Doing the FLoop

Yes, the requisite anchorage sunset photo, all by ourselves on the Shark River in Everglades National Park.

We set off from Marathon after a very enjoyable two-plus weeks (it's an easy place to wash up and never leave) to do the so-called Florida Loop (about 450 nautical miles the way we did it, clockwise from home to Marathon to the southwest coast, across the Okeechobee Waterway including the Lake, to Stuart and back down the ICW to home).  

The first night we camped out at an anchorage in the Shark River, which is in the bounds of the Everglades National Park.  In theory, there is a small anchoring/overnight charge in the Park.  In practice, this is so remote (from Flamingo, the Park HQ) that no one came around (on a Sunday night) to collect.

We headed to Marco Island on Monday (12 February); it's just too long a trip for us to get there from the Keys in one go. Not a very inspiring stop; nothing pretty to look at, very busy "harbor" with no accessible services - we were happy to be off in the morning - and we weren't first.  Our overnight neighbors were clearly of the same mind. 

Our Naples friends weren't around, so plan A was to to on to Fort Myers Beach, but Neptune had other ideas.  The two anchorages were SO quiet, we were fooled - we knew it would be a little rough and windy but it was very rough, very windy, and generally awful.  Even getting to Naples took some serious focus - and, when we got inside - quiet again.  We got a berth at Naples City Dock - just lovely, in Old Naples - and treated ourselves to Bleu Provence just outside the marina - a truly excellent restaurant with very well prepared French classics with a Florida flavor, and fantastic service.  It was "Valentine's Eve" and they were flawless.  On Valentine's Day we ate at The Dock, a no-reservations pub/seafood place, also very well executed.  We had walked around Naples a bit and could totally see why our friends moved there from the Florida east coast a few years back.

We took a short hop on the 15th to a tucked-in marina at a big mixed use complex in Cape Coral, ate about 100 yards from the boat, and then started our west-to-east trek across the Okeechobee Waterway (a series of rivers and canals that allows some boats to transit the peninsula - we couldn't do it in Raconteur unless we took the mast down).  We overnighted on the 16th at the Labelle Yacht Club.  We had a great tiki bar cocktail and lunch, and then it was so popular we couldn't get dinner in the tiki bar - 

we went inside instead, rather less charming - and then had a less than quiet night - and less than a dark skies experience as you might hope.  That sign you see in the photo is neon, and lit all night.  Ah, well. We made our way off the dock on the early side, with the intention of making thorough to the other side of Lake Okeechobee and, we hoped, through the Port Mayaca Lock on the east side of the  Lake.  In the end, we managed to transit Ortona, Moore Haven, Lewiston (twice, in and out for fuel), and Port Mayaca (some of the coming rain had started to appear) and it was early enough that we decided to keep going.  We were able to get through the St. Lucie Lock, too, right at 4:30 (the last of the day) and with a little luck to find a marina in Stuart that we could reach before their 6pm closing.  It worked out well; it poured starting Saturday night the 17th, and all day into the evening on Sunday the 18th, and we could meet our Hobe Sound friend for dinner on Sunday night in downtown Stuart.

The last leg is too long to do in one go unless you can go outside (which is what we did when we brought Third Flight home two years ago), and the storm meant the the winds and seas were anything but fair.  This is the hardest stretch for finding marinas; those that have survived the real estate development of recent years have turned themselves into superyacht centers - minimum boat lengths 50', clearly not interested in little boats like ours - but JP and Susan pushed hard to make the Delray Harbor Club Marina, with the nicest dock master ever, where we tied up for the night on the fuel dock, had showers in their nice pool bathrooms (it's a condo complex with a full service marina)  and could walk to Phat Boy Sushi on Linton for dinner.

Fueled up before heading home on Tuesday the 20th.  Here is Third Flight back at our home dock, with her name and hailing port now stenciled to the bottom of Passepartout, our new dinghy.  Our dinghy storage method blocks the name and hailing port on the boat herself.

Next up: chartering a sailing catamaran with our Ohio-based friends Pam and Jim in the Exumas 1-9 March.

Different....everything

 

In December, JP suggested we might spend a few weeks of our Florida winter on a long(er) excursion with Third Flight, the Mainship 30 Pilot II that's a motorboat cousin to Raconteur (same designer). We found her in Stuart in February of 2022, and have done a few day trips and some overnights.  She's smaller - one cabin, one head - but there's a generous and fully enclosed cockpit and we acquired a luxury air mattress and featherbed combo for added sleeping space.

JP and Susan headed south from our dock at the apartment in Lauderdale, where we keep Third Flight in winter, on Monday the 22nd of January.  Leigh followed in the car and we met up at Safe Harbor Marina in Marathon, in the Middle Keys, on Wednesday the 24th.  We did a couple of excursions from the marina, but it's an El Nino year so Florida weather has been cooler and rainier than usual, so we've had a lot of marina time and a chance to explore the Keys by car while staying on the boat.  It's a fun change of pace.  We came home to the apartment for the first few days of February and then headed back down on the 7th; we've hatched a plan to do what is jokingly called the "FLoop" - to continue it really - which will take us from here up to the Shark River, Marco Island and Naples on the Southwest coast of Florida, then across via rivers, canals and Lake Okeechobee to Stuart, before we head back to the apartment.  We will take ten or twelve days for it, starting tomorrow - Super Bowl Sunday, the 11th of February, with a goal to be home around the 20th or so.

I took the sunset photo at the marina on the 8th - our 20th wedding anniversary - before our excellent fish dinner at Castaways.  We can get there on foot, by car, or in the newly-christened "Passepartout", a Takacat dinghy with an electric engine.

I will try to report back from the trip, Internet access permitting.

PS Raconteur, after a much-shortened sailing season brought on by the installation of a new engine (!) last summer, is on the hard in Branford, Connecticut for the winter.  We will hope to splash her in May, and return her to Guilford Yacht Club, controlling depth problems notwithstanding.

Summer on the Long Island Sound

 Sailing competes with gardening and other pursuits and commitments, even when the boat is nearby.  We enjoyed a couple of GYC events - a lobster bake for the 4th of July weekend, when Leigh's mom was visiting, and a music night - and we went sailing three times: a few days to Old Saybrook (where our friend Peggy rents a house for a month at Fenwick, and gives a house party at the end); a Tuesday to Saturday sail to Shelter Island and back; and a two week "hit the highlights" trip to Block Island, Cuttyhunk, Martha's Vineyard, Nonamesset/Naushon, South Dartmouth, back to Block.  We didn't sail as much as we would like - there's more wind on LI Sound than in the Chesapeake, but it wasn't super-reliable in mid to late August.  We had some thoughts of doing a late season sail this week (10-14 October) but there is a long to-do list, it's on the cool side, and the wind was not going to be very consistent.

We will not be able to haul out at GYC - it's ramp, and too steep for Raconteur - so we are going to Dutch Wharf in Branford, early/mid next week.  We will be doing some preparation and offloading tomorrow.

Here are a few photos of our northern summer.

In a home slip: First time in 11 years, 6 months

Raconteur at GYC

The top photo was taken on Sunday evening, 29 May 2022, in our new home slip at Guilford Yacht Club in Guilford Connecticut. The bottom photo was taken in early December of 2010, on or around the day we brought Raconteur south from the Chesapeake to our home dock on the ICW in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We set off from there to the Bahamas and on down to the Caribbean in February, and made it to Trinidad in late June or early July of 2011.  You can find the Voyage Log in a link on the blog.    We have been in a number of places, at anchor, on moorings, in marinas, and on the hard, over all these years, but we are still wrapping our heads around having the boat only seven minutes away from the house - three minutes longer than the elevator ride in Lauderdale.

We had a great couple of days in Newport, at the Newport Shipyard marina.  They took great care of us, and despite a squally day and a half, we were quite comfortable.  It was our first time in Newport, and we fell in love with the place as many people do.  Two great breakfasts, two great dinners (some things do NOT change: We travel on our stomachs), and in the end we left a little reluctantly on Sunday for a ~11 hour motoring trip south and west. It was a great introduction to what we hope will be many happy months and years of exploring the coast of New England and the northern part of the mid-Atlantic.

Raconteur at AOTP

We have a few things to accomplish this month; Susan has gone to NH and JP is off to Europe for a week, and we will visit Florida at the end of the month to see Leigh's mom and deal with Third Flight ahead of hurricane season there.  We have a couple of parties coming up in early/mid July, and THEN we will plan a first excursion in Raconteur, Northbound.

New England: Wow

No, we did not ask Susan to walk the plank today, but isn’t this a great image?

We headed out from Guilford this morning around 0815, using a car service, and made it to Newport in time to find the launch location and early enough to grab a great breakfast at the Nitro Café  the launch took us out to the Marsgracht ahead of our scheduled 1130 launch. We got lucky - the dense fog was clearing, and there’s a front moving through overnight, so the timing was perfect. Because of the front, Susan had booked us into Newport Shipyard for three nights. We balked at the proposed rope ladder climb down, and with  the intervention of our Seven Star agent Jay (we met him for the first time today), the launch picked us up at the bottom of the floating gangplank and dropped us alongside Raconteur after she was lowered. 

We made it into the marina by 1215 - we have a perfect spot on their “working” dock - and by about 1530 or so Raconteur was a fully functioning sailboat again - decks cleaned, sails restored, dodger and Bimini re-installed, dinghy off the foredeck and onto the davits. 

This is a cool place. We will stay tonight and tomorrow night, and try to be off at or just before first light on Sunday, hoping for a rising mid-tide before sunset in the slip at Guilford Yacht Club. 

Yes, it’s all a little disorienting. 

The shipping adventure, Part One

Boat on Boat

We got back to St. Thomas on Monday the 16th, perhaps a bit earlier than we might have, as our load date and time, when it finally came through, was set for Saturday the 21st at 1500.  I easily found a room for that night at The Green Iguana, in the Mafolie area above old town Charlotte Amalie, and less easily got us onto a Sunday flight back to Miami. We had picked up a mooring at Frenchtown Bay Marina (which is mostly the base for a charter operation called Waypoints); we considered going around and anchoring near the airport but the mooring was quite comfortable and convenient, so we stayed the whole week.

We (mostly JP and Susan) then did semi-leisurely preparations for the load; we topped up the provisions and did our best to eat most of them, although we did treat ourselves to a great meal at Taco Chelle in Frenchtown on the first night.  We had already done most of the interior prep, making sure that things were not likely to fly during loading or on the journey. It's 1,430nm from the Gregerie Channel to the Narragansett Bay, give or take.

On Friday we did some cleaning, and Susan and JP took down the dodger and the bimini, battened down the mainsail (they had already done a wrap and tie on the jib), shut down the wind gen, covered and tied the winches, and got the fenders ready.  We visited the Marsgracht (the transport ship) in the afternoon to witness the proceedings; the ladders on the side of the ship looked pretty scary, and we decided that Leigh would get off with the luggage at Frenchtown Bay, drop it at the guest house, and then hang around at Crown Bay while JP and Susan took Raconteur around for her load appointment.  As it happens, Leigh got there (at the far end of the cruise center) at 1441, just in time to see Raconteur pulling around.  They got the call to come alongside, at around 1510, and I just hung around waiting for...something.  Well, the "something" was, in the end, a text from Susan at 1534: "Want a gelato?"  No ladder; they were ferried back to Crown Bay Marina (home of a delightful gelato and coffee spot) by fast dinghy.  It's not clear that the procedure by which boat owners climb rope ladders is any longer in place - I suspect the lawyers have put the kibosh on that risky sport.

I managed to capture the photo above as we were getting ready to leave Crown Bay gelato and head to the guest house, Raconteur about to be lowered onto her cradle for the trip.

We had a nice dinner at Mafolie (hotel and restaurant overlooking the city), and a quiet night, and we flew back to Miami and arrived home in Lauderdale around 1645 on Sunday - an altogether anti-climactic end to this part of the adventure.

The Marsgracht is due at Newport in the early morning of Friday the 27th; our bet is that it will be Saturday before we will be summoned for the unload.  We will take some time to put everything (or most things) back together, and then plan (WOG and WP, as the shipping line says) to make the 15 hour trip to Guilford as a passage.  

Meanwhile, here is one of the last shots of Raconteur in the beautiful turquoise waters of the Caribbean.

Francis Bay, St. John, USVI

 

An actual vacation in the USVI

Scheherezade II

We flew back to St. Thomas on the 4th of May; we took delivery of the new dinghy (a Caribe LT10, chosen by the very scientific method known as: It Was Available) on Thursday afternoon and Susan and JP spent Friday morning getting it ready for use and ensuring it could hang from the existing Cato davits.  We took a brief test spin and though we honor the Walker Bay (Scheherezade I) for her 16 years of service, we must say that the inflatable (aka Scheherezade II) is very comfortable and roomy.  In the days since, we can also say she is notably drier.

 We made a couple of provisioning runs to the excellent Moe's across from American Yacht Harbor in Red Hook; AYH very kindly kept us in the same slip for the added two nights' stay and we treated ourselves to dinner out at the very good, rather hidden Three Palms in the complex to celebrate.

On Saturday morning the 7th, we made an epic passage around to from AYH to Great Saint James, picked up a mooring in Christmas Cove, and ordered from Pizza Pi, the well-known "pizza boat" of St. Thomas, which provided dinner and two breakfasts from two delicious pizzas.

On Sunday morning, we actually sailed Raconteur around to the north side of St. John, to Maho/Francis Bay, where we lazed for three nights - unheard of for us - and yesterday we moved around about a half mile? to Leinster Bay / Waterlemon Cay.  It's a quiet week in St. John, it seems; none of the mooring fields have been full.  We will stay here another night; Susan snorkeled yesterday (she and JP snorkeled in Francis too) but I am lazy and the wind is blowing the dickens (gusts to 35).  

We've been cooking on board every day, as most of St. John is National Park, so it isn't the BVI-type experience of sailing from bar to restaurant every day.  Last night it was my mom's potato salad and my version of smash burgers; JP made a beef stir-fry one night, we fried pork chops Ree Drummond-style, and we had a fresh pasta en brodo with a Susan salad.  We are trying to use up as much of the liquor on board as we can, before the shipping adventure.

The ship (Marsgracht) is on its way to Port Everglades; the load date is scheduled for the 19th.  We will continue our vacation until early next week, and then make our way to the surroundings of Charlotte Amalie to execute the long list of things to do.  We have an AirBnB for the 18th and 19th, and a flight out on the 20th - if the dates hold.

Here is Susan, exercising the rusty skill of blowing the conch horn at sunset a couple of nights ago.