Day Two of the Journey North

 Smoother day than yesterday 
  
 Hello Friends! 
 Day two was much easier.  We motor sailed for the first 
 half of the day and sailed for the second half. 
 We had partly cloudy skies with random pop up thunderstorms 
 Waves in the channel were 2-4 feet and the winds were 
 15-10 also off our starboard beam. 
 As the route around the keys turns more northerly we were 
 finally able to just sail close hauled.  We made between 
 6-9 knots and hit a maximum speed of 9.2 knots in 21 knots 
 of wind close hauled rails in the water! We spent much of 
 the day in this heeled over configuration. 
  
 We left Rodriguez Key around 10am after a breakfast of 
 eggs and toast.  Around 11:30 or so we ran into our first 
 little microburst.  Winds picked up to 40 knots and the driving 
 rain mixed with the see spray and pelted us until we were 
 soaked to the bone with salt water again. (two days in a row) 
 It is interesting how the waves calm down in the center 
 of a storm.  We were hit by 2 other small showers during 
 the course of the day but mostly they missed us.  We did. 
 seed a tornado forming under one of the storms on land. 
  
 Lunch was PBJ and dinner is fried burritos which we are 
 eating now.  Later tonight we will be cleaning up the 
 cabin sole.  The salt water has made it so slick and 
 it never want's to dry out. (because of the salt) 
  
 Around 5pm I heard a bump!! We were all pretty freaked out. 
 as we looked at the chart plotter we saw a shoal right on 
 the edge of the channel.  It was not marked on the navionics 
 charts unless you zoomed in really close! It's a tiny shoal 
 that rises about 10 feet in about a 10 meter area. 
 We draw 5.5ft and we hit on the bottom of the swell. 
 My depth gauge clocked it at 7ft.  As far as I can tell 
 no damage was done with our full keel and we didn't hit 
 very hard. 
  
 After we anchored the boat next to us moved about 200 yards 
 farther away. There was plenty of room but I hope we didn't 
 offend them or something. We were easily 100 yards away from 
 them. 
  
 Bye for now.