Departure Day.

clothes loaded...check
food loaded ...check
strainers cleared...check
waypoints loaded...check

We are awake and sipping coffee.  In a few minutes, we will head down and fire up Dream Chaser.  Destination today...Marco Island Marina.  We have a fuel truck scheduled for first thing tomorrow morning.  That is a good thing, we will most likely take on around 200 gallons of fuel.  We will need every bit of that for our planned ramblings around the Keys.

Weather today, looks superb.  Mid 80's and, winds less than 10 out of the west, and waves, of 1 foot or less with long intervals in between.  It should make for a nice run on the outside.  The distance is around 80 miles, and if we run it fast, the travel time should be around 4 hours.

See you in Marco!

Two days until we depart.  First leg of the journey will be from Burnt Store Marina to Naples.  We plan on staying at the City Dock.

We anticipate being out for 2 weeks or so, and spend most of the time hanging in the Keys.

We have completed a few projects to help with this trip.
1.  Upgraded the ground tackle from 25 feet of chain and 150 of three strand nylon rode, to 75 feet of chain and 150 feet of nylon rode.
2.  We have built a snuber/bridal for the anchor.  It has a clip to hold the chain, and contains about 50 feet of three strand nylon road.
3.  Installed a dinghy and davits solution.  We have a 7.5 foot Saturn dinghy with a rigid inflatable floor.  For Power, we chose a 2.5 hp, Suzuki 4 stroke outboard.  We chose the Natley Dinghy ramp for the davits.  After several tests on Charlotte harbor, the system seems to work.  We have not tried this yet with a strong following sea.  The dinghy is adequate for two of us, but struggles with four people on board.

After replacing the racor fuel filters, we seem to be ready to hit the water.

The plan is to leave on Wednesday, first thing in the morning.....