Day 6 – Running on fumes and BANG, WHAP, SCREECH. What was that! Buzz, buzz.

Some of the most challenging days start so beautifully. Our morning departure from La Siesta Marina, Islamorada, FL started with this peaceful view from the TIKI deck at the Marina.

How do you top buying gas in South Beach and arriving in the Keys to swim with Manatees? Well, you don’t. Departure from our secluded marina at 8:45am was as beautiful (and less eventful) as our arrival. Look at this channel through the mangroves to get back to the main channel. So cool.

Striking out on this southern Florida end of the Intracoastal Waterway was a beautiful mixture of amazing watercolors and interesting sights including boundary signs for the Everglade. We ran along the Keys for about 5 miles to pick up the Yacht Channel (yep, that’s what they call it) North. As we proceed, our emerald green and blue water turns tan with stirred up sand. Dusty tells me it is from Bone Fish that stir up the bottom sand to get to their food. It’s an interesting sight and makes one want to grab a fishing pole and have some fun. But we’ve got water to plow so on North we push.

If you look at a map of Florida you will notice a vast stretch of isolated shoreline and water from East Cape, which is Everglades shoreline where the eastern side of the state ends, moving up the West coast of the Everglades toward Marco Island. There is a whole lot of nothing out there except Everglades mangrove barriers and skinny, skinny water. There are 3 useable ports: Flamingo, Chockaloskee and Everglades City. To stay away from the shallows and make reasonable time North, the route takes you well off shore, well out of sight of any land…for several hours and far away from these ports.

Our fuel burn is still higher than it should be. That will be checked in Clearwater. It has implications, however, on a long cross water leg that goes well off shore with no convenient fuel stop. Past the Flamingo channel - which is a 20 plus mile round trip run into Flamingo from our direct course across this section of the Gulf of Mexico - there is no practical place to stop to get fuel or service since any trip to the East, given the way the shoreline curves around, would take as long as going on to Marco Island. That is the implications part; take the time and burn the fuel to go buy more fuel at Flamingo or press on? We press on.

Dusty bought 2 five gallon gas cans at the Bass Pro Shop (it’s called something else in Islamorada, but it is the same thing and owned by Bass Pro Shops) the night before. He needed them for his boat and figured we could fill them and have some insurance in case we run short. Let’s see, fuel burn is 32 gph at speed; ten gallons - that should get us………nowhere! Well not really, at 1200 rpm we could do something like 20 miles on 10 gallons. So we are feeling pretty good as we pass the Flamingo cut off with just over a half tank of fuel.

The Gulf of Mexico along this direct stretch from Flamingo to Cape Romano just South of Marco Island is lonely mid-week. With somewhat shallow water in every direction except the channel, one can see how a bad storm would make for some nasty, nasty waves. This is no place to be stranded. It is beautiful, in a standing on the edge of a cliff in the Grand Canyon kind of way. Calculating fuel burn and watching the GPS Chart Plotter for course and route information is a favorite past time on this leg. Candy and Corinne went to sleep and I was wishing I could. By my calculations we would get to Marco about the time the fuel ran out. It made for a tense time. The short story is, we had maybe 20 minutes of useable fuel in the tanks when we tanked up in Marco. At Marco I got approached by Smokey in a boat with this blue lights blazing and him fussing at me for making wake. Good grief man, if you knew what we had just been through you would be escorting us into the fuel docks with lights and siren blaring telling everyone what outstanding sailors we are. (I shouldn’t have made the disparaging comments about our Paul Blart, Mall Cop experience in Boca Raton. It came back to haunt me.) No ticket though so no harm, no foul.

We stopped at the Marco River Marina. They weren’t particularly friendly either. I think people on Marco Island, given how isolated it is, just don’t want other people around. No problem. After fueling and waiting out a thunderstorm we were off for Ft. Myers. About half way to Ft. Myers is when it happened. BANG! Screech! Oh good grief, what was that! Well it didn’t take long from the smell and the buzz, buzz, buzz coming from the panel alarm to figure out that we had shredded a serpentine drive belt which powers the cooling water pickup, water pump, etc. Man, a big engine sure heats up fast when you turn off the water! Three miles off shore drifting away from land with the only useful channels 20 miles ahead or back and it’s 6pm. Hmmm. Not good. It could be worse, but not good.

Fortunately I had included a new belt along with the fuel filters and other things in our emergency travel kit. We were able to replace the belt and replace the antifreeze that boiled out of the heat exchanger into the engine bilge when the engine overheated. There was a job for everyone. Candy manned the helm starting and turning off the engine as we refilled the heat exchanger. Corinne and Dusty helped jury rig a coolant refilling apparatus (Silverton folks should be shot for where they put the coolant reservoir).










My job? Standing between two hot, running engines to replace the belt and hold the hose as we refilled the heat exchanger.

Within 45 minutes we were underway. We made our Marina at Ft. Myers Beach at dusk. By the time we tied off it was dark….and the Marina was closed. Fortunately, thanks to the marvel of cell phone technology we had called ahead. They left a key to their Boaters Lounge where there was a TV, showers, a laundry, etc, etc. Nice evening, nice place.

We set out this morning for Clearwater. We may make it tonight or we may stop in Sarasota or Longboat Key. Seems the girls want to go shopping at St. Armand’s Key. That even sounds like fun to me but we’ll see. I’m starting to get “get home-it is”.