plans in sand....

...always on a sailboat.  The best laid plans can get scrapped in an instant if the wind or weather changes.  As a fellow captain here at Banana Bay said, "Better to be here, wishing you were out THERE, than to be out there wishing you were in HERE (safely tied to a dock).  Let me back up about twelve hours or so...

Cap'n and I got up and got busy with our final to do list....buy propane, get gas, fill the water tanks, buy Dramamine, ginger ale, rum, you know- all of the important stuff for a sailing/dive trip.  I did a final cleaning on Marquesa, made up Ellie's bed, jumped in the shower and picked up Fran by 1:15pm.  She rode with me to Ft. Lauderdale to get Ellie bug who landed at 4:45pm.  We stopped for dinner on the way back, and got back to Banana Bay after 9:15pm.  The plan was to leave at 10pm for a 17 hour sail to the Dry Tortugas.  It would have been a perfect night sail tonight.  The stars are gorgeous. There's about a 10 knot breeze from the east, so we'd have a following sea pushing us all the way W/SW.  With Bessie already running, we checked two different sources on the internet for the latest marine report before casting off.  The weather will be turning to crap Wednesday night through Thursday- winds N/NE 25+ knots seas building 6-8 ft.  The wind will subside to 15-20 as the week wears on, but still out of the NE which is precisely our point of sail to come back to Marathon.  The seas will subside to 3-5's, though not until Saturday.  Irregardless, we would likely be motoring, not sailing, as the wind will be on the nose, and we'd be pounding up and down...a very uncomfortable ride, especially for a Willis.  We turned Bessie off, turned off our running lights and nav station, and came up with plan B.

We discussed several options, other places to go, and have settled on leaving at 6am for a day sail to Looe Key for some diving.  If the weather looks to hold, then we'll leave to go on down to Key West possibly for Tuesday night.  We may come back to Bahia Honda, or come on back home.  We'll see what we run into once we get "out there" after the dive at Looe Key.  So for now, Ellie is on board, we are provisioned and ready to go, and it looks like we'll be casting off in about six hours...

Until next time, whenever that may be, G'nite, y'all!