18 Apr 13

Up early for a 40 mile run to Boca Grande. The forecast was E - SE, so we decided to go outside. After we rendezvoused with Sam and Pat and collected our dink, we headed out to sea about 09:00. Unfortunately, after we got out of the Venice Inlet and got the sail up, the wind went almost immediately to SE, then SSE (i.e., right on the nose), so we only sailed for about 30 minutes. We got into Boca Grande Inlet at the west end of Charlotte Harbor, about 15:00 and then got the hook down just to the SW of Useppa Island. We anchored in 10 feet of water with 80 ft of chain (way more than necessary, but the wind is still howling, S 15 - 20), hooked up the chain snubber and the anchor-riding sail; noticed that the other boats in the anchorage were yawing +/- 35 or 40 degrees, while we are parked with virtually no movement. We had burgers for dinner aboard “Longhawk”. Nice to spend another night on the hook; we have to get our “anchored or moored” / marina ratio greater than 1.0 pretty soon or we are going to go broke sooner than expected. The snubber and anchor-riding sail worked brilliantly. We had 15+ knots all night long, but no yawing, no griping from the rode or snubber lines; just blissful, uninterrupted, quiet sleep.