WOW, What a Ride!!

We are now safe and sound in the Marathon Yacht Club marina. It is a small but perfect place to rest and recover from our crossing.

First, this part of Florida is very shallow. Second, the waves were much larger than forecast and the winds were stronger and more prolonged. Third, it was a great sail until....

Ok, going back to part two. Coming out of the Naples Bay opening, we hit very large breakers and pounded our way out into the Gulf. Once there, we hit waves of about 6 feet. Fortunately Sanctuary is built to handle that but it does make for a wild surfing ride down the waves. Once we were about 10 miles offshore, we headed south and had a tail wind all the way down. That may sound great, but sailboats don't ride very well at that angle. They are much more stable, if heeled to one side, if sailed a bit off the wind. That meant that we wallowed in the troughs for the next 20 hours. We put up the spinnaker and had a great sail for a while. The winds kept building instead of the forecast easing so we decided to douse the big (over 900 sq. ft.) sail. Unfortunately, we were about 10 minutes too late and a gust hit or something and we lost control of the sail and it wrapped a few times around the forestay (the metal line running from the top of the mast to the bowsprit) and all hell broke loose. What that meant was that we couldn't lower sail and we couldn't douse it either. For the next hour we worked to solve the problem all the while trying to figure out backup plan A, B, C, etc. I was working to keep the boat into the wind so David could unwrap the sail. He was hooked into the jack lines but with the bow now faced into the wind, the foredeck was about like a bucking bronco. It was a huge risk to him but he stuck with it and for the next hour he wrestled with this huge bag of air and demonic force until he could straighten it all out and get it back on board. He was completely exhausted to the point that he let me do the sailing for the next several hours. He's now on the boat catching up even more. I had about a solid hour and I'm running on adrenelin but I know I'll crash after lunch.

To add to our woes, the laptop has decided to be awful and is stuck in loop from hell. According to my very patient and knowledgeable tech support staff, AKA Greg, I will have to reload the operating system. Chances of finding that in the keys may be tough so the last of the pictures may have been posted. I will have to depend on the kindness of local libraries for internet access. If you ever see pictures again, you'll know I was able to find a local shop that is affordable.

For now, we're going to recover then tomorrow we'll start exploring the keys. Please keep us in your prayers. They saw us through a pretty rough crossing and I think we used them all up.

Congratulations to Craig, Mary and Christopher Lewis (David's sister and her family) on the addition of Alexander Cole. I hope I got that name right. He arrived in the wee hours of this morning.