A Tale from The Crooked Anchor

By Ken Mitchell

Having sold our house and cars, we downsized our belongings and packed what was left onto our dream boat, a new-to-us 1990 Gemini 3200 catamaran, and set sail for a life on the sea. We are Capt. Ken and Miss Kelly.

Mother Nature is beautiful. We feel blessed for what she has shared with us. We have seen majestic sunsets with more colors than you can imagine, pods of dolphins riding the wake of our boat, the turquoise waters of the Caribbean so calm you can’t see where the sky and water meet and the Milky Way on a dark night where more stars than you can count look like diamonds filling up the sky.

Mother Nature can also have a dark side. We have seen her mad. She is not pretty when she’s angry, and she’ll throw everything she has at you. We experienced a lot of her anger firsthand. “What doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger”. Good words to stand on, but not too comforting when you’re in 10′ seas and over 30 knot winds. We have been there. We have been caught with our pants down on more than one occasion. Mother Nature doesn’t care. No one wants to be in rough seas running from a storm 50 miles offshore, going in the opposite direction of your destination, looking for calmer waters.

Even with all the modern technology and the best minds making weather forecasts, Mother Nature can make changes quicker than you can blink an eye and we have seen a lot of her fury first hand, but we never could have imagined what she had in store for us this season.

Crossing Florida Bay is a two-day event for us. From Marco to Marathon is roughly 82 miles as the crow flies. We like getting up before daylight, running all day, and dropping anchor with enough time to make dinner and sit on the deck to watch the sunset. We usually stay close to shore, especially with the eastern winds, and anchor halfway down the Everglades. This particular trip was no different, something we’ve done a dozen times. 

We pulled the anchor in the morning around 5 am and set sail. We had the wind off the quarter stern, which is great for us. Not quite on a run but making a good 5 knots. We had a smooth day sailing, making it to Broad River, about 10 miles north of Ponce de Leon Bay. We didn’t know exactly where we dropped anchor, but we would soon find out. The winds had died down, and there was a light ripple on the water. Miss Kelly had been making dinner while I motored the last couple of miles to about 100 yards offshore. 

With dinner over and we sat on the bow winding down the day. Miss Kelly was having an adult beverage and we watched the sky change a multitude of colors as the sun slipped below the horizon not knowing what tomorrow would bring.

Did you hear that? Hear what?…. There it goes again.

I sat up, trying to get a sense of the sound that was. It’s funny the sounds you can hear on a boat. There’s a popping/clicking sound you can hear throughout the boat, coming from snapping shrimp, barnacles, and fish feeding on the reefs. There’s the clanging and banging of halyards, the boat creaks and cracks, and the sound of water splashing against the hull. Our boat is no exception to making sounds; she makes a multitude of sounds, all of which we are accustomed to, but a new sound always stirs concern.

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