Sailing Kismet

    Now that the Receta delivery was complete, I was free to cruise at my own pace, no schedule or deadlines. I could just take it easy, but did I do that? No, of course not, do you know me? I just wanted to get to Key West, I went flat out. Here is how it went.     I was back on Kismet on Monday night; Tuesday I went back to Jensen Beach because of the convenient grocery store and laundromat, and of course to check out another tiki bar; Tako Tiki was not bad but I didn't have time to hang out and listen to the band that was setting up, had to finish my laundry and shopping.     Wednesday, I was up early ready to head south on once more. The first stop would be West Palm Beach, seven hours of motoring, nothing interesting to report on that trip. Lucky for me there is a huge river to anchor in, pretty much anywhere. I guess the word got out. I had to motor a mile and a half south after coming in the inlet from the Atlantic, but I finally found a parking spac...

    Back on November 29th, 2025 I saw a posting on the Sea People app that I use, it was a call for help to deliver a newly purchased boat from the Caribbean island of  St. Martin back to Stuart Florida. I answered it, hit it off with Adam Martin from Iowa and agreed to crew for him on his delivery at the end of January. It is on my list of things to do, cross an ocean on someone else's boat. This trip is half an ocean, but a good start, so I signed on. Thus begins the tail of two voyages, sailing Kismet to 900 south miles to Stuart and then sailing Receta 1100 plus miles north west to Stuart. At this point Kismet was not scheduled to be hauled out for bottom work for another five days, the clock was ticking. Schedules again.         Receta is a 1981 Tartan 42 foot sailing vessel with a inboard diesel auxiliary engine. It's similar in size and mass to Kismet, my Passport 40, and is equally robust, this was a major factor in my decision to sai...

    They say the most dangerous thing on a cruising sailboat is a schedule. Those pesky things, that incessant taskmaster of getting all the things done and to all the places on time. There is truth in this, when sailing you must go where the wind takes you even if you have a reliable and strong diesel engine you still are not going to make miles directly into the wind, you must wait, thou shall not pass until King Neptune allows it.     Neptune's schedule allowed me to stay at St. Augustine another night but the price would be an overnight passage to Fort Pierce, the the next inlet north of Stuart Florida, my next destination.  Fort Pierce inlet was about 160 miles south, off I went and sailed with the engine off for the next eight hours, glorious! And then!    I was relaxing in the cockpit letting the autopilot do it's thing when I saw something in the water, maybe trash, maybe sea grass, but no, it was a sea turtle!!! The first I have seen in t...