On The Road Again

We have enjoyed our time here in Steinhatchee, but it is time to hit the road again. We have the perfect weather window starting tomorrow for heading south. We probably won't be able to post for a couple of days, but I will as soon as we can. We should be in the Tampa area this weekend. With the forecast we should have a beautiful sail with just about perfect wind all the way to Tampa. That would be nice for a change. Wind from the right direction? Who ever heard of such a thing? Time will tell if they are right.

Mike

Just Thinking

Last night I was setting in the cockpit grilling some brauts, watching the sun set, and thinking how good life is. Tonight we took Rosie and went up the river a ways and stopped to eat at Hungry Howie's pizza. It was good and we got back right before dark.

View from my back porch

View from my back porch

View from my back porch

View from my back porch

Steinhatchee Florida

We are in Steinhatchee right now. We are at Sea Hag Marina. It is the cheapest marina I have ever found, $9.37 a night. We are waiting on the next weather window to go on down to Crystal River. We had a good crossing from Dog Island to here. It was about 77 miles across the gulf. We left at 4:20 am and got here at about 6:30 pm. So we left in the dark and arrived in the dark. It was interesting as this was our first night sailing. It was pretty neat when we left our course was straight into the reflection of the moon on the water. I could just keep the bow pointed into the glimmering light and be on course.

Our friend John was sailing beside us. It was fun to have someone to share the journey with. His boat is about the same size as ours, but about ten years newer (its only 30 years old instead of 40)

John sailing beside us.

Underway to Steinhatchee

Sharon not getting seasick

Sea Hag Marina

Dog Island

We are at Dog Island right now. It is a beautiful place. We took Rosie over to the beach and then went for a long walk. There is an old sailboat laying on its side in the same cove we are anchored in. Always sad to see a boat like that.

When we went into Carrabelle and anchored we saw another small sailboat there. I took Rosie and went over to say hi. It was John, we met at Lighthouse Landing on Kentucky Lake last year. He had stopped there to buy fuel on his way down from Chicago. We had corresponded by email but had lost touch. We were surprised to see each other. He is heading the same direction as us, so we are going to hang together down the coast for awhile.

Morgan at anchor off Dog Island

Sailboat on Dog Island

Going for a walk

Pictures just don't do it justice.

A Perfect End

We are at C Quarters marina in Carabelle right now. We decided to get a night in the marina, dry everything out, and wash clothes and linens after our wet ride yesterday. Sharon's side of the V berth got soaked (mine was fine, and I slept like a baby last night). So in order to keep all parties happy, we got a slip and washed linens and put a fan on the mattress to get it dried out. It was a beautiful day today.

This evening I set on the swim platform grilling some ribs and watched the sun set behind us. I had Jim Croche playing softly in the background, I could here people on the dock laughing and having a good time, A pelican landed on a channel marker across from us and watched me grilling. He was probably disappointed that he didn't get anything. It was a perfect end to a great day.

Passing a swinging bridge on the ICW on our way to Alachacola

Pedro, our perfect pet.

Our slip at low tide.

C Quarters Marina

Low tide here is LOW

The inside on Morgan after our ride yesterday.

Another change in plans (Hard to imagine)

We are in Carabelle, We just had the roughest day we have ever had on "Morgan" We went through the cut at Apalachacola on an outgoing tide with a south wind (dumb thing to do). Large breaking waves coming in as we were going out. I will never do that again. Once we were out the waves were about 3 or 4 feet tall and breaking and about 4 seconds apart. We ran about 30 miles east and ducked into Carabelle. Finally dropped the hook and took a break. It was very very uncomfortable. Most of the 30 miles we had the waves on our beam. We were sailing about 5-6 knots. Even as uncomfortable as it was I never felt Morgan was out of control or that it was too much for her.


We are going to hang around here for a better weather window. I will post some pics tomorrow.

Small change of plans

We are heading to the Swanee river instead.

Made it to Apalachacola

We anchored across from downtown Apalachacola last night. We filled up with fuel and walked around town today. We are anchored out by St George island tonight. We have a good weather window to head to Clearwater tomorrow. We won't have Internet for a few days, so I will post as soon as we can. We do have a link at the top of the page now that you can click on to see where we are. Pics coming soon.

We did a small repair on the bimini and changed the oil in the motor today a anchor. Double checked everything, I think we are ready to go.

Underway (Finally)

We are finally underway. We have anchored close to where the ICW narrows on our way to Apalachacola. On the picture above is a link to a google map where you can see our location. Click on the link. You will then have to enlarge the map to see where we are. Once we stop we turn off the Spot tracking device so as to save the batteries.

We had a great day today. It feels so good to finally be underway. Hopefully I won't have to drive a car again for at least six months. It is so nice to be at anchor and away from the marina at last. The only downside right now is all the biting flies. They have come out in force to welcome us to this little bay we are in. I am sure all you guys up north feel sorry for me.

STEAK TONIGHT!

Getting Ready

We are loading Morgan up to head out on Sunday. We have decided to take the ICW down to Apalacacola, then head across to Clearwater. We are 98% ready to go. We should easily finish up preparations tomorrow.

We went a little crazy on the upgrades while we were here. Spent way too much money, but hey it's a boat. The acronym for boat, Break Out Another Thousand has alot of truth in it. But we have a first class 25' cruising sailboat now. (Thank you Exxon) This is a list of most of the things we did.

Refrigeration
Added a fourth battery, we now have two 200 amp hour banks.
Added two more solar panels, We now have 160 watts.
Added a Morningstar solar charge controller and a monitor.
Added lazy jacks for the main sail.
Had the main sail fixed.
Ran all sail control lines back to the cockpit.
Added a 1000 watt power inverter.
Added more shelving.
Bought a new outboard motor.
Painted the deck.
Installed an anchor roller.
Bought new anchor and anchor chain.
Installed a macerator pump.
Rebuilt the head. (toilet)
Painted Rosy's bottom.
Bought the bottom paint for Morgan. We will repaint her when we get to St. Thomas.

And last but not least, we bought a Spot satellite tracking device. We will put a link here on the blog that you can click on and see where we are.

I love the song Knee Deep and found this video, so I thought I would share it.

A Little Reminiscing

We were reading our log from last year. It has been a year since we left Kentucky lake and headed out. It was a year ago yesterday that we entered the Mississippi River. Wow how time flies when you are having fun. I wish we could have spent the entire year on Morgan, but we had to go make some money. Thanks to Exxon we should be set up to not have to leave her for a good while now.

We hope to have everything done by this weekend, and be able to leave and start heading south again. I have about three projects left to finish. We had a good shake down run the last two days. We were able to test all the systems that we have repaired or installed last month. Everything is working great. We are excited to get going again.

I thought since we were heading for south Florida on a slow boat next week this youtube song would be fitting. We watched the movie Gone Fishing last night.

Finally at anchor

We finally were able to get out of the marina and go sailing. We anchored out last night in Calloway bayou. So much has happened as far as working on Morgan. We had to get a new motor, the old one was not repairable. That was the main purpose of the trip out of the marina yesterday, to properly break in the new motor. They want you to run it a certain RPM for a set amount of time. We used the motor for about 7 1/2 hours, the break in time is ten hours. We only used about 1 1/2 gallons of fuel. It is a very low emission and low fuel consumption motor, which means we wont have to carry extra cans of fuel on the deck. That is a good thing. We have been doing alot of upgrades on Morgan. Below are pics of some of them.

Finally out sailing

Our new motor, a Sail Pro 6

New anchor and roller.

More storage for Sharon

We found the perfect boat pet (more about "Pedro" later).

Sunset at anchor.