August 5, 2009

OK, so it took me a week to get my first journal entry about Day 1 and I only made it out of the John’s Pass Channel and over to our anchorage on the eastern side of Egmont Key on Tuesday, August 4th. The fact is I forgot to tell you about the dolphins that swam with the GYPSY WIND as soon as we went under the bridge and all the way to Key West they have constantly come up to the boat to check us out. GYPSY WIND is VERY dolphin friendly. Heidi has taken some great shots of dolphin swimming next to us. In fact, when we did the photo shoot with the Jack Mosley Band (you will read about that later), when the band was sitting on the starboard (right) aft (back) side of GYPSY WIND with their legs dangling near the water, a bunch of dolphin came up and got real close.. Mike, the photographer, got a few pictures of this and hopefully one of them will be good enough to use as the cover shot for Jack’s next CD, “Time on the Water” (at least that was the name of the CD and feature song as of the writing of this entry). The truth be told, in a selfish way I am kind of hoping that they use one of the other photos that show more of GYPSY WIND and also have the name being shown. We will have to wait and see. Please go to http://jackmosley.com/purchasecds.html and you will see what ended up happening . . . if the CD is published by the time you are reading this. Also, if it is published, I HIGHLY recommend you purchasing a copy as this CD is definitely some of the best music Jack, and the Jack Mosley Band (Don, Rick & Alan), have ever created.

So, Heidi and I get to the eastern side of Egmont Key with plenty of time before sunset. We anchor right in front of a sign a couple hundred yards away that said “BIRD SANCTUARY” and WOW were there a lot of birds. We had finally made it. Our first day was behind us. We had successfully left Madeira Beach and had dropped the hook and felt secure for the night. A friend of ours, Capt. Ted, from the Boca 1 sportfishing boat in Madeira Beach had given us a blackfin tuna he had caught yesterday. We sliced up some sashimi and I fixed it up with some imitation caviar (you can get it at any grocery store), sesame seeds, avocado, Japanese mayo and topped with soy sauce mixed with wasabi. It was quite tasty and ended up being our dinner as we were too tired to fix anything else. Sleep was calling our name and we went down below to the aft cabin and called it night . . . so I thought. You see I am a third generation Florida boy, raised in Jacksonville, Florida. I must admit that I do love air conditioning and that I do not enjoy sweating when I am sleeping or trying to sleep at night. We have an air conditioner on the boat, but we currently do not have a generator. Thus, right now the only time the air conditioner will work is when we are tied up to a dock at a marina and have power. We did open all of the hatches and hooked up what is called a wind catcher to the companionway entrance. It kind of scoops up all of the air in the area and directs it down below. It works real well if there is a lot of wind blowing. We also turned on both of the fans we have down below. We laid down and I think Heidi went right to sleep. She says she loves sleeping without air conditioning. As I mentioned, I don’t, and after trying to sleep for a half an hour or so it was time to go to the cockpit and try to sleep there where I know there would be more wind and thus, be cooler. At least that was the plan.

Remember I said we anchored right next to a Bird Sanctuary? Well, there is a book out called “Do Dolphins Ever Sleep?” It has a lot of interesting questions and answers about ships, the sky and the sea. I don’t know if this is in it, but let me give you first hand knowledge that FRICKIN BIRDS DO NOT SLEEP AT NIGHT!!!!!!!!!! All they do is make noise and then more noise, and then even more noise. So after a wonderful evening of no sleep, I waited for the sun to come up, listened to the weather report and prepared us to leave. There were storms to the west and north of us, but the report was good for where we were heading and we were not picking anything up on the radar.

To pull the anchor we have a pretty good system set up. It is a Muir Cheetah electric windlass and we have a 30 kg (about 66 pounds) Bruce anchor with 100’ of chain and 150 feet of 5/8” nylon rode. To operate the windlass all we have to do is turn on a switch in the cabin and hook up a remote keypad next to the anchor/windlass. Then we either push the “down” button to let out chain or rode or if we are pulling up the anchor, we put the boat in gear to take the pressure off of the windlass and then push the “up” button and voila!, up she comes. Now since our boat is 44’ long (really she is 51’ from the very end of the pulpit to the very back of the dingy when she is up on the davits), when Heidi and I were at a boat show in Ft. Lauderdale one of the venders was selling what they called ‘marriage savers”. These were headsets that you wore and you could talk directly into a microphone (already my kind of equipment – lol!) without touching anything. These have really come in handy when we have been anchoring, when I climbed up to the top of our 50+ foot mast and when we were leaving port one morning in the dark and Heidi was at the bow of the boat flashing the spotlight on the channel markers. No one has to scream or give hand signals or guess what the heck is going on. We each just simply talk into our headset and we have full control of the situation. “Marriage savers” is an understatement for the usefulness of these devices. I strongly recommend these to anyone cruising or really anyone who does any of the things I previously mentioned. When you are pulling an anchor in, you have to turn the wheel to starboard or port or go forward or stop immediately. By using these headsets, all communications are done instantly with no chance of error.

There is one more handy item that we have that we forgot to use the first time we brought the anchor up, but have used it ever since. That is we have a 50’ coiled rubber hose with a spray nozzle on the end. This one pumps salt water and we can spray it anywhere on the boat. When you dig your anchor into the bottom, many times when you pull it back up it has a bunch of mud and/or yucky junk on the anchor and the chain. This can make for a big, smelly mess in your anchor locker if it is not cleaned off before the chain goes in there (which it automatically does when you are using the electric windless). We simply spray the chain and anchor off as we are raising the anchor and everything is cleaned prior to going into the anchor locker.

OK, so I let Heidi sleep up until the last minute before we are getting ready to pull the hook. I had the windless set up, the spray hose was ready and I was starting to put up the mainsail. To do this you have to be facing the wind and since we were at anchor we were already facing the wind and there was really zero wind to speak of. If there had been much wind we would have waited until we had pulled the anchor to put up the mainsail. Also, the reason we even bother to put up the mainsail when there is little or no wind is that it helps to steady the boat in all sea conditions. Since we have a large keel under us, the mainsail that goes above the boat, helps to counter balance the pull of the keel. WOW! Sounds like I am learning this sailing stuff! Anyway, Heidi gets up right as I start to put up the mainsail. When I started the engine it woke her. She came right to the wheel, put on her headset and just like clock work, we pulled the anchor and started heading south once again.

That night we had spoken to Jack (Mosley) to confirm that we were heading his way and to try to set a day for the photo shoot we were going to do. Our original plan was to head to Boca Grande Channel and go into Charlotte Harbor. We would find a place to anchor and then work our way toward the northeastern part of Charlotte Harbor towards the mouth of the Peace Rive. Jack was playing Saturday night at Benedetto’s which is located just past the mouth of the river. However, Jack informed us that he had picked up another gig at the White Elephant near Englewood Beach on Friday night. This was the place that Jack use to play a lot and we had driven down from Madeira Beach to see the band play there before. It is right off of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) on Manasota Key. He told me there was a good anchorage close by so we pulled out our charts and found the area he was speaking about. Heidi and I decided to change our game plan and instead of running all the way up Charlotte Harbor, we would simply see Jack at the White Elephant on Friday night. We would then go about 15 miles up the ICW and pick up Jack, the band and Mike the photographer on Saturday morning and do the shoot in the afternoon. This would work out a lot better for us and, if all worked properly, we would then keep heading south toward Cabbage and Useppa Keys where we would anchor for the night.

Since our plans had changed we would now be going from the Gulf of Mexico and entering the ICW at the Venice Inlet which can be a tricky little bugger if the tide is rushing out hard. Manasota Key is located about 15 miles north of the inlet. As Heidi and I were sailing, really motoring towards the Venice Inlet we kept hearing Coast Guard “Severe Weather” Reports on our VHF. We always keep our VHF radio on and tuned to channel 16 when we are sailing/motoring. This way you always get emergency notices from the Coast Guard from weather reports to navigational hazards to missing ships or ships that need help that might be in the area you are close to. It is a rule of the sea to help out any boater that is in trouble no matter what your plans are. Anyway, these Severe Weather Reports were all saying that there were some hellacious storms north of us in the Clearwater area, as well as offshore and they were all heading north to northeast. We saw some of these offshore and none of them came close to us. I had even spoken to my pal, Bill and he told me that Tarpon Springs (just north of Clearwater) had continually been trounced in rain all morning. As I mentioned, we did not have hardly any wind. However, when we got about 10 miles from Venice Inlet the wind picked up a little and we decided to try to sail some. We did so and thought we were really doing good until the wind came up on us REAL hard and kind of took over things. We did the right thing and reefed (lowered) our sails and started heading downwind right towards Venice Inlet. I must admit though that it was a very valuable (and exciting) lesson for us. Although we thought we were sailing pretty good, what really happened was that one of those storms that was west of us, instead of it going north to northeast as they had all been doing all morning, it decided to come south to southeast for just a bit and it caught us without us knowing it. We should have lowered our sails earlier, but lesson learned. You see, I am mainly a power boater and I could always outrun a storm – even if we were going slow. The idea of a storm catching me was not in my way of thinking. It is now.

Going into Venice Inlet was no problem at all. There are about a gazillion markers once you get inside the inlet so Heidi went to the charts and called out the marks that we need to head to. We then had a peaceful and beautiful four hour run down the ICW all the way to our anchorage at Manasota Key. We dropped the hook about 100 feet off this uninhabited island and about 500 yards from the White Elephant which we could see off our starboard side. Jack called and wished us well for making a successful voyage to his backyard and then invited us to dinner for the following evening. It had been a long day and sleep was once again calling our name. I again tried sleeping down below but once again it was too hot for me, so out to the cockpit I went hoping that there would be no mosquitoes OR BIRDS! There were no mosquitoes or birds, but the water was alive with bigger fish chasing smaller fish. I mean they were relentless splashing the water all around the boat. So, another wonderful sleepless night on the GYPSY WIND.