Ah, to spend your birthday on a remote island in the keys, wouldn’t that be nice! That was our plan to celebrate my 29th birthday on January 25th.
As we prepped the boat to leave for a long weekend, we discovered the starboard engine would not fire up. She cranked, slowly and sadly, but didn’t seem to have enough umph to start. 😫
Birthday Deadline
The next morning, on my actual birthday, I set a deadline of 11:30am. If we couldn’t get the engine started by then, we’d just jump in the dinghy and go somewhere closer for the day.
After many prayers, and hours in the engine room, Will got her running! Yay! He’s so handy. 😍 We yanked up the mooring lines and headed to Boca Grande Key, about 15 miles west of Key West.
Beautiful Boca Grande Key
The ride out was really nice, minus the lobster traps, which caused us to constantly disengage the autopilot. Less than 3 hours later, we arrived and dropped anchor.
Before the sunset, we dinghied over to the beach and took a stroll along the shore. It was our first time being off the boat while anchored, and I couldn’t help but keep looking over my shoulder to make sure RumHaven was still there! (newbies).
Our First SUCCESSFUL Night at Anchor
We had a lovely sunset and a beautiful evening with SO MANY STARS 🤩. It was amazing to see how many stars are in the sky when you get far enough away from civilization. We could actually see the “glow” of Key West in the distance.
The night was uneventful, thankfully. That’s not to say I wasn’t up every few hours checking our swing pattern on the Navionics chart that we kept by the bed. Man, our boat has a massive swing span!
Uneventful, until…
We enjoyed a nice day at Boca Grande Key Beach and checked out the nearby shipwreck, then got ready to head back to Key West in the afternoon. As you guessed it, the freaking starboard engine would not start, again! Argh, like dude, we just ran you yesterday and you were fine!
After a few failed attempts at remedying the issue, we decided to limp back to Key West on one engine. The ride back was pretty smooth, and we were thankful to have the autopilot keep us on course with just the port engine running.
Back in Key West
We arrived in Key West just as all of the sunset cruises were out and about, but it made for an epic arrival and ending to a great birthday weekend. (See video below!)
What was the problem with our starboard engine? Well, we chased the problem for another 6 weeks! Will is going to cover this in detail in a separate technical video, coming soon.
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