Day 110
Since we couldn’t sleep anyway, we got up early to prepare the boat to pull anchor at daybreak. Even though we were in extremely shallow water (the tide had gone out), Legacy was not sitting on the bottom which we interpreted as a good sign for the day ahead. Inside the mouth of the Little Shark River, winds were calm and the water was smooth. As the sun came up (I’ve seen more sunrises on this trip than I think I’d seen in my entire life, beforehand), we pulled the anchor with no issues and pointed the boat out of the river and back into the gulf. Waters stayed incredibly “skinny” all the way out of the river. Having to travel so slowly made that little segment (approximately 1 mile’s distance) take almost 45 minutes to complete. The NOAA forecast was still predicting 15-20 knot winds and 2-3-foot wave heights for today’s crossing. As we finally reached water with deeper depths out in the gulf, we had left the protection of the Everglades, so we were now feeling the winds and the rougher waters. We decided our friend Scott Johnson was probably exaggerating about having to double NOAA weather radio’s predicted wind speed and wave heights. Yes, the winds were around 16 knots at that point, and we were bouncing a bit on the 2-3-foot waves, but we could handle it! Legacy was indeed a seafaring vessel, and we just did our best to stay seated up in the flybridge and hold on for the ride.
Of course, crab-pots surrounded us (ALWAYS), so we were dodging them again, just as we had the day before and the day before that. We saw our friends the dolphins and watched the gulls, pelicans, and cormorants bobbing along on the surface of the water – regardless of wave-height. They didn’t seem the least bit bothered by the roller-coaster ride created by the winds. I thought to myself – if those birds can handle these rougher seas, then so can I. So, we wove through crab-pots and bounced along like that for several hours. Even though it was windy, it was warm and sunny, which boosted our spirits. We were both thinking, “these waves aren’t sh*t, we can handle this, no sweat!”, and felt confident we’d made the right decision to go ahead with the crossing today. Steve’s upper-body strength increased considerably with all this manual steering. Every time he tried to turn on the auto-pilot, a line of crab-pots would suddenly appear right in our path, so he’d have to take the wheel again himself to avoid hitting them.
About 9:30 am, the skies started clouding up and the winds increased to between 18-20 knots, and the wave heights increased subsequently. Our ride got rougher, and our adrenaline levels rose accordingly. As the skies got cloudier, the winds turned chillier, so we closed up the flybridge. But then, maybe 20 minutes later, the sun came back out and turned the flybridge into a steamy greenhouse, so we had to unzip again. With my lousy sense of balance (even on perfectly flat, stable ground) I was USELESS in these waves. I tried and failed multiple times to stand and tend to the flybridge windows, stumbling all about and grabbing onto anything I could reach to stay upright. Watching my fruitless attempts finally convinced Steve to put me at the helm while HE zipped and unzipped isinglass as necessary. This plan worked much better for everyone.
We’d been seeing land way over to our east for a while now, as we passed the Florida Keys. About 11:30 am, we spotted the Seven Mile Bridge up ahead of us, under which we needed to go for deepest access into our marina at Stock Island from the east. We rocked closer and closer to the bridge until we finally passed underneath it. The waters turned even more emerald-green and beautiful underneath the bridge. We were actually cruising in the Florida Keys! 😊 We passed underneath Seven Mile Bridge at about 12:15 pm. Now, as we cruised, the Keys were appearing to our north (which was off the starboard side of the boat), and we began to notice the wave heights growing. NOAA’s earlier predictions had applied to the Gulf of Mexico, on the western side of the keys. NOW, we were actually sailing east of the Keys, in the Atlantic Ocean, where conditions changed dramatically. We started to recall NOAA had predicted stronger winds and bigger seas for Hawks Channel, which is along the east side of the keys, exactly where we were now cruising, and would continue to be for the next three hours to Key West. The wind gauge was now showing 24-knot winds and we estimated the waves to now be as high as 4-6-feet. Uh-oh… We looked at each other and almost simultaneously said, “I think we might be starting to learn what ‘big seas’ are!”
The bouncing had turned to flat-out rocking, as Legacy’s bow rose to the top of one large wave and then dove right down the other side of it, into the watery valley between it and the next wave. White-caps were very much now the norm, rather than the occasional passing occurrence, and the winds were whipping spray across Legacy’s bow constantly. We both began to feel a bit nervous, but it was apparent Legacy was handling all of this in stride. It was just her crew that was harried and wide-eyed. I began picturing the storm scene in the opening credits of Gilligan’s Island, and realized we were playing our parts perfectly at this moment, even though there was no rain falling. Yet.
My eyes stayed riveted on the churning ocean before us, as we were now on high-alert for crab-pots. That’s right, they were still EVERYWHERE, even despite the ridiculous conditions. I noticed the skies were getting darker about the time Steve glanced behind us and saw a rain shower approaching. As that rain caught up to us, it also brought FOG, which eliminated our visibility. We rarely have to use radar during the day, so it wasn’t turned on. The only way to turn it on is from below at the salon helm, which Steve climbed down to do, holding on tightly to the rails and wearing his life-jacket, which we had each donned several hours earlier, even though we were stationed up inside the enclosed flybridge. As Steve rushed to go below, we both forgot to put on our headsets, which is how we communicate when separated from each other on the boat. Suddenly, there I was! Gilligan at the helm all by myself dodging the mine-field of crab-pots as they (and large sheets of rain) flew by me on both sides, while at the same time fighting to keep the bow of the boat pointed into the waves, rather than letting them hit us broadside. Right then, both engines went silent. Holy crap, it’s happening again, I thought – and at the worst possible moment! Steve was nowhere in sight, and we couldn’t communicate. I started fearing he might’ve fallen overboard and I hadn’t seen him, so I took my eyes off of the waves in front of us to scan the waters behind the boat. In the rain, the waves increased to what were most likely 7-feet. Radar now operating, Steve bounded back up the steps and into the flybridge, soaking wet. He said he’d heard me shouting and was frightened something had happened. Right then, we both realized just how important wearing those headsets truly was. I’d been hesitant to go below and check on him because I thought I still had control of the boat from the flybridge and had to keep the boat out of the crab-pots, when all the while, Steve had taken control of the boat from below (which is why the engines had seemed to stop and restart) and said HE’D been steering Legacy himself that whole time. What the ?! 😐 Had we been wearing our headsets, Steve could’ve just told me what he was doing, and neither one of us would’ve gotten worried. As quickly as it had come up, the rain shower passed us and we could actually see where we were going again. We both breathed a sigh of relief, but realized we still had two more hours of high winds and 4-7-foot seas to ride. It was like being stuck on the world’s longest (and wettest) roller-coaster.
As the afternoon progressed and we got closer to Key West, the winds and waves began to lessen, just as NOAA had predicted, which was just fine with both of us. The ride was still rough, but now somewhat easier to tolerate and steer through. Steve had been checking his charts for the location of Stock Island Marina Village and had previously set a course on Navionics. He followed that course as I spoke with the marina to let them know we were almost there. But as we entered the channel leading to the marina, the depths suddenly went from 5-feet to less than 1-foot. And the further in we went, the shallower the water got. I was still on the radio with the marina and asked them if there was some sort of trick to navigating their channel, as it was suddenly so shallow. Taylor, the marina manager, asked me if we were in the channel and I said I thought we were, but then he asked me if we could see “the tall red and white striped smoke-stack” ahead of us? There was NO smoke-stack anywhere in sight, and just when we were thinking we might’ve gone the wrong way, and so needed to quickly turnaround, we felt the ominous “bump-bump” of Legacy’s hull running aground, and our boat was suddenly no longer moving. Steve wasn’t sure what the bottom consisted of in this channel, and didn’t want to risk damaging the propellers by using the engines to attempt to back-off. He had been following the route planned by our Navionics charts, but missed that Navionics had been sending us to the wrong place. Instead of taking us to Stock Island Marina Village, it was taking us to a place called Stock Island Docks, which was not at all where we wanted (or needed) to be. Knowing that dark was approaching, we hailed Boat US on the radio to request a tow. (Thank goodness we’d purchased that limitless towing policy from Boat US!) We gave the representative the coordinates of our current location so he could find us, and he indicated he knew exactly where we were. It sounded to me like this was a common spot where larger boats ran aground. He told us he would get to us soon in his skiff, but had also called a Boat US tugboat to come and get us, as he feared his little boat couldn’t tow a boat Legacy’s size through such shallow waters. He arrived after about 30 minutes and tied his boat to our port side while we waited for the tug-boat. He and Steve talked shop while I went down into the salon. By this time, the sun was beginning to set. Of course, this was a busy channel – for the correct-sized boats, anyway – so small rigs kept having to go around the idiots in the larger boat blocking the middle of their channel. We even had a few boaters passing by make smart remarks about us to their fellow passengers, not realizing (because sound carries over water and they were obviously drunk) we could hear every word they were saying about us and our boat. Oh, well – we knew we looked like fools, so what could we say? Our Boat US guy spoke on the radio several times with the tug-boat he had called, but it was still about 20 minutes out from us. We had previously called Stock Island Marina Village back on the radio to tell them what had happened, but advised we were still coming as soon as our tow arrived.
As darkness began to fall, we realized Legacy was no longer stationery and was actually floating in the channel again, which meant the tide was coming in! Our Boat US hero told Steve instead of waiting even longer for the tug-boat to arrive, he was going to tie Legacy to his skiff and pull us out himself, since the water level had risen slightly. He got us all hooked up and turned around in the channel as the sun dropped below the horizon. I marveled how that very small, open-cockpit boat could so easily tow a 50-foot trawler behind it. Steve was up in the flybridge at the helm steering Legacy to follow the skiff as closely as possible, to prevent unnecessary drag. I was so mesmerized by this whole process, I failed to notice what Steve had already noticed. The wind was picking back up and so were the waves. As we approached the mouth of the channel, conditions swiftly deteriorated. Not only was it dark outside, but the winds were now at 30 knots and the waves were closely following suit. Our poor Boat US hero up ahead of us in his skiff was getting battered by the winds and swamped by the giant waves. The winds were howling at this point and we could barely hear him talking on the radio to the waiting tug-boat driver. We watched as waves absolutely swamped the bow of that skiff three separate times, which completely soaked its captain through and through. We were making slow progress forward, with still extremely shallow depths showing beneath our keel. Legacy was rocking so badly at this point, I had to stay seated with my arms and legs wrapped around various rails and table legs to keep myself onboard. About this time, we saw our skiff-driver pull his boat up next to the tug-boat and physically hand the line tied to Legacy over to the tug driver, who then secured us to his boat instead. That entire process scared me to witness, as both boats ahead were pitching and falling in those horrendous waves, and neither one of our rescuers appeared to be wearing life-jackets! The whole time, Steve continued fighting Legacy’s wheel to keep her pointed into the waves.
Nine times out of ten, I’m the one who gets the most shook-up in situations such as this one. But when I realized Steve had gone completely quiet, I knew this was not our normal. I could see the seriousness of things in Steve’s body-language, which just added another layer to my anxiety, but gave me the presence of mind to just shut my mouth and concentrate. As the Boat US skiff driver slowly veered away from us (but still stayed nearby), the tug-boat pulled us farther out of the channel where the waters deepened, but the high winds were now sending constant spray so high up it was coming into our flybridge! At that point, our tug-boat driver got onto the radio to tell us we’d gotten far enough out he could release us, and said he needed us to untie his boat’s tow-line from the forward cleats on Legacy’s bow. Steve and I looked at each other, and since I’m always the line-handler, he told ME to go out onto the bow to untie. Knowing myself pretty well, I was incredulous and shouted, “I’M not going out there! I’ll fall right off this boat!” At that point it was like Steve snapped out of a trance and quickly agreed that I was the LAST person that needed to be out on the deck in what now seemed to have reached “Deadliest Catch-level” conditions. I jumped into the helm seat (Gilligan was BACK), while Steve did his best to scramble outside into the elements and untie our boat, without falling overboard himself. And yes we both had our life jackets on and securely fastened.
Once we were disconnected from the tug, it pulled away from us so that we could start our engines and head toward the correct channel this time. In almost complete darkness. He told Steve over the radio that the hull of his tug boat was 12-feet high, and those waves were submarining him! (Wait – we were out in 12-foot waves…??) This time, the red and white striped smokestack was illuminated, and appeared before us, as the lights from our marina were also visible in the distance. Both of the Boat US boats followed us to make sure we were okay and got where we were going. All the while, the winds remained at 30 knots. We’d long since realized all bets were off with the crab-pots, since there was no way to spot them in the pitch darkness. So, we prayed Legacy’s stabilizers, rudder, and props would miraculously remain crab-pot-free as we headed toward our destination. We had originally told the marina we wanted to fuel-up before we went to our assigned transient slip, but that was long before all of this chaos had ensued. The marina called us on the radio to say they were closing and to ask if we still needed to fuel-up, which we quickly said NO – we can do that later when there’s not gale-force winds blowing! I asked Taylor (at the marina) which slip we were assigned to and he advised us it was “B-12”. He then proceeded to give me directions from the marina entrance to our slip location, so I thanked him and signed off the radio. In mere moments, we realized he had either given me bogus directions or I had misunderstood him (the latter being the most likely). Steve got on the radio to the Boat US skiff driver to ask if he was familiar with Stock Island Village Marina, so that he could perhaps lead us to our slip. He said he thought he could, so we proceeded into the marina, still fighting winds way too high to safely enter into a marina. 😐 It was so dark and windy, all I could focus on was getting our fenders hung up on the starboard side of the boat, as previously advised to do by the marina rep. The waves inside the marina were smaller, so I felt safer out on Legacy’s deck, but the winds were holding strong. By this point, we were both wearing our headsets so we could communicate. Just as I advised Steve I’d hung all the fenders, our headset batteries completely ran down after our LONG day, and we got disconnected. With her large flybridge, Legacy is top-heavy in high winds. Not that she could roll-over, but that flybridge acts like a huge sail catching all beam-side winds quite efficiently. Which is exactly what is not needed when trying to navigate a completely unfamiliar marina with narrow channels in the dark. As we entered the marina, a gigantic moored sailboat, with a navy-blue hull, was taking up massive space on the starboard side of the entrance. Steve said he held his breath as we came up next to it, feeling like he was “threading a needle” driving our boat through the narrow opening it created. (We’ve since learned that big blue sailboat is 120-feet long, with a hull that looms up some 25 feet above the waterline. It is being refurbished, as it currently has no mast. As we’ve passed it in the daylight, we’ve seen that its starboard hull has already suffered damage from other boats who were not as successful with their needle-threading. Quite ironically, that boat is also named Legacy!) Steve followed the Boat US skiff into the fairway where slip number B-12 was located, which meant Legacy had turned sideways into the winds. Meanwhile, I was running around down in the cockpit holding the boat-hook, hoping to fend-off any boats or docks we might accidentally be blown into. Just as Legacy turned broadside to the wind, a huge gust of wind hit her port side, which pushed her right into all the slipped boats tied to her starboard. Steve later said he’d had both thrusters (bow and stern) pushed as far to port as they would go, but they were no match for that wind. The thruster motors were both revved up high and the wind was howling, and right when I heard a loud crash, I saw the starboard corner of the swim-platform at our stern was mashing up against a ladder mounted on the dock. I used the boat-hook with all my might in an attempt to push us back off the ladder (which miraculously sustained little to no damage). All of a sudden what seemed like thirty dock-hands magically swarmed the docks beside us. Each one of them were simultaneously shouting different instructions at me, and several of them were physically pushing our swim platform off of the dock-ladder. Meanwhile, Steve was following one of the dock-hands down to slip B-12, which was to be our home for the next month. As Steve continued on into the fairway as directed, I saw that Legacy was still dangerously close to all the stationery boats slipped on her starboard side. In addition to the many dock-hands, multiple boat-owners had come out of their boats and were holding protective fenders between their bows and the hull of our boat to help prevent unwanted damage. By this time, I was so bewildered, I felt my head swivel all the way around on my shoulders. (Steve later confessed that right about that time is when it occurred to him that HE “WAS THAT GUY” coming into the marina in the total darkness, like a bull in a china shop and damaging all boats around him.) All at once, I discovered – even against all that wind – Steve had miraculously managed to turn Legacy around in the fairway so he could reverse her into our slip. Dock-hands again came running at me shouting for me to “throw out a stern line!” and “do you have a spring line?” and then someone else shouted from the front of the boat for me to hurry and pitch them a bow line. I was thinking to myself, for God’s sake, this boat is 50 feet long and I’m just one person! There was no physical way I could simultaneously throw them a stern line AND a bow line! So I spastically pitched a stern line overboard toward someone with a blurry face, and then started for the bow of the boat, trying not to trip and fall down in the process. By the time I got there, a very spry young man had somehow managed to board our boat by leaping from the dock finger, over the water, in the dark and safely landing on our deck, and was in the process of wrapping our bow line onto the bow cleat, while another dock-hand was securing the other end of that line to the dock finger. Though I could barely comprehend it, Steve and those dock-hands had managed to get us all the way into our slip and secured without hitting the boat slipped right next to us or the dock finger in the whole wind-driven process. Steve shouted at me from the flybridge, “Are we all tied-up and secured? Can I kill the engines?” Hilariously, even though our headsets had long since died, in Three Stooges-like fashion, I’d continued to wear my headset, still talking away to Steve into the mouth piece like he was even able to hear me. I’d been giving him a play-by-play throughout the whole thing, which is why I couldn’t understand why he was now shouting at me from the flybridge like I’d not kept him informed all along! I had completely forgotten he hadn’t heard a single word I’d been saying. Some of the dock-hands reached over and started high-fiving me for a job well done of getting Legacy safely slipped and secured and I was thinking to myself, I didn’t really DO anything besides run around on the deck like a headless chicken.
Things began to slow down a bit as Steve made sure all dock lines had been tied to his satisfaction and that the fenders were lowered or raised to their correct heights. We tipped the dock-hands and then our Boat US skiff driver appeared on the dock behind Legacy with official Boat US paperwork for us to complete and sign. We thanked this young man profusely and tipped him well for his heroic, above-and-beyond efforts. I told him to go home, get out of those soaked clothes, and take a long hot shower!
All the commotion having died-down and the dock-hands vanished, Steve connected Legacy’s shore power, which thankfully worked perfectly. We both then went inside – me for a shower and Steve for a strong cocktail. Even though I’d originally thought the loud crash I heard was from our swim platform hitting the dock ladder, it turns out that crash had actually been caused when the teak railing on Legacy’s starboard side collided with an adjacent sailboat anchor as that gust of wind hit us. ☹ We were left with a large scrape and deep gouge in our teak, but the sailboat anchor was unharmed, and thankfully, no one else’s boat had been damaged in this debacle. One of the dock-hands told Steve our teak should be relatively inexpensive to repair, which made me feel a little better about it. By this time, it was 6:45 pm. We had caught our breaths and realized how fortunate we were that nothing worse had happened to our boat, any other boats, or to US. Neither one of us could believe the day/night we’d just experienced, nor the horrible wind and wave conditions we’d just come through. Legacy had held up well and completely protected us, even though we didn’t exactly return the favor.
As we tried to relive the day, we realized our biggest mistake had been being in a rush to get to Key West. AGLCA’s Looping 101 is to never rush or hold yourself to a schedule. Always let the weather conditions dictate your plans. Had we not been on a schedule to get to Key West by 12/30/20, we most likely would have remained at our anchorage in the Little Shark River, awaiting optimal cruising conditions, rather than pushing ourselves. We learned that we cannot completely trust our instruments to plot the correct routes for us without using our own brains to double-check them. Had we not accidentally taken the wrong channel when heading for the marina, none of that night’s chaos would’ve occurred. We would’ve saved the call to Boat US, and arrived at our slip in Stock Island Marina in broad daylight, so we could see exactly what was happening. In hindsight, we realized we should’ve just tied-up for the night at the marina fuel docks and waited to come into our slip until the next morning, when hopefully the winds would’ve been calmer. But, as always, we have to learn our lessons the hard way, and this time was no different. Legacy is named for Steve’s mother, Maxine Linn, who died almost 9 years ago, and I like to think she was watching out for us that night, doing her best to prevent injury and keep the damage to a minimum.
Position: N 24° 33.912, W 81° 44.297
Distance traveled: 90 SM
Total distance traveled: 2399 SM
Total marina nights: 89
Total nights at anchor: 20
Locks today: 0
Locks Total: 27