Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas.  We spent a little over a week of it traveling, but the highlight was seeing the kids and grand kids.

 Something we don't get to see very often.  Sunrise on our drive out of the keys to head north.  

 Local Christmas lights.  This one is at the power company next door to the marina.  

 These next two are at the park right next to the marina.  

 Mackerel Sky Sunset at our home in Boot Key Harbor.  Gets its name because the clouds resemble the markings on a King Mackerel.  You will be seeing more great pictures,of this sky, in future blogs.

Since I mentioned the King Mackerel, I had to include the photo of Yammy and her 30 lb catch from last year.  

You Can Keep Your Snow!

I hate rubbing it in, but we love it here.  We have had some mid 60's days, but that is warm with the hot Florida sun.  Yammy is out, for a boat ride, with her long time friends Maria and Blair.  They are originally from Fayetteville, NY and are staying in an RV down here.  One of those times when Facebook is great.  It brought them together after almost 15 years.  They have a 20' jet boat and are planning on water skiing today.  My work is winding down for the day and I decided to write a quick blog.

The rigger's have come out and inspected the rig with no problems found.  Once you have had a mast break, you tend to be even more paranoid.  They also fixed a sloppy boom gooseneck problem.  It is very common on cats due to the large mainsail twisting the boom.

We have gone out only once since we have been here.  Hit 8 knots close hauled at 40 apparent in 15 knots.  Still can't get over what the new sails have done for us.

We also went and sailed Sid and Bonnie's 43' french boat FIU.  He is selling his boat in an effort to buy a catamaran.  I wanted to see how it sailed and I was impressed.  43' long with a 15' beam and IOR hull shape, makes her very stable and fast.  It was built in the same factory as our Lagoon, so we feel a kinship and plan to help them sell it.  If anyone is interested in more info, just let us know.

1994 43' Custom, French designer Etarn and CNB built.  Swing keel with 8' draft with board down and 4'5" board up.  Stiff, stable, fast and huuuuge inside.    

Yamm'y friend Blair in the background.  He refuses to get his picture taken. 

 Tough day on the water for Maria

 Morning Yoga.  Can't do that in NY right now.

Being from New York, it doesn't really feel like Christmas here.  Hey, who cares!  Our sunset through the wreath,
    

Peanut Island

We all do it.  Just drive around Peanut Island and anchor to the north or south waiting to cross to the Bahamas or to Miami.

Peanut Island is on the north end of Lake Worth in the Palm Beach area.  We spent three days there waiting for the right window to sail to Miami and had that great sail.

With the extra time, we decided to go explore the island.  It is Beautiful.  A state park that has been done very well.  No fees and not even a donation box.  Protected dinghy/boat basin, snorkeling lagoon and wide brick sidewalks.  I assume it must be popular, but there were only two other couples there the day we went.  Worth a stop to walk, swim or picnic.

 Snorkeling/Kayaking Lagoon.  Crystal clear water and easy access platforms for snorkeling and swimming.

 Wide brick sidewalks and hotties to check out.

     All around the island was rich with bait fish jumping away from predators.  When we got back to our dinghy, we had 6 of them hiding inside.

Two Events

We are now in Marathon and had two events occur over the past week.

1.  We were contacted by the new owners of Yumsuch.  She was sold again.  This time it is a young family in NJ.  I was able to speak to them and it sounds like the right couple for the boat.  The couple had been following our blog, while searching for a Nonsuch, and when Yumsuch came up for sale again, it was a no-brainer for them.  Yammy and I have been sleeping better knowing that Yumsuch is back on active duty and being taken care of.       

2.  Yasmine Ann hit hit double digits.  The elusive 10 knot barrier was broken on our sail from Lake Worth to Miami.  Winds were at 60 -70 degrees, 12- 15 knots and gusting to 23 knots apparent.  For us, it was one of those 2% days where all the elements created a perfect sailing day.  We covered the 60 miles averaging 7.5 knots.  Highest speed seen was 10.3 knots.

   

Breakers Hotel Resort in Palm Beach

Kite fishing off of South Florida.  This is an ancient Chinese method of getting the line out past the surf.  Floridians are now using it to get up to 35 hooks (on this mega kite) away from the boat.  We saw many boats with different size kites.  The most common was a small orange kite.

Ritz Carlton South Beach

In honor of our Veterans!

Sunset at Rodriguez Key.

WOW

Wow, is all I keep saying every time we hoist the new sails.  We are in Lake Worth and heading for Miami tomorrow for a few days.

Sailing from Fort Pierce to Lake Worth, we actually tacked down the coastline.  The winds were 10-15 knots from the SE.  We didn't make it all the way, but sailed more than half the distance before we fired up to make it in before dark.

LIFT:  You may remember a previous post talking about the under body and the lift required to avoid excessive leeway when heading to windward.  Kris, at Haarstick, said he was hoping the news sails would help eliminate some of that leeway, and it did.  It is one of those things when you are sailing to windward in the 7 knot range, you think your sails are performing well.  Therefore, I forgot about the lift in sails and how that can help with leeway.

When you think of an old Dacron sail and how the draft has moved aft, you realize that you have created lift at a 90 degree angle to the boat.  This forces the under body to do all the work to try and force your boat forward, instead of sideways.  When your draft is located forward of mid-sail, than you are creating lift that helps to pull your boat in a more forward direction. With the new sails, I can actually see the draft and adjust it to the position required for the point of sail and wind strength.  With our old sails being so stretched, I could not do anything to adjust the sail.

In similar conditions, with our old sails, we were seeing 10-15 degrees of leeway.  This was giving us 65 degree tacking angles.  This will take longer, or as we found out last spring, even never make it to your destination.  With our new sails, we are seeing 3-6 degrees of leeway now.  Still not perfect, but such a great improvement that we felt comfortable tacking down the coastline.  Never thought that would happen with a fully loaded cruising catamaran.  Many monohulls passed us motor-sailing in a straight line and we saw them later in the same anchorage.
                 

 Kent and Jane took some pictures as they PASSED us in their new Cat-Trawler.  You can't see it, but I am wearing my Turtle Towing Service shirt since every time we come across Kent, he passes us.  Towing a turtle is a good excuse for going slow.

 I thought this was a cool picture.  We are sailing in only 3 knots of wind on the Indian River.  It is one of our favorite parts of the trip down because you get flat water sailing and anchorages every 10 miles. So, I refuse to motor.

 Kent and Jane aboard Serenity (soon to be Rising Tide), their PDQ34 trawler.  Twin 100 Hp turbo charged Yanmar's.  I think I still don't have a prayer to beat them.

 The happy couple enjoying the great views from their flybridge.

 Rocket launch from Cape Canaveral.  We didn't know it was going to happen, and it took place right in front of us as we were heading down the ICW.  Couldn't get the camera out fast enough to get a better picture.  Found out later it was a satellite going up.    

All wooden sailboat with high gloss varnish everywhere.  I may like the smell of varnish, but that would be a little extreme.

Racing the Cold!

Looks like we left SC just in time.  They received snow this week along with many places along the East Coast.  Even as far down as GA.

We are in Velcro Beach for a week.  Just got past the 2 sub 50 degree nights, now we are warming up again.

             New Colors for our Home

 The beautiful Yasmine showing you the expanse of the beach at Cumberland Island.  We walked it every day.

Great shot of Georgia's state tree, the live Oak.

 One of Cumberland's wild horses walking on the trail in front of us.  No that is not me taking a picture in the mirror!

 Jacob will attest that someone is a better sand sculpture than I am.

 Two of the sea sisters enjoying a sunset on Fiu.

 Plane took off and landed right next to us.  There is a nice Inn, at Cumberland Island, that people can get there by ferry or plane.

Migration

Yes, the snowbirds have flown the coup and we're heading south to Florida.

We left about a week ago and are sitting at Cumberland Island right in the state line between GA and FL.  This will be our third day here. It has been 3 years since we stayed to enjoy the island and walk the massive beach each day.

Similarly, we spent 2 days at Charleston to enjoy the city for the first time in 3 years.  We stayed across the river at Patriot's Point.  Enjoyed the Market on Saturday and took an historic tour of the city and Fort Sumter on Sunday.  

After that it was starting to get cold at night, the weather was right, so we did an overnight sail and traveled 145 miles from Charleston to Cumberland Island.  The weather didn't turn out as predicted (what's new), but we were able to sail with the new sails for the first time and test them in all types of wind.

All I can say about the new sails is WOW.  We were doing our usual thing and sailing dead downwind with our Code 0.  Then as the 8 knots of wind speed turned onto our bow, we rolled up the Code 0 and raised the main planning on motor sailing.  That was when we noticed that we were already sailing  a couple knots just under mainsail.  We unfurled the head sail and starting making 5 knots.  This is closehauled in 8 knots of true wind speed!!  Never thought this boat would ever be a light air boat upwind.  Thank you Haarstick!

 Picture from Charleston across the Cooper River to our marina at Patriot's Point.  We were adjacent to the USS Yorktown and a submarine, the USS Clamagore (behind Carrier).

 The Citadel at the military college in town.

 They have a giant class ring at the entrance.

                                    Fort Sumter

Part of the original structure.  The start of the civil war was right here on 4/12/1861.

 The stiffness of the sails help to generate lift without spilling air over every wave.

Our sunset on our first overnight sail of the season.