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"It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. `By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?" - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Time passes, and eventually a story swells up within you that must get out. This is such a story. It starts simply enough, with the decision to augment our Fleet yet again, this time with a sailboat.

Prologue: To Buy A Sailboat

I'd been enamored of sailing for some time, at first by sailing on the tall ships at the Key West Bight, and then by taking lessons from Capn Al on his schooner Reef Chief in Man-O-War Harbor. From there, I progressed to buying a membership at the Key West Community Sailing Center, where I took many lessons, eventually getting certified to use their fleet of ODay Mariners at-will.

I love the Sailing Center and its people, but my primary purpose was to get comfortable with sailing, and I did that. I lived 20+ miles down the road from Key West, so commuting to go sailing wasn't just inconvenient, it was also expensive.

At one point I had even approached Capn Len about a job on the Western Union, but was gently informed that he only needed fulltimers, not weekenders (least of all weekenders who lived in Cudjoe, 20 miles away). He also had suggested I think about getting my own boat. But he didn't doubt my enthusiasm for sailing. That's one thing nobody ever doubted, and sometimes that's enough.

The idea marinated for a long time, until eventually a habit emerged of studying every single ragboat on Craigslist, Boats.com, Boattrader.com, and so forth. First, I decided I didn't want a boat bigger than about 27 feet, anything more being just 'too much boat' for a guy whose family of dogs and cats was not going to move aboard for extended periods. Then, I decided I needed the shallowest draft possible, because I was not going to leave my boat out in Cudjoe Bay at anchor, I would keep it on the dock. Well, that cuts the list down greatly. Many gorgeous sailing ships are for sale every day of the week, at fantastic prices, in deeper harbors like Marathon and Key West, but many of them draw 4 feet or more. That just would not do. What about a smaller boat, say 18 or so feet?

This Precision 18 that we saw from the Old Bahia Honda Bridge one day, sure looked attractive. A centerboard sailer-trailer that draws less than 2 feet with the board up, and still has a roomy cabin. Getting warm…

I checked out this ODay 22 on Craigslist:

I really liked the cabin layout of the ODay 22, and the way it, like the P18, draws less than two feet with the board up. Sadly, I could not take this boat. It needed to be hauled out to work on the centerboard, and could really use some paint, endeavors that would add hundreds if not thousands to the true cost of acquisition. I'd like something a bit more ready for adventure.

A week or so later, more digging on the Web found me an ODay 222 (like a 22, but somewhat redesigned) for sale in Islamorada. Over an hour away by car, but the wifey agreed to go check it out with me:

There lay the Therapy, on Jim's seawall, looking clean, wanting for nothing in the way of maintenance, and with a fantastic price tag. Not to mention an excellent 4-stroke outboard with electric start and an alternator. Or three bags of sails. Or the nice traveller setup on the mainsail. I really dug it.

"That's our boat," she whispered to me. When your wife says that, you do not ask questions. We paid Jim for his vessel and promised to come back when the weather was fair enough to deliver the boat -- were we nuts? -- 60+ miles over water from Lower Matecumbe Key to Cudjoe Key.

The First Delivery

It is not enough to simply sail the thing home, of course. First you've got to buy an electric chainsaw and cut down some branches to expand your dock space somewhat, if you've already got a powerboat there. Then, you have to buy provisions.

The final logistical concern is that you've got to get to Islamorada, sail home, and then come back to Islamorada to pick up the car you left behind. For this, we'd use a cheap rental car: Obtain a one-way rental from Key West Airport to Marathon Airport. Then drive it up to Islamorada, and let it sit there overnight as we sailed home. Drive back to Islamorada with our own car, then drive both cars to Marathon Airport where we would return the rental car. Simple, huh?

The delivery route would take us along the Intracoastal Waterway route, bayside of Islamorada and Marathon, finally crossing into the open ocean at the Seven Mile Bridge, and heading west, past Lois Key, and finally up Bow Channel, through Cudjoe Bay, and home to our dock.

Some buzzsawing later, we had managed to make room to walk the powerboat back about 25 feet and make enough room to dock a sailboat.

Eventually, the time came. We'd cleared the dockage space, bought the provisions, and the rental car was in our driveway ready for action. We had to go to sleep at 8:30pm in order to be up at o-dark-thirty so that we could push-off at or just-before sunrise; We would need all the time we could get, for such a long ride. I'm not sure that I slept at all. I'd never undertaken such a thing, and I knew it was going to change my life. Hell, we said, if we can do this, we can get anchor tattoos. We'd casually discussed them in the past, being the only kind of tattoo I could ever entertain getting. But I felt I did not deserve one, owing to something of a lack of experience, despite extensive powerboat rides since 2009.

We got up at 4:30AM on Thursday, February 23rd, glad to have made coffee before going to sleep. We slammed it down, drove to Islamorada with our provisions, and filled our gas cans, before meeting up with Jim again during civil twilight in our little red rental car.

We shoved off at 7:00am, just as the sun was rising, meandered out of the Lower Matecumbe canal, and turned west to join the ICW route north of Islamorada and Marathon. The sun was still just rising in the east.

This was the particularly charmed, if long and slow, half of the voyage. We tooled westward through mostly-calm waters, with nothing to do except keep spotting markers and try to stay on track. The sun crept higher, and we realized we were going to fry miserably unless something was done about that.

Something was done about that. Then we decided we should mess with the sails a bit, so we put up the mainsail.

The sail went up, full of ODay pride. At this point, with the centerboard up, engine running, and mainsail up, we were cruising at over 6mph, which is an excellent speed on this boat (I think her theoretical hull speed is around 6.8mph). Still, 6mph is 6mph. The sun moves across the sky, and you creep along, spotting marker after marker in the small waves and green water.

… You probably can't make out the Long Key Viaduct in the background.

There's Red 18, along the ICW just north of Key Vaca. Some of the only amusement we got on this part of the trip, was ducking crab boats.

 

… But even that wasn't too exciting. They tended to avoid our slowly-chugging vessel, and even if they didn't, the 222's bow was more than able to cut through their wake without even pitching. After more cruising north of Marathon …

… eventually the Seven Mile Bridge came into view. Here, we would pull the mainsail back down, top-off the fuel tank. Only problem was, the gas can spouts would not open no matter how much we turned and twisted things on those newfangled openings. They say you should never leave port without a multitool, and I had been mindful enough to bring the Victorinox multitool. With the multitool, I was able to mangle the guts of the spout enough to permit gas to trickle out. The fuel tank was thus topped off, just in time for us to approach the Seven Mile Bridge. But first, we had to maneuver away from this sailboat (who was actually a sailboat, being under sail; We however, having dropped the main, and had an engine lit besides, were a powerboat and it therefore behooved us to yield to him):

 

Eventually we got clear of him, and lined up to make our passage through Moser Channel, under the Seven Mile Bridge.

… Getting closer …

… And finally, we passed under the 60-foot span, with tons of room to spare.

… And with that, we are through the bridge and heading out into the open Atlantic.

As it turns out, this is where things start to get interesting. On the charts, I had of course seen the notes about "overhang", and done enough Googling to understand that "overhang" means "good sized waves." What I could not have anticipated (for lack of experience), until just then, was a bit of marine mathematics: It had just been high tide, north of the Seven Mile, and the tide was now rushing out pretty well. Meanwhile, the wind had picked up out of the south, at about 10-12 miles an hour. These two forces were colliding with each other, creating what some folks call "pileup," others call "4 foot waves," and we called "holy shit."

Apparently, they do not just hand out anchor tattoos for the asking.

I had never experienced such a thing, least of all as captain. Up, the bow went, until we faced the sky, and back down with a wet crash, time and time and time again. It is unsettling to find oneself in this predicament with no prior experience, furthermore knowing that turning around is not an option, and that the vessel must proceed southward into these waves, to avoid shallows and spoil islands on both sides of the channel.

Eventually (and by 'eventually', I mean half an hour or more), we adjusted to the situation enough to realize that putting the centerboard down would add stability, and more importantly, we finally were able to turn back westward, out of the swift channel. The waters calmed down significantly, although we still rolled a fair bit laterally. No help for it, sailor. Carry on.

Another thing I can tell you, is that with so much pitching and rolling, this is where virtually no photos were taken. It seemed to take an eternity to get west of the Seven Mile Bridge and Ohio Key, but eventually it was a nice feeling to be back in the Lower Keys, and getting closer to more familiar waters. We let our guard down, as we sighted a few more boats out here with us:

We pressed on like this, rolling gently, eventually coming to Bahia Honda Channel. The water here picked up somewhat again, and rolled our rudder into a trap buoy line. Grace handed me a paddle as I barely hung on in the cockpit, and started to use the paddle to scrape the buoy line down off of the rudder, when suddenly I looked up and found us surrounded by monster waves in every direction. More of the awesome pileup action.

The first wave we hit was powerful enough to knock the trap line off the rudder without any further intervention by me, so I tossed the paddle back into the cabin with Grace. Unfortunately, this was followed by another 15 minutes or so of interesting times. Objectively, it was probably worse than Moser Channel, but subjectively, it wasn't quite as bad, because we'd already been through a similar situation. But it still felt rather like, as others have said of this channel, going through a washing machine.

Fortunately for us, that was the last of the more interesting times on the Atlantic. The only problem that remained after this, was fuel-related: The engine only sipped about 0.8 gallons per hour, and we had over-provisioned and brought about 21 gallons, versus the 12 or so we needed. And it was all sitting in the cockpit in stinking cans. Grace had to excuse herself and remain in the cabin for a few minutes, as she was quite miserable from the fumes. On the next trip, we'd learn to tie plastic bags over the fuel spouts to cut down greatly on the fumes. It would be nice to tie the cans down on deck, but on that small boat, if the boom didn't hit em, maybe the jib would. If not the jib, maybe the forward hatch… eh, we'll just have to figure that out.

Hours passed, and the sun began sinking into the western horizon. And we'd only barely sighted our old friend, red marker 50A just south of Lois Key. This created another set of conundrums:

1. No way in hell were we going to be home before sunset.

2. Because of that, we'd have to make sure to somehow rig up the battery-powered running lights we'd brought with us (the boat does have mostly-working lights, but at the time I had not yet rigged them up and gotten them working).

3. Coming up Bow Channel and into Cudjoe Bay was either stupid or suicidal, depending on one's preference.

We came up with an action plan: We'd rig up the battery-powered lights as best we could, and grace would prairie-dog up out of the bow hatch with a flashlight to illuminate the channel markers. Meanwhile, I would use the iPhone and pull up an old GPS track from past powerboat rides and try to hug it as best as I could.

First, we had to avoid trap buoys while staring directly into the sun. Then, it was time to pause and finally enjoy still waters south of Lois Key at sunset, before having our fun in Bow Channel. Of this, there are many photos.

… The sun thus dispatched, it was time to pull up the centerboard and begin the perilous voyage into Bow Channel. I'm pretty sure we were both good and scared, but I have to admit: Grace did a fantastic job of illuminating the channel markers with the flashlight, and between that and the iPhone GPS track, we managed to maneuver without incident through Bow Channel and around the large oval-shaped flat in the middle of Cudjoe Bay, almost completely blind. It is indeed a wonder that we did not hit any trap lines or moored vessels.

Then came the journey into the canal. Once we'd located the entry marker, we began the process of taxiing into the La Fitte Canal (as we called it). Our rudder is hinged, and flipped up as we dragged it across the shallow flat that guards the mouth of the canal. The only real problem with this, is that the rudder does not hit the propeller of the outboard engine, unless it is flipped up. I discovered this by steering hard to enter the canal, thereby putting a few good teeth marks in the rudder. Fortunately, neither prop nor rudder were seriously harmed by this. Some more spotlighting and shouting, and somehow we found our way to our dock. More spotlighting and shouting (and furiously reversing and pulsing the throttle, and almost smashing Grace's hand), and we had a bow line tied off. Grace happily disembarked to dry land, and helped me walk the boat into a more permanent docking position, and it was made fast.

We had done it. We were home. The Therapy was delivered, at 8:15pm, just 13 hours and 15 minutes after setting out on its 60+ mile voyage. Much celebratory hooting and hollering immediately followed, as lights were gradually turned off and provisions were unloaded. Our Navionics track looked something like this (although I'm still not clear why it didn't save the whole damn thing, you can fill in the blanks with your imagination):

We were horribly landsick for the next 12 hours or so, as the ground rocked underneath us in sets of threes, and every blue surface on the television set seemed to contain breaking waves.

And the sailboat Therapy and the powerboat Villa Villekula were docked nose-to-nose at our treehouse in Cudjoe Key.

But it would not last.

Just a couple weeks later, I would suffer abdominal cramping so severe as to seek out the advice of a doctor, who then sent me out for an abdominal ultrasound. Some days later, I received a cryptic phone call telling me to immediately contact a certain surgeon to remove my gallbladder. As I panicked somewhat about this and made the consultation appointment with the surgeon, I received more interesting news: Our landlord of three years would not be renewing us, preferring instead to resume occupation of her property. We had less than two months to leave.

To make a very long story short, we very luckily found a new rental property in Big Pine Key that surpassed any expectations: A fenced double lot for the dogs, tons of seawall space for our fleet, and more square footage than we'd ever know what to do with, for a reasonable price. Frankly, it made the Cudjoe house look rather humble by comparison. As soon as we gave first/last/security on the new place, it was time for surgery. Despite some wonderful insurance hangups (there are always those, aren't there?), I had a successful surgery. In fact, it was an absolute blast, once the fentanyl hit me. One week later, the moving began. I was still in pain and not completely recovered from the surgery, but it's a cruel world. I had to get back to work and start moving furniture.

And boats.

The Second Delivery

Grace's powerboat, being a 17-foot skiff, is always a pleasure to handle, seas permitting, and fits neatly under any given bridge in the Lower Florida Keys. Its delivery took place on April 1, and was an utterly uneventful (meaning good) 49 minutes:

In less than an hour, we'd had no problem bringing the little bugger into its new home, in Pine Channel Estates on Big Pine Key, just north of the Pine Channel bridges.

The astute reader has probably already figured out the problem thus posed for moving the sailboat: The Therapy has a 30+ foot mast height, such as may only pass under the Niles Channel bridge between Summerland and Ramrod keys, or all the way back to the Seven Mile Bridge. And like hell I was going back to the Seven Mile. Then, once through Niles Channel, the sure-thing route goes out into the Gulf Of Mexico, around the Content Keys, and back towards Pine Channel, for another near-60-mile voyage. I considered stepping the mast down and going under Pine Channel bridge. But then I found the shortcut.

April 9th was the date chosen for the second delivery of Therapy for a number of reasons, prominent among which is the perigeal spring tide. That meant that for about four hours out of this day, every depth reading on the chart would actually increase by up to three feet. That meant that the careful ODay sailor, with centerboard up, could go just about anywhere there was water. That's when the shortcut emerged:

We didn't have to go all the way into the Gulf, we could pass through the normally-one-foot-deep passage between Big Torch Key and Water Keys and sneak into Pine Channel, for a trip distance of 32.6 miles and a transit time of about 7 hours. Once I realized the amount of time and distance that this would knock off the trip, there was no way I wasn't going to at least try. Our friend and veteran sailor Monique believed we could do it too, and got the day off work for the occasion.

We provisioned up, with some 9 pints of beer, a handle of tasty vodka, a case of water, sunscreen, PFDs, charged iPhones, and so forth, and flipped the sailboat around to face out of the canal. We were ready.

At 9:00AM on April 9th, myself, wife Grace, and pal Monique pushed off the dock, and took our dock lines and buoys with us. Farewell, Cudjoe. It was very uneventful motoring through Cudjoe Bay with the centerboard up, excepting the occasional powerboater who finds it necessary to go right next to you at full throttle and wake the hell out of you (although admittedly this is much less worrisome on an ODay 222 than it was with the Porta-Bote). After about 45 minutes, we were at the southern end of Bow Channel, entering the Atlantic Ocean.

And we were immediately back into the fun, as 3 and 4 foot waves out of the east began to rock our ship. Grace dropped the centerboard as I plowed into the waves bow-first. Monique sat on the bow, howling like a cowboy riding a bucking bronco, through dozens and dozens of large waves breaking and splashing the hell out of her. This went on for most of two hours, and despite her initial amusement, even Monique would later admit that she had gotten tired of all the knocking and spraying. It was worst at Red marker 50A just south of Lois Key, being our point of maximum exposure to the eastern wind.

The wind and waves began tapering off somewhat as we approached Big Pine Key (due to the way Niles Channel curves around, you must first approach Big Pine before turning to face the channel). Fortunately the waves began to subside almost immediately, as soon as we entered protected Niles Channel. Grace pulled the centerboard back up and spotted some very important markers that helped us get through the channel properly. It was now time to approach Niles Channel bridge.

The math had been done before: 27-30 feet of mast height, maybe 2 more feet for the tides, way more than enough room to go under the 40-foot Niles Channel bridge. But it didn't quite work that way. And herein lies the story of my worst-ever lapse of judgement as a captain:

I began panicking and telling people not to touch anything metallic on the boat, when it looked certain that the VHF antenna was going to clip the high-voltage power lines. But it cleared them, seemingly by inches, but I'm sure it was more like a foot or two.

Then, I shut the engine down, almost completely, when it appeared that we were about to be demasted by the Niles Channel bridge. But by this point, there was no stopping anything. We continued to drift towards it.

We cleared the Niles Channel bridge by less than two feet. Wow.

That bridge had been there since about 1982 when the Overseas Highway was rebuilt, and although Florida bridges are apparently commonly mismarked, there's nothing in literature to suggest this of Niles. One may therefore assume that I had greatly misunderstood my own mast height. Whoops. Anyway, everyone, including the boat and her mast, came out safely on the other side, and with clean underwear (I'm guessing). There was much celebration.

After this, it would be mostly shallow water cruising the whole way. We put the bimini top up and handed out pints of beer. This was the quiet and fun part of the trip. Around here, we noticed we'd had a stowaway on board from Cudjoe Key:

That poor bugger had managed to hang on through the high seas, and not be electrocuted by the Keys Tieline, so he was pretty well set at this point. We saw this pretty trawler just north of the Knockemdown Keys:

… And eventually we made our turn into the Water Keys shortcut. The water is particularly shallow and pretty up here:

At certain parts of the Water Keys passage, yes the rudder did fold up, and yes it did hit the ground a couple times, but nothing horrifying. With the crew's help reading the waters (which in waters like these, is more important than charts), Pine Channel soon unfolded before us.

There was one last super-shallow ridge to clear in the north end of Pine Channel, so I cut the engine throttle to minimum, and ordered the girls to the front of the V-berth to give the rudder maximum clearance. It worked.

The rest would be cake, and we knew it. We finished the beer and generally slapped each other on the back. The final leg consisted of looping around the south end of Pine Channel to avoid spoilage and get into the canal entrance:

Monique climbed onto the deck and tied us off, giving us a wonderful docking. At 3:00pm, exactly 6 hours after we had set out, Therapy had been delivered again, this time over only about 32 miles of water. The new house, like the old house, is very close to a Lower Keys bus stop, making it cheap and easy to fetch our Honda and get car-ed up again.

Epilogue

We've all changed so much as a result of these voyages. Grace is the new Logistical Queen, often figuring out when to drop or retract the centerboard, or which techniques or markers will get us out of a potential jam, and much much more. We still haven't gotten anchor tattoos (yet) though, although they're probably a lot closer now. And one point of personal pride, is that I'm now the guy that people ask, "how the hell did you get that sailboat in here?"

Carefully. Same way it's going out for our next camping trip.