Clewiston, Day 2

A short clip of the Lake O crossing, after the roughest part (we're both fully engaged when it's rough, defined as needing to use the wipers). At least the wind was at our backs. When we returned from Stuart, Lake O looked pretty calm but the NOAA forecast was a Small Craft Caution, winds 15 MPH with gusts to 25 and choppy (worse in a shallow lake like this). We have well-established 'NO-GO’ criteria, which saves a lot of time and agonizing debates.

NO-GO CRITERIA:
-Any NOAA marine forecast Caution or Advisory in effect on the route
-NOAA wind over 18 MPH or gusts over 22 MPH
-NOAA Choppy or Rough in Protected Waters
-Windy.com (blue app) winds over 18 MPH or gusts over 22 for any block of time on route
-Either of us prefer not to. We’re retired, we have all month.

The boat can handle a lot more than that and the boat won’t break (but a femur might, and they are harder and more expensive to replace).

It got to over 85 degrees in the cockpit today and it was windy.

What broke:

An exterior roof rail bolt drips in heavy rain. Of course the proper repair is disassembly, clean out core, epoxy and redrill. The temp repair is caulk on the outside (never the inside, or the water will infiltrate the core). You likely knew that.

The cockpit lights are inop. When the shop replaced all the fuel lines for the new engines, a wire bundle was rerouted and too short; pulled off the switch blade in chop. I made a jumper extension long enough to remove the strain.

A cockpit light lens screw went AWOL. There’s an ACE hardware store close to the cute church, so I bought a couple of extra 6-32 ½” replacements just in case.

Safe Travels!Read more