Saturday – Friday, Mar. 16 - 22  

Key West was great, Stock Island Marina Village was great, the weather was great… but we needed to be moving on. We decided to use Hawk Channel for our return trip to Marathon. The ICW route north of the Keys would have been smoother, but there are some very shallow areas and the trip is nearly 35 miles longer.   When you travel at 9 mph, miles matter. 

The weather was good, but we had 1-2 foot swells on our beam (90 degrees from straight-ahead). What is a swell? Glad you asked. A swell is series of surface gravity waves generated by distant weather systems over large bodies of water. When you are on a beach with waves coming ashore on a calm day, you are seeing swells. They usually have a long period (3-4 seconds or longer) and have little to do with local wind conditions. What’s a wave period? Great question. A wave period is the amount of time between wave crests. 

Wind waves are generated by local wind conditions and will be related to the direction of the local wind (which can add to the height of the swells or just make for a sloppy mess if the wind causes waves to move in a different direction than the swells). We traveled on a day that had minimal wind waves (around 1 foot) but had to put up with larger swells for most of the trip. Bo was not crazy about it, but he did well. 

We decided to stop at Marathon Marina, the same place as our last visit to Marathon (the Loop is a Marathon - not a sprint). The weather forecast for the next few days was ugly … a couple days of thunderstorms/rain and 30 mph winds – yikes! Marathon Marina is well protected, and the town is big enough to get supplies.  Unfortunately, the marina’s floating dock was full, so we got a slip on their fixed dock. 

Why does that matter? Good question. Things are simple on a floating dock. You put out your fenders (robust balloons/bumper pads), tie your dock lines to the dock cleats and you are good to go. The docks rise and fall with the tide, so the relative position of the boat and the dock stays the same.

Not so with a fixed dock. The tide in Marathon can be as much as 2.5 feet (we will see much greater tides farther north). Docking at a fixed dock with windy conditions requires some planning to avoid getting the sides of the boat (rub rails) caught under the dock on a rising tide, or ripping the cleats off the boat at low tide. The challenge is to have the dock lines loose enough to account for the changing water levels, but tight enough to avoid banging into things. So far so good – knocking on wood! 

Maintenance/repair time…..

The toilet in the aft cabin head was not behaving well (we will spare the details and avoid photos). Electric flush toilets can wear out. Brian made sure we had a repair kit and a full replacement motor in the inventory, so it appeared that we were prepared for this. The inspection and repair began at noon on March 17 – Happy St. Patrick’s Day! May the luck of the Irish be with you! (Sadly, Brian is mostly Norwegian, not Irish; this will come back to haunt him.)

If you are not familiar with boat heads (bathrooms); imagine having a toilet, shower and sink in a poorly ventilated, 80 degree F phone booth made of fiberglass (we could have turned the AC on, but it was more important to keep outside air moving through the boat). The toilet is directly connected to a 50 gallon holding tank with a few days of “product.” Wonderful working conditions.  By 8pm that evening, the scope had increased, the project was behind schedule and over budget. Hoses had to be replaced (which we also had in the inventory), but the root cause of the problem was still unknown. 

By the afternoon of March 18th some progress had been made with the installation of new hoses and fittings. Brian decided to forego rebuilding the existing pump system with the repair kit and instead install the new pump/motor combination. Sadly, two attempts at installing the new pump/motor were unsuccessful, in fact the situation was worse than the original problem due to a new o-ring that would not set properly which was needed to prevent "unpleasant leakage" (that's the technical term). Brian’s frustration with what should be a straightforward repair gets high; Sue is fighting a cold and trying to be supportive; Bo is trying to figure out why we left that great marina in Key West with the doggie play area and his new doggie friends … and why the boat smells much more interesting! Coping strategy: Let’s do a little more research on the boating websites for similar installation issues by other cruisers; go to dinner; have a few drinks; and use the forward head until we can figure this out. This is why having two heads is better than one! ;-)

The morning of day 3 provided encouraging progress. A couple of installation ideas from a boating website make a lot of sense (naturally good information that’s not included in the manufacturer’s instructions). Three additional hours of disassembly, clean-up and very careful reassembly completes the project. Yes!

Tourist Time:

We decided to rent a car during this visit to Marathon to check out some other Keys and make it easier to stock up on supplies before our move northward. Peddling along A1A with a 50 pound bag of dog food across a bike’s saddle bags did not seem like a good idea - although it would have been entertaining to the passing motorists. Having Bo’s food and our food and supplies taken care of meant it was time to do something fun!

How about a visit to the Dolphin Research Center (DRC) on Grassy Key? Sounded like a good idea and it was!  We spent the better part of a day there. We didn’t participate in any of the quite expensive touristy activities (swimming with the dolphins, help with a training or healthcare session), but we were able to observe all of those things plus play sessions which were narrated by trainers so everyone could learn about what was happening. The DRC’s main focus is research and education, and the entrance and participation fees help offset costs for the not-for-profit center. It was much more interesting than a Sea World visit and you could tell the people working there are very knowledgeable and dedicated. Each narrator stressed the importance of developing relationships with the individual dolphins and how, like people, certain trainers become more favored by different dolphins.

We learned that dolphin mothers choose a “nanny” (another adult, usually female) a few weeks before giving birth and the nanny dolphin stays with the mother and baby for most of the time until nursing is stopped between 18-24 months. All the dolphins there get all their food and treats whether they learn or perform as expected or not. Positive reinforcement with treats and lavish praise when they exhibit a desired behavior is how they are taught behavior signals.  When they don’t perform a requested “trick,” it is simply ignored and a treat is not given at that time.  There are also times when a dolphin will do an extra flip or trick without being asked to do it, so a little of their personalities are seen during the sessions. There are also 3 sea lions at the dolphin center (long story as to why they are there) who are taught using the same methods.  It was an exceptionally fun way to spend a cool, windy day!

And now, we’ll continue proceeding northward on our adventure…

[ We finally figured out videos. We can post links to YouTube under the "video" icon and they will be listed along the right side too.]