Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Key West - Cooler days

$450/night if they have a room
Our temperature topped out at 80 yesterday and now we're in for cooler weather, the lower 70's. Ann is enjoying doing her painting while I'm down below doing boat planning stuff for our upcoming trip north. I think I've found a 8 MLLW path through the east entrance to Dawho River where there's only 5 MLLW if you follow the buoyed route. The route is from the survey by USACE of Charleston. As far as I know, no one has ever taken that particular route. It's outside the buoyed channel. When we go north, we'll give it a try. If anyone else wants to try their luck at it, send me a comment below and I'll forward the waypoints. An extra three feet would be a great benefit to those transiting that shallow passage.

Totems? Hotels like these always seem to have this sort of thing around.
Key West is always changing. I snapped a photo of the Marker hotel It's sitting on what used to be a vacant lot when we first starting coming to Key West. The rooms, I'm told, are very nice but they go for $450/night. The hotel occupies most of a city block and it's right next to Schooner Wharf so it's in an ideal location for marina action.

Yesterday I bought 300 ft of 5/8 inch line from West Marine at 40% off their usual list price. They've announced a new policy of not being undersold by anyone, including internet sellers. I guess they've gotten religion because they were losing customers right and left. Now they have a price matching policy which is long overdue. Maybe with that they will become a useful supply store for mariners. They were just too overpriced in the past.

6 comments:

Mary Minard said...

Will you put the waypoints in your book for next year if your track is successful?
Your assessment of the navigation apps is very impressive; grateful for the information.

Unknown said...

Hi Bob,
Thanks for your great information, really appreciate it. I have a question regarding the ICW and mast height maximums along the route from Lake Erie to Jacksonville, Florida. Can a 66’ mast make it all the way down? If not, at what point on the ICW would you take the mast down and at what point would you raise it again?

Thanks again Bob. Best to Ann; her pastels are beautiful.

Best,
Kia Gardner

Bob423 said...

Mary, yes, I will put everything in my 2018 edition. It will grow in size.

Kia, a 66 ft high mast cannot make it down the ICW to Miami. Boats that tall usually go outside along the coast and come in the inlets, but that involves overnighters. Anything over 63ft is going to be problematic and involves playing with the tides to get under some of the bridges. In the 2018 edition, I will be publishing photos of every fixed bridge along with their height boards and the tide at the time the photo was taken and calculating the bridge height at low tide. That way, all you have to do is find the tide in a local tide table and add it to the low tide height to bet the clearance, as far as your question, I haven’t done the analysis yet for a good answer to your question. Most bridges on the ICW are advertised to be 65 ft at high tide but many are lower. The bridge just south of Beaufort, NC, is famous for low clearance at high tide, down to 63 ft or so. I would, certainly take the mast down before that bridge. If you stay inside, you can’t put it back up until Miami. There’s a 55 ft bridge on the way.

Bruce said...

The ICW Dahoo portion is right in our back yard and we transit it frequently. Please send the coordinates and we will check it out. Would love to find a good passage through.

Bob423 said...

Bruce, how did you know I was doing the study to find a better route through Dawho?? Well, never mind. Here's the Word file giving all the details. It's stored on Google Drive.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1AzXiGXaswM6YYTt8KkJxNnqkvWjag1Z4

It also has links to the original USACE survey and a link to the GPX file with the new route. Now, I haven't tried the route yet, it's all based on the survey but I would appreciate greatly (as well as other boaters) if you could confirm that the route is good for 8 MLLW as predicted by the USACE survey. You would make it a lot easier for boaters heading north through this area in the spring!

Bob423 said...

Bruce, just send me a note back on your progress, thanks!
423sail@gmail.com