Marathon, Boot Key Harbor

 Hello!

Update:

We remain in Boot Key Harbor Marathon, at the City Marina on a mooring ball. We have been exploring the area by dinghy and occasionally Uber, plus doing chores. Laundry and grocery shopping take a lot longer from a boat. The harbor has hundreds of boats but is fairly quiet. There is no car traffic noise here, just an occasional generator and always dinghies going back and forth. We have tried several restaurants and liked them all, Dockside, Keys Fisheries and Keys Steak and Lobster. We like to end each day in the cockpit with one of our boat drinks and watch the evening come in before fixing dinner. We plan to sail to the Bahamas next week. 

 Marathon stories:

Boaters here are extremely helpful. We came into the mooring field and promptly ran aground in an area marked by an informational buoy as “shallow.”  Go figure! But the writing on the buoy was very faint. A man in a nearby boat started gesturing wildly in the direction we needed to go. Al got us off the shallow area and we headed to our assigned ball. Meanwhile the woman from the boat with the gesturing man got in their dinghy and started off in a direction. It took us a few minutes to realize she was helping us. She picked up part of the mooring ball, I snagged it with a boat hook, and we strung a thick line through it to attach to the ball So nice! Another man helped us find the way into the marina office. Again, with some wild gesturing as we were headed towards the shallows in our dinghy. On the second day here, we put our dinghy in the water, started the engine, put it in gear and immediately wrapped one of our lines around the propeller. A massive catamaran was motoring towards us. The woman on the front of the boat kept saying over and over “Our brakes went out.” I had a couple of choice words for her, but I managed to hold them in. Al started paddling the dinghy so we would not be run over by the catamaran. Luckily the man at the helm noticed us and slowed down to avoid us. Seconds later our next-door neighbor came out on his deck to ask if we needed help. I thanked him and said we were out of practice. He replied that he and his wife had been cruising for only a year and had wrapped their dinghy prop 8 or 10 times. So nice!

 Info and Questions:

Are you missing your friends from home? Yes, the hard thing about travel is leaving your buddies at home. We like to make “Happy Hour Calls” to our friends and family while watching the sunset. Hopefully some will be able to join us on this trip. We have met a few folks here, in the marina laundry room or the mail and gathering area. We met some locals at the Dockside Restaurant. People here seem very friendly and down-to-earth. One way to communicate in an anchorage is to put up a flag that signifies something about yourself. A boat in the harbor Horizon had a Seven Seas Cruising Association Commodore flag up. We are also Commodores in that club, so we dinghied up and said hello. They circumnavigated the world in 8 years and now spend their winters here and summers traveling in a campervan around the US. We had a nice chat, one interesting thing the woman said was “I always tell people, if you don’t like working on your boat, don’t get a boat.” So true!

How did you prepare for this trip?

It’s hard to know when to say we began preparations for this trip. In the 80s Al built a 31’ wooden cruising sailboat, Christine, and he has been making overnight trips on sailboats for decades. When we met in 1998, we started taking trips on that 31-foot boat up and down the west coast of Florida as far as Key West and Cuba. So, you could say we started preparations way back then! To get specific about this trip, in the last few years we have steadily upgraded our current boat Jade with a new engine, new sails, updated electrical system, new dinghy, new navigational systems plus the decks, hull and bottom have been painted. We wrote out a boat project list in the beginning of 2025 to get focused. We worked on project after project all year, interspersed with normal life! When that list was complete, we started another list. Usually, several items are being worked on at the same time, and we try to finish a task completely before crossing it off the list. In mid-February 2026 we moved on to the boat.  That helped us finish the final projects and put a pause on most of normal life! In the last two weeks we had a meeting every night covering what we did that day and what needed to be done the next day. Those last two months were busy and tiring but it got us off the dock on April 15^th.  

Let me know if you have any specific questions.

Thank you for reading!

 Love and Peace,

Fran Lima

Passage to Boot Key Harbor, Marathon

 Hello!

We left the Manatee River Thursday April 23rd at 7:00 pm and arrived in Marathon Saturday April 25th at 10:30 am. It has been years since either of us have done a passage, so we were nervous. I usually don't care if I can see land but on this it was reassuring. We could see the shoreline until south of Marco Island.

To avoid heavy winds and high seas from behind us we settled for lighter winds coming from the direction we were going. That made for a rough first night. The boat did well and we took turns staying up to watch the horizon and adjust our course. We use an auto pilot to steer the boat on long runs; it needs to be watched and adjusted occasionally to keep us on course. We do not want a fully automated, integrated system. It's good to have something to do while on watch. I entertained myself with some movies downloaded to my phone, reading a book and catching local stations on a new AM/FM radio my friend Joan gave me. There is also like nothing being under the open sky with time to think about life and talk to relatives no longer with us.

The sky was mostly clear and temperature nice during the passage. We saw one sea turtle, some flying fish and seagulls. We used the diesel engine the entire trip and had the mainsail up to steady the boat. If we waited for the right wind to sail everywhere, we would never go anywhere. It is very nice when the winds are right and we can put up the sails and travel to our destination sailing.

On Saturday morning we would see Marathon. The water was just 6-12 feet deep and was a nice turquois blue. It took a few hours to get around to the harbor. A woman came over in her dinghy to help us pick up the mooring ball. Super nice because it is not an easy maneuver and we are out of practice.

We are swinging off a mooring ball now which is almost as nice as being at anchor. There are hundreds of boats here. Boats at anchor, on mooring balls and in marinas, boats in every conceivable condition.

We are close to the marina office and dinghy dock. Grocery stores, laundry and supplies are nearby so we can prepare for the passage to the Bahamas. It is exciting to have made it this far.

Thank you for reading!

 Love and Peace,

Fran Lima

Information, stories and more

Hello again!

We are still anchored in the Manatee River, waiting for good weather to make a passage to Marathon. All the food and tools have been put away and the safety gear checked. There are a couple of items left on the to-do list. We have gone to shore twice using the dinghy. Friends Bob and Fran even joined us on Saturday afternoon for a meal out. Thanks guys!! The weather has been very nice, but too windy for travel.

A few more questions: 

How do you decide if the weather is good for travel? Sailors are habitually checking the weather. Al checks several cites and apps regularly. However, for a trip like this we pay for a Weather Router, Chris Parker at Marine Weather Center. He has been advising sailors for decades and offers several levels of service. Al is on the Florida/Bahamas Zoom call right now. Chris gives a detailed description of weather and then sailors ask questions about their specific plans. Al will be on this call most every day of the trip, at around 7 am, except Sundays when Chris takes a day off.

What safety gear do you have? Well, quite a bit. It sometimes makes me ask myself - Why are we doing something, supposedly for fun, that requires lifesaving and emergency communication equipment? That may be a question for an entire blog post! Our equipment includes a 4 person Liferaft that will deploy and inflate if we trigger it or if the boat sinks. We have 2 locator beacons that signal our location to the Coast Guard. When these beacons are set off it essentially asks the Coast Guard to pick you up, so they are for a dire emergency. We have several VHF radios, an SSB (marine ham radio), continual access to the internet with Starlink and an InReach satellite tracking device. Several friends and family members can watch our track when we move the boat. Our inflatable life vests are comfortable to wear continually and have an attachment that allows us to clip on to the boat with a tether. While on deck we each carry a tracker that shows our position in the water on the boat’s chart plotter if we fall off the boat. We also have a Lifesling and block and tackle set up used to retrieve a person who has fallen overboard. There are also multiple flares and a “ditchbag” holding emergency items in one spot to easily grab if we need to abandon ship quickly. Sailor’s superstition says, “If you don’t have it, you will need it!” So, I will leave it at that. I have probably forgotten some items but that covers most of it.

A typical cruiser experience!  On Sunday morning Al and I were in the dinghy and I was trying to start the outboard. Even with all this boating experience, I forget about the intricacy of engines. I generally think any piece of equipment should be also to take a severe beating and respond immediately to any request I make of it. So, the engine would not start, and we were drifting away from our boat. Next to us was a nice powerboat with two couples that we had been watching over the last couple of days. They seemed to be enjoying themselves like we were. They saw us having trouble and immediately moved towards their dinghy to lower it in the water. They yelled out to us, “Do you need help?” At that point, I gave up and let Al start the engine and give me another lesson on how to treat mechanical things. We did go over to say hello to the nice folks and had a little chat. They were former sailboat owners and lived in St Petersburg. We went on to our destination, enjoyed a nice breakfast out, threw out the garbage and filled up a 5-gallon jug of water to keep the water tank on the boat topped off.

On the way back to the boat, we decided to check out the damaged dinghy dock at Emerson Point Preserve. The preserve is a wonderful park and before the hurricanes of 2024 was accessible to boaters by a very nice dinghy dock. It’s too damaged to use now. We noticed our boater friends were there in their dinghy, pulled up on the beach near the dock. They had finished their visit to the preserve and were unsuccessfully trying to start their outboard engine! We ended up towing them back to their boat with our dinghy. These are the types of encounters that happen all the time with cruisers. Life is more basic, less stressful and the natural tendency to be a decent person seems to come out. Another reason I like this sailing life.

Thanks very much for reading!

Love and Peace,

Fran Lima

2026 Sail - Bahamas and East Coast of the US - Intro Post

For those interested in details and information this is the spot. I'll start with some typical questions.  If you have others let me know. Please forgive me the sailing terminology. It is an entire second language!

What kind of boat do you have?  It's a 44 foot CSY (Caribbean Sailing Yacht) walk-through cutter rig built in 1980. We bought it in 2007 and have been working on her ever since. Jade is powered by a mainsail, large genoa and a staysail or the 65 hp diesel engine. Down below there are two berths, two heads, a walk-in shower, a galley, a salon and a walk-in engine room. The mast is 64 feet tall and she draws 5 feet. Our top speed under sail is around 7-8 knots, under power it's 5-6 knots. Traveling this way is slow! A nice change from our normal life.

How do you cook? The galley has a propane oven, with a three burner cook top plus a small microwave. An upright refrigerator / freezer is built in. We have a pretty good amount of storage for dry goods and dishes. The storage for pots and pans is quite small and is under the oven. We use a percolator for coffee and frequently use a pressure cooker on the stove top. There is also a propane grill on the back deck. The grill gets used a lot. I have several cookbooks on board and we usually have internet access to look up recipes. My cooking style is mostly gluten free, low inflammatory, Mediterranean. I'm experimenting with baking in the pressure cooker. So far, it's going well - apple crisp and cornbread were both yummy. For this trip I loaded the freezer with meat and bought mostly fresh vegetables and fruits. We have some frozen and canned foods too and will need to replenish along the way. 

Do you stop every night? Usually, yes we do - is the best answer. However, when we are on a trip that will take several days, the boat keeps moving around the clock. For example, sailing to Marathon from the Manatee River will take approximately 40 hours. We leave in the evening and spend the entire time moving the boat without stopping. We take turns staying up at night, usually taking 2 hour shifts. We rest whenever possible during these passages to avoid getting fatigued. We fix nice meals as the weather allows, listen to music, read, check on the boat systems hourly, always keep an eye out for other boats to avoid a collision, continually watch our course and stay aware of the weather. Once we get to our destination we stay put at night, anchored in a protected cove. We usually stay several nights in one place. This is the real purpose of the trip - checking out the sights, socializing with other cruisers, exploring and enjoying the area. Staying at a dock costs at least $200.00 a night, but anchoring is generally free. Being on a boat at anchor is one of the most pleasant experiences you can have in life. I absolutely love it, and it is one of my favorite things about this lifestyle. The peacefulness and proximity to nature seems more natural to me than life in the city. 

This seems like enough for today! If people want, I can keep sharing this style of blogs along with Facebook photos as we travel.  

Thanks to all. Love and Peace, Fran Lima