We have been in the middle Keys on Boot Key since Saturday, July 23. We left Key West on Thursday, July 21 with the winds on our nose. We opted to motor into the wind rather than tack back and forth making little headway, but about 5 hours out of Key West, our engine over heated. Turn engine off, put sails up. Rod determined that the problem was an air bubble had been sucked into the raw water cooling system for the engine, causing not enough water to get to the engine to cool it. Hmmmm… what to do…. It was a bit too rough for him to crawl into the engine compartment and try to fix this while we were underway, so we opted to turn back to Key West. It was a very pleasant downwind sail back and we were able to make it back in about 3.5 hours in the ~15 knot winds on our back. I guess Key West just wasn’t ready for us to leave. We were going to attempt to anchor near the boneyard (see update below), which was a bit unnerving, but after we dropped our hook we were quickly visited by an anchored neighbor. A very nice Frenchman named Chris (Chreese) warned us that the holding in that area was not good at all. I replied that based on the boats on the beach that’s what we suspected. He graciously offered us one of his moorings for the night. He assured us that it would hold because he had put it there himself – about 275 pounds of anchor attached to about 600 pounds of steel from the nearby wreck on the bottom. With a wave and a French accented “You will rest well tonight”, he zoomed away in his dinghy back to his 60+ foot ketch moored behind us. We did rest very well that night and were able to get an early start the next morning when we determined that the engine running just a bit more was able to suck the air bubble through the system, so we didn’t need to burp it out after all.
Friday, July 20 we anchored at Bahia Honda State park, which was great because it was really our first short day on the water. We arrived there around 2pm and just hung out for the afternoon. Ahhhh… Saturday we arrived here in Marathon with a list of things to check on and fix. As I write this, Rod is doing the happy dance because he just discovered what has been causing us to be taking on water (which he has now fixed), and he fixed the refrigeration! Yay!!!! I helped him by holding a flashlight and confirming which hoses moved when he wiggled the other ends. Oh, I also pointed fans at him so he wouldn’t suffer heat exhaustion in the engine compartment. I play a very important role in maintaining these systems.
Weather report indicates westerly winds which are odd for this time of year here, but great for us. We plan to leave here tomorrow.
