Shark River

April 2, 2009
Okay. We are sitting on a river in the Everglades. Shark River. Bill, our mentor, and Mark, another mentor, have helped us all day by cell phone. Tonight, we are out of cell phone range so we will be on our own.
Our itinerary was to travel to Channel 5, cut through the Keys, head north, then jog around to either Flamingo or Shark River to anchor overnight.
We left Tavernier Key at 8:00 AM. We motored across Hawk’s Channel and set the sails for Channel 5. It was great sailing, if you were headed in any direction other than the direction we were going. So, we motored. It was a pretty day, the breeze was nice and we wanted to let the wind blow through the boat so we opened a couple of the forward hatches. "What a comfortable breez through the boat," we thought. Wrong. We were beating into the wind, spray blowing over the bow, and all that spray blew into the boat, which we didn’t discovery for an hour or so. Okay, a wet floor and a few wet things. We’ll remember next time.
We made Channel Five around midday. I called Mark to get through the Channel. He had described it to me on our checkout sail. I confirmed what I thought he previously told me and headed through just fine. It was a little weird to see our mast so close to the underside of the bridge. It seemed to almost touch. Thank goodness it didn’t.
We then zig zagged by motor, through the craziest series of channels, to start heading north. The eerie thing was that we have a 4'10" draft and we were sailing in six to eight feet of water with occasional shallow spots. I just knew that at any time I would run aground. In fact we softly bumped once. Oh, and the crab traps. Crabtraps were everywhere and we were motoring. I could just see the lines from a trap wrapping around our prop. So, we spent the midday dodging crab traps.
As if that wasn’t enough, there was a hum in the boat. It hummed because the propeller was spinning under water. It spins in forward or neutral; however, don't shift to reverse. The reason is, if you put the transmission in reverse while it is spinning from sailing, it stops the spinning but jams the transmission. No one told me that. So, I shove it in reverse. The noise stopped but we could not shift it back into neutral or forward. That meant we could not start the motor. So, out came the repair manuals and in about an hour I had it fixed. Linda was at the helm, sailing the boat in that skinny water. She did great. While I was down there, I changed fuel filters for the first time too.
We thought about stopping at Flamingo, FL but when we read the waterway guide it said if your draft is over 4 feet, don’t go. So on we went to Shark River. Bill, told us about Shark River, a secluded but deep river in the Everglades. We made it just before sunset and dropped anchor. Shark River is in the middle of the Everglades. It was beautiful but we were so tired, we ate Dirty Rice with nothing else and went to bed.
Kudos to Joan and Ed who sold us our boat. We were laying at anchor in Shark River and the wind was still. The boat was hot and stuffy until I found the DC fans that they left on the boat. We had a great breeze from the fans all night.
Post again tomorrow.
Royal Crescent