Key West

April. 23, 2007 Key West, FL
We anchored here at Key West just after lunch following what could not reasonably be called a pleasant passage. It's funny, when I did the run from the Yucatan to Key West in 1980, it was just as nasty. We downloaded all the weather and it showed an easterly wind to 15K. I wasn't real keen on that as it was going to be wind against the Gulf Stream, which always makes the seas short and steep. But, we had a crew available, Jeff Martin, from my former place of employment. Jeff is a keen sailor and all around good guy, so we were glad to have his company, but the schedules of land folks always seem to bite you in the butt. So we didn't get to wait for southerly weather, we left.
Then the weathermen failed us - instead of 15 knot winds we had 20 and above. That little change was enough to change rough and uncomfortable into very rough and very uncomfortable. We had 10 foot seas with steep troughs in between. Ugh! And then it shifted so that Key West was directly upwind. At that point, we decided to motorsail and eventually just took down all the sails. We weren't going very fast, but we were going where we wanted to go. It was a long slog uphill until we got to Key West. Poor Jeff, it wasn't anything like the sail we had from Colon. But he is a good sport and a delight to have around, so I hope it was worth it for him.
One piece of new technology really worked for us and greatly reduced the possible stress. Our AIS (Automatic Identification of Ships) receiver put a picture of all the passing freighters on our electronic map on the computer screen so we could see the name of the ship, it's course and speed, the closest point of approach and the time to closest point of approach. Then, if we were frivolous, we could look up their destination and cargo. You can't believe how nice that is. There you are in the middle of the night and there are lights out in the darkness that can only be ships - and there are three of them. You're not really sure which way they are going until they get a lot closer. Now a sailboat isn't all that visible to the big boys although we run our radar and thus make a big picture on their radar screens. So we are always afraid of being run down. Now, we just call them on the radio to make sure they see us. It makes a huge difference to know the name of the ship so we call, "motor vessel Texaco Maru, sailing vessel Saeta calling". In seconds, the captain is back and we can talk about how we can avoid one another. It is so lame to call out "to any large ship off Cozumel" - usually nobody answers.

I just ran ashore in the dinghy and turned Jeff loose to get to his airplane, but Key West looks VERY cool. I think I am going to like it here. The marinas wanted $2.50/foot/day and so we decided to anchor. We are 5 minutes from town, so I don't mind. Considering what we saved on a marina, I don't think Andi will complain if I take her out for oysters at the raw bar on the wharf! Who knows, maybe we'll stop by for lunch at the clothing-optional lunchroom? This looks like a lively town. Wish you were here. We didn't take any pictures at all.