Miami Gets to Miami!

We are back to cruising! But better prepared than before.

The last bridge we made it through can be seen between the lights…

Last post we had made it out of the yard and just far enough down the New River to get caught between bridges in Ft Lauderdale 5 pm traffic where they shut down the bridges until 6. Instead of trying to find somewhere to anchor in the dark, we just stayed put, went out for a nice celebratory dinner, walked back to the boat and crashed…

Yesterday we were up early, and took advantage of water at the dock to thoroughly wash the boat. The boys took outside, the girl inside. We shut her up in there with closed hatches and scrubbed for two hours and two bottles of comet…

After the first hour, we checked on Shelly to find her singing away to her work music turned way up loud. She was really hot in the shut boat, so we turned on the air conditioning that works great with the newly repaired generator. Woohoo! A happy first mate makes for a happy boat for sure…

We 'bent' on (the old nautical term for installing) the newly repaired genoa on the just adjusted roller furling and it worked very nicely. After paying $20 more than the $30 we were quoted for the dock the night before ( sorry he was wrong when he quoted you that…) we got underway in threatening rain showers and overcast sky.

It felt great to be getting underway again, with the generator and engine seemingly running great.

It was a short 24 mile run to Miami but there are tons of bridges we had to go through. Then it started raining.

So the crew abandoned the capt and ran for cover. The capt actually had a good time in the rain, motor sailing in between all the bridges. We were actually sailing along at a steady 7 knots with the wind abeam for a very nice ride.

Nearing Miami the sun began to peek out and the crew was called to help steer. The first bridge we went under with Ryan steering we hit the top of the mast. The dumb navigator/capt did not read the fine print to see the bridge was a very unusually short one, and thank the heavens it was not a foot shorter or we would have crashed into the mast instead of just bending a wind indicator. Now we know exactly how tall our mast is!

There will be images soon from the top of the mast as repair crews are hoisted up 54.5 feet…

Goose seems to like the sailing except when we roll and there is lots of noise. Yea well me too Goose.

We anchored just inside of Key Biscayne about 2. The joy of being able to start the generator was short lived as the generator would not start.

Sometimes I think the universe wants to see just how much patience I really have.

It took replacing a fuel shutoff solenoid, finding and repairing a broken wire in the hi temp exhaust cutoff switch and the some sheer will to get it running again. (Knocking on wood) the generator has run great both times today.

It was Ryan's night to cook. He spent most of the afternoon making an awesome broccoli cheddar soup and Shelly helped him make bread bowls from scratch to serve it in the cockpit under a beautiful evening sky. Yum! This is what it is all about.

Then this morning after a conference call for paws4people on gotomeeting we put up the mizzen and the main and sailed off the anchor. Then out came the genoa and we were sailing along at 7 knots in about 15 knots of wind. Very nice! We sailed the four miles across Biscayne Bay to a Dinner Key/Coconut Grove to do laundry and wait out this next cold front.

So here we sit, having to decide what to do next, where to go and when to go. We are talking about heading over to Pennekamp National Park and doing some snorkeling on the reefs.