Days 117 and 118 - Blondie 2 — Captain Father John

Miles cruised 0, fuel purchased $0, slip fee $133, daily high temperature 77*f, low temperature 62*f

The predicted storm hit with a vengeance on Saturday night. Sustained winds of 40 mph and gusts over 50 mph. Torrential rains accompanied the blast of air. I am sure there was lots of excitement on the boats on the hook last night. That was the type of night when you find our out if you have the right ground tackle (anchor). Winds continued to blow hard all through the next day.

The black line is sustained wind speed and the red line is wind gusts.

Sunday’s weather forecast – “Gale warning with dangerous seas. Small craft advisory. Use extreme caution. Winds: SW 27 to 36 knots. Seas: WSW 8 feet at 6 seconds.” No joy riding today. It has continued to blow hard all day and night.

It was so windy that our Looper burgee blew off its flagpole. One of the marina staff saw it floating in the water and retrieved it for us. We now have industrial strength clamps to attach it to our flag pole. We should have secured it last night before the storm. We had no other damage from the storm.

Key West race week will have plenty of breeze for the sailors with north winds 15 – 20 mph forecast all week.

On Sunday night Craig and Day Olney picked us up and drove us to their marina at the Boca Chica Navy Base. The base is an airfield that specializes in top gun training exercises for Navy pilots. Craig and Day have a Lagoon 38′ catamaran called Toucan Deux that they bought new two years ago. Their boat was built in France and sailed over to the U.S. on its own hull. Not on a ship.

We enjoyed cost effective ($1.50) cocktails at the Navigator bar at Boca Chica and headed back to Stock Island to have dinner at Roostica’s Italian restaurant. They serve an amazing family style spaghetti dinner with meatballs, sausage and pork. The meal for six could easily serve eight or ten. Lots of leftovers.

The Stock Island Marina Marina is state of the art. They have troughs for the power cables and water hoses to go under the finger piers. This eliminates trip and fall hazards.

We traded in our view of Key West harbor for a view of this fifty footer. It does help block the wind a little.

As I have mentioned this is Quantum Sailmakers Key West Race Week. We only know one boat in this race. Tod and Heidi Patton are our friends from Chicago. They are racing on a J88 (29 feet) sailboat that is a state of the art design boat named Blondie 2. They are racing with the J boat owner/builder onboard Jeff Johnstone. Tod is my sailmaker for Blue Heaven from UK Sailmakers. There were three races today. They finished second in the first race and fourth in the second race and had a crisis. Tod reports as follows. “We ripped our large chute in half during the second race we were 1st or 2nd at the time. We used the small chute and did not do very well in the last race.”

Bonus photo – the Mediteranean Sea

Carl (Chef) Wooden – quote of the day.

“On the beach, you can live in bliss.” Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys