Day 49: Sanibel Island to Key West, FL

Today was Friday and was going to be our day off to explore, but a worsening weather outlook for Saturday made the decision easy for us to leave. The Trip direct to Key West  is 110 miles from Sanibel Island and this would take us about 40 miles from the nearest land so we paid good attention to checking the engine, making sure all gear was properly secured and motored out of the marina at 7.10 am.

After a short trip out of the inlet we set the autopilot direct to Key West. There, dead ahead, were some ominous dark black clouds. I dialed up the radar on the screen and it clearly showed the heavy rain that was coming our way but with so much detail that we were able to see the lighter patches.  Over the next hour we zigzagged our way through the storm missing the worst areas - Raymarine saved the day again. After the rain the wind died down and we had a great calm run, averaging 15 knots which is definitely the sweet spot for this engine, right at 2750 RPM.

The calm seas allowed us to stay on the Flybridge where it was nice and cool and we read and passed the time doing Sudoku puzzles.

Approaching Key West we could see a huge black cloud covering the area with lightning bouncing all over the place.  We were ready to slow down and weather the storm out at sea rather than be caught in a restricted channel, but our luck held out and the storm retreated in front of us.

When we tied up at the fuel dock at Conch Harbor, which was a ValvTect Fuel provider (one of our partners on the trip), the dock master said we missed it by 10 min and it had been one of the biggest storms they had seen in months - all the streets downtown were flooded and everywhere we went the storm was all people could talk about.  The staff at Conch Harbor were great, we fueled up, pumped out the waste and grey water tanks and they gave us a great dock close to the shore with good visibility for the public to see the little trawler that could.

Best,

Garth