This was our second day at sea and we continued sailing around Florida. What wouldn’t life be easy if we had a canal straight through Florida. Then you could do Tampa – Charleston in one night. No doubt there would be a bee line of cruise ships going in an out. New Orleans to Nassau in 36 hours; the cruise business would boom even more, just on that. At midnight we passed Miami and from there we followed the curve of the Florida Keys at a distance of about 10 to 12 miles. In principle it helps to get as close as possible to the Keys to avoid any remnant of the opposing Gulf Stream current. You might even get a counter current that helps you go faster.

However the Florida Keys are a marine sanctuary that extends up to 7 miles off the coast. This area should be avoided when possible. By staying 10 miles away, you always have three miles up the sleeve to make a course change to starboard in case of opposing traffic, fishermen or Sunday Sailors. Therefore I laid my courses that far out and just hoped that the Gulf Stream ran much further to the south. Yesterday morning the Gulf Stream was not following the predictions, this time it did. The ship even caught half a mile of counter current for awhile and that improved the speed. We were now starting to run ahead of schedule a little bit and that meant I could drop that engine that I had hoped not to use at all between Charleston and Tampa.

The marine sanctuary ends at the Dry Tortugas which are the final group of islands that form part of the Florida Keys. In the old days, before the sanctuary was established, you could cut through the Dry Tortugas and that would save you about 30 minutes. Now we go around taking the longer route. From the Dry Tortugas it was one straight course to the Tampa sea buoy where I wanted to be at 1 am. in the morning. It is a long way from the sea buoy to the dock in Tampa, so you want to be early. The pilot boards normally half way up the first channel about 10 miles to the East of the Sea buoy. Sometimes earlier if there is traffic, sometimes later, if it is bad weather and they need more of a lee. I have been coming to Tampa since 1983, so I do not mind wherever they board, the further in the better it is, as the sea is much calmer inside then outside on a windy day.

The Gulf Stream is partly fed by water coming out of the Gulf of Mexico but some of this water stays to the North of the Dry Tortugas and circulates back North towards the shore of Mississippi. It is not much but if you have had a few days of SE winds, then this current can reach a velocity of .5 to .75 of a mile and on 10 hours sailing can give another 15 minutes of travel time for free. This time it was doing exactly that and it all helped with the fuel consumption. Unfortunately you can not plan a cruise schedule on this as Mother Nature is not that predictable.

Now what does a captain do on a quiet sea day? He does paperwork, inspection rounds, he judges the “whatever floats my boat” contest and goes to bed at 7 pm. Inspections are not much liked by the crew as they mean more work but are of course necessary. As explained in an earlier blog, we have the standard rounds but there are also the Captains walk-abouts who are not pre-announced and have no pattern or focused plan. I just walk around and try to measure everything against the standards set by the company. Most of the time I come across small things that tend to fall by the way side, mainly because they are in that grey area of not directly being assigned to a specific department. Hotel thinks that it is Deck, Engine thinks it is not theirs, Deck thinks it is Hotel, etc. etc.. And yes quite often the issues that I pick up on involves more then one department and fall under nobodies direct and main responsibility. I notice these and then just assign them to one department to get it done.

Tomorrow more about the “float my boat contest” and why have to be in Tampa so early. Tonight I will be up at midnight when we start sailing into Tampa bay.