2025-04-20 Tired of watching the weather, decided to go for it and sail to Florida anyway.

We look at the weather each day, hoping for a 5-day window to sail from Luperon to Florida.  Nothing looks good.   

Monday had a bit of excitement, as a new boat came into the harbor, and was being led by a "friendly cruiser" in her dinghy to an open mooring ball.  Unfortunately, she led them over the large shallow bank in the middle of the mooring field, and they promptly went aground on a falling tide.  Big steel ketch.

We sat and watched the entertainment as several folks in dinghy's and the local man who owns the moorings attempted to get the boat off the ground.   We were getting ready to go help, but could see quite quickly that there were too many bosses and not enough followers and no good coordination to work together, so decided to pass on getting involved.  After a couple of hours of trying various unsuccessful attempts to push it off, everyone left to wait for high tide later in the evening.

 

Around 9 p.m. the local mooring owner boat came out, and easily pulled the boat off the bottom, and took them to a mooring.  No damage done.

Dean decided that it would be a good day to make cinnamon rolls, as we thought we would enjoy them when we finally did leave and have a multiple night passage.  

Hard not to eat them all right away, but know they will be a nice treat on a long passage

Kris got busy and made some removable dinghy registration placards that we need to put on the dinghy when in Florida waters. 

Only Florida has gotten touchy about insisting our dingy be registered, so we registered it in Idaho. 

Tuesday we headed into town to have a meal out, and check out the grocery stores.   If we were going to be here for a couple more weeks, we would need provisions, so the local store or if not we would need to get a taxi or rent a car to head to the larger town.    

Nice lunch out on a restaurant that caters to cruisers - not your typical Dominican Republic fare

Some of the backstreets of Luperon, much cleaner and nicer than the main street

Wednesday, like any other day, we got up, had breakfast and checked the weather.  We both were not looking forward to spending another week or more in Luperon waiting on an ideal weather window.  Kris looked at weather and said - let's go - have to motor sail for one day, and have one day of 30 knot gusts, but all doable if we want to.  Sooo - we got ready and went to town and checked out, and then went to the grocery store to use up the leftover Dominican Republic money we still had.  What do you get  - junk of course, it will last and was some of the higher priced items at the store.

 

What we bought for $1,500 DR - or $25 in US cash

 We got back to the boat and hoisted anchor at 11:00 on Wednesday the 16th. 

Wednesday afternoon winds were light, so we motor sailed for the first 8 hours or so, then the winds built, and the motors went off.  By hour 24 the winds picked up so we put in one reef of the main and kept going around 7 to 9 knots.  By hour 48 the winds built, so a double reef main and jib was moving us along around 7 to 9 knots.  By hour 72 we were seeing gusts to 30 knots, so went to just the jib, and sailed along.  We came into anchorage at exactly 96 hours after we left, averaging 6.8 knots for the 4-day trip.

We do a shift of 3 hours on, and 3 hours off.  Works for us, but it doesn't mean you get a lot of sleep.

Would like to say it was all smooth sailing - but it wasn't.  Had some lumpy seas.  Kris slipped and fell in the cockpit due to salt spray coating everything, making everything extra slippery.   She banged her shoulder had, and her head lightly.  Dean stubbed his toe and walked with a limp for a couple day.  We lost one of our port visors - heavy seas ripped it right off.  We were losing a second one, but Dean was able to reach over the side and save it.     

Kris had an "oh crap"  moment on watch when she heard the kerplunk of something metal falling on deck.   It was night, of course, so a thorough search via flashlight on all critical items revealed a nut had come off the bolt holding the boom vang to the boom.  Dean was called up, and we got the main down and secured, as losing the vang would be a bad thing.  That's when we started sailing under jib alone, and the speed was good enough we just left it that way the rest of the trip.  Next morning we did fix the loose bolt and got the vang fixed.

Some pretty sunsets on the trip.   Passed close to a tug and barge, but not a lot of traffic to worry about on our route.

Kris saw one green "flash"

Tug and barge was the closet we got to any other traffic

Had one brief hour of rain on the first day, but that was it for the whole trip

Day 2 sailing along with double reef main and jib.  Doing 8 plus knots steady in 18 knots apparent

Was not a warm trip - Kris was in pants and sweatshirt most of the time

Pretty much the view for 4 days

It was nice to come into Florida and get into some flat water.  We were tired of rocking and rolling.

We were planning on going all the way to No Name Harbor at Key Biscayne, but it was another 60 miles, and the wind was on ENE, so we decided to come into Lower Morecambe Key as there was one of the few spots we could get on the west side of the Keys for good wind and wave protection.

Approaching the Channel 5 bridge.  One of the few places with a high enough bridge to get us to the protected Florida Bay waters.

 

Once in and anchored, Dean spent the next hour cleaning crusted salt off the boat.  It was everywhere.

Kris checked in to the USA online, and scrubbed the inside of the boat, as we had tracked in salt with our feet and clothes after every shift.

It was time for a nice lunch, and by 1:00 we were sitting down to our feast of pizza.  YUM YUM

 

Fresh sheets on the bed, a nice hot shower, and we are ready to relax and have a good nights sleep tonight.