Sailing in to the night

Here we go another trip to Key West. This time I convinced Mike instead of taking 5 days to get there and stopping somewhere every night, let’s just go from St Pete directly to Key West. Something we can check off of the to do list 🙂 At first he was a hesitant, the hurricane Matthew sail was still very fresh in his mind but after a few discussions he was on board.

He started studying the weather for the trip 10 days out, and was ready for any scenario that we might come across. I get it, night sailing is a whole different beast so I indulged his obsession. Finally, departure day was here, I provisioned for the trip while Mike did a couple of things on the boat and later that evening we set sail to Manatee River, just in the Tampa Bay making our departure for Key West a little easier.

7:30am rolled around, and like Mike has become accustomed to doing he pulled up anchor on his own and off we went, 185NM to Key West. Of course the weather didn’t cooperate and we had absolutely no wind, so we had to motor most of the day.  It was completely smooth and we just settled in, got some work done and went over the logistics for the evening. We had our friend, Jen joining us and she has some night sailing experience on a monohull so she would be pulling shifts with us throughout the night. We enjoyed a nice grilled salmon, salad and beet concoction for dinner, and as soon as the dishes were put away the sun was set.

Time for the adventure….

Jen took the first watch from 9-midnight. I tried to lay down and get a little bit of sleep, but had no such luck. I was anxious, nervous, excited but ready for the challenge. Right around 11:45pm the wind started picking up and we were able to pull out the jib. For the first time all day, we turned off the engines. There is something so peaceful about the sound of water slapping the hulls with out the hum of the motor. Especially when it is so dark all you are seeing is the running lights of fishing boats. We did a crash course with the radar before night set, and relied on it heavily throughout the night to alarm us of anything that might be around.

My shift started at midnight and went to 3am. I got the sails set with Jen, and very quickly we were doing over 7 knots. I could feel the power in the boat…she wanted to move. The competitor in me was like heck yeah…let’s go faster. The new sailor in me said…woah tiger take it easy and depower the boat! I listened to the later and tried to find a comfortable happiness. Enough to keep us moving, but not enough to to cause London to basically become one with me. Just as I was settling in, I saw way off in the far distance a very bright light, but nothing was showing on the radar. So I kept an eye on it and eventually it kept getting closer. I woke Mike up and asked him to assist. By this point we had 15-18 knot winds sustained, with 20-25 knot gusts consistent. (We put reef 1 in the main before it got dark, so we were prepared!) I was tethered to the jack lines Mike had put all around the boat, but I also had London pressed tightly against me tethered in as well, she wasn’t letting me go anywhere. The waves had picked up and we were feeling what we think were about 4-6 ft seas. Our only indication of that was the feeling of the boat surfing the waves and dropping us, since we had no visuals. Mike was on the spotlight, while I kept an eye on the radar and made sure we were holding course. The autopilot was having to work double time because we were getting tossed around quite a bit. As we got closer we realized it must have been a fishing vessel that was trolling because we flew past it doing 6.5 knots. After that bit of excitement passed, I enjoyed the rest of my watch just hoping a rogue wave didn’t toss us to hard. It was intense and a few times the wind grabbed the sails and took our speed up over 8 knots. The power that went through the boat was crazy and we found that a speed of 4.5-5 knots was better for the wave period and helped make the ride a little smoother.

Mike started his shift at 3am, and at about 4:30 the bilge pump alarm started going off. I was trying to close my eyes with not much luck and the alarm certainly didn’t help. So here we are, its crazy dark, big seas and we are down in the bilges manually pumping out water because there was not enough for the automatic pump to actually grab and suck out. With the big seas there was just enough water to set off the sensor though, causing the alarm to beep incessantly. Finally, around 5am I was able to get a couple of hours sleep and when I woke up the sun was rising and the seas were just starting to calm down slightly. It was a beautiful relief to see daylight and to know we just accomplished our first night sail successfully. The rest of the sail to Key West was still a little bumpy as the waves diminished to about 3 feet but we would still get the occasional 6 footer to keep us on our toes. The wind stayed with us and we were able to sail the rest of the way. Even though it was eventful those are my favorite kind of days.

Up next the Dry Tortugas…