Stuart to Port Mayaca Canal

We drove the car to the storage yard this morning and wrapped it up with a tarp before heading back to the boat.

I looked at various locations for local car storage including Indiantown marina, which only charges $20 a month, but ended up at the same place that I used last year because of their good security.
Back at the boat we were off at 11am for our motor across the state.

Hook down at dusk just before the Mayaca lock in a beautiful Anchorage with lots of birds, gators and mosquitoes!

Measuring air draft

Tomorrow we hope to head across to the Gulf coast through the Okeechobee Waterway but there is the small matter of a railway bridge with a open height of 49 feet in the way ten miles west of Indiantown. Fellow Westsailers, Dick and Libby have gone under the bridge several times but my mast is not original so I had to check it's height.

It turns out that my mast is 44 feet high from the deck to about a foot above the top to allow for the tricolour and the VHF antenna.

Checking the height of the mast step above the water is a bit of a challenge too. We laid a pole horizontally on the deck and measured each end above the waterline and averaged them. Bottom line is that our air draft is a little bit over 48 feet so in theory we should be able to get under the bridge. Wahoo!

Big mistake!

Well after spending the holidays away from the boat, I arrived back yesterday to be greeted by this!

I should not have left my dinghy in the water while I was gone because it was coated with barnacles and took me a couple of hours to scrub and clean the resulting mess. Oh well. Live and learn.
Tomorrow it will be very windy again so we will be staying put before we push off for lake Okeechobee.

Baking bread on the boat

I try to keep things as simple as i can and this time of the year is perfect for baking bread. Because I follow the sun, it is usually too hot to use the stove, let alone the oven, but the outside temperature is about 80 degrees Fahrenheit so the dough will rise okay before you cook it, and the inside of the boat doesn't become so uncomfortable that you have to leave.
I first mix the yeast with 2 cups of warm water and let it stand for a few minutes.  The water should be warm and not hot. Then add this to 3 cups of flour and mix. Leave this to rise for an hour or so and then nead and transfer to your loaf pan to rise again. You can either buy a non stick Teflon coated pan or smear butter on the bottom and edges of your container. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and then cook for 30 minutes.

The 3 cups of flour and 2 cups of water along with the yeast is all you really need to make bread, but if you want to add a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of sugar along with herbs and spices, you can. Above is an Italian herbal loaf that i had for breakfast along with my coffee this morning. Yummmm!  Also when cooking with gas, I find you have to insulate the pan somewhat in the oven, so that it doesn't burn on the bottom.

Sunset Bay, Stuart, Florida

Well after calling all the mooring fields on the gulf coast and finding that they all had waiting lists I settled on Sunset Bay again for my winter base here in Florida.  I could have gone to Dinner Key in Miami, but it is very exposed to the east and Boot Key Harbor in Marathon was my preference but they do not let you leave the boat and I wanted to travel for the upcoming holiday season.

I really like the marina here. It has excellent facilities, the staff are friendly, there are lots of exercise options, the wind and current are benign and there is a grocery store nearby.

Fort Pierce

Yesterday, the wind died around lunchtime so I pulled out the "iron genny" but then around nightfall they started coming from all directions instead of from behind like they were supposed to. Anyway,  I decided to put into Fort Pierce and anchor for the night.

I am the only one here and the boat is a mess because I was too tired last night to put the sails away. There were 5 black birds sitting around my boat that I had to growl at when I got up.
I am considering going across Lake Okeechobee over to the gulf Coast so I will ponder that over my morning cup of joe.

Running Backstays

One of the good things about getting together with fellow sailors, this past weekend was that I was reminded of lots of nautical details. One of these details included the importance of using running backstays. Running back stays connect to the mast at the same height as your stay sail so it supports the mast at that point. It can also help support the mast if the back stay were to fail.

I hadn't used them in several months so I dusted them off this morning and you can see it attached in the center of the photo. Recently a westsail was rescued by the Peruvian Coast Guard after one of the boomkin stays parted. The boomkin jammed up against the rudder so that it was impossible to steer the boat. Anyway the only reason why the mast didn't fall down was that he had his running backstays up.