Sailing Class - Florida - Key Largo Trip

 Return To Vacations
Trip Itinerary:
  • 05/01/2021 - Leave Colorado Driving to Witchita Falls, TX.
  • 05/02/2021 - Leave Witchita Falls driving to Pensacola, FL
  • 05/03/2021 - Leave Pensacola driving to Gaines City, FL
  • 05/11/2021 - Leave Gaines City driving to Ft. Lauderdale
  • 05/15/2021 - Arrive at boat, get tour/details of the week.
  • 05/16/2021 - Set Sail on Catamaran from Ft. Lauderdale Channel to Miami Channel, Set anchor in Biscayne Bay
  • 05/17/2021 - Headed to National Park for second evening. BBQ steaks and corn, very relaxing day.
  • 05/18/2021 - Morning started with first test, pass with an 87.. ~face palms~ Headed down south further to Key Largo, anchored north of it.
  • 05/19/2021 - Morning with second test, got a 92 on it, so improving. Started return trip up to Miami, and practice man overboard drills.
  • 05/20/2021 - Morning with 3rd test, got an 82, harder test in my opinion, but was still passing. Headed back to home port. Oredered out Pizza's, and chilled for the night.
  • 05/21/2021 - Morning back at home port, 4th and final test, scored a 96, so life was good. Cleaned up boat, and disembarked.
  • 05/24/2021 - Return to Colorado Springs on United Flight
Highlights of Catamaran Trip
  • First night before we set sail, key broke in the door to lock/unlock
  • First day of sailing, pulled over by coast guard for an inspection, I heaved 3 times over the side of boat
  • Almost fell over side trying to throw lines to secure boat to dock.
  • 3rd night out, got catamaran stuck on shore area in the miami port area.
  • Last night out on boat, I did not seal room window completed, bed got soaking wet, rained on me while drying out matress, and set off fire extuinguisher at 2:30 in the morning trying to set bed back up.
  • Last day, waves on Atlantic were 10 feet+, threw one of the crew on top of another sleeping crew member.
  • Dropped our last carton of eggs on floor
  • Kayak flew off boat while coming back into ft. lauderdale channel
Story Info
So it all started with co-workers needing help driving cars down to their Air b&b place in Gains City, Florida, while they wait for their house to be finished in July. They wanted to leave at the beginning of May, and offered to pay for everything for the trip down. I had been looking at some schools for boar captain training, and found Blue Water Sailing school, which seemed to have good info/boats for learning on. However, they were 6 months booked out, so couldn't get in until October. I had sent them an email asking if they had any "wait list" possibility or something, and they said they had something come up in the middle of May. I signed up for it, and asked if volleyball player could join as well, and they said they had room. So we were able to book a catamran class for the 3rd week of May.
First day driving from Colorado Springs, co worker picked me up at my place at 8 in the morning.. Dear god, so early. We picked up breakfast and started driving south to Witchita Falls, which was about a 10 hour drive. Nothing terribly exciting, long drive with not much of anything to see. We got there, had dinner, and hit the air b&b place. Nothing too exciting about the air b&b, probably one of the worst beds I had ever slept on, but at least had a room to sleep in.
Second day, we picked up breakfast, and started driving for Pensacola, heading to some area called Dicovery Bay, in an area that we didn't know, was across a very large bridge. We got there around 9:30, and GPS told us another 5-7 minutes, and we had seen signs for the bridge being out, but thought we could drive around to another bridge. Came to find out, it was a bridge over the bay they had shut down, and they were diverting traffic another 35 minutes away to a tool bridge to cross, but they had turned the toll off on it. So we were already tired, and eventually figured it out. Was not a good night for anyone....
Last day, only crazy thing that happened was we were figiting with the radio to use blue tooth, and missed our turn to head south towards Orlando, and ended up doing a 20 minute extra drive to get back to the highway. It was a race between us who would get there first, and we even passed each other a couple times on highway. Even passed a semi truck that look lke the trailer had exploded and melted in the middle of the trailer. Traffic was bad, but thank god we were on the south side. The north side was backed up for miles and miles, and not moving. Got to the Air bnb in Gaine City around 9ish, unloaded the car, went to get dome dinner at Nanny's Chop House, which had a greeat steak and potato. Got sat right under the air conditioner, which in florida, not a bad thing, but was still dang cold for me, had to put my flannel on in the restaurant.
Recovered for a few days, they had the air bnb for a while, and it had the porch in the back facing a golf course, so was fun to watch amatuers play golf, and eat breakfast. Went to check out the office in Orlando for a day, and went for a drive down to Sarasota(Siesta Keys) to check out the beach(about a 3 hour drive). Looks like a vacation place cruise ships drop us off at for a day, the beaches were pretty awesome. The gold course area, had some places that looked like scenes from Jarrasic Part with desserted, overrun srubbery on the buildings, looked like something was beating away at them, and an old master checkin building that looked deserted for years... The next day, co worker drove me to Orlando airport to pick up a rental car for 3 weeks. $700 for 3 weeks was not a bad deal, and I was able to get a Dodge Charger. Was black, but had great air conditioning, so was enjoyable to drive(compared to my car).
A week later, made a drive over to Ft. Lauderdale to spend a few days there at the beaches, and a hotel that was 10 minutes away from the Catamaran we were going to sail on. Hung out on the beach one day, wasn't very nice, and definetely with no shade, the sun was murder, even swimming for 30 minutes, the water wasn't very clear, and seaweed crud floating in the water. Lot of really high, fancy hotels in the area, and the tall ones blocked the view of the beaches, so was hard to get a look, or find an opening to them. A day before we were to leave, the school sent me a message saying I had not faxed them all the sheets/forms they needed, and they only had half of them. I shortly realized that the fax machine I used only faxed one sided pages, but the forms were on both sides... Fortunately, I had brought the forms with me, and the school let me drive them down to them the day before.
The day of the catamaran arrived. I picked up volleyball player, and we headed over to the dock We parked right in front of the catamaran about an hour early, and the instuctor was there, loading up stuff, and wanted us to come back in an hour, so we went to walk around the nearby docks to look at some boats. We got back to boat, and grabbed our gear. There were 5 of us total, the instructor, a couple, the volleyball player, and myself. Since I was last one on board, I got the last room, which was on the right side forward(starboard head) room. Wasn't big, but was workable. Instructor introduced herself as Captain Jennifer, and talked through initial throughts and introductions. She made a grocery list of things to get and told us we should go out for dinner for the night, as we wouldn't leave til the next day. She also showed us tests, and said we were going to take a few test, and she showed us the booklets. After she bought all the groceries, we unloaded them into the boat, and then she took off for the night, and left us to sleep on the catamaran on the dock for the evening. When we went for dinner, we wanted the key to lock the catamaran door while we were out. The key looked like a metal dowel, I hadn't seen a key like that before. The instructor left us the key. When we came back from dinner, we tried the key in the lock, and it snapped off. Fortunately, the door was already unlocked when it happened, so got lucky it wasn't stuck locked. We all tried to go to sleep early, I think everyone else fell asleep early, but I had a hard time being a late nighter. They had a shower/bathroom on the dock, so at least we had hot shower, and a bathroom that was normal. We also had looked over the groceries, and went to get a few more things(another carton of eggs, granola, yogurts, snacks), just to make sure we didn't run out.
The next day, we ran through our checklist to make sure the boat was ready for sail. The only issue found was that one of the motor's alternator belts was a little loose, and had been throwing black powder on the side a little. They had called in the service person to tighten it up, and it looked good after that. The tide had changed through the day, so the step onto the boat was 6 inches, to about 2 feet difference, but didn't realize it until someone had mentioned it. So we set sail to get out to the Atlantic through the Ft. Lauderdale channel. As we got closer to ocean, more boats were showing up. You'd swear there was a huge party happening out in Sea or something with all the boats. We did have to wait at one of the bridges to open, as we were just slightly taller then the bridge. While we were waiting, we made ham sandwiches and hung out. We got out to the Atlantic, and started sailing South towards Miami. As soon as it became my turn to drive, I took the chair, and the waves were 5 to 10 feet high. About an hour into driving, the caost guard came up behind us and boarded us to check all our paper work and holding areas. Apparently they were training a new person, and showing her how to do everything. They stayed on the boat for over 30 minutes before finally leaving. When they left, I was relieved of driving, and I went down to back of the boat and sat down. ABout 3 minutes later, body told me it's losing it, and gave me a minute to get to the side of the boat, 7 dry heaves later, I finally got out most of the ham sandwish I had eaten later, and then just rested for the remaining of the sail before we got into the Miami channel. After going through Miami channel, we stopped on the Noth side of Biscayne Bay, and dropped anchor there for the night. We had paniced, as we were going to do BBQ vegetables, chicken and corn, but when we pulled the BBQ out, we couldn't find the solenoid to run it. After 30 minutes of tearing the boat apart, we found it in the spare parts. And to use the BBQ, we had to drop the Dingy in the water, to be able to mount it on the boat. The other issue, the clamp wasn't very strong, and we almost lost the BBQ food(and the parts at one point), over the side, but we made it. It was late in the evening, but everyone turned in for the night.
The next day, we were up and running and headed further south to get to Biscayne National park. Park was awesome, had a small little cove inside of it, which only had one other boat when we got in there. We docked up to the side of the dock, and tied up for the night. We BBQ'd steaks on one of the camp site BBQ pit, and checked out the beach on the other side of the island. They had flushable toilets, and a nice little walking path around the cove, and lots of picnic/bbq spots for folks to use. Some of the trees were bent in weird shapes, and the sites were not reachable to walk on/touch, sadly. We got told next morning would be our first test of 4, and it would consist of 100 questions. Good grief. After cleaning up dinner mess, we all started a nightly trend of mass studying for the test until we were too tired to continue studying before morning. Of course, I was the last person up at night, since I was a late night person, so I usually got to sleep around 2 to 3 in the morning.
Morning came, and we made scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast, and a shot of orange juice for the help. 9:00 rolled around, and we started the test. About an hour, or so to finish the test, we all passed with scores ranging from mid 80's to 90's. We started the day with practicing driving around the cove area, and re-docking the catamaran. Another catmaran was in the cove area, which was another boat from the school, and they started practicing earlier then we did, and then left shortly after. Half way through our driving awat from the pier/dock, and redocking, the coast guard/police were ruinning the same kind of drill on their boat, so made it a little more challenging for us, since the code wasn't very big. After we all had a chance to drive off the dock, and redock twice for each one of us, we set sail further south towards Key Largo. When we got to Key Largo, that was as far south as we would go. We dropped anchor, and took advantage of the area, since it was breezy, we anchored close to the shoreline to keep the boat from rocking.. Few of us went for a swim, and the instructor took her kayak out for a paddle around for a while. We enjoyed another evening of BBQ and watching the sunset, and got ready for another day of testing.
Start of the day, we did another bacon and egg breakfast, did our 100 question test, and got through it with scores ranging in the low 90's. We picked up anchor, and started heading back up north to return back to port. We stopped to do man overboard drills. It was so windy we decided not to use the sails, but instead use the engines to practice the drill. We did not want to wreak havoc on the sail and the boom from turning back and forth in the wind switching sides. Instructor tied a gallon water bottle to a life vest, called it "Bob", and threw it overboard, and we had to rescue bob. After that, we raised sails, and learned how to "dead stop" the boat in a windy area, and leave the sails up, but no power to them. I don't remember exactly what the name of the manuever was, but was cool to not have to drop sails to take a break for lunch. After lunch, we headed North to the Miami Port, and got a Mooring there for the night. As I drove us into the spot to anchor to the mooring, I grounded the front port side of the catamaran too close to the side shore. Instuctor took about 5-7 minutes rocking the boat around until we broke free, and was able to get into the spot. The area was aweful, the water not very clean, and a lot of sunk/old boats around the area. While there were free water taxi's, it wasn't a place we wanted to swim, or walk around. Chris took the dingy out for a ride and came back shortly after. We BBQ'd up some chicken and corn, and proceeded to study for the text for the next morning, which we were told was only 50 questions, which was the catamaran specific test. I went down to my room to grab the book, to find I had a streak of water across the bed. Looked like I hadn't sealed the window completely shut. I came back down an hour later to find the bed now completely soaked with water. Looked like the day traveling, water had slowly washed into my bed from the tiny cracks in the window. I pulled the matress up to find the base area completely soaked with salt water... Grrrrrrr... I pulled the matress, and stood it up in the room, and turned off the humidifyer in the room to see if it would dry. Checked an hour later after everyone else went to bed, and it was still soaked. I then pulled the matress up to the outside open area, and attempted to dry it that way, while studying for the test.... I checked the matress at about 2:00 in the morning, and it started feeling dry in the middle, but slighly wet on the outter area. The sheets and pillow cover were about dried out. A few minutes later, it started raining.. Grrrrr again... I brought the matress back into, and attempted to bring it back down to the room. While I was rotating it to go into the room, it had knocked open the cabinet that was propper closed holding the fire extinguisher and the life vest pack. I picked the life vest pack back up, and put it back in the closet on top of fire extinguisher, at which point, a piece of metal fell on the floor, and the next thing I knew, the fire extinguisher discharged, and yellow smoke and powder went everywhere. GOOD GOD!!!! No broom/mop, I had to get several pieces of paper tower, and found wet ones didn't work better, and spend the next 40 mninutes cleaning up that mess... Finally was able to get to sleep at about 3:30 ish... My gosh.
Can't say next morning started off easy, I was pretty exhausted waking up.. I woke up to the sound of something crashing... Heard from the galley that someone dropped the carton of eggs on the ground. We lost an 18 pack of eggs, was able to salvage 3 of them, I think. Since we were making scrambled eggs every day, the 3 that we salvaged, we were able to make small breakfast... Test again at 9, these 50 question test must of been the hardest test, as so many questions were so far out of my league. Ended up getting an 86 on it, which was passing(80%). Everyone else scored high 90's on it, and even 2 students got 100%... Grrrrrr, must of been sleep deprevation... lol After cleaning everything up, and preparing to make sail again, we were ready to head back to home port. We had reports of winds of 20 to 30 mph coming from the east, which meant the ocean water off the coast of Miami, heading up to Ft Lauderdale would be bumpy again. I started taking motion sickness pills hoping they would help with the rough seas. Once we got to the last ouuter channel from miami, we could see the sea was pretty crazy. Once out on the sea, it was pretty rough, waves were up to 10 to 15 feet high, and the catamaran was doing a lot of dropping off of waves from time to time. The only comfortable place to be seemed to be the captains seat. We all tried to lay down and close our eyes, or try to hold position, as the boat was rocking like crazy. I remember at one point, one of the students rocked so bad they fell on another sleeping student, and she wasn't happy, but the rocking was that incredibly insane! Once me made it into the Ft Lauderdale channel, the ride got smooth, and we all got our second wave, as we slowly worked out way back into the port. Only last crazy thing that happened, the instructor kayak had become loose, and blew off the boat was we got to the last overhead bridge. Fortunately, another boat behind us was able to stop and pick it up, and bring it up to us. Once in the port, we plugged back into power, everyone took a "hot" shower, and I ran out to get us pizza for dinner. Now that we were in port, was easier to study, and got to sleep at a better hour.
Final morning, had out last 100 question test. 2nd hardest test, and I thnk I finally scored a 96 on it. Some chart navigation stuff, which was a lot of fun, and I realized I messed up twice along the way.. Ughhhh, but was able to figure it out both times with just a little bit of common thinking.. After cleaning things up, the school wanted us to throw all our bedding into the bed covers, and leave it up on the main galley area. We emptied all our suplies out of the boat, refilled it with water, and packed the car with all our stuff and headed out.
We had booked a hotel in Naples for the last few days of our stay(Chris and I). We made the 2 and a half hour drive across aligator alley, and got to the hotel. The days were pretty warm, but the evening's to watch the sun sets, and relax for dinner outside on the patio areas was awesome! I did like the beaches MUCH better on the west side of Florida, the sand was better, the water clearer, and the unsets intense. We even hit a bar area one night, where a catamaran had anchored off shore, and dingy'd into a bar area where everyone was chatting and having a great time. The energy was amazing.
Final day had come, I needed to be at Orlando airport for my flight at 2, and Chris had to be at Ft Lauderdale for his flight at noon. I had a 3 hour drive to get to Orlando, so I started out at about 9.... GPS and drive was doing fine. As I got to within an hour of the airport, GPS started turning up the time on me, saying it would be an hour, then an hour and 15, and then an hour and 30 minutes... wtf.... A few accidents had happened during the drive that slowed me down... I should have gotten there at 11:45... As I got close, I managed to hit the tollway. However, the tollway did not accept credit cards, and I didn't have any cash on me. Grrrrrrrr, So I got a citation/ticket that I had insufficient funds, and had to get off at the next exit(I didn't know about next exit, but airport was at the next exit). I had 1 week to mail in the 2 dollars and seventy five cents I owed for the toll. When I got to the airport, the line to return the rental car was nuts, and extended way outside of the parking areas.... Took about 30 minutes to get into the rental area. Once I got car checked in, headed to the baggage checkin. Another long line, about 30 minutes to get it checked in.... Security check, at least 35 minutes... My gosh.. Finally made it to my gate at about 1:15 ish, so not bad... The flight to Denver was awesome.. I had paid for an upgraded seat to emergency exit row. When the closed the cabin door, no one else was in the extra seats. The captain of plane said we were going to have tail winds, and we would arrive 30 minutes earlier. No biggie, but was great to stretch out over 3 chairs and watch a movie on the laptop.. They came by with several soda's, pretzels, and water... Given the situtation too, I was more relaxed as well, and no one gave me any grief.... Now the flight from denver to the springs, which was only 15 minutes, good grief. I got to my window seat, and a few minutes later, the person sitting next to me, took out a bunch of alcohol wipes, and went to town wiping everything from the food tray, to the metal rods on the seat, to the cushions themselves... The whole area smelled like rubbing alcohol.... So glad that was NOT the flight from Florida... Got to colorado springs, and was grateful to get some fresh air.
A month later, got the stickers for my ASA Sailing log book. Still don't know how to apply them, but looking forward to getting some more time in the book!!!!