Still Cruising, but Closer to Home

After returning to the good old USA in June of 2016, we found a nice berth for SD in Indian Harbor Beach, Florida, which is 75 miles south of our home base in New Smyrna Beach. There, we are lucky to have a nice wide, deep part of the river to sail her in. In addition to local day-sailing,  we have cruised to the Florida Keys several times during past winters. In March of 2019, after a few weeks in the Keys, we made a beautiful overnight voyage up the west coast of Florida to Ft. Myers. From there we made our way across the state via the Okeechobee Waterway and its multiple locks, finally crossing the lake itself and reconnecting to the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.

Our recent voyage brought us to Islamorada, in the middle of the Florida Keys (we're 80 miles north of Key West), where we just finished the dreaded haul-out at the very accommodating Coral Bay Marina boatyard. After 6 days of hard, dirty (but rewarding!) work, SD's bottom is looking pretty good for a 40-year old gal. While on the hard, we completed many other tasks, including replacing the cutless bearing, testing the prop shaft for true-ness, painting, polishing, etc. - you get the picture.

The prop shaft/cutless bearing project was actually more work than sanding and painting (5 coats!) the bottom. The job required the emptying of the starboard lazarette (a cockpit locker), which was followed by the captain's shoe-horning himself into the cramped space. Extricating himself required even greater contortions, and would have been pretty entertaining for the crew had the captain not been so cranky. The process was repeated over and over again, accompanied by some bad words, as he emerged at frequent intervals to inspect the bearing/shaft alignment.   

Once that project was completed, since the locker was empty, hey, let's clean and paint it in there! This involved the crew hanging upside down over the edge, to reach all interior surfaces. Thank goodness for ice in the cooler, as we definitely earned beer-thirty!

We'll remember this as the winter of weird weather, as front after front has blown through every few days, bringing some very strong and gusty winds, and occasionally some pretty chilly temps. Once SD was "splashed" back into the water, we opted to take a berth in the little marina. With the frequency of the high winds and the questionable holding in the anchorage, it proved to be a good decision. When things got honking, we'd walk to the end of the dock and look out at the whitecaps and stiff chop in the anchorage, and say, "Sure glad we're not out there!"  Friends in the anchorage were trapped on their boat for several days, unwilling to tolerate the pounding, wet, salty dinghy ride ashore.

We've found plenty here to keep ourselves entertained, and the laid-back, non-touristy, "old Keys" vibe of Islamorada suits us just fine. Walks to the tiny library or Sunday farmers' market, dinghy rowing through the mangrove creeks, and other activities fill our time but also leave plenty of time for relaxing in the generally balmy weather. 

All is well aboard, and although we look forward to getting home in a few weeks, we'll miss our "island time" and those lazy mornings lingering over our morning coffee in the cockpit.
We'll no doubt be back!

Reduced drag Campbell "Sailer" prop. It has served us well over the years.

Cheers!

Katie and Ken

sanddollar_n4ks@yahoo.com