Tuesday, 10 January 2017 - I decided last night to not get up extremely early, leave in the dark and try to sail from here in Factory Bay at Marco Island to Little Shark River, 57 miles south, so I got up at 7am and headed out about 10, after sending out my 99th episode. The wind was light, but the projections were for 10 to 15 kt out of the east. That would be near perfect for where I'm headed. I motored out of the bay and into the Gulf, then cut the engine, unfurled my sails and headed south, still in light winds, convinced they would pick up. I, and the weathermen, were wrong. The wind was extremely light, 2 to 5 kt. almost all day. At one point, a breeze moved past at 10kt, but only for about 5 minutes. Very frustrating. At another time, the wind was almost nonexistent, but I could see wind on the water about 300 yards away, so I became a motorboat again for a few minutes. I got there and shut the engine down, but there still wasn't much. Two other motor boats with masts, but no sails up, flew by me like I was standing still and disappeared over the horizon in about an hour. Eventually, the wind stayed in the range of 1 to 2 knots, but with gusts of 4, for several hours and from directly behind me, then from almost every direction. I couldn't keep the sails filled, and jibed and tacked about 20 times trying to go anywhere. I finally decided to try running directly down wind, wing on wing. Again, almost no luck. I couldn't keep the sails filled enough to pull me along. Finally, about an hour before sunset, I put a preventer on the boom and, just by chance, the wind picked up to 4 to 5 kt., allowing the sails to fill part of the time. However, if I got off a heading of dead down wind even in the slightest, the genoa would still collapse since I don't have a whisker pole.
                  About 11 o'clock this morning, a loud BANG resounded from somewhere on the boat. It startled the heck out of me and, of course, I instantly imagined all sorts of horrible things that might have fallen, broken, blown up, caught of fire, etc. I looked everywhere immediately and finally came to the realization that it was ...the lid to the toilet falling closed. Whew! Thank goodness that was all.
                  I decided to sail until sunset and watch to see if I could see the ever elusive "green flash" as the sun went down. I didn't see the flash, but when the sun went down, so did my sails. I sailed a total of about 9 miles along my planned route today, barely past the south end of Marco Island. At this rate, it will take me 10 days or more to get to my destination.
                  When I turned my computer on to type this up, it asked me to pick a WiFi network since I had WiFi turned on when I shut it down. I'm about 5 miles off shore and very surprised to see a network strong enough to reach out here. I think that's very unusual. I thought perhaps it was my phone, but I turned that off and the signal was still here. The only boat near me passed awhile ago very quickly. That was probably the Key West Express, they run about 40 knots and are big enough that they may have their own WiFi setup onboard for the customers aboard, but they passed and the signal is still here. Very puzzling! If I knew their password I could tap into it.
                  Now that I've quit sailing for the night, the breeze has picked up to about 10 kt., but I think I'll be ok just bobbing and drifting along through the night. Right now the wind is making me drift along parallel to my planned route, which means that the wind is out of the north. If it blows this way all night it may get a little rough out here. If I discover that the wind picks up too much or changes direction toward shore, I can still drop anchor. I'm only in about 30 feet of water even though I'm five miles off shore. I couldn't put out a lot of scope, but putting down an anchor would definitely slow me down even if it didn't hold.

Wednesday, 11 January - Even though I got to bed early last night, I didn't get a good night's sleep. The wind picked up and changed the course of my boat. I could see I was headed well off shore instead of down parallel to my planned route and at 12:30, my boat started "hobby horsing" or pitching lengthwise so much that the swim platform on the stern started slapping the water as it dropped. It's right outside my sleeping quarters near my head and it sounded like it was going to break apart and I heard something like the head of a bolt or nut hit the deck, so I got up, got dressed, and went to the bow and dropped the anchor and 120 feet of chain, hoping that would slow and restrict the rise of the bow. It did make the slapping of the swim platform stop, but it was still a pretty bouncy night. I was surprised in the morning to find that the waves were only about 4 to 5 feet.
                  I arose at dawn and immediately raised the anchor and prepared to head out. Unfortunately, it was an hour before I actually started sailing. The anchor came up easily, but the top of the mainsail kept catching on two different halyards, one at a time. I've not caught a halyard like that but one time before. I'm going to have to climb the mast to see what's gone wrong up there.
                  I sailed all morning without my mainsail because I couldn't deploy it, but winds were pretty good and where I ended up after the night was over was directly in line with an extension of the next leg of my journey, so I got on that heading and sailed on it all day long, never having to change course except to dodge crab trap floats. There were plenty of those out there today, and a large school of porpoised followed me for awhile.
                  The wind died midday to absolutely zero, so I finally started the engine and became a powerboat for about three hours before the wind picked up a bit. During the lull, I finally got the halyard unwrapped from the mainsail and was able to unfurl it for the rest of the day. Still, I didn't get far. I continued until just at dark, trying to get closer to land because the breeze is coming from that direction and the closer I get, the smaller the waves should be. I'm now sitting about 10 miles outside the entrance to Little Shark River and have dropped anchor out in the open again, not very close to shore after all. Luckily the ten knot breeze that picked up just before dark has died back a bit and, hopefully, the night will be a little bit calmer. A pretty sunset today, and I seem to be the only boat around again. In fact, there are only two lights outside other than mine, the full moon and what appears to be a very bright star. My "Star Tracker" app on my phone tells me that is really two planets, Venus and Neptune, almost in alignment. Mars is right there with them, but I can't see it.

Thursday, 12 January - It's certainly good that I didn't plan on making this trip from Marco Island to Little Shark River a mad dash in one long day like everyone had suggested and assumed I would. I'd be way behind schedule, but since I don't have a schedule, I'm right on time.
                  I slept in till 8 o'clock this morning, made breakfast, weighed anchor and headed out to Little Shark River, dodging lobster and crab pots all the way. I arrived about 1pm and thought I'd have the place all to myself. It wasn't long, however, before a power cruiser from San Diego passed me and headed up the river, then a sailboat and another powerboat pulled and anchored near me, here at the mouth of the river.
                  I need to look closer at my charts. I was afraid to go further up the river for fear of getting into shallow water or having the river narrow down to where I wouldn't be able to turn around. This afternoon I got in the dinghy to do some exploring here in the Everglades and one of the things I did was head up the river to see what it really looks like. It's plenty wide to turn around for at least two miles and has at least two "tributaries" that you could do the same. All of them were still 12 feet deep where I turned around. I also checked out some of the smaller side channels, and although they seem to meander endlessly, they all dropped to less than 6 feet immediately. Lots of them would be perfect hurricane hole anchorages for shallow draft boats. You could pull into a side channel anchor and tie your boat off to the mangroves and be perfectly protected. I'd heard that lots of boaters do exactly that here if a hurricane is predicted to hit the Keys. This place could probably protect thousands of small craft, although some of them might get lost trying to get out again. When I left the boat today, I wrote down the coordinates down on a piece of paper that I took with me just in case. After about 5 or 6 turns, it would be very easy to get lost. Everything looks different coming back and there are thousands of miles of channels out there that would all look the same with the chance to turn up a new channel about every hundred yards or less. Too bad most of it's so shallow. I even kept running aground with the dinghy in the smaller channels. I saw lots of avian wildlife, but no 'gators, yet. I think I'll get out tonight, covered in mosquito repellent and go spotlighting for alligators for awhile.
                  Well, my gator hunt was a bust. I dinghied about the entrance to the river and bay, and into one of the side channels for about an hour, but I saw nary a one. The tide is out. Maybe that had something to do with it, or maybe the water is too salty here when fresher water is nearby. Maybe there's too much or too little of something else. Who knows? I could have had fish for dinner though. Immediately after I started, fish started jumping as I shown my light on the water and one quickly jumped into the boat; a bit too small, though. Not a keeper.

Friday the 13th - This certainly doesn't look like an unlucky day to me. At 8:30am it's almost low tide, and there seems to be about a 5 to 6 ft. tide here, and the surface of the river here is calm as can be, although with a very fast current running out. All around me I hear and see wildlife in the small mud flats; herons, cranes, and ibis. Diving into the waters are the pelicans, only having to take off and fly 50 to 100 feet before splashing headfirst into the water again to catch another fish for breakfast. In the deeper water are porpoises and manatees.
                  Hey! I just figured out what I heard hit the deck in the middle of the night on Wednesday. It was one of my lawn lamps that I had suspended up about 10 feet to light the deck awhile back when my mast head anchor light failed to come on. It's gone, so that had to be what I heard.

Saturday, 14 January - I definitely want to arrive at Marathon in daylight, so I awoke about 3:30 am and raised the anchor at 4 o'clock, by the light of the moon, then headed out of the river into the Gulf. Predicted winds are about 10-15 kt. in the morning, picking up to 15-20 around noon. In actuality, they are 5-10 in the morning and around 10-15 part of the afternoon. The boat seems to be sailing awfully slow, even taking the light winds into account. I realized about ten miles from my destination that I had probably been dragging at least one lobster or crab trap all day that I ran over and that got caught on my propeller or rudder in the early morning darkness. I figured it out because I knew I hit and caught one coming into Marathon and, in the clear water, I could see it dragging behind me when I went to the back of the boat and looked. I had to totally stop the boat by furling the sails, and I still had a hard time pulling it to the surface to cut them free. Too bad I couldn't have at least gotten the crabs or lobsters out, but, in fact, I couldn't even pull the traps up to see them; too much weight. I barely was able to get the line out of the water to cut it. No telling how much line is wrapped around my propeller shaft. I'll find out when I clean the bottom of the boat. I can see that I need to rig a knife on a long pole, or get a small grappling hook so I can hook the lines and winch the traps up next time. The grappling hook is probably the better idea. I might be able to do that without having to stop the boat. I bet I passed about a thousand floats today between Little Shark River and Marathon. The seem to be almost everywhere and are quite a nuisance to boaters. You just can't miss them all.
                  Other than that small nuisance, it was a beautiful day for sailing and I saw lots of porpoises again. In fact, there were so many and they were so close that I was going to take some photos, but my camera ran out of juice just as I was going to take some shots. I put it on the charger for awhile and the dolphins were still hanging around, so I went and unplugged the battery and inserted it and came back on deck. Just as I did, a large powerboat went passed and the dolphins skedaddled. Oh, well! The winds weren't quite up to expectations, so it's a good thing I took off early. I arrived at Marathon, sailed under the bridge, and anchored about 5:30. I had arrived right on time, plenty of daylight left to coil lines and put things away. Well, I didn't really sail through the bridge this time. The wind was almost perpendicular to the bridge and just as I started to go through, the bridges, new and old Seven Mile Bridges, blocked the wind and the tidal current seemed to be drawing me quickly toward the starboard pilings, so I immediately started the engine and powered through.

Sunday, 15 January - Today I dingied into the Marathon Yacht Harbor to meet Steve Luta at his boat on mooring ball A17. That's at the far end of the mooring field, about a 20 minute dinghy ride. This is, I believe, one of the largest mooring fields in the country. There are well over 300 boats in the harbor and a waiting list of over three weeks to get a mooring ball assignment. Steve showed me a better place to anchor than where I am, a short, side entrance to the bay where I won't have to pay for a ball and that affords much better protection from winds, In fact, it might be a very good spot if a hurricane came through. Next, he gave me a tour of the facilities at the marina here which include private showers, washers and driers, a TV room, a library with several hundred books in it, mail pick-up, and even a project room where you can work on an outboard, your dinghy, or spread out a sail to do some sewing on it. We also walked over to the main street in Marathon, where he showed me where to find grocery and drug stores, West Marine, a good burger, a bar popular with the boaters, Home Depot, etc. We ate at a good Chinese buffet restaurant, then went across the street and I bought three grocery items that I needed. On the way back to the marina we tested out one of the popular bars, had 5 beers between us, and the tab only came to about $9. Not a bad afternoon.

Monday, 16 January - It didn't seem like I accomplished much today, but I guess I did after all. I read several brochures to get information on what and where things are here in Marathon, listened to an hour of the morning broadcast for the marina which tells of the goings on for the day, and, again, started to attempt to fix the 12 volt refrigeration. Unfortunately, I discovered that repairing it is going to be a lot tougher and more time consuming than I had thought. I had thought that I simply cracked the joint where a coil is connected to the side of a brass fitting. I discovered that not only is that joint broken, but that a 1/4" line that enters on the opposite side of the fitting actually passes through the fitting and enters and runs inside the larger 1/2" coil, and that both joints of the 1/4" tube are loose, too. That really complicates things. The smaller line carries the refrigerant inside it and the larger, outside coil, carries water. Fixing that may be beyond my capabilities. I think I need a second opinion.
                  At 4 o'clock I joined Steve Luta for a beer and dinner at Burdine's Seaside Restaurant and watched the sun set, then returned to the boat. Since then, I've been catching up on email and studying my charts to find an anchorage that will protect me a little better from wind and wave from all directions. The spot that Steve showed me the other day may be a little too shallow for me. I may actually go back and check it out a little better tomorrow.

Tuesday, 17 January - A beautiful day for a sail and Steve Luta came out and joined me at 10:00 am on my boat. The point of his joining me today was for me to get some of his many years of sailing knowledge to rub off on me and it did, although it didn't exactly start off well. I've had trouble "swinging the compass" on Island Time before, which is a means of calibrating and compensating the onboard, computerized compass that is connected to my chart plotter and then making it match my other, binnacle mounted digital compass. We failed at that the first time and decided to move on to other things. We unfurled the mainsail, after a bit of trouble getting the halyard to quit getting tangled in it, then unfurled the genoa and staysail. Steve noticed right off that the boat had way too much weather helm, meaning that it wants to constantly turn upwind. I knew this, but didn't know exactly why. He quickly deduced that the mainsail furling system's inner stay was too loose, causing the mainsail to billow too much in it's belly or center. I had suspected that it was too loose, but didn't really know that that was what was causing my weather helm problem. We tightened the inner stay, but didn't get to verify that doing so has corrected the problem. After tightening the stay, we couldn't get the mainsail to deploy without fouling the halyard line, so we headed back in. I'm very anxious to go out again to try it out, but need to resolve the halyard-snagging problem. I'm pretty sure I know what is causing that problem and that fixing it will be easy, but I need to have a very light wind day to do so because I'll need to lower the mainsail to the deck to make the repair. We decided to find me a new, more protected anchorage and headed in to the inner harbor and mooring field. I tried getting into one space beside the channel, but quickly ran aground, backed out, circled and headed on in. The next logical place was Sister Creek, a second, shorter, and narrower entrance to the harbor. The charts lead me to believe that the depth in Sister Creek would be marginal and that I wouldn't be able to get near the edges to get out of the channel at all, but the charts are wrong on both aspects. I was able to drop anchor just at one side of the center of the channel, then Steve took a line over to the mangroves with his dinghy and tied it to them. We then pulled the aft end of the boat over to within about five feet of the edge of the channel by the mangroves, and I think we could pull it right to the edge in deep water, but my dinghy on it's davits would be rubbing the mangroves. At any rate, I now have a very well protected anchorage in absolutely smooth water, and I don't think that the current will be a problem because there is only about a two foot tide here. I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to get out of here by myself, but getting backed in again may prove more difficult.
                  Steve and I later took his dinghy to the dock, then walked a couple of blocks to a Gulfside restaurant where I had conch steak for dinner.

Wednesday, 18 January - When Steve and I set my anchor yesterday, the wind was very light and the current here is very slow because the tidal rise and fall is only about 2 feet, I didn't get much scope out on the anchor rode. We're going to have much stronger winds this weekend, so today my next door (boat) neighbor and I moved my anchor out into deeper water. I now have out 120 ft. of chain, much better on a Mediterranean moor, meaning I have one anchor out in the channel and two, for the moment, lines tying the stern of the boat to the shore, actually, the mangroves. This is a useful way to anchor more boats into a smaller area. With three "anchors" out, my boat won't swing into others and the weak current allows this type of mooring. The expected winds are predicted to be from the west, which is from the stern of my boat, which I have pulled up very close to the mangroves, which are taller than all but the mast of my boat, so I don't expect any trouble with the wind.
                  By the way, I'm quickly becoming convinced that about 75% of the men that come to Florida are named Steve. That is the name of my new neighbor, Steve Patterson on a 42 ft. Hunter sloop named "Living Well".