S/V Aphrodite

We departed the U.S. yesterday, 12/16/05, via Key West Flo. We left at sunset and sailed under a beautiful full moon. The winds have been strong and favorable for sailing, with us making good headway despite the adverse Gulf Stream currents. At one point this afternoon Aphrodite clocked a boat speed of 20 kts! The waves are the large rolling type so we are swaying and sliding over the tops of them causing enough movement that I feel compelled to brace myself in the chair so I don’t go flying. We love this boat because she is so stable, taking the wind and waves gracefully, allowing us to move about with “relative” ease.

We are on our way to the Yucatan for the Christmas holidays. Kacy and Chris, Keri and Luke will be joining us for New Year’s and Michael’s 60th birthday. We love having people onboard now since we can offer so much room and comfort. Before we left the States, we bought a “hookah” system which will allow 4 divers to dive without carrying tanks and BCDs. With 4 people, the system supports diving to only 60 ft., but with 2 we can go to 80 ft. We are looking forward to trying it out. It is perfect for the shallow dives in the Bahamas, but may be less than perfect for drift diving in the Yucatan. One of the local Key West dive shops reported nearly complete devastation to the beautiful Cozemel reefs from the recent hurricane season.

Well, I have just had a first and maybe “once in a lifetime experience”. As I looked up from the computer for a minute I caught a glimpse of something orange in the distance. A look through the binoculars revealed what appeared to be a life raft adrift. We furled our foresail, set the main for controlled motoring and turned around to investigate. Once we got close enough to confirm that the object was indeed a life raft, we called the U.S. Coast Guard to report the raft,as well as our lat./long. position. Earlier today the Coast Guard had been reporting the “over due” alert of a sailing vessel sailing from the TX coast to Key West. It was a very long shot, but who knew, there may be people in the life raft seeking a rescue. The closer we approached the more my adrenaline flowed, punctuated with fear. It definitely did not look like any life raft we had ever seen. Well, you can imagine our wild imaginations gearing up! Here we are, out in the deep blue sea, off the shore of Cuba and find what might be a raft full of Cuban escapees, or worse, drug dealers just waiting for a beautiful American boat to confiscate. We circled without going too closely until the Coast Guard gave us the O.K. We got within 100 yards of the odd shaped orange thing ,close enough to see that the escape door was ajar and the lettering said Land and Sea Rescue, London,. We started blasting our air horn to see if there were any people aboard. Once we were confident that neither a person nor a gun would appear in the doorway my fear was replaced with intrigue. I took pictures while Michael communicated with the Coast Guard. Before I knew it, I realized that the Key West Coast Guard was asking if we could board the raft to confirm that there weren’t any survives. Hell no was my thought. That’s all we needed, for Michael to attempt boarding a raft in waves as tall as himself, leaving me to fend for myself if he then became a victim. Well, we left the scene knowing that there was nothing needed. About a half hour later the Coast Guard called us to inform us that a life raft had fallen off a British Merchant vessel and that all was well. Just another day in the life of Michael and Jeri!

Well, reporting today’s events to you have kept me amused for awhile. Maybe I will go and take a nap until we start our night time 4 hour on/4 hour off watch schedule. We won’t be Mexico for 48 hours at the current speed, 3 knt. over ground. Darn, we have been bucking a 4 knt. adverse current for the entire trip, but the wind has dropped to 9 knts, so here we are bobbing along, singing our song.

Warm wishes of happy holidays to you,

Jeri and Michael

Dec. 19 2005

We arrived Mexico this morning at 0600. The passage was uneventful with terrific winds most of the way.

Jeri and Michael