A Tale of Two Chemists: It’s Howling Outside Tonight

It’s Howling Outside Tonight

Monday 1st February 2021

The following is an excerpt from the NOAA marine forecast for this evening.

Tonight: Northwest winds near 25 knots, with occasional gusts of 30 to 35 knots. Seas 4 to 7 feet, except 8 to 11 feet west of Cosgrove shoal light*. Near-shore waters extremely rough. Isolated showers.

We are very glad that we went for a day-sail yesterday – today conditions are decidedly rough. We are well protected here in the marina and so we feel pretty cozy, but our wind instruments are showing winds in the 25-30 knot range. When we woke this morning it was cloudy and quite breezy and we had some showers, which is the first rain that we have seen in several weeks. Once the rain passed, the sun came out and the winds increased ... a lot. We took a walk around town this afternoon and were impressed by how choppy the water looked. The anchorage areas north-west of the island are protected from large ocean swells by the surrounding sand banks but they have zero wind protection and miles of shallow water to build up a fierce chop. One review that I read about Key West on ActiveCaptain.com said “No one tells you before you get here that all the anchorages are lousy” … which is why we chose to stay at the marina! In fact I think we have been incredibly fortunate to find space at the Key West Bight city marina – it’s a great location in the center of town, with an easy walk or bike ride to places of interest and also fairly peaceful and pleasant to hang out. The other day we cycled past the other city marina in Garrison Bight where we had initially made enquiries, but discovered we could not access the marina because of overhead power cables that are lower than our mast. To be honest I think we got lucky because we now realize that Garrison Bight marina is a couple of miles out of town in a much less attractive area right next to the exceptionally busy route 1.

Tomorrow we’ll do some boat cleaning and a little shopping to prepare for Tasha and McKenzie arriving in Key West in the evening. They were originally going to stay on board, but because of concerns about picking up and passing on Covid-19 during their travels they are now are going to be staying in an AirBnB close by and we will try and manage some sort of social distancing. More on their visit to follow…

Mike

24 42.220 N, 81 06.131 W

* Cosgrove Light is about 15 miles to the west of us and is where the majority of the keys end and there is no land protection to the north.

A lone yacht anchored south of Tank Island just to the wets of town. The main anchorage areas are further north. It seems strange that it's so sunny and so windy.