Key West to Isla Mujeres Mexico – dan

It was a typical passage in that it was unlike any other passage we’ve ever made; so far, they’ve all been very different experiences. It took us four long days to make the relatively short 350 nm journey. We left Key West last Thursday morning. It was 8:00 am when we dropped our mooring lines, the air clear and cool with the wind light (3 – 4 nmp) out of the north. We said our good-byes to the Conch Nation as we ghosted slowly past Schooner Warf and Malory Square, sailing on in spite of the light and variable winds.

By noontime, after 4 hours of sailing we were only 10 miles from Key West, that’s when our forestay gave way. We’re lucky it happened in light-air or we might have lost the mast. We were tacking through a bunch of fishing boats when it happened. Funny things can go through ones mind at such times. There was a loud bang and then the head-stay & jib swung in. My first thought was; that’s not supposed to do that. Luckily I was at the helm the instant it let go so I was able to react immediately to save our mast. We usually let the autohelm drive the boat during a passage. I spun the helm hard to port and headed dead downwind to relieve the strain on the mast. Next we rigged a spare halyard to the bow, dropped the main sail, hand rolled the jib and then rigged our inner-forestay. Luckily for us the stay itself was fine, we’d somehow lost the cotter pin that holds the lower forestay clevis pin allowing it to pop out. Like I said we were lucky, very lucky. A half-hour later we on our way again.

It was very slow going in light-air against 1.5 nmh of opposing Gulf Stream current. We read to each other, finishing Patrick O’Brian’s biography and then started the 5th in his series of Aubrey-Maturin novels; Desolation Island. Susan knitted and I napped. By noon of the second day we were only 70 miles away from Key West. We set the spinnaker when the wind came off our nose and rejoiced as it slowly built throughout the day. By sunset the wind was blowing nicely at 12-14 nmp and Gypsy was sailing gloriously. It was hard to drop such a beautifully pulling sail but discretion won out and we doused the spinnaker and unfurled the jib for the evening.

It was a beautiful evening; clear sky, sliver of a moon, a couple slender clouds, lots of stars, though not many of the shooting variety and there was a bio luminance phenomenon that I’ve never seen or heard of before. At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. There were quick flashes in the water around the boat that lasted no more that a second. They were relatively small, about 2’ – 6’ in diameter and looked like miniature versions of cloud lighting, happening just under the surface of the water.

Later that evening I got a big laugh when I woke Susan for her watch by gently touching her foot. She must have been very deeply asleep because she jumped with such a start as I’ve never seen her do before and when she did she exclaimed loudly; “RATS, we still seem to have rats”. We’ve never had any issues with rats on board but the previous evening Susan touched a hitchhiking bird that she didn’t know was there and let out such a squawk (Susan not the bird) that it woke me from a sound sleep. It was even louder than the yell she made when a car knocked her off her bike in Key West. Poor Susan has been getting more that here share of abuse lately.

We had been doing great with respect to the Gulf Stream until we neared Isla Mujeres. I had been expecting strong current north of Cuba but there we never saw more than 1 nmp against us. It was 60 miles northeast of Isla we hit the strong stuff, 3.5 nmp of oppositional current. I altered course from southwest to west in order to get into soundings earlier and that seemed to work. Soon the adverse current dropped down to a manageable 1 nmp. It also helped about then that the wind clocked around to the north and built to over 30nmp. That gave us plenty of power to punch through the stream. It was exhilarating surfing down moderately large waves at speeds in the 8 to 11nmp range.

We arrived at Mujeres just as the sun was setting. It was a bit of a rodeo getting the hook down and secured at dusk, in a strange harbor, in 30 knots of wind. We did little more that evening than raise our Q flag, set the GPS’s anchor watch and then fell soundly asleep, sleeping like two people who hadn’t gotten a full nights sleep in the past 3 nights. We went to bed grateful for our safe passage, snug harbor and warm bed.

And that dear friends and unknown readers, is the story of our passage to Mexico.