Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Before weighing anchor or leaving the mooring ball while on passage, we always check the fuel and oil to make sure we have enough and/or topped off. When I checked this morning, the oil was a third of the way above the low level line on the dip stick. While this isn’t good, it’s not bad. It meant that we were burning oil way faster than we expected to be.
We weighed anchor around 7:30 a.m. It was another hot day. This meant it was time for us to put the shade up. We had bought a canvas drop cloth from Harbor Freight to use as a temporary shade. However wee were having issues just lashing it down and getting it to stay high enough for us to stand under. We still had the frame for the old dodger so we put that up and recreated what was there before. After some frustration, it was worth it. Now we could both have free reign of the cockpit area without having to trade places in the shade. This significantly helped our spirits and our energy.
We finally got past the areas of the ICW that we were already familiar with and started passing areas that we only knew by land or had heard about. We started getting jealous about all the places we hadn’t explored, but that just means we need to go back.
By 8:00 p.m., we anchored in Jensen Beach, just south of the bridge in Stuart. As we anchored, we noticed that we were spilling out a good sheen and the oil pressure had dropped. Not good.
65 miles/12.5 hours
