My sailing passion began during the years I was burning out on business. An aviation associate took me for a sail on his small sailboat on a local lake. “Try it,” John said, “it’s like flying.” It was. I spent as much time as I could for the next several summers sailing Sunfish board-boats back and forth through powerboat wakes on Boulder Reservoir in Colorado, a mud puddle with a principle dimension of less than a mile.
Several years later my story of cruising as a lifestyle begins.
At retirement, aged 42, I began adjusting my needs to fit my means. I all but stopped driving and was experimenting with a variation of bicycle touring, a backpack full of camping equipment, a bicycle, and a 90-day bus pass. I made a midwinter visit to friends in upstate New York then headed for Florida for a respite from winter and a pilgrimage to the Space Center. Even in central Florida, winter camping can be pretty chilly, so I decided to go as far south as possible, Key West.
I kept an eye out for a Sunfish to sail. There were plenty of beach catamarans but I was already a confirmed monohull sailor. Halfway back up the Keys, at Marathon, I decided I’d have to settle for whatever I could find if I was going to do any sailing on these beautiful, warm waters. What I found was a twenty-two foot sloop with a sitting-headroom cabin for $95 a day, way more than I’d intended to spend.
“Does a day mean 24 hours?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I recorded the sail at the time. Here's how I perceived it.
#
“A cumbersome gallon of water has been added to my camping equipment and food stores replenished,” I began. “A list of items to be resolved prior to getting underway is accumulating, for much of the equipment and circumstances are new and what I intend to do is potentially in the category of serious business. But boy, is this going to be fun!”
Settled for the night, I unfolded and spread out my "Teal’s Florida Keys Guide", an annotated chart of unknown date printed on heavy newspaper and labeled against use for navigation. Presumably it is a copy of the real thing with dive sites and other attractions added. The chart’s coverage is from Key West to Boot Key at the west end of Marathon, the town halfway up the Keys. The whole of Marathon, at the same scale, is inset in a corner. There is a large-scale inset of Boot Key Harbor as well.
Tomorrow's plan is to sail from the center of Marathon into Hawk Channel then circumnavigate the island, spending the night at anchor in Boot Key Harbor. West of Marathon is Seven Mile Bridge and a channel under a sixty-five foot bridge, tall enough for sure… but how tall is a Jaguar 22? The question is added to the list. East of Marathon is the edge of the earth, for the chart goes no further. Charts are added to the list and a note to ask about tides and currents. Two other items, boat manual and chart legend, are noted without expectations. I am pleased that I put the rental off until tomorrow, some of this preparation seems necessary – though Alf seemed entirely unconcerned about my lack of experience with the ocean or so large a boat. His chief concern was that I intend to sail alone.
#
It is late morning, nearly noon, as I head cautiously down the narrow channel that winds through the shallows of the harbor, past a deeper anchorage, and around the bend to a wider channel leading to the sea. I am glad I went with Alf in a dinghy as he led another boat through the narrow part of the channel earlier. The mainsail is still furled, the jib is still bagged. Jane moves lightly through the water under the gentle push of her small outboard motor.
Jane is a Jaguar 22, a 22- foot sloop, 36-feet tall, with a draft of three feet – special Florida version. She is not as flashy as the sister ship we led out earlier. She lacks the red and blue accent stripes, being trimmed in grey and beige, and seems bit older, more used. Her radio and I know not what have been removed and much of the late start is due to repairs to a bracket that holds the table to the wall of the cabin. The compass is mounted on a board cut to fit the wide “V” of her companionway – an empty black socket on the aft bulkhead of the cabin marks its intended location. Perhaps she is seasoned enough to compensate for my inexperience.
Rounding the bend into the main channel we meet Jane’s flashy sister returning, jib down, main fluttering. Roger, her renter, calls out that he is putting his passenger ashore (she didn’t like the heeling) and will be back out. A rendezvous is indicated, for I intend to warm up close to home and Roger is just out for half a day of sailing.
Well clear of the channel I turn into the moderate north breeze and begin putting up sails. It is unexpectedly difficult for Jane insists on backing and turning crosswise to the wind [which I now know to be normal]. Still, the job gets done and some badly needed practice begins. Roger reappears and we play for a while, sometimes within hailing distance, sometimes not. Soon I feel reasonably comfortable with the boat and am ready to begin the circumnavigation of Marathon.
Roger is dead in the water, sails flapping. I stand clear as he goes forward to deal with something on the bow. When he is underway again, I sail alongside. He calls out that the anchor had fallen overboard. It is back aboard now. Must have been a rude stop.
I announce my departure then head Jane northeast up Hawk Channel on a close reach. Since the official chart now on board also ends just east of Marathon, beyond is still the unknown, the area to be dealt with first, while plenty of daylight and daylight-related options remain.
An hour along the tack, approaching Duck Key, a dolphin surfaces several boat-lengths ahead and to port, crossing under the bow. I watch for its next breath, eyes following the reckoned path. It is some time and several hundred yards to starboard, astern, three of them, beyond camera range. Rounding Duck Key, I see another dolphin, again too distant to warrant a photo.
Long Key Bridge, under which I intend to pass, is now ahead. Jane is pointed a third of the way up the major span, close to the wind. I try to judge the bridge’s height by the scale of vehicles crossing the bridge. It looks tight, probably too tight, but I will sail closer to decide. According to Alf, Jane is thirty-six feet tall. The subject of tides (“two feet maximum”) came up, then Rules of the Road, but somehow the height of this bridge had not. Nor does the chart say. High-tension lines run parallel on this side, somewhat higher off the water than the bridge. It is increasingly doubtful that Jane will pass beneath the bridge, perhaps not beneath the wires. Still, we have come a long way.
For all the days I have been in Florida the wind has been northerly, off the bridge, away from the wires. Yet I am mindful as I approach how serious short-circuiting high-tension lines to the ocean with an aluminum mast might be. And I know nothing of the current here, what direction it is running. The outboard is lowered into the water, operation checked, and it is left idling in neutral. Finally, a hundred yards or so out, too far to read the warnings painted on the towers, I fall off the wind, sail parallel to the bridge for a few minutes, then turn, jibe and reach off to the Southwest, the direction from which I came. I have been out for three hours now. That much daylight, maybe more remains.
Rounding the shallows off Duck Key the boat speed slows. I harden the sheets, then tie off the tiller and turn to the charts. The south entrance to Boot Key Harbor lies half again the distance to our starting point. There will be Sister Creek (the route into Boot Key Harbor) or darkness to deal with, whichever comes first. Sailing these waters after dark is entirely out of the question, by my standards as well as by the rental rules.
Passing abeam of Jane’s homeport channel I estimate an hour of light remaining. Though upwind of us, the channel is within easy range of daylight. Instead, I ease her off the wind a few degrees to increase boat speed then shoot a fix. Anchoring out now seems likely. The sun begins to dull as it sinks low, its harsh yellow muting to a fervent orange as it moves deeper into the edge of the atmosphere. It has been decades since I have seen the sun set on tropical waters. I had forgotten…. Now the color is very orange, burnt orange. The bottom of the fireball touches the ocean and spreads, seems to hang, then plunges into the sea.
Something is happening half a mile or more away to port, perhaps a school of dolphins surfacing, I think. But it persists, remains stationary. I check the chart. It can’t be anything other than waves breaking on East Washerwoman Shoals. I can’t be that far out or that far along, yet what else can it be? If it is, the water here could be more than thirty feet deep. I want to anchor in water much shallower than that since anchor line, I recall reading, should exceed the depth by a factor of seven. I doubt that Jane carries that much line for her anchor. First choice is a large area that charts seven to ten feet with occasional spot depths of four or five feet. I assume, without actually knowing, that the soundings are at low tide. I bring Jane about to the port tack, close to the wind.
A large sport fishing boat passes well clear heading, I first suppose, for the mouth of Sister Creek. But presently it stops. A figure moves forward to the bow, presumable to lower the anchor – at this distance, in this light, it is just a figure. Several hundred yards closer to shore I turn into the wind and anchor. I estimate the depth at ten or twelve feet and pay out an appropriate amount of line. The sport fishing boat is far enough away for privacy, close enough to be used as a reference to check for a dragging anchor. I bag the jib, furl the mainsail, coil all loose lines, and turn on the masthead anchor light.
The flying dream. There are a handful of us, apparently strangers but somehow familiar, gathered outdoors on a very pleasant day at some sort of resort. An attractive, middle-aged woman, the leader of this group, has proposed a game, a sort of acrobatic competition. We leap and soar to her direction. The others fade quickly from the competition as the moves become more difficult and unlikely until finally I am alone rocking back and forth above the others like a leaf being lifted on a light breeze, no less astonished than they at the ease with which I float and sway, infinitely pleased.
The rocking continues. The sense of warmth and peaceful confidence remains as the dream blends into Jane’s rolling and pitching in exaggeration of the small waves. I lie quietly for a time in an afterglow of contentment. Three o’clock. An incredible number of stars are visible through the companionway. The dew is heavy on the boat, as if from a rain, but it is warm and dry within. From the companionway I verify the relative positions of the airport beacon, microwave tower, East Sister Rock and the anchored powerboat, above which Orion, overabundant with stars, looms halfway down the sky. The anchor seems to be holding.
A luxurious sleep easily returns as the boat rocks persistently and erratically on one to three-foot waves.
#
Early twilight. Venus is intermittently visible through breaks in the now cloudy sky. The breeze is light, still northerly. Beyond the companionway Jane is wet with dew. She rocks softly, rigging creaking gently; the seas are somewhat lighter now. Twilight gathers into day as the sun returns from the opposite end of the earth. Color comes again to the world and I discover that Jane is bobbing fifty or a hundred feet inside the scalloped edge of the turquoise shallows. The camping compass fixes a position on the chart between ten and fifteen foot soundings.
Breakfast consists of soup and dried fruit, then up anchor, up sail, and underway, southwest again, past East Sister Rock, Sister Creek, by West Sister Rock, and to the end of Boot Key, running as close to shore as I dare, perhaps closer than is wise. The water remains a light, glowing turquoise most of the way. Often, features of the bottom are seen, distorted by the moving surface of the water. On the chart there is a fine line between two feet of water and seven. I believe myself to be running on the seven-foot side of it.
The channel beneath Seven Mile Bridge is still more than three miles away when a time limit I had set expires. It is time to turn for homeport. Three hours remain in which to cover seven straight-line miles. Coming about onto the port tack I fall off to a close reach, a course that will take me out quite a ways. I will have to sail both sides of the wind, a beat. The first tack is in the direction of East Washerwoman Shoal. Coming about from there will take me by last night’s anchorage. Two equally long tacks after that should put me in the vicinity of the channel entrance.
Coming about half a mile from the shoals, I again see that I have been overconfident in my estimates. By the end of the long starboard tack shoreward it is evident that I will not be in on time. An hour of grace seems reasonable… unless someone had shown up wanting half a day of sailing…. I bring her about again, port tack. The wind has decreased further. I play with the sails and fall off the wind a bit. The outboard will be needed to get Jane home reasonably close to the appointed time. Continuing under sail. I lower the motor, start it and verify that it does, in fact, increase boat speed – considerably. As light as the wind is, the sails do little to help, so I turn directly for home, directly into the wind. If I arrive early enough I can sail a bit before going in.
Again, though, I have misjudged the distance, speed, or both. By the time the channel entrance can be seen the twenty-four hours are up. Jane is no longer into the wind – there is no wind. Rather than trying to sail in calm air for the self-allocated grace period I continue towards the channel. A hundred yards out the engine rushes for an instant than stops. Out of gas. The sails and telltales are limp as Jane goes dead in the water. The water is glassy smooth. I pull out the gas tank and look it over – there is always some gas left. In this case, it is a quarter inch sloshing over the bottom, a cup or two perhaps. I prop up one end of the tank to an angle estimated to give the pick-up the most to work with. Several pulls and the engine is running again. At a low throttle setting to stretch the fuel as far as possible I enter the channel. Almost to the first turn, a quarter of the way in, the outboard again goes silent, which is not a total surprise since the fuel pick-up is not located near a corner or the end of the tank. Quickly, I remove the fuel line from its fitting to the tank, remove the filler cap, and push the line into the tank, angled towards the low side of the propped up tank. Again, the engine starts easily and I continue around the next two turns, past the anchorage, and into the narrow channel that winds through the shallows to the dock. It now seems good fortune that air and water are so still, though I would love to have come in under sail… with a full tank of fuel and a running engine as a backup.
The long outer side of the dock is vacant except for a boat near the far end, room enough to berth several boats. Still, it is my first landing with a boat the size of Jane. The remaining fuel is an unknown and I am determined not to put myself in a position that will require reliance on the engine. I intend the docking to be a credit to the adventure. Alf and a couple of others are at the office or near the sport fishing fleet. No apparent note is taken as Jane idles softly by. No one is on the dock. Good. With airplanes the best landings are generally those that go unnoticed. Two boat-lengths out I put the outboard in neutral and glide towards the dock at a shallow angle. Beginning early with the tiller, I bring Jane parallel near the center of the open area, momentarily shift the idling engine into reverse, then neutral again. Luck has supplemented concentration, Jane lies inches from the dock, not having yet touched it, absolutely dead in the water.
After slightly more than a day aboard, the dock seems to rock gently.