Marco Island

November 24, 2013

We are currently docked at Rose Marina on Marco Island.  As is our practice, Rose Marina is a relatively cheap entrée to an up-scale community.

We left Pelican Bay on a high tide the afternoon of 11/20/2013 and made the short trip to an anchorage near Useppa Island.   Useppa Island is another exclusive enclave that during the 1960s was a base for training the men involved with the Bay of Pigs 'invasion'. They lived on Useppa and trained on Cayo Costa in relative privacy and secrecy - how things have changed in 50 years!   Our  move from Pelican Bay was uneventful, except for discovery of a problem with intermittent engagement of our anchor windlass.  With the help of the 'wind-lad' (me) we were able to successfully raise our anchor.

On Thursday 11/21/2013 we traveled down Pine Island Sound and anchored at a spot off Punta Rassa in San Carlos Bay to stage for a trip down off-coast to Marco Island.

Friday offered a beautiful sail down the gulf coast with 15-20 knot winds almost close-hauled (off the bow); this was the second year in a row that this leg has been a great sail.  We made record time and were in Capri Pass, fueled and docked at Rose Marina by 2:00 PM.

Our first couple days here have been consumed by laundry and working on the windlass problem.  Lighthouse, the manufacturer, has been great and offered some good suggestions.  One of these was to relieve any strain on one of the power connections - apparently strain on one of the cables  has had a history of putting the related solenoid out of alignment and making it work erratically.   Totally removing the waterproof gland where the cable enters the control box markedly improved the performance,  but I had to 'play' with reinstalling the gland so as to not reintroduce the problem.  The biggest breakthrough, however, was when I disconnected the windlass switch in the cockpit (my idea).  This switch was installed in parallel with the primary foot switches and for reasons too complicated to go into, I suspected it might be draining too much of the control circuit current.  This pretty much eliminated the problem, at least for now.   We will be ordering a new solenoid assembly to carry as a spare if the strain/erratic solenoid issue returns/grows.  Since we spend the vast majority of our time at anchor, windlass performance is very important to us (especially the wind-lad)!

We had planned to leave here and head for Little Shark River on the far southwest coast of Florida on Tuesday, but a strong cold front is coming through tonight and will probably delay our departure.  Currently it looks like the best day to continue south will be Thursday (Thanksgiving Day).  We will probably celebrate Thanksgiving on Friday at Little Shark.

After yet another cold front passes, we will continue on to Miami.

Tom
Docked Rose Marina, Marco Island