Currently in:  Long Key Bight, FL

Yay, we're in the Keys! We left Marco Island just after dawn, along with several other boats that clearly had the same idea. It was trawler weather for most of the day, the Gulf green and glassy, but toward afternoon we got enough wind that we could sail the last couple of hours in to the Little Shark River. Too bad our dink motor is sick; the area is part of Everglades National Park, a maze of backcountry mangrove channels, and it would have been interesting to explore.

We were awakened at about 3:30 am when a squall came through with quite a bit of wind. Since the Little Shark River is a tidal river (i.e., the current reverses direction every tide change) we were lying to the current rather than to the wind - until the wind piped up from the opposite direction. The wind shoved us around this way and that, causing our chain to drag along the bottom and make a lot of ominous grinding noises. Hard to sleep when there's what sounds like a giant chewing on rocks under your bed! We let out a little more rode but there was basically nothing to do other than wait until the wind died down. (In retrospect we probably should have anchored closer to shore, and/or used two anchors in the Bahamian Moor, one upstream and one downstream.)

When we woke the second time this morning, several boats had already cleared out. We could see the other sailboats ahead of us putting up sails in the light southwest wind, so as soon as we were clear of the river mouth and turned south, we did the same. We were tight on the wind but with less than 10 knots and no waves at all it was a fine, smooth sail.

One of the boats ahead of us realized they couldn't clear Cape Sable with the conditions, and motorsailed on the direct course instead. Another, a pretty green cat ketch with tanbark sails on a wishbone rig (all the nonsailors reading this are saying, "Huh?") tacked, which inspired us to keep the motor off and do the same. One carefully-thought out tack (using our computer navigation to plot exactly what course we needed to make, and where we needed to turn so we could do it) had us humming along at five knots, and once we cleared our mark we turned downwind, and on the reach we made six easily. The cat ketch instead kept tight on the wind close to shore, and we quickly outdistanced it.

At about 2:30 in the afternoon, though, the wind dropped off, and our speed did likewise, and pretty soon we realized that to make our anchorage in daylight we needed to motor, so we did. But it's been really interesting sailing and judging the wind without a functioning wind instrument. (Britt went up the mast before we left Marco Island and came back with the anemometer head. He got the cups spinning again by cleaning out corrosion, but discovered the directional vane is bent and cracked close to breaking, probably due to smacking one too many of the 55-foot bridges...we will try to repair it this week, so for now it's on the shelf rather than on the mast.)

We have a Windex at the top of the mast, an arrow that points to the wind. (The sailboat joke is that it points in the direction you're going, i.e., always into the wind!) The thing is, what it senses is the apparent wind - the wind that's blowing, plus the wind created by the boat's motion. So we have to do a little mental vector math that ordinarily our instrument does for us. If we're motoring in a dead calm, it will point straight ahead. A little wind from over our right shoulder will deflect the pointer toward the right, but how much depends on the exact angle of the (true) wind, and its speed relative to ours. And of course we have no instruments at all to give us a hint at the windspeed (other than our bodies - but it's really hard to separate the feel of the apparent wind from the true), so we have fallen back on the Beaufort Scale, judging the wind by the texture of the surface of the water, the size of the riffles and the wavelets and the waves. When the surface is smooth and glassy, we turn on the motor. When little riffles form on top, depending on the wind angle, we might be able to sail.

NOAA is forecasting "light and variable" tomorrow. Well, we'll see what that looks like!