Last night after dinner with the boat prepared and ready to go, Grace and I were relaxing in our own ways. grace was reading a book in her bunk. I was checking and double checking everything. While on deck, I looked at the moon. It was a clear sky, but not too many stars. The nearly full moon was so bright it obscured all but the brightest stars. I called Grace out to see it. There was a rare natural phenomenom... a halo around the moon. This was not a welcomed sight. A halo is formed from the sunlight (reflected off the moon) bouncing off ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. For there to be ice crystals that high up, means moisture had to rise that high. A warm front is usually the culprit, which brings stormy weather.
I went back to the nav station and listened to the weather one last time and downloaded the latest weather information from various NOAA websites. There was no mention of a large storm. The weather window seemed ideal for our trip to the Dry Tortugas; giving us a good two days for sailing.
After that, Grace and I decided on an early start around 7:00am. Our planned destination was Boca Grande. This is a small island (key), about 30 miles west of Key West. It is supposed to offer good shelter from the east winds and good protection from waves no matter what the wind direction.
We did get up early, and were away from the dock right at 7:30am. After motoring out the Boot Key Channel, we raised the sails and were underway. It was now around 11:30am. We had not reached Key West yet. The sailing was going well. Grace struggled a little with the motion of the boat since she has not been on either boat in a few years, but she was just uncomfortable, not seasick. So, I kept her on deck and tried to keep her busy. Then, I had some help. A couple of dolphins came to play. I didn’t
run for the camera as I usually do. Instead, I just had Grace go up on the bow
and watch. The dolphins played for just about 10 minutes and left. They returned
once again a little while later, but it was a brief stay as before.
Around 3:00pm, a
squall line started to approach us from the south. It was moving slowly, but
coming steadily. This is consistent with the halo around the moon last night.
The weather radio did not indicate a serious storm in the area. I explained our
options to Grace. They were simple enough… continue as planned to Boca Grande,
or divert to Key West. We opted to divert and let the squall line pass by us.
This squall line passed us before we actually entered Key West, but by that
time we would be pushing daylight if we returned towards Boca Grande.
We moved to the anchorage on the back side of Wisteria
Island. The winds were gusting to over
25 knots. The steady winds were just 15 knots.
After reviewing the charts, this was a good decision. From
our current position, there is a channel out of Key West leading to the
northwest that will set us in the direction we need to go. There will be no
need for back tracking as we would if we headed past Boca Grande.
The anchorage we were at was about a mile from Key West
with two islands between us and the famed city. Out of curiosity, I tried the
Wi-Fi antenna. I had no luck at first, but then found the Hyatt Spa, which had
a guest login. From over a mile away, we had Wi-Fi. It was a good connection
too. I used this to get an update on the weather and download new weather GRIB
files. Even being just one day newer, these new files could make a difference in the Dry
Tortugas where we will not have any weather updates.
I got up several times through the night to check the anchor
setup. Once I decided to let out a little more chain… to be safe.
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