Well it has been a minute or three months… but as they say,”we are back!” From modern day naval battles to setting sail on our final voyage of the season, finishing with what to do when hurricane season comes we can’t help but enjoy every minute of this adventure.
Have you heard of the Conch republic? Well there’s a great story! On April 23 1982 after a series of denials and rejections from the legal courts, the city of Key West took matters into their own hands in response to a Boarder Patrol Station being setup on the main route into the keys leading to very long backups and hours of waiting to have everything in your vehicle searched for drugs and illegal immigrants. They reasoned that if they were going to be treated like a separate country then they would just happily become another country. Thus the Conch Republic was born. Spying a target of opportunity in the USCG Cutter Diligence the wooden schooner Western Union, under the command of Captain John Kraus, attacked with water balloons, conch fritters, and stale Cuban bread. The US Coast Guard responded with fire hoses and Prime Minister (Mayor) Wardlow surrendered and then demanded foreign aid… which has not been paid to this day. However a quiet victory was achieved in the removal of the Boarder Patrol checkpoint and the the relief of the traffic jam.
Our story of our time in Key West is not over but we are going to head back north and prepare for Hurricane Season ( June 1 - October 31) and that will include sailing north overnight back to our home port of Punta Gorda, in Charlotte Harbor, on the west coast of Florida. This will be only our second blue water over night passage and we are feeling much better prepared, even though we had been hanging in the straps at the work yard just a week before! A full safety inspection, including the mast and rigging, and a little bit of provisioning and we just needed the weather to be perfect. When passage planning we rely on forecasts from a few different weather apps like Predict Wind, Weather Underground, and we double check it with the National Weather Service Forecast. Lucky for us the weather was spectacular with winds out of the SSE at 12 knots and a gentle following sea. We made great time on what was by far our most comfortable passage to date. This is why people sail, smooth seas, good breeze and the open water experience. It was perfect, sailing into the sunset and arriving the next afternoon happy and confident in our skills and in our beloved Moon Dragon.
Hurricane season and preparing Moon Dragon to be on the Hard (stored on land strapped down on stands in a hurricane approved marina) was our next challenge and I am super grateful that I had the help of my brother and father to help with getting her all set up and ready! We cleaned her out of food (donating all that they would accept), Stripping the sails, clearing the decks of gear and lines, and rigging a sunshade across the entire deck of the boat. We did a lot of work in a very short time!!
Cristen took on the challenge of driving north with Eric and the dogs (who were super gassy) and all of our stuff. Eric had a couple of Dr appointments (yearly checkups) that we really didn’t want to miss (rescheduling is a pain) back in Missouri. Needless to say she is amazing and really stepped up to the challenge and did awesome! (Matt is the author of this Blog and is her biggest fan). I was able to join them back in Missouri a couple of weeks later… but that’s another story…
Now that we are back in Missouri we are all set to take on new challenges and needless to say, we always keep in mind that when facing the unknown, the keyword is ADVENTURE!
