currently in:  Boca Chita Key, FL

Sorry to disappoint our vicarious stowaways, but we're not in the Bahamas yet. (And we're twice as disappointed as you are, believe me!)

The National Weather Service's recent extension of forecasts from three to five days out is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, we can now get a forecast on Saturday for Wednesday's weather. On the other hand, by the time Wednesday rolls around, chances are things will be entirely different. And that's what happened to our weather window.

To cross the gulf stream from here we need light winds somewhere between SE and S, or moderate SW to W winds, or even an absolute calm. The northerly current (it has always amused me that meteorologists call wind flowing south-to-north a "southerly wind", but oceanographers call water flowing south-to-north a "northerly current"!) kicks up big waves with any north in the wind, and although our course is northeast we'll need to steer basically due east, as the northward component of our course will be taken care of by the current. The problem is that the wind typically blows more or less out of the east, and when it veers to the west it signals the prelude to the passage of a front - which results in it blowing like stink for a few days from the north. But just before the front, if it's moving slowly enough, and if it comes long enough after the previous front that the big waves in the gulf stream have laid down, there's a weather window.

On the weekend it looked like Wednesday and Thursday would be such a window, with predicted winds of E-SE 10-15 knots (for you landlubbers out there: a knot is roughly 1.1 miles per hour) switching to SW, and then to W, with NW winds blowing in on Friday. As late as Tuesday afternoon it still looked good; the predicted winds for Wednesday were now due east, which was not so good, but only 5-10 knots, which was. Seas in the stream were predicted to be 2 ft or less (also good), and Wednesday night was to be SE at 5, Thursday SE 5-10, Thursday night W 10-15, with the north winds coming sometime after midnight. Our plan was to leave relatively late in the day on Wednesday, so as to take advantage of the lighter and more southerly winds, sail overnight and arrive at Chub Cay sometime the next afternoon.

But on Wednesday morning, it was blowing hard from the east, hard enough that we noticed it even in the protected canal on Blackwater Sound. The forecast for the day had morphed into E 10-15, and more ominously the reported winds at Fowey Rocks, a weather monitoring station on the reef outside the Keys, were east at 18 knots. Too much to motor into, so we made a Plan B:  Thursday still seemed okay, but we wouldn't be able to make it all the way to Chub Cay before the front. But if that afternoon we went the 13 miles to Angelfish Cut, the nearest exit from behind the Keys, then we could leave the next morning early, and make Bimini with decent light to enter.

The problem was that as we put the routes together, we realized it wouldn't be possible. To make it in time we'd need to leave before dawn - and Angelfish is a tricky cut with a narrow channel that is actually too shallow for us to traverse without a little help from the tide. And guess when low tide happened to be on Thursday? 

Well, we didn't care. We decided we needed to get going, even if it wasn't to the Bahamas; Miami's not far, and there are a few interesting spots in Biscayne Bay. The Andersons have cruised Biscayne Bay many times and decided not to come along, but we left that afternoon and anchored at Pumpkin Key near the cut.

Thursday actually turned out to be more east winds and bumpy seas - we went out Angelfish to maybe snorkel on a reef, but we couldn't find the reef moorings we wanted, and it was sort of icky weather anyway, so finally we went back through Angelfish, put up the sails, and sailed to Boca Chita Key. It's part of Biscayne National Park, with a protected harbor that is inexpensive to tie up in, and we figured it was a good place to wait out the front, where we could easily get off the boat and walk around. So that's what we're going to do today!