April 20
Start just south of the bridge to Key Biscayne ...8 AM
Route all set up in my Garmin GPS with 22 waypoints
Wind DIRECTLY from the south, uhh the way we must go.
Rules are weird in this race, the larger boats can motor south through the several very narrow channels
A third of the way we are thinking time to scrub the trip.....a 42.5 mile beat to windward. Then the wind gets fluky, my inexperienced first mate Vlad says, "What's this"
I look behind...big storm in Hollywood Florida 25 miles north. Pretty soon we are making a wake like a motorboat, bildgeboards up, rudder set to kick up if we hit ground, cold wind directly form the North where the storm is.. Flying south, seeing the bottom right below us. I know it is mid tide and rising, I know these waters. No races scrubbing here!
3/4 of the way there; the wind decided, well, to not be there, at ALL. Now we are doing the Sargasso sea thing, thinking about laso-ing one of the Card Sound mosquitoes....they are BIG. Battery dead on the GPS.
Vlad says, "Go find the wind!"...huh.
We wait, eat, tell some stories, talk the the third passenger, by parrot. And wait....
Till little breeze takes us very slowly the rest of the way, finding the green flasher at the north end of Jewfish creek with chart and binoculars. I am thinking, I gettin pretty old, I can not see squat in the darkiness.
Through the creek to dock-age at 1:15 AM Sunday. Everyone has partied and gone to bed
Call a cab, are are none available, so they send a limo for the same price
Here we come Tiki Suite
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But the next morning, as the big guys headed back for Miami, they saw a pretty tiny cat ketch with no motor ....those guys are brave, or stupid or both
Thanks BandB
Donald Crampton, M.D.
Skipper and builder