impending bad weather is akin to playing Russian roulette with you life.
Tuesday 14 April 2009
We awoke to find the winds shifted to the south, as predicted. A weather forecast from Key West, which said the winds will die off to a tolerable 10 knots later today and tomorrow, will give us a chance to leave early in the day tomorrow, after the riotous seas we can see on the far side of the reef have died down a bit. Once across the first twenty miles of relatively open waters we would be behind the protection of the shoals, where seas are predicted to be 1-2 feet all the way to Key West.
If we leave early enough in the day tomorrow, we can get phone contact with the staff at Boca Chica in order to arrange a berth before they quit for the day. Otherwise, we’ll have to settle for anchoring off Key West or paying the ruinous dockage rates there.
The more I listened to the NOAA broadcasts on the marine VHF radio, the more it became apparent that a predicted wind shift from SE to NW will be associated with the ferocious front currently south of Tampa (and apparently headed our way). I went over to Tommy Poppell’s boat to view his Sirius weather system on his laptop after dropping Mary off at the pier for some last minute shopping in the fort bookstore. His graphic depiction showed a very angry-looking weather front already at Fort Myers. Leaving for Naples on our original schedule would have been sheer folly, if not worse.
I became uncomfortable with even remaining in the Dry Tortugas overnight for a run back to Boca Chica.
In return for a call to Boca Chica to reserve a slip for tonight (and one for Island Chariot, a sailboat coming back later) on Tommy’s satellite phone, I repaired a bent stainless steel shackle using my vice and hammer and drilled a safety wire hole in the pin for him (being the good guy I am, I didn’t charge him for the broken drill bit).
Then it was hightail it to the pier and get Mary aboard and in gear for immediate departure. After hurriedly retrieving the dinghy and both anchors, we got underway at 1220 for an after-dark return to Boca Chica. With 4-6 foot seas just outside the reef, we had precious little time to prepare any lunch before it got too rough to be opening the refrigerator door and dealing with food and drink.
For about three and a half hours we were getting a pretty rough ride until we got behind the shoals where we were protected against the south winds and swell all the rest of the way to Key West.
We are passing through Key West as I write this, and we will arrive Boca Chica at 2200.
As Key West and our connectivity fade over the horizon astern of us, I am turning to Word as a repository for the Chronicles of Calypso. I’ll copy all this into the blog when we get back to “civilization.”
We have just exited Northwest Channel, which leads, you guessed it, NW out of KW. We experienced little winds and a foot or so of wave and swell as we ran down the south coast of Key West. If it had been a flat calm, we would have gone the shorter route to the Dry Tortugas south of the shoals separating the Atlantic from Florida Bay.
For now, we are in very calm waters headed west. By 1100 we are alone on an aqua-marine sea about 30 feet deep. We can see none of the very flat parts of the Marquesas Keys 7 miles SW. We dodge the occasional lobster or crab pot buoy as the only sign of civilization. Weather is mostly cloudy and hazy with a light breeze from the south. Temperature in the cabin is 75, and we have the windows and doors open for perfect comfort.
We just crossed an area designated as a danger zone. Surface navigation is unrestricted, but no anchoring or other bottom activity is allowed due to bottom mines! Hmmmmm.
1520 and we have both had a nap; me on the settee; Mary leaning over on me on the pilot bench. Saw a fast catamaran loaded up with tourists heading for Key West via the southern route. We are in the strait between the end of the shoals and the Dry Tortugas with light winds and 1- to 2-foot seas off the port bow – no spray on deck this trip. Should begin to see some of top of Fort Jefferson in the next hour or so.
1635 – fort ho! A long low blocky shape has appeared through the haze at 3 miles. Pretty crummy visibility, if you ask me. Anyway, the electronics didn’t lie; there is something out here.
There is a sailboat about 2 miles ahead us us apparently headed into the park. We should catch up before too long.
We moored alongside the Fort Jefferson visitor pier (2-hour maximum) at 1715 and immediately went to the credit card satellite telephone there and tried to make a call to brother Jim to cancel our float plan. After over a half hour of conversation with the sat phone technical support people, it became obvious that the credit method was not going to work, and they finally agreed to connect us on an emergency basis. Anyway, we were able to let people know where we are.
By 1835, we were anchored with our old-fashioned fisherman anchor and wandering about amongst the half dozen or so vessels already inhabiting the limited area. From our vantage point, we were able to see a spectacular sunset behind the Loggerhead Key lighthouse.
The fort is closed at sunset, but the lights on the pier were on for a couple of hours afterward while some park employees and contract New England brick masons gathered to fish and chat. Later, the looming bulk of the fort was blacked out but for a lone light seen through one of the second story embrasures.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
We went to sleep with a light wind out of the east and some rolling, but during the night I woke up to find the water surface glassy calm. Today has seen a pretty steady east wind and moderate rolling. Our Magma flopper stopper could probably use a twin on the other side, but as it is, I am sure it is helping reduce the rolling.
We got the dinghy launched and went to the dinghy beach before the tourist catamaran ferries from Key West arrived at 1030. We “spectated” while they moored to the pier and disembarked their crowd and then joined the guided tour of the fort given by the tour guide brought along by the ferry line. After the tour, we returned to the boat for lunch and then went back ashore shortly before the ferries left.
We found out that Fort Jefferson is the biggest masonry structure in the world after the Great Wall of China. Abandoned in the late 1800s as obsolete. It suffered hurricane damage and neglect as well as damage from it own iron embrasure covers, which swelled under the brick as they corroded causing the brick exterior to be spalled off into the moat. That damage is now being addressed in part.
We accosted the much-vaunted National Park Service historian (a double masters degree in fortification design and architecture) and talked him into a tour for the boaters beginning tomorrow at 0900. He says that will give us time for a good session before the ferry boats arrive – it being a bit awkward for him to be giving tours at the same time the ferry boat guides are taking their charges around.
In the afternoon hours, we walked around the entire moat wall and then into the fort to look at areas we’d missed earlier. Then we informed the other boats in the anchorage of the special tour tomorrow as we made our way back home.
As we are expecting a bit more wind tomorrow and into Tuesday, I felt it wise to add out 40-pound CQR anchor and 120 feet of chain to the old fisherman anchor we put down yesterday, which has 20 feet of chain and 120 feet of 5/8-inch twisted anchor rode out. They are about 60 degrees apart off the bow to the east and southeast. I will sleep better now.
Surprisingly, I am getting clear broadcasts from the marine VHF weather channels. Mary even has a good FM music station on the entertainment radio system. Unfortunately, the weather forecasts are not as mild as what I was getting from the computer websites before we left Key West. The best time to leave here this week still looks to be Tuesday night, but we will have 10-15 knots of wind astern with probably 2-4 foot seas – NOT the seas state I would like, but better than being from off a beam or the bow.
We heard the good news that the captain of a high jacked US freighter off Somalia was rescued after Navy SEALs shot and killed three of the pirates. Through a complex series of events, the captain had ended up as a hostage of the pirates in one of his ship’s lifeboats while his ship steamed off to its destination after USS Bainbridge showed up on the scene. It was from the Bainbridge that the SEAL snipers snuffed out the pirates. Thank goodness AMERICA responded in an appropriate manner. Hopefully, we’ll see a lot more dead and captured pirates in the future. I was yelling in approval and sounding the ship’s whistle. Hoo-rah!
As dusk settled in well, I was out on deck and happened to look down into the water to see a LARGER brown shape approaching the boat. I was initially in mind of calling it a nurse shark due to the general shape, but after it settled into a position just under the swim platform, it became evident we had been adopted by a 6-foot long grouper. It hung out with us for an hour or so before we noticed it gone.
Monday 13 April 2009
Winds were brisk in the 15 MPH range this morning making launching the dinghy a bit interesting, but we had an appointment with Chris Zeigler, the fort historian for a special tour for the boaters. We both ended up a bit wet as we made our landing on the course sand dinghy beach where the surf wanted to fill up the dinghy from astern – we had to hurry to drag the dink up on the sand.
Mary and I had listed a bunch of questions we wanted him to answer, and I posed them to him at appropriate times in his tour. It was a real treat to get the expert to our small group of boaters. It was especially interesting to hear him talk about how his small apartment in one of the lower level gun casemates leaks during the infrequent rains much as described in the letters home from soldiers 150 years ago. He says the cement securing the brickwork also tends to drop small bits of grit into his cereal bowl; so he keeps his food and electronics covered all the time. Rangers do a 10-day “on” hitch followed by a 4-day off stretch in Key West.
Mary got into the small souvenir shop before we went back to the boat to ride out whatever the weather decided to throw at us. As we were finishing up placing the dinghy in its cradle, I heard a startled expression from Mary who had gone around to the starboard side. I was surprised to see a full-sized brown pelican standing on deck staring us down. It didn’t seem too concerned, but after the visit was appropriately documented via photographic evidence, the thing was coaxed onto the cap rail for a clumsy, but effective take-off (after depositing a small gift, which was promptly washed over board).
Our afternoon entertainment has evolved to time spent with binoculars in hand watching the new arrivals seek safe holding ground in the limited anchorage area. We now have 20 boats here, and at least one of them in uncomfortably close to Calypso. Our two anchors out off the bow will make for an interesting recovery tomorrow as we must veer closer to boats on either side of us to get over the top of the anchors to break them out of the bottom. Oh, well, that’s for tomorrow. For now the winds are down to about 12 MPH, and we can see some moderation of the rolling we have been putting up with – I hope that continues.
So here I am in the middle of nowhere cooking a couple of hamburgers as the sun sets when this guys approaches us from astern in his dinghy clearly intent on direct communication. “Hey, it’s me, Tommy Poppell,” he says. It was none other than our past commodore of the Panama City Coastal Cruisers on his way to Mexico. I told him about the couple in the sailboat off our starboard bow who had just come in from Honduras. This place is a real crossroads.
Tommy stayed for just a few minutes at the swim step, too tired to climb aboard, and relayed his tale of woe about a 24-hour trip into the wind in 12-foot seas from Fort Myers in his sailboat. Goodness, that’s like having to walk uphill both ways to school as a kid, through the snow. He said he’d had to use 12 gallons of his precious 42 gallons of diesel and was considering going to Key West to refuel. I offered him all he could take, but for now he has demurred. We’ll talk some tomorrow.
Later on, we had disappointing weather forecasts from the several NOAA weather stations (Naples, Tampa, and Key West) that I can hear. There is a strong front moving through central Florida cutting off our route to the mainland. Seas are not predicted to really settle down between the wind shifts associated with fronts, and even if they were to do so, predicting just the right hour to depart in the face of impending bad weather is akin to playing Russian roulette with you life.
Tuesday 14 April 2009
We awoke to find the winds shifted to the south, as predicted. A weather forecast from Key West, which said the winds will die off to a tolerable 10 knots later today and tomorrow, will give us a chance to leave early in the day tomorrow, after the riotous seas we can see on the far side of the reef have died down a bit. Once across the first twenty miles of relatively open waters we would be behind the protection of the shoals, where seas are predicted to be 1-2 feet all the way to Key West.
If we leave early enough in the day tomorrow, we can get phone contact with the staff at Boca Chica in order to arrange a berth before they quit for the day. Otherwise, we’ll have to settle for anchoring off Key West or paying the ruinous dockage rates there.
The more I listened to the NOAA broadcasts on the marine VHF radio, the more it became apparent that a predicted wind shift from SE to NW will be associated with the ferocious front currently south of Tampa (and apparently headed our way). I went over to Tommy Poppell’s boat to view his Sirius weather system on his laptop after dropping Mary off at the pier for some last minute shopping in the fort bookstore. His graphic depiction showed a very angry-looking weather front already at Fort Myers. Leaving for Naples on our original schedule would have been sheer folly, if not worse.
I became uncomfortable with even remaining in the Dry Tortugas overnight for a run back to Boca Chica.
In return for a call to Boca Chica to reserve a slip for tonight (and one for Island Chariot, a sailboat coming back later) on Tommy’s satellite phone, I repaired a bent stainless steel shackle using my vice and hammer and drilled a safety wire hole in the pin for him (being the good guy I am, I didn’t charge him for the broken drill bit).
Then it was hightail it to the pier and get Mary aboard and in gear for immediate departure. After hurriedly retrieving the dinghy and both anchors, we got underway at 1220 for an after-dark return to Boca Chica. With 4-6 foot seas just outside the reef, we had precious little time to prepare any lunch before it got too rough to be opening the refrigerator door and dealing with food and drink.
For about three and a half hours we were getting a pretty rough ride until we got behind the shoals where we were protected against the south winds and swell all the rest of the way to Key West.
We are passing through Key West as I write this, and we will arrive Boca Chica at 2200.
