25 December 2023 - Christmas Day
no boat travel
For those of us not traveling or having family come to visit, we enjoyed a potluck luncheon planned by Evelyn and attended by about 20 or so boaters plus some marina staff. We had more food than we could eat and lots of great conversation.
The luncheon started at noon and ended about 3:00.
The rest of our day was spent video chatting first with our son and his family in Connecticut and then with our son and his family currently in Colorado visiting my son's in-laws. All told we were on the video screens for about 3 hours.
26 December 2023 - Boxing Day
Depart: Marlin Bay Marina for a maintenance run 11:30
Arrive: Marlin Bay 12:45
Distance: ~ 6 nm
With all the activity over the past few days, I decided I'd like to sleep in a bit and skip going to art class. That turned out to be fortunate as Clark decided today would be a good day to take the boat out for a maintenance run to heat up the engines for an oil change. Clark said the weather would be better in the morning.
We took our time getting the boat ready for the ride. We should have moved a bit faster. Just as we were pulling away from our slip, the fog started to roll in, and it came in fast. By the time we were moving, we could barely see the sailboat anchored nearby in the bay.
On a clear day, the sailboat looks as shown in the picture below.
Today, this was our view. The image got clearer as we got closer to the sailboat.
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| Yes! The sailboat is in this picture! |
Well, that was fun. We knew the sailboat was there, so no worries. What about the things we did not know about? I stood on the anchor pulpit at the bow of the boat to repeatedly scan the horizon for other vessels and fish traps. I wore a wind breaker to fight against the damp chill in the air. I thought my jacket would end up wet from the fog, but it is waterproof, so it survived and so did I.
As I stood out on the bow, Clark asked me if we could speed up. His oil was not coming up to the temperature he wanted for an oil change. When he asked, we were traveling at about 900 RPM. He wanted to move up to 1200 RPM. We normally travel at 8 knots around 1520 RPM. I gave the go ahead. He was piloting the boat as an airplane pilot would through fog - using instruments including way points on the chart plotter, radar, chatter including complaints about fog on the VHF, compass, and horn. Thankfully, even though we don't fish from the boat, we have traveled to John Sawyer fishing bank many times on maintenance runs, so he also has local knowledge.
Clark blew the horn every 2 minutes as a fog horn warning to anyone else who might be out on the water. At some point another vessel tooted back on their horn. We never saw the boat. Each time Clark was ready to blow the horn, he would yell, "Horn!" and I would cover my ears. The horn is painfully loud when standing on the bow.
Most of the time we were out there, it was dead quiet with nothing to see but fog. It is funny how the mind plays games in those conditions to create mirages. My mind told me I could see things out there like buildings that I knew could not to be true!
The fog was so thick that I could not even tell where the sky met the water. I could not see the horizon at all. On two occasions small fishing boats sped by near enough that we could see them through the haze. As we reached the end of our expedition, two jet skis came flying by. We decided that those folks must be certifiable maniacs. That is too dangerous to even think about.
After we got back and had the boat tied up, it was time to get to work changing the oil. Thankfully it was a cool day as working in the hot engine room on a hot day is very hard. Clark did the majority of the work on his own. He called me in to assist on a couple of things where he needed additional hands. I also managed to give him a couple of helpful suggestions on how to set up his oil collection paraphernalia in hard-to-access areas that he fights with each oil change.
In the evening, we heard on the evening news that, for the length of the Keys, they had fog and, therefore, dangerous driving conditions for the entire day. Apparently weather was a beast across the USA as fog and snow impacted road and air travel across a majority of the country.
We had no hope of viewing a sunset today. Late afternoon I saw the sun fighting to shine through the fog. The fog was winning the battle. The sun finally gave up trying.
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