We were up at 5:30am today, before the sunshine’s alarm clock even went off. It was 82 degrees outside. Seriously! And sticky-sweaty-humid. Perfect if you’re a tropical jungle plant. There was plenty enough light in the marina to see what we were doing, so we unplugged our power cord, untied our lines, and shoved away from the dock at 6:00. By then, the sun was starting to think about getting up. The water was calm, the air was calm, and we could see fine well-emough to go out the Key West Harbor channel.
When you leave Key West to head north, you must first follow the channel out through the Key West flats for about 10 miles miles northwest to marker #1. Then you can set your heading for your destination, which for us was almost due north to Ft. Myers. We spend the rest of the day with a heading of 004 degrees.
Until next time, Key West!
It doesn’t take long for the land of Key West to nearly disappear on the horizon. This was at 6:26, so we were only about five miles out the marked northwest channel.
We certainly are not the people who usually see a sunrise, so when we do, it’s pretty neat. This was at 6:31. Mr Sunshine wasn’t hopped out yet.
The water was really calm. I checked the marine forecast again, and it should be pretty smooth sailing today. Let’s hope for none of those thunderstorms in our path.
That is good looking water. We saw another boat quite aways out in front of us, and then a couple more come out after us. We wouldn’t be totally alone out in the Gulf today, which is normal. We always see other boats going north or south on this journey – especially since we only travel on good forecast days! People make the run to Key West all the time.
And Mr. Sunshine woke up right on time at 6:41. We didn’t get a lot of color in the sunrise with all those clouds over there, but it was still neat.
A little more color as the sun ☀️ rose up a bit more, declaring our blessing of being alive and able to be here today.
Here is the helm set up. The Garmin plotter, Gladys running Navionics, and a fan to circulate air when we were going slow. It was hot without much breeze, so the fan helped for a tiny bit of air circulation. And of course, the little race cars to remind us which side the red and green markers should be on. 😉
We tootled along at our normal 1290-ish rpm until about 8:20, then Captain decided to step it up to 2300rpm. Our goal was to get to the Pink Shell Marina before five o’clock when Dockmaster Dave goes home, so we planned to run fast for about four hours today to go the 135 miles. That would cut the trip down from 14 hours to under 10. The water was such a pretty blue.
A few times we saw little flying fish. They looked like about 10” long and really skinny. They jumped out of the water and kept skipping across the surface. They’d skip, and then when they’d start loosing some mo-jo, would zoom their tail really fast to stay on the surface, then skip some more! They were keeping up with us, and we were going 20mph!!
We always had to keep an eye out for crab pot buoys. Even though the season ended May 15, there were lots of stray rogue buoys out there in the middle of nowhere! We had AweToe driving since it was a long ways to go in a straight line, but we had to divert at least a dozen times when a buoy was straight in our path. They aren’t big, but at least in this calm water, they are easy to see. This one wasn’t in our way, but you get the idea. I don’t think I’d want to make this run at night, with buoys out there just waiting to foul up our props! 😳
The water went from splat flat pancake, like that above at 10:30, to quite chunky and splashy like below at 11:00! We’re thinking it was due to the clouds that we were hoping to avoid. They seemed to be building in the east and moving our direction. Thunderstorms always create wind. We took some big splashes up in the fly bridge, but we didn’t encounter any rain from the sky. YAY!
At one point, Captain took us off course a bit to ride the waves a little better. There is a little zigzag in the yellow line at about 11:30. This Nebo report shows our trip. Green (under 10mph) for about 2.5 hours to start, white/yellow for ~ 20mph for 4.5 hours, then green for another 2.5 hours. Total trip time was 9:34. The yellow is for speeds recorded of 15-20mph. White is for over 20mph. When we were running 2400rpm, we were right on the edge of 20mph. You can tell where it was the windiest because it was consistently slowing us down to just under 20.
I liked running the middle section fast. We covered a lot of territory while being the farthest away from land. It’s always nice coming north to see the buildings of Marco Island and know that civilization is within reach again! We can see them from a lot farther out than we could see Key West.
We were back in cell service once we were off-shore from Marco Island, around noon, and I saw this alert. Wow – it is hot. At least while we were going fast, we had some nice wind. It’s weird though, because when we left Key West, the waves and breeze were coming from our starboard stern (Southeast). When the wind and waves picked up, it was on our starboard bow (Northeast). When we slowed down to 9mph at nearly 1:00, it was on our port beam (West).
Before long, we were cruising past Pink Shell beachside! Woo-hoo!
As we rounded the north end of Estero Island, Captain called the marina on VHF 16, and the professional response from Pink Shell Marina was to switch to CH 11. We went there, and then we hear “Hey Island Girl! Long time, no see! How ya been?!”. Dave is such a nice guy! He gave us our slip assignment; #26, stern in, port tie, description of the location, and see you there! As always, he was ready at the finger pier to receive lines, help tie us up, and welcome us back. He said when he saw that we had a reservation, he even checked the computer to see how long it has been since we were last here. Over a year. Yep – life was busy last year with triplet grandbabies, so we were not in Florida much. It’s fun to be back to Pink Shell. They have a nice pool and beach here at this resort, so this will be a nice extension to our ‘vacation’.
I need to think of a good name for this guy. He looks like he stepped in yellow paint… or he found himself some pretty fancy yellow shoes.
Kenny got out the salt water spray down suds and washed down Island Girl. Wow! She had salt everywhere! Got the A/C running and tried to get ourselves and the interior cooled down. It took a long time, since it was near 90 degrees outside and there was so much heat radiating up through the floor inside. I fixed some spaghetti for dinner and we relaxed and watched some TV. But then the air conditioner stopped cooling and was showing an error code. Uh Oh!!😳. Kenny went down into the furnace (engine) room where it was 500 degrees to check the strainer where the water comes in to run through the a/c unit. Ah ha! We sucked up a jelly fish. WHAT?! That’s kinda weird. He cleaned the strainer out, restarted the a/c, and all was well again. YAY!
I’m looking forward to spending some time at the pool tomorrow. It’s not quite as luxurious as the one at Marlin Bay in Marathon, but it’s good. We always love hanging out in it. This resort has three pools, I think, and the one we like to go to has recently been posted as ADULTS ONLY. That will make it nice and quiet and relaxing. See you there!