Marathon and Beyond

It’s currently crab and lobster season in Florida and pots are out everywhere. These traps lay on the ocean bottom and have a trailer line attached with a floating buoy. Odyssey is a full keel boat with a skeg rudder and a bar running from the rudder to the keel to protect the prop so I never worried about catching a crab pot line . . . until now. About half way between Key West and Marathon we heard a bang and I started getting heavy vibration on the binnacle. I looked behind us and saw chewed up Styrofoam. That’s not good.

The vibration stopped after about 30 seconds and I assumed all was cleared. We continued on and once anchored in Marathon, I noticed a line trailing behind us. It was cold, only 75 degrees, but I dove down to get a better look. Sure enough, there was line wrapped around our prop shaft. I was able to get the line cut off and also noticed the prop shaft anode was missing. Fortunately, I had a spare zinc and was able to replace that as well.

It can be tricky replacing the zinc underwater. Trying not to drop any of the bolts, washers, nuts, allen key, and zinc halves while holding your breath. There was also a tidal current in the anchorage that kept pushing me from the boat. I eventually got the zinc on without loosing any parts.

I’m not sure if the line from the pot stripped the anode off or if it disintegrated that quickly. I still had the fresh water magnesium anode on, which was on my to-do list once we got to the Bahamas. Well, one less item to worry about.

We decided to take a marina in Marathon for 2 days. We found a smaller marina that had reasonable prices for the Keys area. It included electricity which allowed us to run our air conditioner. It’s not hot, but it is very humid. After a couple of weeks on the mooring ball and anchor, everything starts getting wet. Running the A/C dried the inside of the boat out. It also gave us an opportunity to defrost the freezer. Our freezer ices up quickly in the high humidity and needs to be defrosted more often.

While in Marathon, we were able to make our final provisioning runs. We’re ready to make the crossing to Bimini. It’s a waiting game watching the weather. To get to Bimini, we need to cross the Gulf Stream, which is a strong current that runs between Florida and Bimini. It flows from South to North and when the wind is from the North, large waves form due to the wind vs current effect. At this time, it looks like Sunday and Monday may be our best opportunity to cross.

More to come…