Sailing Last Mango

3-21-16   Yesterday evening the weather started to change, We were with the crew of Bodacious at Sparky’s for Happy Hour when the first blast of cool dry air forced its way into the bar area. It felt great to me but the restaurant staff quickly scrambled to deploy the rain and wind screens. I could feel the sweat drying from every inch of my body and thought to myself, “It’s gonna be a good sleeping night”. As the night wore on some heat and humidity came back but nothing too bad. I believe it was 4 AM when the rain really started and the wind began blowing a full 20 to 30 knots out of the North. When Mango’s on a mooring or anchor and the wind blows above 20 the knots it begins to jog back and forth on its tether and you start to hear the waves lap against the hull as well as the wind in the rigging . This wind continued to howl and I know it interrupted our sleep a bit.  The winds caught several boats by surprise. This one was the highest and driest we witnessed.

3-16-16   This past Saturday Hannah came to visit with her boyfriend Jared, they will be with us for the week. We have an itinerary kinda setup but we’ll see what they want to do. The car trip up to Miami Airport went very well aside from a Google Map issue but the way back was a bit more interesting. Certainly traffic was increased on the way back due to the time of day but we had an accident which closed down the expressway for about 40 minutes. On top of that every little town on our way down the keys had some type of festival or charity walk which delayed our arrival even further. Anyone who has ever driven down the keys knows that it’s mostly 2 lane traffic and any slow driver or traffic issue stops all traffic. Hannah captures and displays what we think is a Mushroom Cap Jelly Fish. Jared on arrival, pre-sun exposure 4 Handsome people on Sunset Grilles dock. As you can imagine the kids

3-6-16    I don’t remember if I blogged that Last Mango got a mooring ball late Sunday. This is particularly welcome considering that we’re due for gale force to near gale force winds for the next several days. We feel great about our Mantus Anchor, but question many boats that have come in over the past few days. The anchorage has really filled in and got crowded due to the upcoming weather. Our new address is Boot Key Harbor Ball L9. Upon arriving at our new address we were greeted with many Dolphins and Rays, I believe this is due to our new location being near an entrance to a creek that has a good tidal flow. Sunset at our new address Today is Key Colony Beach Days so Karen and I decided to bicycle up a couple of miles and check it out. I’m so glad we pedaled our butts up there rather than drive, the traffic was terrible. I really didn’t need to comment about traffic because traffic is bad anywhere in the keys from what I can tell, far too many car

2-23-16  We left our anchorage at Lower Matecumbe Key by 8 AM leaving Soul Serenade behind. Soul decided to take the inside route due to wind and wave conditions outside the protection of the keys. Karen and I both agreed we rather get outside and ride the predicted 15 to 20 knot winds from the SE rather than motor down the ICW. It turned out to be a spirited sail with 3 to 5 foot waves and a top wind speed of 34 knots, there was never less than 24 knots of wind. For the start of the morning we had one good rain shower start just as we were crossing under the Channel 5 bridge. It would’ve been nice to end the day with a good rain since Mango and I became a very salty during the ride. Karen stayed pretty well protected and gave me direction to waypoints from behind the dodger. I was expecting Karen to give me a little grief for the conditions but she was good with it. It was a bit bumpy but with 2 reefs in the main and a bit of jib we moved along well at 5 to 7 knots and only oc