Regatta del Sol, The Beginning

The race begins on Friday, April 26 from St. Petersburg, Florida.  By water, from my house it is 96 miles.  I decided that in order to bring the boat up, we should do a night sail to do some team building with the crew and to shake down the boat to see if all of the safety changes done over the last year work as expected.  We left Sunday evening, planning on arriving Monday morning so we could make any repairs if any were needed.

We left the dock at 3:45 PM and motor sailed to Boca Grande.  We got there at just about 7 PM as expected.  We put a double reef in the main before we went through Squash Cut which s a very narrow unmarked passage by Boca Grande that would take an hour off of our trip.

We settled into our watches with Jake Dye and I on the first watch and Al Alexander and Don McAlpine taking the next.  The wind was pretty much on the nose and we motor sailed with the jib rolled up for the 1st two hours.  The waves we against us and we pounded quite a bit.  The last hour of our watch, the wind clocked around and we unrolled the jib, cut the engine and sailed along quite nicely until we passed along the helm to the next watch.

The winds kept building up to about 20 kits during the night and continued to clock around.  Don and Al decided to roll up the jib.  There appeared to be some sort of snafu and the jib sheets got mixed up with the sail and it would not come in.  Jake and I came to the deck to help out.  Did I mention that it was pouring rain and that there was lightening all around.  It seemed to take hours but I am sure it was less, but at around 12:30 AM we got it all sorted out and the rest of the sail was uneventful into St. Pete.

We did find that the gas line that connected the new propane

Some pictures that have not been previously posted.



Spinnaker Flying for the 1st Time



Sunset Leaving Key West

Our run down to Key West from Ft. Lauderdale was memorable for a few reasons.  We flew the chute for the first time on the trip and it was a thing of beauty.  The set went smoothly and the drop was nice for the skipper since the sail did not touch the water.  For those of you with interest, it was set with both sheets and guys on both clews.  We did not jibe the spinnaker so perhaps the effort was wasted. 





Richard getting ready to set the chute

Also on the way down to the Keys, we were 'approached' by the US Border Patrol and Homeland Security team on the water.  A speedboat manned by 4 armed officers came up behind us on the port side.  I was in the galley frying some onions to eat with the steaks we were about to put on the grill.  Richard called me up and I was asked "Where are you headed?"  Key West, I replied.  "Where are you coming from?"  Bear, Delaware, I replied.  This brought some oohs and aahs from the crew on the speedboat.  "What was your last port of call?  Ft. Lauderdale, I responded.  With all of the answers satisfactorily answered, he said "dinner smells great" and they were off.






Key West Limo Ride

Night life in Key West consisted of retracing the steps of Ernest Hemmingway and Jimmy Buffet.  We were in Margaritaville and we made sure that Key West lived up to its name.













A note from Key West

When we were in Key West, there was a neighbor on the dock, Scotty.  He was a hairdresser living on a sailboat at the marina living his dream.  He was king of Karaoke in Sarasota, he said.  Very friendly and glad to meet us.  Richard was headed off to get some beer and Scotty insisted that he take his cooler.  Then we couldn't return it.  It was a permanent gift.  We wanted to pitch it, but Richard made it into a keepsake that will live with us forever.  Note dates, destinations and the route traveled. 

Back in Punta Gorda

We got into Punta Gorda last night at 8:30 PM.  So much for having an easy day back.  We left Ft. Myers at 8:30 and I decided that it would be more fun to be in the Gulf that in the ICW for the remainder of the trip.  As a result, we had to go south for over an hour to clear Sanibel Island.  It was past noon when we got back the same lattitude that we started the morning at.  Then we had nice weather and a great sail up to Boca Grande.  We didn't pass through the inlet until 4:30 PM and right at that point it was mile 1500 on the trip odometer.

I will collect all of the pictures and post them over the course of the weekend.

Playmobil finally at home in Punta Gorda

Ft. Myers

We stopped in Marco Island this morning I decided that Marco to PGI was too much of a push. We decided to make for Ft Myers. We are in Ft. Myers now. Tomorrow to PGI.

Marco Island

We left Key West yesterday but made a wrong turn when trying to find the channel North. This cost us a few hours but we cleared the northernmost portion of the Channel around 5 PM. 13 hours later we are about an hour from the inlet to Marco Island. We will stay here for a day before the final run to Punta Gorda tomorrow.

Key West

We have been in Key West since early Friday morning. We have been enjoying the warm weather and today went snorkeling off of Sand Key. Nice fish, but not much in the way of coral. A bit disappointing. I need to post pictures. I am sorry that haven't gotten around to it.

Tori has a video of about 5 dolphins playing and surfing off of our bow wave. She doesn't have a cable to download to my computer so we are thinking that she will download to u-tube and post the link on the blog.