Late Coffee…Early Cocktails

We’d planned full use of a 3-day weather window by scheduling an early morning start from Pumpkin Key providing our 5-1/2 foot draft with the high tide needed to clear the hard-bottomed shoal at Angelfish Creek. By 5 am the winds, forecast to be 15 knots, were pummeling us with 30 knot gusts. We groaned, covered our ears with our pillows and went back to sleep.

More weather analysis later in the day indicated our weather window was closing in and we feared that it would disappear entirely by the next morning. By 3 pm, the winds had calmed to a nice 15 knots and we decided to get out of Dodge on that afternoon’s high tide, one hour before sunset. We’d never sailed crab-pot littered Hawk Channel before at night but are pleased to report that once the sun sets and you can no longer see them, the crab pots become far less dangerous. And since you can’t avoid something you can’t see, it saved lots of jerky, close-range steering. We suffered a few thumps as pots hit the keel but remained unentangled.

We were reminded by the Coast Guard frequently through the night that 30 containers fell off a ship a few days ago and are floating north. This provoked much discussion as the typical container is the size of a semi-truck trailer. If we hit one of these floating just below the surface as they like to do we’d likely go down in a big hurry. Luckily, the containers stayed mostly on the other side of the reef that separates Hawk Channel from the Florida straights.

Jim King dinghies over from s/v Karma to lend a hand

It was a glorious sail south on Hawk Channel in perfect 15 – 20 knot winds, the full moon lighting a silvery path and car headlights twinkling from the Keys. The nice conditions and the fact that our 3-day weather window has dwindled to barely a crack, persuaded us to just keep on going and we turned the corner into Key West at 8 am. An hour later we were pulling into the mooring field at Garrison Bight and were hailed by our Southall Marina mate Jim King of sailing vessel ‘Karma’. Someone had just left the mooring ball next to him and he would meet us in his dinghy to help hook us up. This was very welcome news as Jim is moored on one of the balls closest to the dinghy dock and his assistance cut much effort trying to lasso the mooring ball as Key West thinks pennants are for sissies.

Soon we are tooling about Key West compliments of Jim’s van, reacquainting ourselves with the lay of this eccentric land. While Jim made a stop at West Marine, I checked out the latest magazines and just happened to open the February issue of Cruising World to p50 where Greg and I are pictured as part of a crowd on a beach in the Bahamas! You’ll need a magnifying glass to see us but we’re right on the left margin of the photo – my head is backed by a lime green beach chair and Greg is sporting a blue cap and a big ear-to-ear grin.

We adjusted again to life on a mooring ball and the frequent weather checks needed in Key West. This mooring

Roll cloud accompanying front

field is wide open to the north requiring a constant weather watch and detailed plans for completing chores between frontal systems. Within a week of settling in we received a forecast for a front with squalls producing 60 knot winds and are awed when a roll cloud forms right over Fleming Key. This particular roll cloud barely produced 20 knot winds before heading up the Keys to menace other anchorages. But the fronts continue to roll in, one after the other, with today’s gale forecast severe enough to blow dogs off their chains and prompt the suspension of this afternoon’s bus service. NOAA even has wind chill warnings in their forecast! Oh well, it beats shoveling snow, and early cocktails are still listed on Yoohoo’s order of the day.