Picture Perfect Trip; Almost

Boot Key, Florida
24 41.73 N 081 07.21 W

Well, it really did blow up to 35 knots last night. We had a very fast ride. One could say thrilling. I'll even confess to a degree of anxiety at times.

Just before sunset, a second front (warm front?) passed. One could see a sharp line pass over with absolutely cloudy weather in front of the line and absolutely clear sky behind it. The clear sky made for exceptionally beautiful star gazing last night. It also caused the low temperatures. I know Libby suffers in the cold so I tried to take the brunt, 4 hours watch for me versus 2 for her. Still, even I was cold despite the multiple layers.

I was right about the waves. They never did get big. Never more than 2-3 feet. Despite that, for the very first time on Tarwathie. I got pooped. A rogue wave suddenly broke over the stern and dumped a load of cold water down the back of my neck. After that, my clothes were wet and I was even colder.

At least the winds stayed moderate, nothing more than 20 knots. That is until my turn to take a nap. Then they picked up to 30 or more. Tarwathie was really flying. The highest sustained speed we saw was 9.5 knots, but the GPS recorded an instantaneous peak speed of 13.02 knots. She was also becoming increasingly hard to steer, despite the fact that we were flying the foresail only. I reefed the foresail 50% and steering became much easier. Speed decreased to 7 knots.

We depended on our GPS chart plotter to navigate among the numerous shoals along Moser Channel. If we had only paper charts, we would not have been able to do that in the dark. Despite the GPS help, our depth sounder alarm went off a dozen or so times, showing depths as low as 6 feet. That make our blood pressure rise a bit.

An hour after dawn we crossed under the 7 mile bridge and turned for the final 2 miles in to Boot Key Harbor. We made 122 miles in 22 hours. That's a very fast passage for a 32 foot boat.

Once inside the harbor entrance, only 0.5 miles from our goal, the real trouble happened. What trouble? I'll write about that tomorrow. Right now, we're anchored off the island; outside the harbor.

Too Much, Too Little, Pineapple Pineapple

At Sea
25 53.12 N 81 52.94 W

We were prepared to depart for Marathon this morning. According to the forecast, a cold front should pass mid morning and after that two days of north winds. Perfect.

Before leaving I listened to the local NOAA weather report. It said a low of 41F(5C), winds 20-25 tonight with gusts of 35. Wait! 35 is gale force. That sounds like too much. How about if we wait till tomorrow? The winds tomorrow would be 10-15 turning to southerly by Sunday. Wait. That is too little wind and we might not get there before the winds turned around.

As I wrestled with those questions the reality hit me. Pineapple pineapple. We have had too good a year. It has been almost two years since we sailed in really bad weather. We have become spoiled and soft; looking for perfect conditions rather than acceptable conditions. It's time that we challenged ourselves a bit. 25-35 knots is right in the groove for a W32. We can use hand and feet warmers if necessary to get through the cold night. Damn the weather report, full speed ahead.

Now, 10 hour later we're well on our way. The wind is dead behind us. We're doing 6 knots with the foresail only. Everything is fine.

I thought that we might put in to The Little Shark River about midnight to grab a partial night's sleep. However, a check of the tides shows that midnight is the lowest low tide right there. At low tide Tarwathie almost scrapes along the bottom of the river entrance. Running aground offshore at midnight in a near gale would be a bit too much adventure, so I abandoned that idea.

We should arrive in Marathon mid morning tomorrow. The only worry is the shallow parts of Florida Bay. We have to sail long stretches where the bay is only 8 feet deep. If the waves get too big we could touch bottom. I don't think that's likely. The waves are really small now, and they won't have time to get big in the next 12 hours.

A Spectacle Seen, Another Not Seen

Fort Meyers Beach
No LL

Yesterday, as we sailed down the river, we saw something we thought was a bait ball. A bait ball is a densely packed school of small fish. They are hunted by predators and sometimes driven up to the surface. In that case, the sea birds get involved as they too start eating the fish. What we actually saw was an area of agitated water and a flock of over excited sea gulls attacking the water.

When we got close we saw that this wasn't a bait ball. The fish were large. Very large. 60-100 cm long fish. The gulls were excited by of course they couldn't pick up any fish that large.

We scrambled to get out a fishing pole and a lure. We figured that no matter how unlucky we are as fishermen, we could hardly miss catching on of those fish if we threw a hook in to the middle of that ball. We were too slow. Before we had the pole out on deck, the ball dispersed and disappeared. Too bad for us.

Last week, our plan was to continue north from Fort Meyers Beach to visit Caya Costa, Punta Gorda, and Tampa Bay. We discarded that plan in favor of the trip up the Caloosahatchee River. Today, I bought a newspaper and learned that if we had gone to Tampa that we would have been right in the middle of Super Bowl Hysteria next Sunday. OMG, that would have been terrible from our point of view. We like to avoid crowds. We never go to the big boat shows. A Super Bowl brings the biggest crowd
of all. In this case, there will be a big spectacle that we will not see, and we're glad.

Down the River. What About The Book?

Fort Meyers Beach, FL
26 27.29 N 081 56.57 W

We're heading south, down the Coolahatchee River once again. We had a great time up here and we're both very glad that we took this side trip.

Actually, it was hard to leave LaBelle. The longer we stayed there, the more I warmed to the place. On Tuesday morning I was just getting warmed up on excuses for staying another day or two when Libby said, "Nah. Let's go." I think we really have mostly nomadic blood in our veins by now. No matter how nice the place, we get the itch to move on after two or three days. Only Vero Beach and Marathon seem to have magnets strong enough to make us content to stay. I'll search through our blog archives for confirmation, but I believe that we have averaged 100 to 125 locations visited every year since we started.

Speaking of blog archives. Libby and I worked to many weeks turning blog archives into a format suitable for publishing a book. It was a lot more work than I expected. The trouble is that it appears that the past 4 years blogs would make the book 1200 pages long! That's far too big. Almost all cruising books published nowadays have 200 pages or less. Even Jamea A. Michener, I suspect, must of had trouble convincing his publishers to print 1200 page books. In this economy, everyone is cutting back including the publish-on-demand companies.

Another dilemma is what to do with the pictures. Books with lots of color pictures are very expensive to print. We found while editing that many past blog articles would have to be substantially re-written or eliminated if the pictures were not present. Ditto for the other approach of publishing a section of 5-6 pages of B&W pictures in the center of the book. That too would require major re-writes and elimination of articles.

That leaves us with a bit of a dilemma. We're not sure what to do next.

1. We could choose only the most choice posts, editing in down to the-best-of type of book. The trouble with that is the audience. I visualize my book audience as people who would love to cruise. They can live the cruising life vicariously via our posts. Changing it to the-best-of removes all those mundane and ordinary days, and one looses (I think) the sense of living it vicariously.
   
   
2. We could try to publish it in 2, 3 or 4 volumes. But if each volume costs $15-$30 retail, then it gets too expensive. We would also have to follow up with a new volume every year.
   
   
3. We could self publish it 1200 pages long; pay for it ourselves, and restrict distribution to close family and friends to whom we want to give gifts. I guess that the copies might cost more than $100 each. The trouble with that idea is most of those people have been reading our blog all along. They already read it; they don't need any book.
   

For the time being, we're stymied by this dilemma. We would welcome suggestions.

Medical Sticker Shock

LaBelle, FL
No LL

A prerequisite to living the cruising life is that you are healthy. Libby and I are both healthy. We have no health insurance. We aren't eligible for Medicare or Medicaid. We can't afford private insurance. Even if we could afford it, it would provide little value because we travel all the time. Most policies bind you to a primary health care provider in your home state, and provide only limited benefits while traveling.

Still, we don't do bad. I guess that we spent only $500/year on health services over the past 4 years. That is, before today.

I need to replace the sunglasses I lost when I got dunked. Jennifer found a really neat web page to buy glasses at low prices. Zenni Optical will sell me a pair of glasses for less than $100 that would cost more than $500 at Lens Crafters.

The only hang up was that I need my prescription for the web page. I called Lens Crafters. They refused to give me the info because my last eye exam was more than 12 months ago. No problem I thought; I'll just use Google to find an optician in LaBelle.

I did that, found Dr. Parrish's Family Eye Care nearby, and made an appointment. Guess what? The eye exam fee was $192! OMG! WTF!
I never paid more than $50 before for an eye exam at Lens Crafters or at Wal Mart.

Perhaps it is because of the monopoly power that the only optician around holds over a small community. Perhaps is is medical inflation -- 400% in 18 months. But, I suspect that the real problem is other people's health insurance. The federal government and the major insurance providers use their power to say, "We only pay 30 cents on a dollar of your bill." The doctor compensates by hiking his fee 350%. Everybody wins except the tiny minority of uninsured cash customers like me.

It is yet another case where government socialism directly harms me. If we had never started with Medicare, Medicaid or employer-provided health care (beyond major medical), then doctors and drug companies would have to charge affordable prices or lose customers. Introducing a third party payer removes negative feedback needed to hold down the price.

In any case, I have a severe case of medical sticker shock. Thanks for allowing me to vent my anger.