March 24 Day 17 Marathon to Little Shark River Traveled 46 miles It’s time to head north. The winds are out of the east so it looks like we have a window to cross Florida Bay and go up the west coast of Florida. We had the sails up and pushing us at 6 mph towards our destination by 8:30 AM. Within 2 hours we were out of sight of land. I hope our navigation skills with the gps gets us to where we want to go. We were able to hoist the genniker in the afternoon and keep it up for about 3 hours. It got a little breezy as we passed Cape Sable on the SW corner of Florida. We were at our anchorage at Little Shark River in Everglades National Park by 4:30 ... read more

March 20 Day 13, Marathon to Key West to Marathon by bus.50 miles each way. All can rest now that Rick and Wayne are back from Key West. We behaved ourselves and acted like senior tourists. We took the conch train around Key West to see the many sights and learned the history of the Island. We went to the ship wreck museum and found out that from1850 to 1900, salvaging ships wrecked on the Florida Reef was a major source of income for the Island. For a-wile Key West was the richest city in Florida. Then the Government installed aids to navigation and put Key West into a depression. That's just like the Government! We also visited Mel Fisher's Treasure Museum. Mel Fisher is the diver who found the sunken Spanish Armada off Florida’s coast. ... read more

March 16, Day 9 Tavernier Key to Duck Key 25 miles Last night was a little bumpy on the hook. This morning it was blowing about 30 mph in the harbor where we were anchored. We survived and at 9:00AM motored to the fuel dock and tied up. Since the Marina was closed we hauled our 6 gal fuel container to the nearest gas station. Of course that station was also closed and didn’t appear to be opening soon. Since the wind was blowing in the right direction at less velocity we decided to just sail until we found a marina with a fuel pump. We figured we had enough fuel for a few hours of motoring. We had a wonderful sail and crossed under highway US 1 and were now sailing in the Atlantic Ocean. ... read more

Monday March 8, 2010 Day 1 Traveled 30 miles to Stuart, FL We motored east on the St. Lucie cannel. We had to go thru 1 lock and wait for a rail road bridge to open. They gave an Amtrak train the right-of-way. We made it to a place called the Manatee Pocket near Stuart. We are anchored near the restaurant we ate in a couple of days ago. It was warm today when the sun was out, which it was most of the day. Grilled steaks for dinner and didn’t loose the grill in the water like we did back on the Tenn-Tom. March 9 Day 2 Traveled 51 miles. To Delray, FL We were up and at it by 7:00 AM. We entered the Inter-coastal Water-way (ICW) at 7:45. It was another day of ... read more

Rick and Wayne are about to depart on the second leg of our sailing adventure. We will leave Wisconsin March 2nd and head to Fairhope, Alabama to retrieve Amber Lee. We were told that Amber Lee made it through Tropical Storm Ida without any problems. Our plan is to trailer Amber Lee to Florida and circumnavigate South Florida. (See map) We will launch in the St. Lucie canal near Stuart, FL , go down the Inter-coastal Waterway to Miami and then down to the Florida Keys. After we spend some warm days (we hope) in the Keys we hope to have some nice weather to cross Florida Bay and sail up the west coast of Florida to Ft Myers. We can then take the Caloosahatchee River to Lake Okeechobee and then get back to where we ... read more