Laundry and boat jobs

Laundry and boat jobs

Thursday 11th March 2021

We have a list of jobs that we need to get done before we leave Boot Key Harbor and this morning we decided to tackle the laundry. Better now than wait until the weekend when the laundry room gets really busy. It’s great having a good laundry facility at the marina – you simply get a card from the desk with whatever credit you want on it ($3 for each wash or dry) which avoids having to use lots of quarters. 

This afternoon we spent an hour planning out a possible route. Our plan is to head east up the Hawk passage for ~ 20-30 miles then cut outside of the reef and continue north east until we hit the Gulf Stream and then ride that all the way up to Fort Pierce inlet just over 200 nautical miles away. Monday morning was looking promising for a departure and we figure that would put us at Fort Pierce by Tuesday afternoon. However, I just looked at an update forecast and unfortunately it looks like conditions aren’t going to settle down as much as we were hoping. The challenge is that at least at the outset we may end up beating directly into the wind and even if we want to break the journey into smaller section the only anchorage between here and Key Biscayne (90 miles away) has no protection from the east. We’ll just have to keep watching the forecast.

In preparation for doing some real offshore sailing I reinstalled our wind self-steering system and also the emergency Jordan Series Drogue. This is a long length of ultra-strong rope attached via a bridle to a pair of reinforced plates on the back corners of the boat. The rope has about 100 cones sewn into it every couple of feet that act as a brake in the water should you need it. If thing get really rough and out of control you simply throw a chain attached to the end of the drogue overboard and it should deploy automatically. Then the crew goes below and the boat takes care of itself. The only issue now is that you have to rig it in a way that it doesn’t get tangled around the self-steering gear if you have to deploy it. I think we figured that out and continue to hope that we never have to use this device!

I am so ready to start moving again! 

Mike

24 42.327 N, 81 05.701 W

This is a time-lapse video that was shot over 20 minutes from the deck of Cotinga around sunset. It may give you a sense of how much the boat swings around the mooring when it's windy ... or just make you feel sick watching it!