Marathon, Key West

I spent the better part of a day extricating various components of our autopilot to send to the manufacturer. After a couple of weeks in transit and at the shop, I think the parts are headed back to us now.

As of yet, I haven't been able to talk to the guy who did the troubleshooting, but rumors are the cables were bad. I would assume at the connectors (7 little tiny wires in each cable). They were well secured, weren't corroded and were placed where they would not get bumped, so I don't know how they went from good to bad. We will see.

We had the alternator frame welded and I reinstalled the frame and large alternator with new belts.

The weather has been breezy but spectacular during our stay here. We took the bus to Key West and enjoyed a day there. Other than obscene T shirts hanging in the shop windows, we didn't see any crazy stuff that makes Key West so proud of itself. By reputation, not our type of town, but now we've "been there, done that". I will say that I've been on third world buses that were much more comfortable than the "Keys" bus. At least there weren't pigs and chickens on board.


Speaking of chickens...much like in Latin America, they roam the streets and sidewalks of KW with abandon. Mostly roosters, but you see a chicken every now and then.


Some of the 48 percentile. Tarpon begging for handouts from a fish cleaning skipper.


Waiting in line for an autograph from Albert Einstein IV. 

Actually, there was no way I was going to wait in line to take a picture of this famous landmark, so I jumped up on the little wall, and this was the best I could do.

Back at Boot Key Harbor, there has been a bit of excitement. There used to be an opening bridge which guarded the entrance to the harbor. That bridge was condemned and is now always open, but just before the bridge there are power/fiber optic lines with 65 foot clearance from the water at high tide.

It is not uncommon for an unsuspecting/unprepared skipper (with a mast over 65') to run into these lines. We have met crew from 2 different boats that were dismasted by running into the power lines. We only draw 58' 6" and the high power line is higher than the fiber optic one, so no problem for us.

A catamaran with a 73 foot mast hit the lines the other day and apparently broke the cable holding up the fiber optic line. This caused the line to droop quite a bit lower. Later, several other unsuspecting boats, which normally would have cleared, hit the lines doing some damage, but not dismasting.

Now all the boats in Boot Key are in a panic. They've been waiting several weeks for a weather window to cross the Gulf Stream. The window has finally arrived, but nobody has fixed the power lines and sailors are feeling trapped. The fiber optic line belongs to AT&T, but you can't get them on the phone. Go figure. The city and the marina are disinterested. It has been amusing listening to the chatter on the VHF. It actually makes me feel smarter than I am. I guess that's a good thing.

I am in serious discussions with the Weather Babe regarding our route back to Texas. For us, The Gulf Intercoastal Waterway starts at Pensacola. Technically, it starts around Fort Myers, but not for us.

We don't like dealing with the bridge tenders around New Orleans and our experience at the locks have included very long delays. We can handle the lock delays and the bridge tender attitude, but delays make it difficult to make it to an anchorage before dark.

On the other hand, the Gulf of Mexico has thousands of oil rigs, many of which are unlit at night. Since we are short-handed, we prefer sticking to the shipping lanes which are rig-free.  This is a lot less stressful.   

The biggest problem for me are the funky currents. The Loop Current is warm Caribbean water that squirts up between Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula where it then enters the Gulf of Mexico. At one extreme, the current takes an immediate right and becomes the Florida Current south of the Florida Keys, then making a left and becoming the Gulf Stream.

At the other extreme it shoots up close to the Louisiana coast before pulling a Uy, making a circuitous route back down to the Florida Current. Usually, it is somewhere in between the 2 extremes.


At the top of the U-turn, it breaks off creating an eddy which slowly makes it's way to Mexico's west coast--with baby brother and sister eddies on it's tail.

Since an eddy is basically a current flowing in circles, it creates a couple of problems. One, if you are on the wrong side of it, you will slow down. Two is worse. You are basically assured of having wind against current somewhere close enough to create steep, square and confused seas.

The key would be to try and hit the eddy where it flows with the boat and wind direction. But the currents move around and so does the wind.

But it could be a wonderful passage. Most likely some nice, some not so nice. This is assuming we get our autopilot back.

Stuart, Fort Pierce, Biscayne Bay, Rodriguez Key, Boot Key Harbor

While in Stuart, we rented a car and drove to St. Marys, Georgia to notarize some papers, then decided to check out Savannah since we were in the neighborhood. A very cold and windy cold front was making it's way down the East Coast so we drove through the cobble stone streets of Savannah's historic district, and basically stayed in the car. It was not even close to T-shirt, shorts and flip flop weather.

Some inside info for anyone writing a travel guide for Savannah, Georgia. Don't drive down the cobble stone streets with a full bladder. It really really hurts. Especially in an economy rental car.

We put over 1200 miles on the car during our weekend rental.

The St. Lucie Inlet is for those with more guts than us, so when we finally bid Stuart good-by, we took the ICW to Lake Worth. We were anchored by early afternoon, took a nap, then weighed anchor at 3 am and made our way toward Miami.

It was a beautiful, but windless day, so we motored most of the way. The fishing rods were deployed, but I only caught about 40 pounds of seaweed.


Sunrise on and calm seas.

We entered through Government Cut to Miami, then wound our way to Biscayne Bay and finally to the bight at Key Biscayne. We love this anchorage. The Miami skyline is quite stunning at night.


A nicely restored wooden motor yacht preparing to anchor next to us.

The anchorage doesn't provide much west protection, so when a front came through with it's westerly winds, we moved across the bay to the Dinner Key Mooring Field. It also provided an opportunity to do laundry.


This is not me, and it's not a body building photo. No, really, it's not. Lisa swears the camera makes her muscles look smaller. The picture shows the dedication of the Weather Babe to hang onto the mooring ball for dear life--when the helmsman doesn't take the time to set up a proper approach on a windy day.

We have been having an issue with our autopilot for some time. It does fine out on the ocean, and does great in heavy weather, but it does S curves on the ICW. Lisa wants to name it Zig Zag. (unlike on a car, a boat autopilot steers the vessel to a compass or wind direction setting) So far, none of the recommended fixes have been successful. We were out motoring doing another test with it (moving the fluxgate compass to another area) when we we heard a thump thump sound. Lisa took it out of gear and the noise went away, so we thought we had caught something in the prop and that it fell off when Lisa shifted to neutral.

After removing the engine cover, I discovered the thump thump sound was from a broken alternator bracket. This is a very heavy duty frame that seems to have been very well engineered and installed. It was mounted on top of the engine mount bolts so that it would move with the engine as it is supposed to.


This is a 200 amp alternator mounted on the frame that broke. 

The frame broke behind the raw water pump and the 125 amp alternator on the right hand side of the picture. The frame was bolted to the 2 front engine mounts and wrapped around to the rear engine mount on the left hand side of the picture (out of view).


Here is where it sheared off. 

The hole in the small piece is where it was bolted on top of the engine mount. You can see some dark coloring part way through where it broke, which indicates it started a while back. The belts were tensioned correctly, so I don't know what caused it. I suspect it may have been weakened when Bock Marine moved the engine sideways some to realign it with the prop shaft.

The weather window had us scheduled to leave the following day, so I removed the alternator and the rack with the intent of just using the 125 amp alternator. I made matters worse by letting the positive and negative wire from the alternator touch before having them safely wrapped up.

That necessitated a 35 minute dinghy ride across the bay and a 2 mile walk to West Marine to claim their one and only 400 amp fuse to replace the one that I blew. I was happy to pay double the nonWest Marine market value for the fuse.

Our departure was delayed a day, but we finally made our way out the Biscayne Channel and into Hawk Channel. My heart was bleeding tears watching the sailboats in front of us head for the Bahamas. All systems were running smoothly--except the autopilot. The autopilot motor was not receiving power from the motor controller. None of the fuses were blown, but I'm sure it's related to my alternator blunder. We will have to send pieces of the system to the manufacturer in Washington State to have it fixed. No Gulf crossing without Zig Zag.

Our destination was Rodriguez Key. The wind had more southerly in it than forecast, so we were close hauled the whole way and tacking back and forth for much of it. The true wind was 15 to 18 knots, so the apparent wind was in the low to mid 20s.

We're not addicted to Facebook or Twitter or I-Anything, but we do rely heavily on our autopilot and feel totally lost without it.

We arrived at Rodriguez Key tired after a fantastic day of sailing. The water is Bahama like. I desperately wanted to swim to cool down, but I had to trouble shoot the autopilot problem. Lisa did jump in and she checked the bottom of the boat and the anchor set. If she can do that here, I think she ought do it in Texas.

We were off at sunrise the following day and pointed to Vaca Key. Once again, we were able to sail the whole way and made great time, still with no autopilot. It was a bit rough again, but we were on a close reach instead of close hauled. As the day wore on the wind was just above a beam reach. We had decided to take a mooring at Boot Key Harbor if one was available, and if not we would anchor near the bridge and head for Key West the following day. We needed to stop somewhere to get the autopilot taken care of and to change our insurance. Right now we are only covered east of Carabelle, Fla. Yo, Obama!! Where are you when I need you? If I tell you I might get pregnant, then will we be covered in the Gulf--I mean for free of course.

We were relieved to get a mooring at Boot Key because muscles we don't have were hurting. And we were whooped. Can I please have my autopilot back?