We departed our anchorage at Jewfish Creek early in the morning heading for Biscayne Bay. The temperature was a very pleasant 74 degrees with light winds of 5-10 mph. Great for cruising! Wrong. We just happened to be heading directly into a very strong current which our limited capacity with the solar electric drive has difficulty overpowering.
Between the strong currents pushing back and the mostly cloudy skies with little to no sun, it was a slow go of it and finally at 1:50 pm our reserve battery was mostly spent and we pulled over and dropped anchor to give the panels time to catch them up. As is our normal procedure when given lemons...make lemonade! Carter went lobster diving. He found a haven of lobsters close by but unfortunately absolutely none of them were of legal size and he came home empty handed but he and Radar had a good time trying. Seems Radar is quite the lobster hound. After a couple hours we continued on to a nearby cove and dropped anchor in Card Sound within site of Turkey Point Nuclear Plant.
Tuesday, February 11th
While waiting for the batteries to charge up in the morning we decided to go on the hunt for lobster again since we will soon be heading into the ditch where there will not be any more opportunity for lobster diving. While Carter was diving, I snorkeled and sunbathed. Life is good. But unfortunately, still nothing but shorts when it came to the lobsters that day.
We got back on the trail at about 11:30 with 80 degrees and light wind of about 10 mph at our stern. It was a beautiful day. We dropped anchor at Sand Key pretty early, 4:40 pm, giving us a couple hours to recharge the batteries before sunset. This location gets us into position to cross Biscayne Bay tomorrow.
Wednesday, February 12th
We've been working on getting the boat all cleaned up in preparation for our upcoming press conference with ReThink Energy Florida in Miami. This morning, since the weather was so nice, we decided to get an early start and clean the exterior of the boat and do some maintenance we had been putting off. While Carter was replacing the shaft zinc on the propeller, he noticed the bottom of the Arc was getting pretty fuzzy so he decided to do some scraping while in the water to keep it under control. While he was doing that, I scrubbed the top deck and walkways. The Arc was lookin good!
At 11:15 am we weighed anchor and began our crossing of Biscayne Bay. The temperature started out 74 degrees with southerly winds of 10-15 mph and a strong following seas pushing us along nicely. We kept a nice brisk pace for most of the day when suddenly, at about 2:00 pm we hear an awful sound coming from the engine room. This could be bad. Carter immediately shut everything down and went down to investigate. Good news, sort of, the master link on the chain had broken. Carter said he noticed the chain had been getting stretched and was thinking about taking out a link anyway so this was his punishment for procrastinating. Apparently it had actually become loose enough to jump the idler pulley and in so doing the master link must have been strained to the breaking point. Not a big problem, Carter stocks lots of parts and the chain components are definitely on his critical spares list and was able to replace it, removing a half link at the same time to tightening up the chain, and getting us moving again in a matter of 30 minutes or so. We didn't even drop the anchor and actually drifted another half mile toward our destination.
We continued with Miami in our sites but now, suddenly, a thunderstorm was looming and closing fast. So much for our leisurely passage, we were about to get pummeled by a gale with our anchorage literally in sight. Things got pretty hectic for about an hour and as our batteries where depleting fast we were contemplating an emergency switch to diesel power but fortunately the storm blew through and the sun came back out.
We coasted into our anchorage by Marine Stadium with the batteries nearly depleted and our nerves a little frazzled, dropping anchor about 5:00 pm and settled down for the night.
The view from our anchorage.
After a nice sunset we went below to relax before dinner and get things ready to bar-b-que and when we came up back up on deck after dark we were greeted by a breathtaking Miami skyline. This picture hardly does it justice but it was fabulous!
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