Day 3 - Click image for larger view
Morning of my 3rd day had Southern Light sailing in/out of the Everglades park boundary in the Gulf of Mexico. Before afternoon I had navigated the Florida Bay channel and anchored just inside the Florida Keys Channel Five Bridge.
There is one dog leg to be concerned with on this route named "Yacht Channel" on most charts. Two markers, "2" Red and "1" Green, are located approx. 800' apart and almost parallel to the main channel, however shoals extend in opposite directions towards the main channel between them calling for near a 90 degree zig-zag between.
At the time the weather was not the best for continuing on for Bermuda so I anchored just inside the Keys Channel Five Bridge to wait it out. The winds at the time were out of the East 15-25 knots and gusting higher. This was the direction I needed to sail. Anyone who has voyaged the Gulf Stream in a small boat knows that winds and currents in opposite directions are not the most comfortable plus there was no reason to beat up Southern Light in the early stages of her adventure.
This little stop at anchor provided time to check up on rigging and clean the bottom while in shallow water.
So I rested up from the previous 2 days of short catnaps of maybe 5-10 mins at a time. It was very difficult to get into the swing of rest vs alertness but I'd done it before for a few days at a time. What I didn't know was how I would deal with continual catnaps on the longer passages.
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Morning of my 3rd day had Southern Light sailing in/out of the Everglades park boundary in the Gulf of Mexico. Before afternoon I had navigated the Florida Bay channel and anchored just inside the Florida Keys Channel Five Bridge.
There is one dog leg to be concerned with on this route named "Yacht Channel" on most charts. Two markers, "2" Red and "1" Green, are located approx. 800' apart and almost parallel to the main channel, however shoals extend in opposite directions towards the main channel between them calling for near a 90 degree zig-zag between.
At the time the weather was not the best for continuing on for Bermuda so I anchored just inside the Keys Channel Five Bridge to wait it out. The winds at the time were out of the East 15-25 knots and gusting higher. This was the direction I needed to sail. Anyone who has voyaged the Gulf Stream in a small boat knows that winds and currents in opposite directions are not the most comfortable plus there was no reason to beat up Southern Light in the early stages of her adventure.
This little stop at anchor provided time to check up on rigging and clean the bottom while in shallow water.
So I rested up from the previous 2 days of short catnaps of maybe 5-10 mins at a time. It was very difficult to get into the swing of rest vs alertness but I'd done it before for a few days at a time. What I didn't know was how I would deal with continual catnaps on the longer passages.
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