Congrats, what a cool trip for sure! My wife will want a bigger boat for sure!
We finally made it to the Dry Tortugas!
- Thread starter Gene Neill
- Start date
I didn't go back to read all the posts, but one factoid from my trip to the fort was it used to be a refueling place for warships. Most noteable was the USS Maine fueled there before it's fatefull one-way trip to Havana Harbor. Ka-boom.
It was a lighthouse, a prison, a water desalinating facility for steam ships, a refueling station, a hospital/quarantine facility, a national landmark, and finally a national park. Ironically, the only thing it never really was was a fort!
Wow congrats! Great trip and great solar mounts. Great video I really enjoyed watching. A couple questions if I may. Wouldn't the solar mount be more mechanically robust if you had centered the rail clamp on the panel to balance the weight or was there a reason you did them that way? I didn't see a dinghy and I'm wondering how you managed that trip without one or if you had an inflatable or something?
@Joe A my guess as to why you would off center the mount would be to reduce the intrusion of the panel into the cockpit when the panel was in the catch the rays mode.
Excellent question. It's because of the short length of rail running along the beam, before the rail turns inboard at the stern. If the "diving boards" were hinged in the middle of the panel, the panel could not be raised above level, to face the opposite side of the boat. The L shape formed by the rail would block the inboard edge of the panel from going any lower. If that makes sense? It would definitely be stronger, but I very much wanted both panels to be able to face the sun directly, whichever side of the boat it might be on. I thought about mounting the panels rotated 90 degrees, but then whichever panel was facing across the cockpit would be as much as 12" lower down in the cockpit, more in the way and more likely to be shaded.
As it is, the mounts are as strong as they need to be. If I ever hit a piling with one, I would rather the panel be torn off the rail, than the rail torn off the boat.
As for a dink ... yeah, we just packed our inflatable kayak. From where we anchored, it was only about 75 yards to shore.
Last edited:
Thoroughly enjoyed the video, all I could think about last night was how I could drag my boat from Tx to Florida and make that trip.
Wouldn’t it be more fun to just sail from Texas? Just kidding. Sort of.
[edit: my emojis don’t show up, going “old school”
][re edit. Arrrrggghhhhh]
We prayed.
Seriously though, that is another excellent question. I must be careful how I answer, so as not to come across as cocky or boastful. But I really am proud of Daydream. She is, in my humble opinion, as well found a C22 as you will ever see. Countless hours of labor and an obscene amount of money have gone into her since we bought her, and she wasn't in bad shape even then. Sails, rigging, ground tackle, electronics, outboard motor, keel hardware ... you name it, it's new or like new. We carry five headsails at all times, from a 35' storm jib to a 180 genny. Redundant GPS's and transducers, redundant VHF's. Always.
At the Admiral's strict orders, I did come up with a brand new harness/tether system. Carlotta made it crystal clear that she WAS NOT going below to sleep if I was not securely clipped into the cockpit after dark. We had never tethered in before. And peeing over the side was forbidden altogether.
We expected (and got) a few hours of rigorous sailing close hauled into around 18 knots and 4' seas on the way back. So I fine-tuned the rig accordingly while at anchor in the Tortugas. Slack leeward shrouds make me nervous. Heavy gear was secured to the windward side of the salon.
We carried twelve gallons of fuel, double the norm. Extra jugs of ice (which equals extra gallons of fresh water), extra food, extra clothing, extra flares.
I'm sure there was more we could have/should have done. It really is a helluva long trip on such a small boat. We were truly blessed with the weather we got, and would not trade the memory for anything, but we have no plans to ever do it again.
Seriously though, that is another excellent question. I must be careful how I answer, so as not to come across as cocky or boastful. But I really am proud of Daydream. She is, in my humble opinion, as well found a C22 as you will ever see. Countless hours of labor and an obscene amount of money have gone into her since we bought her, and she wasn't in bad shape even then. Sails, rigging, ground tackle, electronics, outboard motor, keel hardware ... you name it, it's new or like new. We carry five headsails at all times, from a 35' storm jib to a 180 genny. Redundant GPS's and transducers, redundant VHF's. Always.
At the Admiral's strict orders, I did come up with a brand new harness/tether system. Carlotta made it crystal clear that she WAS NOT going below to sleep if I was not securely clipped into the cockpit after dark. We had never tethered in before. And peeing over the side was forbidden altogether.
We expected (and got) a few hours of rigorous sailing close hauled into around 18 knots and 4' seas on the way back. So I fine-tuned the rig accordingly while at anchor in the Tortugas. Slack leeward shrouds make me nervous. Heavy gear was secured to the windward side of the salon.
We carried twelve gallons of fuel, double the norm. Extra jugs of ice (which equals extra gallons of fresh water), extra food, extra clothing, extra flares.
I'm sure there was more we could have/should have done. It really is a helluva long trip on such a small boat. We were truly blessed with the weather we got, and would not trade the memory for anything, but we have no plans to ever do it again.
That's what self-bailing cockpits are for.We had never tethered in before. And peeing over the side was forbidden altogether.
-Will (Dragonfly)
Excellent plan, Greg, and well executed. I had hoped to sail overnight from Boca Grande Inlet to Marathon someday, but the thought of sailing at night through hundreds of crab pots scared me. We usually stopped overnight somewhere in the Everglades on our way to the Keys. On one trip, we had to stop the boat and back up every 20 minutes or so to clear the sea grass that had built up on our wing keel. Maybe sailing further offshore to Key West would have avoided those obstacles for us.We prayed.
Seriously though, that is another excellent question. I must be careful how I answer, so as not to come across as cocky or boastful. But I really am proud of Daydream. She is, in my humble opinion, as well found a C22 as you will ever see. Countless hours of labor and an obscene amount of money have gone into her since we bought her, and she wasn't in bad shape even then. Sails, rigging, ground tackle, electronics, outboard motor, keel hardware ... you name it, it's new or like new. We carry five headsails at all times, from a 35' storm jib to a 180 genny. Redundant GPS's and transducers, redundant VHF's. Always.
At the Admiral's strict orders, I did come up with a brand new harness/tether system. Carlotta made it crystal clear that she WAS NOT going below to sleep if I was not securely clipped into the cockpit after dark. We had never tethered in before. And peeing over the side was forbidden altogether.
We expected (and got) a few hours of rigorous sailing close hauled into around 18 knots and 4' seas on the way back. So I fine-tuned the rig accordingly while at anchor in the Tortugas. Slack leeward shrouds make me nervous. Heavy gear was secured to the windward side of the salon.
We carried twelve gallons of fuel, double the norm. Extra jugs of ice (which equals extra gallons of fresh water), extra food, extra clothing, extra flares.
I'm sure there was more we could have/should have done. It really is a helluva long trip on such a small boat. We were truly blessed with the weather we got, and would not trade the memory for anything, but we have no plans to ever do it again.
We actually saw a few strings of traps as far out as ... I'm guessing here ... thirty miles? in eighty-ish feet of water.
Fortunately, they pose very little threat to our swing keel, and we have a kickup rudder. We ran at least three of them slap over in the darkness on the return trip. You could hear them going bump-bump-bump-bump-bump all the way down the length of the hull, before popping up in the wash of the stern light.
Motoring at night was simply out of the question. We decided ahead of time, if the wind died out in middle of that mess, we would simply anchor wherever we were and wait for daylight or wind, whichever came first.