Wednesday 8 April 2020
This will be posted when we get
back from the internet-challenged Everglades, probably on Thursday from near
Everglades City.
We were most fortunate in the
calm weather we enjoyed at anchorage last night because Jewfish Hole is more an
indentation in the north coast line of Long Key than a protected
anchorage. We probably didn’t move much
at all after anchoring. In these benign
conditions, I told Mary to stay in bed a bit longer if she liked because
getting underway was a one-person job.
If she wasn’t awake before I weighed anchor at 0730 she surely was after
because the screaming hydraulic windlass and clanking chain and chain hook
dropping on the steel deck was right over her head. Who knows, maybe the large windlass brake bar
got accidentally on purpose dropped too.
The first hour or two of this relatively short day was spent anxiously
watching the depths as we saw less than 2 feet beneath the keel a lot and even
a brief 0.0 feet – scary. However, the
last 2/3 of the trip was run with luxurious 5-7 feet under us in aqua-marine colored but slightly clouded water; so in contrast to the Atlantic side, we
could not see the bottom. We anchored
around 1400 in the mouth of the Little Shark River inside Everglades National
Park in preparation for another short jump to an anchorage near Everglades City
tomorrow. Crab pot buoy dodging , as we
did on the way here, is a mandatory sport engaged with by all who pass through
Florida Bay, unless you are inside the Park markers a mile or so off the
shoreline because crabbing is not allowed inside the Park. We were outside the
markers for an hour or two, and there were plenty to dodge. During the middle ours of our run we were in
water maybe 13-15 feet deep with no other vessel or land in sight. The weather is salubrious in the extreme with
air temp 80 at noon, a light breeze from the west creating wavelets maybe six
inches high, and a few puffy clouds around to give accent to the blue sky. BUT it always pays to listen to the weather
on the marine radio. We may not have
internet or TV or even reception of a decent radio station here in the remotest
Everglades, but we do have the good old fashioned NOAA weather radio stations
blasting out over our whole country.
While planning the next few days’ runs, we discovered the weather was
forecast to turn rather sour Saturday night; so rather than depend on the
weather to hold off until Saturday night, we changed our plan for tomorrow from
a lazy short day of 44 miles getting to anchorage near Evergaldes City to a rather
longer day of 69 miles in order to anchor at Marco Island. That way we will be in position to run a mere
38 miles in dependably good weather on Friday to Fort Myers Beach. Hopefully there will be a marina in FMB which
is still offering transient dockage, but if not, FMB is a very short couple of
miles to entrance to Pine Island Sound where we can find a sheltered anchorage
somewhere in its vastness.
