Have you heard the joke, “Can you name three famous Jewish Wines”?

Answer: Mogen David, Manischewitz and When are you going to take me to Miami? Well, we are in Miami.

After spending a few days in Key West we had to start making our way North in order to eventually get to Brunswick , Georgia where we will stay for around six months in order to wait out hurricane season. Our daughter Melissa and her husband Charles welcomed a new baby boy into the family, Wesley Edward Moreland! He is awesome and we cannot wait to get our hands on him. Here is Wesley sporting his sailor kit. We originally wanted to go to the Dry Tortugas for a few days but this would require at least five days and we did not think we had that amount of extra time.  So we had to pass and hopefully get there on a future trip.

After leaving Key West, we visited the Bahia Honda State Park again for two nights. The wind and waves were going to be relatively calm and we figured this would be a great place to hang. While there we snorkeled and saw fish, a bunch of Conch and white crabs. Renee called them Albino Crabs. They were the same color as the sand so they were hard to spot.

The weather was going to turn worse with 20-25 knot winds for the next seven days. With this and the fact that we needed to do laundry, we headed back to Boot Key Mooring field in Marathon. We did our laundry and I picked up the remote panel the I had shipped there for our Wind Turbine. This will be mounted on the wall and will allow us to control the Turbine (ON/OFF) and get statistics on how much juice it is making without having to lift the mattress and get under the bed to where the controller is located. The issue with the turbine not working was actually operator error. There is a push button that is used to manually lock the turbine. Pushing the button will either lock the turbine or put it in service. Sounds simple enough right? Well I pushed it a bunch of times and nothing. Remember when you father would give you something electronic for Christmas (cassette player) and what did you do? Start pushing all the buttons without reading the manual. I can just imagine my father saying “Man, why don’t you read the manual”? Same principle applies here, reading the manual says that you have to not only push the button, but you have to hold it for three seconds. Viola, we are now generating power from the turbine. One problem solved.

After getting an update on the weather, it wasn’t going to get any better for the next seven days. Tomorrow was going to start with 20-25 knots off the nose and then dying down to 12-15 around noon, but still on the nose. This means no sailing and we will just be a motor boat. We started out in 4-5 foot seas with the wind just as predicted. We were planning to go about 46 miles along the keys but staying in Hawks Channel. Hawks channel runs along the coastline of the keys and out a couple of miles. The seas were predicted to be 7-8 feet outside of the channel and we did not any part of that.

Once the winds and seas calmed down we were able to motor at 7 knots where before we were only making 4.5. This enabled us to reach our original anchor spot sooner than we had anticipated. Again checking the forecast, we decided to push on a few more miles and anchor on the lee side of Rodriguez Key (opposite side from where the wind is coming from). The water was christal clear and we anchored in around 10 feet. We saw a ray leap out of the water three times as it was moving along and a couple of large logger head turtles.

We left in the morning wanting to reach Key Largo. There was no wind and the seas were less than one foot. We had planned to go around 36 miles and stay one more night. However, we made such good time we decided to push on to Miami. This worked out great and we arrived at Noname Harbor around 16:30.

The trip wasn’t all fun and games, we were still battling the water issue and took turns sucking out water from under the floor boards, to the tune of about 25 gallons. In an attempt to eliminate possible entry points for the water, we shut our thru hulls before leaving. Thru hulls are holes in the boat where water can either enter (air conditioning, engine) or exit the boat (galley sink and showers). The thru hulls have a valve that can be closed in order to prevent water flow either to or from the boat. However, shutting these did not seem to help considering the amount of water we sucked out. Needless to say, we were still very discouraged and wasn’t sure where to look next.

The next day I called Mike Kiely who is the agent from when we purchased the boat. Mike works for Denison Yacht Sales and lives here in Miami. Mike has always been willing to go the extra mile to help us out anyway he can. Mike referred us to Jyrki Auvinen from Nordic Marine. Jyrki came out and climbed in the Lazarette while I drove 5KNOTS like I just stole her. After  several minutes of high speed maneuvers he said I see water coming in the back of the boat. Somebody had installed an after market bump guard on the transom along the water line. Apparently this was done without any regard for caulking any of the screw holes. Basically water was getting behind the guard and entering the boat through the screw holes. Renee and I spent the next day removing each screw one at a time, plugging the holes with 5200 Marine Adhesive and coating the screws before reinstalling them. We also dug out any old caulking and re-bed the entire piece. Lets hope this is the root of our water issue and we can stop the insane vacuum regiment we have been doing.

Our plan is to stay here in Miami until the 18th when we will make the last leg up to Brunswick, Georgia.