Hurry Up And Wait

Location: Marathon, Florida
Position: 24 42.371 N 081 05.706 W

When you live on a boat it’s ALWAYS all about the weather. We’ve spent the last two weeks listening to our weather guy tell us a window is opening. Then we’ve watched it carefully and decided it’s not quite long enough to allow us time to get to Mexico with any safety margin. Here’s how it’s been going:

Morning: Wake up early listen to our weather guy on SSB radio, check the weather on line to get our own take on the weather, chat with our travelling companions to see when we all think might be a good time to leave. This all takes 3 to 4 hours. Then we go shopping.

Note: Shopping definition - walk a mile each way up a LOUD busy road for groceries, hardware, pharmacy, general goods. Walk a mile in the other direction along the same LOUD busy road to the chandlery, dollar store, thrift shop, and book store. We have to make a lot of trips because we can only buy what we can comfortably carry the mile back to the boat. We need to keep our ships stores topped off as we eat and use things so we’re always ready to leave.

Afternoon: Do a few boat jobs, get together with friends, pick their brains about good places to visit in W Caribbean, do any “other direction” shopping we need to do, and check weather again to see how much it’s changed.

Most of the time we see a potential weather window open a few days ahead only to watch it get shorter or disappear altogether.

On Friday, Sun Jan 3rd was starting to look good. On Saturday it still looked good. Ok this is really it, we decided, we’re leaving tomorrow.

Hurry up and wait.

Saturday afternoon we went through the usual routine. We hauled the dinghy onto deck, stowed everything, and prepared meals to be warmed up under way. None of us slept much that night, always tense with the anticipation of an upcoming passage into the unknown, remembering last minute things that need to be done when we get up in the morning.

We were all up before dawn and listened one last time to the weather. Hmm. It was still a window but it had changed a little. We would have to leave and hurry south then dawdle for a day off the coast of Cuba waiting for the seas to die down in the Yucatan Channel. Then we’d have to quickly get across the Yucatan Channel before a really big front came through the Gulf of Mexico on Friday. We got on the radio with our friends. We were ALL ready!!! But after a discussion we decided to wait, it just didn’t feel right. All of us except one boat decided we’d wait for the next window. The one boat took off out of the harbour at 7am. We watched them go, wishing we were going, but glad we weren’t.

Hurry up and wait.

We got the dinghy back into the water and did a few jobs around the boat, feeling a bit glum and out of sorts. Julie decided since we weren’t going (and it was starting to look like another week before we could) she may as well start re-covering the cabin cushions. This project involved making a total mess of the cabin until it was completed, so she decided she might as well do it while we were sitting here waiting. By Monday evening she had all but 2 cushions complete. We got up on Tuesday morning. We were listening to the weather and one of the boats we are travelling with asked some questions about the big front that was scheduled to hit the Yucatan on Friday night right after we would have arrived. It had slowed down – now it wasn’t going to get there until Saturday morning. And the weather in the Florida Straits was looking milder, as well.

Hurry up and wait.

We knew there was going to be yet another discussion with the other boats so the Rachels were talking about it with each other when our new friend Dave called on the VHF at 7am. He and his wife have made the trip several times.

Dave: “You know, I was just looking at the weather and it looks like you have a window”.
Us: “Yeah, we were just discussing that.”
Dave: “You’d have to leave today, this morning”
Us: “Yeah. And we just paid for another week here yesterday, after we decided not to go on Sunday.”

So we chatted with our friends and all agreed we’d have 4 days before the big nasty front reached Isla Mujeres. If we left soon and didn’t dawdle we could make it. We called our weather guy on the SSB radio at his 9am broadcast and he agreed that it looked like a good opportunity. Ok, how long would we all need to be ready?

We were already pretty well stowed, we just needed to get the dinghies back on deck. So we decided to leave at 9:00am, just 45 minutes away! Holy smokes! We looked around the cabin. Sewing machine, fabric, foam, thread, needles, lots of other stuff that was stowed before but isn’t now…sheesh. Mark went on deck and prepared to haul the dinghy. Julie started putting everything away down below. Once everything was put away, out came the gear we’d need for the trip. It was still cold so we’d need foul weather jackets and pants, gloves and wooly caps, not to mention our life jackets and harnesses.

Hurry up and wait.

We set up the salon settee to be our off watch berth since it’s too lumpy to sleep up forward under way – you would spend half your time airborne up there. By 8:55 we were all ready to go. Wow, not enough time to even get nervous. We were really going. We led the way out of the harbour, only 3 of us now, off on the toughest crossing we’ve attempted so far in our Rachel.

So now we’ve got 3 days to hurry up and get there before the nasty front, and three days to wait until we get there to see what it’s like.