The Life of Brad

In this month I stayed in Marathon to get to know some of the cruising people in Boot Key and included activities as well checked out Key West and Sailed South to Cuba with Dutch crew.

A few final days of Dale before it was just me socialising and trying to learn and fix boat issues while working on my Bocce skills and riding my bicycle up and down Highway 1 to Home Depot and a few other spots. Also handling dry ice for the first time without a good plan...

My friend Sandra came down from Miami for a visit for a cool night where we all got together to dinghy raft from the open water inlet at Sombrero Beach back to Boot Key Harbor via Sister Creek.

Sorta pirate dressed

down Sister Creek to the sea

Some boats anchored along the Creek

Nice pink house

the gathering

Nice expensive cat going where?

Sombrero Beach inlet

What a good time! Cody was even taking music requests.

Just gorgeous

Lots of photos and videos of life in Marathon off and on the boat over the month.

Love "Buy One Get One" free

Never thought I would pay
$20 usd for guitar strings.
Rust proof, supposedly

Dale was good enough to climb up and trace
the head of the mast so we could build up
the crane piece. Bobcat Metals welder in
Keys wanted $280!
I'm glad I didn't get it made there.

Found a $100 gift card

Learnt that dry ice can be used in soda stream canisters, which is great as refill costs more than $20!

I didn't know how it was supposed to work and I don't think the people who work at Publix know either as they have no safety gear and just put it in a plastic bag saying don't touch it directly... I really didn't think it through grabbing the ice and my other purchases racing home on the bike and dinghying to the boat hoping not to lose too much ice.

$5/lbs!

1 lbs of dry ice each can

Bought a used Rainman Compact 70 water maker from another boater Dale who upgraded to a system double the size. 20 gallons an hour is good enough for me, but the only drawback was that it is AC so draws quite a bit of power from my batteries. $1800, including filters, TDS monitor and replacement impeller which seems a lot, but the power to make water from the sea is not to be taken lightly, haha.

Feel the power to make your own water!
Those are pink as that was the first batch
after the machine sat pickled for 8 months.
Food grade so drinkable, but weird.

too many zip ties

Some live music at Dockside.

Lots of issues and looks like my boat doesn't like water...leaks when it rains...

Looks like a war room
Lists of things to deal with
Finding Crew, fixing things,
buying things, etc

got to change this out as it is
a bit broken and usa registered

That's not a tidy electric panel

How does this lantern open?

Got it, unscrew the middle

I once thought the wind generator was useless (like many things on the boat), but I adjusted it and it works great! 25 knots gets you 10+ amps/hr.

Water maker Dale also had a dinghy to give away so I jumped on helping him sell it on market place for $400 in 2 days. Buyer was super happy and able to repair the leak. A new 11.5' west marine hypalon dinghy is $5000 btw.

That's wild and likely this guy doesn't leave
Marathon ever...like a lot of them

So many boats

Good to have 2 lighters
Thanks Igor!

Thanks Scott for pulling the
broken spinnaker crane down

No good, too short and ripping
mast head weld.

Look at that Bloody Mary
Thanks for lunch Hans!

You know a restaurant is good
when they have a helicopter pad

Well that's ridculous too!

That's ridculous. Radar doesn't work

Sunset

And then through my lexan tint

Switching out BnG for Standard Horizon

Did have a remote though

Dinner with new friends Alex and Karly

A salty Paella at the Cuba spot
El Siboney

Love this sealer!

Starlink ready to go

Interesting to see protesters for Trump and not across Highway 1 from each other. Blue/green flag is on the Trump side so must be military. Interesting to see the anti-Trump/ICE group flying a Red/White and Blue USA flag.

Bingo night with Mike and Deb
Drink chips; different colours
for different prices.

My neighbour sold me a rod
and a few reels for $25. Deal!

New Standard Horizon installed
so I can put my Canadian MMSI

It's been nice

Snacks for crossing

Key West for a Sunday afternoon to stroll around and watch the Broncos lose to the Patriots. Reminded me a lot of New Orleans actually.

With Shawn and Carol at Porky's

During commercials the DJ would play loud

The famous xmas tree in late Jan

Set sail for Varadero, Cuba!

I met Erwin via other sailors over the last weeks who was in Cuba with a broken boat and needed a bunch of things to make repairs that you can't get in Cuba. So, after a few chats the best way to get his stuff to him and me to Cuba was to have Erwin fly up and sail back with me. Easy enough I suppose and with the smooth talking promise of an amazing time in Cuba I jumped at the chance even though we had to cross the Gulf Stream and make a 90 mile passage through crab pots and big blue waters.

After Erwin loaded up his 300 lbs of stuff and his 280 lbs of himself we were nicely overloaded and ready to go. With almost no weather window we headed out at the end of the month with a 6 hour stop at Sombero Reef to get smashed around by the swell on a mooring ball before heading in to the blue water at 2am (I wanted to wait for the wind to come more from the North than East (very bad) and Erwin went for that). It was a bigger sea but at least we were running with the wind. Lots of rain in the first half of the day making for a chilly time.

We caught 2 hour naps as we could and arrived in the dark at 11pm using autopilot and navionics charts to get there which of course did not account for the missing and miss placed channel markers.

Slept the night at the customs dock and Erwin was back to his boat leaving mine with only a few broken pieces (nothing major just annoying).