On the Sea again!

Well we're back on the move. Life was good in St. Petersburg and we could see how easy it would be to settle  into the shoreside life. But it was time to go. Made a quick sail out to Egmont Key, not far past the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Had a nice pleasant night on the hook. Took off in the AM to head for Shark River......NOT! The alternater wasn't alternating!! Somehow blew a fuse that had no spare anyplace aboard. Ugh!! Decided we need that kind of electrical generation since it was the only reliable source of power we had. At least sort of reliable. We decided to go in at Longboat Pass Bridge and find a fuse. Sound easy?.....NOT! This pass has a reverse tide that doesn't seem to show on any charts. Tried coming in at the bottom of the ebb tide. That sucked us right up to the bridge as it was opening sloooooooowly! Made it through. We had been advised that there was an anchorage to the starboard of the bridge. That happened to mean IMMEDIATLY to the starboard after the bridge. Figured that out as we started sliding onto the bottom. Dang!! We did get to practice our ungrounding skills. Good Practice for about an hour. Anyway, we did get our electrical problems figured out. Only took a few days!! Now for the exit back to sea. It should suffice to say that it isn't easy to stop a 21,000 lb. sailboat when the bridge gets stuck half way up. Aaahhhhhh!!! NEGATIVE! NEGATIVE! NEGATIVE! Was my wifes response when the tender asked if we could make it that way!! They had to lower the bridge and start over. Exciting morning.

Our intended journey was to go to Shark River on the southern tip of mainland Florida, not to be. After getting out in the Gulf of Mexico we got on such a good tack and were sailing along wonderfully we just decided to go on to the Dry Tortugas instead. So the following evening we pulled into the bay in front of Fort Jefferson. Wow, what a beautiful location. Great snockeling, bird watching and tours of the fort. (snuck into the tours from the tourist boats) It was a great time. Stayed there for 5 days. Waited to pick another pleasant weather window to sail on to Key West.........NOT!! It started out pleasant even though the winds were contrary. By evening we were getting 20 to 25 kt winds right on the nose with no place to go, since we were in the South West Channel to Key west. Reefs blow us and reefs above us. The biggest problem we had, besides the 5 to 6' seas was we were sailing along way to fast and would end up coming into an unfamiliar anchorage in the middle of the night. What a night of bouncing around stalling for daylight.Made it in fine and tied up to the mooring ball behind Fleming Key and went to bed.  Wonderful.

Now we get to spend several days doing the tourist things in Key West. Truly a world of it's own in the Keys. Hard to explain. After leaving here we will continue up the Keys to Little Torch, Bahia Honda and Marathon. Hope to enjoy our stay down here till we start the larger leaps up the east coast to the Chesapeake. So for now it's Sloppy Joes and Key Lime Pie. Yum Yum!

Thanks to everyone for your nice comments. Hope I'm keeping you posted enough. Too bad we don't have access everywhere, but then again........

So long for now.

Stow aways to the Dry Tortugas

Hey there, I'm back. We've been really busy the last few weeks getting ready to head south to the Keys then north to the Chesapeake. It has been a great time here in St. Pete, Fl. We'll miss all the friends we made here but with the help of modern tech. we will be able to keep in touch better than ever. We finished all our work on the hard. Changed out our sensor through hulls and put on another coat of bottom paint. Buffed and polished the hull with Poliglo. It looks great.

In the mean time we had a great Renaming Party. We crowded 12 hardy souls aboard and preformed a traditional ceremony.....well sort of. It was interspersed with some singing and general merry making.

Some update photos for your enjoyment.

This is the "Before" picture. This is when we went  to Mobile, Al. to purchase the boat. Notice the line wraps on the mainsail. Those are in preparation for Hurricane Ida. We eventually striped off the bimini and dodger and stowed all the deck equipment below decks. At this time it's hard to believe that this is the boat I bought.

S/V Moonshine! This is obviously the "after" picture. You can see why I have a hard time believing it's the same boat. Many hours of work in the transformation. It sure is nice inside too.

Added touches. This is our new cruising Spinnaker

So far we are still on schedule for departure from the St. Petersburg, Fl area around the 5th of April.?? Ya just never know when sailing. We are going to haul the boat out and do some work on the bottom through hull fittings and check out anything below the waterline. If anything is needed at that time we will fix or replace anything needed. We'll also put on anothe coat of bottom paint.

I'll keep you posted on the progress.

This is a picture of our refit in progress. We had the arch and davits installed by Lippincott Marine and I have just finished installing the Radar, Wind Generator and Solar Panels. You can also see a part of the Doyle Cradle Cover for the sail. We're very excited about our new improvements. Christie has been busy sewing covers for the outboard motor and grill. She has also done some modifications to make the tender cover easier to put on and holes for the davit lines. That is on top of making covers for our spare blankets that we can then use for pillows around the saloon, and a cover for the folding bicycle on deck. It has really been a busy time around here. It often seems I work harder around the boat than I did when I had a real job..........Or sort of a real job............sometimes!! :-)
Shane in the mean time is busy with his Studies and Sociallizing around the marina.

Hi all,
It's time to get you all updated on our statis. We have been docked here in St. Pete, Fl since the middle of January doing a major refit. We have installed and new arch, wind generator, solar panels, bimini, sail cover/ cradle pack, cruising spinaker, dodger, ground tackle, swim platform, davits, dive tanks racks and many more smaller items. I will post some pictures of our boat as soon as I can. It's hard to tell it's the same boat as before. We have been quite busy everyday doing some project of another. We are now waiting for the delivery of a new helm and as soon as that is installed we will be leaving this area. It has been a good time and we have enjoyed the people and activities in the area, but it's time to move on.

Continueing the Journey

Continueing on. It took us 3 days out at anchor to get our engine to start. Actually we had to, as Shane says, hire a professional. After changing primary fuel filters, secondary fuel filters, cleaning filter cases, priming, pumping and so on, we found out it was some paper towel that got into the tank and plugged the uptake and supply valve. Fixed!! So off we go. Sailed toward Apalachicola to refuel. All the regular entrys into the back bay were badly shoaled so had to get to the St. George Cut. Lost wind so Christie was happily motoring along when, BAM, run aground! Christie shut the engine down, BAD!! Waves kept lifting us and pounding us down on whatever it was we hit. Not even close to anything by all the charts and readings I took at the shore. Anyway, I got the engine on again and tried to back off....BAD! We by that time had gotten spun around by the wind and waves and I heard the crunching kind of noise. That's always BAD. Put it in forward and every time a wave lifted us we edged forward. Soon we cleared and heading for deep water. Hell of a day so far. We're a bit edgy by this time and still had to go through St. George Cut, read real tight, and on up to Apalachicola through strong winds and choppy seas.. To make a long story short, we came into the fuel dock at Miller Marine in the dark, nerves frazeled and made a perfect docking. The bad thing is, no one was around to see it!! Arrrrg! So it's off to the closes pub for beers. What a relief to be tied to a dock and safely back to shore.
A strong cold front came through that evening and dropped the temps down into the 20s at night and only in the mid 30s during the day. Picture above is ice on the dock in Apalachicola. Decided that wasn't a good time to try to cross the Gulf. It was a nice layover for a few days. Ate at some great seafood restraunts and bought some shrimp right off the boats. Great place. Rented a car for a couple days and drove around the area. Visted some friend we met in Mobile and went over to Panama City to buy some boat supplies. Came across a fella selling strawberries along the road from Plant City, Fl. They were by far the best berries I ever had. Incredible!

A few day later we got another favorable window to make our crossing. Sailed the boat upto Dog Island, just past St. George Island and anchored in this nice, protected little bay. Shane and I rowed the dingy over and explored the island. Very nice. We even got real close to an armadillo. One that wasn't smooshed on the road. :-) Sailed out in the morning into fair seas. Headed out to Green bouy #1 and set our course at 155 degrees and headed across the Gulf of Mexico. The crossing was rather uneventful. We kinda like it that way. We motor sailed the whole way and it took us 36 hrs. to make the crossing. It was nice to come into the channel to Tampa at Egmont Key and have this leg of our trip under our belts. We are better sailors for our experience and are much more comfortable with our chosen vessel. Island Packets are made to take the heavy stuff and we have lots of confidence in her ability to take much more than her crew.

We are now docked at St. Pete Marina and doing a major refit. Installing Wind generator, Solar generator, Arch, radar, chartplotter, new helm,  autopilot and more. As you see we came across the Gulf with a paper chart, a hand held GPS and compass. In other words, by the seat of our pants. We made it and are better prepare for it.  Hope this catches you all up on what's happening and I'll try to be more diligant on posting.

Later

Finally on our way

I'm back. I would liked to keep up on this blog for history and your enjoyment. I hope to post on here on a more regular basis.

We finally found a boat to buy. It's a 1990 Island Packet 38, hull #114. We bought it in Mobile, Alabama. We had a survey done on her just before Hurricane Ida made landfall at Mobile. For some reason the marina didn't want us to own a boat that the insurance company wouldn't insure!!?? We were allowed to purchase about a week later. After that we stayed in the Mobile area around 6 weeks to do a small refit. We changed most of the running rigging, anchors, sacraficial cloth ect. I built shelves in the cockpit locker as the locker is so huge that everything you put in ends up in a pile in the forward end. It was getting colder by the day and we really wanted to get on south. 

On a side note: We are so grateful to know Mark and Susan Simpson, in Mobile. They so kindly allowed us to stay at their home as often as we wanted/ needed to. We even got into watching "Survivor Samoa". It became a weekly event.  And while mentioning the Simpson Family, we were very fortunate to also know Scott Simpson, who let us stay on his Hunter 43 while we were shopping for our boat.

So off we go, with our new (to us) boat and went to the fuel dock. An adventure all it's own. Did I mention that this fuel dock stop was because we ran out of fuel during our sea trial. Had to sail into a fuel dock with 15 to 20 knot winds off the stern quarter. That was up the river. The sea trial out on Mobile Bay was very exciting with 30 knot sustained winds. This was linked to a family that had absolutely no experience with an Island Packet to start with. Yeeee ha!!

Anyway, back to our travels. We managed to cross Mobile Bay that day and anchored outside the entrance to the ICW. This section is known for it's narrow channels and barge traffic. We were mostly concerned with the barges. Heard them coming out of the channel most of the night. To our surprise we never passed a barge all the way to Pensacola the next day. It was a nice cruise along the "Alabama canal". As we came into Florida we were greeted by two dolphins that swam with us for a ways. We figure that they simply weren't allowed into Alabama for some reason. :-)  We anchored in the Big Lagoon, south west of Pensacola. It was pretty rolly that night. We drug anchor around 2:am and got washed up into the shallows.  Bouncing along the bottom has a way of waking one up right quick!!  The next morning was our well planned out weather window to cross the Gulf of Mexico......Yea Right!  It wasn't reeeeeeeeal bad but bad enough that 80 miles out and 20 hrs. of rough travel made us decide to hole up at Apalachicola for a while.  Now mind you that Apalachicola is 50 miles east of us. By sailboat that equates to 10 hours of travel, in rough seas, at best.  Well what to our surprise, the winds shift to the NW and built in front of an unpredicted storm. We're now quartering across 8 to 10 footers that were at 6 sec. intervals. That means short deep troughs. Can you say submarine?? When what should happen........we loose our engine!!!  So while Mom and Dad are down below trying to figure out what to do about the engine, Shane calls down and says, "This is a sailboat ya know".  Duh! So Shane, single handedly set the genoa and started sailing on a 90 degree easterly course. So I hollered up and said " Keep going, that will take us back toward Apalachicola."  So that's how we ended up anchored off Cape San Blas, Florida, working on our engine.

I'll pick up on our story in a little bit.  Be patient with me.