Time to breath and take stock.

Anchored Marathon Florida 

72 degrees, North Wind 6 mph, light chop

Well it's been an interesting couple of weeks. The covid numbers seemed to be declining and we were running out of time to stay in Florida. Florida has some interesting rules about boats in their waters. All carefully created to suction the most dollars out of your pocket, while still making you feel like a second class citizen.

So we ran down to Moss Marine in Fort Myers Beach, FL, great place, terrible place as well. The people are friendly, helpful, seemed competent. The facilities were spotlessly clean, the docks were floating, which just makes being tied up easier. They had a nice ships store, basically a marine focused 7-11, lots of beer and other consumables. The dock floats with the tide so you don't have to have extra line out to handle tidal changes. Pump outs were $5.00, with additional $5.00 tip, cuz man I don't want to do that job. Pump outs are when they bring a giant vacuum to the boat and suck your waste water into their sewer. The only water that is treated in this fashion is the waste water from your toilet. Gross, but hey, keep the waterways semi clean so the giant corporations can foul them. So I had my first pump out, not much in there. The marina is super expensive, at least to me at this time. I don't have a lot of experience with marina life yet. So that was the great part. 

John and Linda flew to Virginia and we all drove down to Florida. Lots of rain slowed things so it took 2 days. Spent a week eating to much, drinking way to much, and trying to figure out how to stand up a floating home. New things we learned, boat fridges and freezers take at least 24 hours to cool and stabilize. Taking a shower on a boat requires 50 amp electrical service and cold showers still suck. Generators are amazing things and then you don't need shore power, but they are noisy and can kill you from CO2 exposure. Has already saved my bacon once. So we cooked on the boat, shopped at the Publix, or at least had them deliver, which is a newer thing to us, as a result of covid of course. Anyway the people that live and vacation here are stupid. Flat dumber than a box or rocks. My unscientific survey showed less than 1/2 wearing masks and zero thought of social distance. What ever, the local government doesn't care so there are few if any restrictions down here. Just come spend your money and should you happen to catch a deadly pathogen, they don't care. 

Due to work and other requirements Betty had to return to Virginia and Linda to Texas so that left John and I to do the boat moving. So here's the terrible part about Moss, the current in the channel where it is located. Can be as high as 4 knots. And rarely going in your direction. Makes getting out of slips hard and the scariest thing I had done to that point. I read the water wrong, left John fruitlessly struggling to control an aft end that was not going to cooperate, meanwhile on the port side the boat was drifting towards my neighbor, peacefully slumbering in his boat and getting myself trapped behind a piling. Some boat hook work later my watches heart alarm beeping away I got the boat levered up next to it, I then sprang to the helm and got us moving backward trying not to slam into the metal pilings that the docks float up and down on. Missed that and got free of the slip. Next error, I tried to turn the boat around to early, the current caught the boat and floated it slowly and inevitably into the giant cone pilings. Thank goodness those are wood and I have a stout rub rail, I still have splinters on it a few days later. But we did get clear and  headed for the Gulf! Finally after so many years of reading, saving, thinking, and dreaming the day had come. And it was a fine day. The boat itself was performing relatively well. Starboard engine was smoking a bit and the port tachometer wasn't reading. But hey, small issues according to my boat broker and surveyor. I had planned on a short leg to Naples Florida where we could recoup, tell war stories and take on fuel and water. I had looked at Active Captain and my charts, weather, etc. Seemed doable. Ok couple uneventful hours later we pull into the channel and start heading up, it's a couple hours at our plodding 4 knot speed, but plod along we do. This particular channel is very busy with a speed limit of 30 MPH, which on a boat is flat screaming. First place recommended is a shallow little bay right inside. Well only room for one boat and some dude is in there fishing and yelling at people on the VHF as they rip through the entrance channel, 5 MPH there. Ok I was told there are 4 others further up. Certainly have room for little old me and failing that there is the mooring field. SO very long story short, only found one of them, and it was jammed full. Called for ball, I'm way to big at 40' x 20' for their space. So the entire trip was a bust. Turn around and start plodding back. Poor planning on my part entry 12 or so. Ha, river bar crossings while the tide is at ebb is stupid scary. Waves are so hard to judge from the cockpit till your riding a bucking bronco. The guy behind me stopped and watched my crossing then turned around and zoomed back to his safe multibillion dollar home. Back out to the Gulf where conditions have deteriorated a bit. Mind you I'm still not sailing, Just motoring along getting a feel for the boat. However I had prepared in Moss before we cast off to sail. Took the covers off the sails, removed the halyard holders that keep them from slapping the masts, etc. Have called my broker and the previous owner a few times about the smoking engine and have determined that if it was overheating the alarm would have gone off, if there was water in the fuel both would be smoking, so it is something in that engine, at this point I'm betting a blown head gasket. I look at my charts and decide to head to Marcos Island. That was a foolish mistake. This is a big boat. There aren't a lot of facilities that can deal with something this large. Channels are narrow, wind and tide are what they are.

So now we are headed south still, Marcos is a bust, wind is up, sun is setting and the chop on the Gulf is stupid. Only two or three feet but really close together and all slamming into my aft end. So the boat is quite lively and very noisy. wind is south 15 - 20 knots, perfect sailing wind. But we decided to continue to motor, smoking engine and all. Night falls. OMG it is so dark. I tried to sneak in behind Marcos Island, but keep hitting rapidly shoaling bottom, backed out of that, moved a mile or so tried again, still no luck. And really you have to appreciate I'm moving at 5 MPH here, give or take. So it takes a good forever to move a mile. Meanwhile I'm sideways to the wind and waves. Lots of pounding and boat movement. After a few of these attempts I figure this is just not working and I'm going to end up aground or something stupid. John and I do a quick huddle and I decide to head out, get some sea room and just puddle through the night. We do exactly that, taking turns sleeping as we can while the boat just gets hammered. The chop is worse than wave action because it is so steep and the period between waves is so close. So lots of waves slapping the bottom of the bridge deck, big booming noise and serious movement. Winds stayed about 15-20 all night. Started easing around dawn. I mean the boat was never in any danger, it was just an unexpected over night with an inexperienced Captain and crew. Poor planning number 300? Anyway the next possible anchorage is way south. Anyway back to my smoking engine. Nice white smoke. I went below and found that we had used approximately 1/2 tank of fuel overnight or the gauge is busted. (edit: gauge is busted) Serious issue. I had expected fuel to be as plentiful as on the interstate, and as easy to get. Wrong. So my jerry cans are empty. I'm really starting to think I am a complete moron. Anyway I shut old smoky down, and I think I am getting the time correct here. Sun finally rises and things calm down. Wind drops exactly as predict wind said it would and starts to clock around to the nose. New emergency, very little power on the boat. Huh? Evidently the ram for the autopilot takes a bunch of power, and I have every piece of electronics on board turned on to navigate, and the one engine I've got running seems to have a bum alternator. Lovely. Try to start the generator, no go, look at the battery switch and it's on house, switch to it's own start battery and pray it has a charge, and yay! Generator starts! POWER! Chalk up one win for a difficult start. Then I decide hey, sail time! We've got 7-10 knots, on the nose but I can tack. We tacked Amadeus a bunch on the bay. I'm good at tacking and frankly this boat has push button tack. And a self tacking jib. Sweet! Wrong again. This boat is many things, but a racer/cruiser like Amadeus it just isn't. And frankly my sail handling skills are not the best. So remember back a few lines when I said I got the boat ready to sail? Took the flopper stoppers off stuff, unzipped and otherwise removed the covers? In the night while getting slapped around the halyard (lifting rope) for the mail sail got wrapped around some bolt or clevis pin or something way the heck up the mast. I can only raise the main about 4/5ths of the way up the main mast. Ok, lets get the jib up, that was a piece of cake. I am loving power winches. So now lets get them wing shaped and start this thing moving. 3 hours of struggle later I've tacked 3 times, moved forward maybe 1/2 mile and am supremely frustrated and really wondering about my chosen retirement activity. More my sail handling ability than anything else, which has so far been lacking. I've not hazarded the boat or the crew, but man this is hard. Anyway I finally get the sails drawing and I'm making max 2.8 knots in 7-8 knots wind with no real chop. Little kids walk faster than this to go to school. But really I have no schedule, except we don't want another overnight on the water. We're getting tired and fuddle brained. We both are happy the boat is not heaving about, John more than I, I expected this sort of movement, not to this degree, but the boats not in danger, just got to be careful moving about. Look around and consult my broker, whom I'm having a very love/hate relationship with in my head, but he was extensive local knowledge and I'd be a fool to ignore that. He suggested an anchorage at little shark river, but there is no fuel there. I'm getting very worried about the fuel situation now and we've been motoring for like 2 days. There is no wind. I mean seriously. At a few points during the day I'm looking at 0.0 knots of true wind. The gulf is mill pool flat. All you can see for miles are billions of long line fishing floats. Serious folks. I hate these indiscriminate killers. Miles long lines, buoyed every 100 feet or so, with a line that supports a miles long killing machine of baited hooks. The guys set them out and some period of time later go pull them up. They take what they want and throw the rest over board. All dead. The only thing good about these is that the line of hooks is deeper than my keel and my propellers. I just have to dodge them so they don't go down the middle of the boat or at either of the hulls. Watched that happen and about had a heart attack when it got beat up by the prop. All I could think of is getting a line tangled around my only working prop and killing the engine. Getting USTowboat out to drag you back is not a cheap experience. OK really the only thing I have found so far that was inexpensive was the pump out in Fort Myers. Whatever, I signed up for this. 

Puddled down 1/4 the length of Florida at walking speed and rejected the anchorage at Shark River cuz no fuel, no nothing really, headed to Marathon. Figured out how to make an end to end track on the chart plotter, set the autopilot to follow said track and we're off. Just have to watch the hours and hours of fishing lines. No wind, serious heat. Pass the Everglades, serious worried here, I evidently can't transmit on the VHF, and no cell service. And an iffy fuel gauge. Sun setting and chart plotter says 9:30 to Marathon. We've spent fruitless hours trying to find a mooring ball, slip, t-head anything. Nope the Inn is full. OK, I'll just find a spot in the local anchorage, Boot Key Anchorage and drop my hook there. Motor under the Seven Mile Bridge and it's like 8:30 with hours to go. It's quite a thing being out at night. If you are out far away, it's no big deal, in close maneuvering? Yeah whole different ball of wax. And we're very tired and hot and sticky. I have literally never drank that much water in a day. Neither one of has eaten more than a few bites of this and that, just not interested in food. Water yes, food blerg. Trying to decode the signals at night in unfamiliar waters, scary. I keep seeing this thing, red, red, green on high, red. Conforms to no light pattern I'm familiar with. And it appears to be moving or not. Very puzzling. Eventually as we get closer I realize it's the bridge marking lights. With my tired eyes and lack of seeing land bound things for a few days it's hard to keep from thinking it's moving. I can see cars going over the top of it, either white red, or red white depending on direction, but it is so confusing. But I trust my track I laid out and just keep puddling. It's achingly slow going, 3.8 knots max. There are series of lights marking the lead in, turns to set up the boat, and then we are there, I turn off autopilot cuz what fool allows a machine to control during that time, and charts are stupid wrong. Which is good, I laid the track down the middle, right through a bridge pile, not a good idea. So we made our first bridge crossing in the dark. Scary, but my heart monitor (Apple watch) didn't go off. Another win! From here it's a hour and half to my chosen anchorage. As we do the radical turn towards the key I'm trying to spot marker lights, can't for the life of me find them. I see them on my chart, but can't match that to my surroundings. Not good. But the bridge is right behind me, there is only one opening for crossing, so I can't be to far off. As we are on approach I'm trying to make out the boats anchor lights against the background of all the city lights. Ha! I can't tell anything from nothing. My eyes are tired, my brain is foggy and I have the remnants of the adrenalin fizzing in my blood from the bridge. I just can not tell what I am looking at. This is very scary. Enough, I leave the boat on autopilot, and god I love that thing I wanna seriously new one for Christmas, like next week, and go forward to undo all the stuff that keeps the anchor attached to the boat. Walking John through what I need him to do for me, and then go back to the cockpit. About 1/2 mile closer and I still can't tell what the heck I'm looking at. That's enough for me. I turned it into the wind, crept forward a few hundred feet off my chosen path and start the process of anchoring. While I have never done this in real life, the process is pretty simple. Stop and hold in place, drop enough chain so you think it's on the bottom then creep backwards laying chain behind you till you have 5 to 7 times as much chain out as you have depth under you. As I am all alone out where I am, for reason's I'll get to, I can be generous with my chain usage. Not like I am going to swing into anyone cause I've got to much scope out. Boats on anchor spin all the time as wind and tide change, so you have to have confidence you are well set. Chart says sand bottom, cool. We start, all is going great till we get to the creep backwards part. Catamarans are well know for their extreme maneuvering ability. Two engines spaced 20 feet apart make them very easy to control. The rule for us newbies is to hold the throttles with your thumbs out, the direction of your thumb indicates the direction either the front or the back of the boat goes. So all is great, except I have one engine. Now the autopilot has been driving the boat for the most part and has been showing the heading offset all day. Once I put it in reverse all it wants to do is drive in a backwards circle, whatever, drop 100 or so feet of chain and try to go backwards to set the hook, evidently it set cuz we're still here. Now this is a terrible anchorage, no one who isn't exhausted chooses this. I'm exposed to all the wind, all the tide and so many boat wakes. Which makes this very uncomfortable. Last night was a mill pond, today, not so much. But we got the hook down and set. Celebratory cigars, a beer and a little bourbon were consumed. Seeing as the genny was running anyway, I turned on the hot water heater, shower sump pump, and anchor light, the sugar scoop lights, turned off the running, steaming lights, and crashed. Got a pretty decent nights sleep. Got up a few times to check stuff, but got a decent nights sleep. Went to get creamer for my coffee, and a diet coke had froze and exploded all over the fridge, went to open the freezer and the damn hinge busted. Got that open and turned down the freezer temp, it was set to max? Now we are on the hook, in a terribly rolly anchorage, a bum engine and I'm running out of ideas. My levels of optimism have refilled with a good night's sleep and I'm going to have some yogurt while I listen to my genny chug. Later all y'all.