Another report from Florida

The weather here has been really miserable: hot and very humid. We had a little break with drier air and cooler breezes before Mom left, and that lingered a couple of days, but then the wind changed direction and the humidity went up. The locals say this isn’t normal, even for the summer because normally it rains, and it hasn’t really done that. If you haven’t heard, there are fires in the Everglades, and South Florida is on draught restrictions which limit watering of lawns and gardens.

We rented a car again for the weekend so that we could drive to the Tampa area and visit our friend Ginny. John worked with Ginny at American Express in Phoenix, and she was the one who convinced their boss to hire a technical writer – my first gig. We enjoyed hanging out in Ginny’s nice air-conditioned home, watching her big screen TV, and doing laundry for free, all quite luxurious for cruisers. The photo is of Ginny and her beautiful German shepherd, Beowulf.

Now we’re back on the boat working on projects while we await the repair of our radio. The manufacturer was looking at it late yesterday afternoon, and it’s on the top of their list for repairs. We still haven’t heard what the problem is or how long it will take to get it back, but we’re assuming that we’ll be here through the weekend. Once we get the radio back, we’ll check the weather forecasts for departure.

We do have friends here. Greg and Kathy on Indigo are at the marina just a few bridges up the river from us. (They’re the people we met in Key West who lived in Amsterdam for so many years.) We’ve gotten together with them a few times and plan to have them over for dinner before we leave. I hope we’ll see them more than that, but Solstice isn’t in any condition for company right now. All the provisions we’ve been buying are still out because we haven’t rigged the storage areas yet to put them away. Once we’re ready to stow things, it should go pretty fast. That should happen today or tomorrow.

At work and play in FL

Mom, Uncle Dick, and me

Hard to believe that we’ve already been here for more than 10 days! We had fun when Mom visited for a couple of days. We drove the car down Las Olas Boulevard, the local shopping street, all the way to the beach. On Tuesday Uncle Dick drove over from Marco Island and took us all to lunch. He could only stay a couple of hours, but it was good to see him. Then Mom and I made a run to Costco and stocked up on non-perishables. That evening we drove over to the beach again for an excellent dinner at a restaurant called Greek Islands.

Mom’s visit ended all too quickly, and we’re back to work in earnest. We’ve made progress on our long list of things to take care of, but we aren’t going to be able to leave here on the 20^th as we had hoped. Our SSB radio quit working as we entered Port Everglades. We couldn’t get anyone out to look at it until yesterday, and the news isn’t good. Whatever is wrong with it is something they can’t fix, and they have to send it to the manufacturer for repair. We don’t know how long that will take, but we’re certain that a Tuesday departure is out. We’re still hoping to be able to leave next week, though.

Riverwalk, Fort Lauderdale

Yesterday we rented a car and went to Miami to pick up the 112 pounds of stuff that we had had shipped to our address at USABox.com. Although they charge a pick-up fee, we still saved enough to pay for the car rental. A bonus was that we got to meet the owners’ son, Carlos, who seems to manage the place. We had been thinking about changing mail-forwarding services, but after talking with him, I think we’ll stay put. It’s a hassle to change addresses, and it turns out that USABox.com offers more services than are apparent from their website.

Among the mundane items we’d ordered were a couple of more exciting things: John’s new camera and my new wireless antenna. John’s camera survived a salt-water dunking on the west coast of Vancouver Island, but lately it’s been going haywire. It’s been making him crazy, so the new camera is what we got with the economic incentive rebate (which we haven’t yet received), putting us firmly in the minority (as usual) of people who are spending the money. It’s a Japanese camera, but we used a U.S. retailer and our Bank of America credit card for the transaction, so we hope it helped.

SE 3rd Avenue Bridge

This photo is of a sailboat coming through the bridge that we didn’t have to go through. It is very pretty here. The area is called the Riverwalk, and although there isn’t much right on the river, we’re only a bridge and a block from Las Olas Boulevard, which seems to be the happening place here.

Arrived in Fort Lauderdale

Wow, this sure isn’t what we’re used to. None of the traffic we saw on the Pacific coast prepared us for Fort Lauderdale traffic. It isn’t the commercial traffic so much—there was more of that near Miami and all through the Straits of Florida

We arrived in Fort Lauderdale at 3:05 p.m. I remember because that’s when we got to the bascule bridge at the 17^th Street Causeway, or something like that. The chart says the clearance is 16.7 meters, or 58 feet to us. Our height is about 62 feet, so we had to wait. The bridge opens on the half hour, so our timing was about as bad as it could be. With powerboats and motor yachts maneuvering around us, we did a U-turn to get out of the way. Then John took over the helm and we waited. One sailboat yelled (with hand signals) that the clearance was 55 feet; I yelled back (also with hand signals) that we needed 65. A couple of other sailboats came up behind us and were obviously waiting too. One signaled us to go first when the bridge finally opened, so we proceeded, despite not knowing exactly where we were going.

Our plan was to take a mooring buoy for a few days and save about $20/day. Orinoco is on a mooring, and we spotted her from the channel. A couple of buoys looked empty near her (and everything is near her because it’s a very small mooring field!), so we slowly headed for one. I was at the helm and aimed right at the ball, and then I looked again at the gauges and saw that we weren’t moving. We were grounded about 50 feet from the mooring (shades of trying to get into Sam’s at Tiburon at low tide). One of the other boats who had followed us through the bridge was also headed for the moorings, and they yelled for us to pick one. I yelled back that we were aground. John took the helm and backed us off as they proceeded. As we angled for a different buoy, we watched them ground lightly, and then they yelled that their draft was a half a foot less than ours, and it was still too shallow. About then a dock master’s skiff came by, and we asked them for advice. Their reply was essentially “go for it if you think you can do it; we don’t really know.”

Nice with lots of yelling. I got on the radio to the dock master at the New River Docks, another city facility, to see if they had room for us. While I was awaiting an answer, I heard the other boat, Heart of Texas, arranging to dock at the marina across the way. I’d studied the rates, and they were twice those at New River—too rich for us. When the dock master came back trying to get us into Las Olas, I said, no, thank you, please do you have room at New River or Cooley Landing? After confirming our length, draft, and beam, he said he could fit us in. Whew!

So we meandered our way up the river. I thought from the maps that New River was on the other side of another bascule bridge, and part of it is, but fortunately for us, our spot is before the bridge. It’s fortunate because the bridge doesn’t open during rush hour, and it was rush hour by the time we got there.

Docking was challenging, and John did a great job. First, we had to move our lines from starboard to port. The dock master had said we could dock on either side, and we prefer starboard, but when we saw the spot (it isn’t a slip but just a side tie to the wall), we knew we needed to do a port tie. So John quickly moved all the lines that I’d set up—and fenders too—and then took the helm. I’m pretty good at throwing lines, and I started trying to catch a cleat when we were pretty far out still. Some guy on shore was watching. I was in my bikini top and shorts. As I kept missing and he kept watching, I almost yelled to him to come and catch a line for a better view. Then, just as I caught a cleat, a nice, different guy came to help. It turned out that he (Pete) was from the other sailboat, Superior Grace, a couple of spots up. He and his wife Sue are from Ontario and they’re having their boat shipped to Anacortes because they’re headed for B.C. Boy, have we got some charts and guides for them!

Long story marginally shorter, we’re here now, and despite the temptation to try the moorings at high tide, we aren’t eager to negotiate the narrow channel here more times than absolutely necessary, so we’re going to stay. Thanks to Pete and Sue, we’ve found the grocery store and a nice restaurant/pub. Tomorrow night we’re going to meet Pete and Sue at the pub for two-for-one appetizers and regale them with B.C. stories, followed by a slide show on Solstice. It’s also nice to have Internet again on the boat, although my connection is still marginal until I get my new antenna. This seems like a convenient location, and I, for one, am looking forward to getting to know the area.

Anchored off Key Biscayne

We left Key West yesterday morning and hoped to make it to Fort Lauderdale by this evening, but the southeasterly wind that was forecast didn't arise, so we had wind on the nose and made very slow progress all day yesterday and last night. Finally, today we got into the Gulf Stream a bit and increased our speed, but it still wasn't enough to make it to Fort Lauderdale before dark, so we'll finish the trip tomorrow.

We'll be meeting up again with Jim on Orinoco, who is already there on a mooring. Indigo was planning to leave Key West today for Fort Lauderdale, so we hope to see Greg and Kathy again too. We exchanged cell phone numbers with them to make it easier to connect.

Key West Idyll

We’ve always enjoyed this place. Saturday we made what we intended to be a short trip into town and ended up staying all day. We celebrated our return to the USA with peel-and-eat shrimp and Pinot Grigio at Turtle Kraals, something of a Key West tradition for us. Part of the tradition is for John to call his sister Jenice and gloat about dining al fresco while she’s suffering whatever weather Oregon is dishing up in April. This time she wasn’t suffering at all; she was skiing and having a good time herself.

Despite long, wet dinghy rides to shore, we’re reluctant to leave here quickly. We really like Key West. There was a weather window yesterday to head north, but we decided to wait for the next one. It's less expensive for us to be on a mooring buoy here than to anchor out legally in Fort Lauderdale, but it’s probably less expensive to buy stuff in Fort Lauderdale. So we’re buying stuff online while we’re staying here and, after the first day of being tourists, we’re eating on the boat.

We’re finding it easier to go to the downtown dinghy dock than to the one that’s free with our mooring fees here at Garrison Bight. For one major thing, we haven’t found free wireless around Garrison Bight. The Pelican case we bought a year ago for the laptop is finally being used seriously when we take the computer to shore. We’re even using the dry bag to keep the rest of our stuff dry. Except for the return trip on Sunday, John and I are only getting splashes that require a rinse of the glasses to get the salt off. Sunday evening, I had to rinse the salt out of our shorts too.

We met an interesting woman Sunday at West Marine. Kathy (K or C, I don’t know) and her husband, Greg, recently bought a Cabo Rico 42 to begin their cruising life. Previously they’ve lived all over the world with Greg’s job, lastly in Singapore but also fairly recently in The Netherlands. In fact, they have dual citizenship (The Netherlands and US) and both speak a little Dutch. We stopped by their boat, Indigo, yesterday for a visit on our way back to Solstice. We had a nice visit and borreltjes. John really liked them and I think we’ll try to see them again before we leave. When we met Kathy, they didn’t know which way they were heading. Now they’ve decided to head up to the Chesapeake, so maybe we’ll see them again in Fort Lauderdale.

I updated our mileage log this morning and have a few more statistics. Panama City, Panama, is still the furthest east we’ve been by a couple of degrees. Our rhumbline from Isla Mujeres to Key West was 370 nautical miles (nm), but our actual track shows we traveled 485. You should see it. It’s quite the zigzag. That explains why it took a day longer than we thought it should.

Crossing the Gulf Stream

Sailing from the tip of the Yucatan peninsula to Key West was four days of sailing to wind. Most of the time we tried to stay 30 to 35 degrees off the wind. Think of tacking back and forth in August between Sausalito and Marine Park for four days with each tack lasting 12 hours. At times we had 25 knot winds and it was tough to sleep. Even Marzen appears to be sleep deprived.

Last night we crossed the Gulf Stream. The wind from the NE and an opposite current. There was some big waves. I finally gave up on the autopilot and started to hand steer to try and lessen the impact of the waves. I swear we'd hit a 20' wave square on and the front half of the boat would be free falling off the back of the wave. It was awesome, loud, wet, and created a lot of adrenaline. I have a whole lot of respect for the Gulf Stream now.

The upside of four days head on to the wind is that nothing major broke and it pointed out improvements that should be made prior to crossing the Atlantic. It was in every sense a real shake down cruise.

Thump, thump, crash... Repeat.

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