JonNe' is in Key West!!

Well, we finally made it!!  We are quite proud of ourselves!!  JonNe' performed flawlessly, as did her crew.  And talk about incredible weather.  When we left Kemah, the last thing we expected was to have 2 weeks of the most perfect weather you could get.  Of course it would have only been a bit better if we had had winds out of the North, Northeast, Northwest, West, Anywhere but East or southeast!!  Of course as everyone who has cruised on a sailboat will tell you - It doesn't matter where you are going, the winds will always be on your nose - and I don't think that theorem was violated more that twice during the entire trip.  We had hoped to use the engine for charging the battery and getting into port, but we used it every day - for a lot of every day!  We are fortunate we carry 130 gallons of diesel.  Actually, we didn't come close to using it all, but we were happy we had it!

When we left Clearwater - for those of you interested, I lived there for two years, on-board my first boat, Dreamketcher, less than a mile from where we were docked.  Anyway, when we left Clearwater, we had great winds - out of the south, which was great, until we had to turn southeast toward Key West. Winds were forecast to shift to the southwest Monday afternoon, but didn't -Instead, winds died down below 10 kts, so the motor came on.  Monday night was flat and wind-less. Tuesday when the winds picked up, it was still on our nose and we ended up motoring all the way.  Tuesday night was the first rain we had - it lasted all of 5 minutes, but it was long enough to wash the salt off the deck. Then the winds really picked up.  We saw 30+ knots and the waves picked up to 4 or so feet off our port beam.  Life was rock and roll all night.  One of the reasons we bought this boat was because she is pointy on both ends.  That makes a big difference in following seas - the stern splits the wave as it goes by us and makes for a more comfortable ride - so with a more traditional stern-or transom, we would have probably been a lot more uncomfortable.

We timed arrival at the Key West channel an hour after daybreak.  It is a lot easier to plan your speed with the engine running also. My biggest concern was getting through the channel if the winds and waves were as bad.  Fortunately, both winds and waves moderated with sunrise.  It still took us 3.5 hours to get from the mouth of the channel to the marina on the other side of KW.  We got in at about 11:30, docked and celebrated with champagne given to us as a gift.  Thanks!!

We are here, we are safe, we are grateful for all we have.  We will kiip you up to date, and as soon as we have pics we will post them.

Thanks to all of our friends and fans.  we love you!!

JonNe'