What a week it has been! We arrived back at the boat around midnight on Tuesday, Dec 4. We were very pleasantly surprised to find the boat in really good condition after it had sat for 5-6 weeks. We spent the next few days buying tons of food and provisions, organizing, cleaning and just getting the boat ready. We found a little time to decorate for Christmas too. How cute is our little Christmas tree! It was a goodbye gift from the nicest people at the St. Augustine Marina -Jim and Jan. It is just the right size for our boat.
Then there are our Christmas lights. The cute little tree lit up in the galley, and then the party lights we already had up work well for Christmas time. Aren't we festive?
We decided we were ready to go and get on with this plan on Saturday, Dec. 8. We left at 2 pm and headed out to the ocean and went south. The plan: to work our way down the Florida coast to get to the right spot to leave for the Bahamas. We have to cross the gulf stream and since it has a strong north current, you have to start south when going to the Bahamas. It will take at least 3-5 days to get down to Biscayne Bay which is where we want to be to head for the gulf crossing. We decided that we would go out in the ocean so we could go day and night and try to just get the long trip over with. We now have our new record of 60 hours straight we spent out on the ocean. At night, we did night watches in 3 -3 hour shifts; Paul and I would trade off and each have one of the kids rotate the watches with us so we always had 2 people up and watching. It went well and the kids have been a lot of help. The weather has not been helping us make very good time, however, we have had a south wind much of the time which has slowed us down. By Monday morning, the wind was really strong and we were going straight into it, and it was getting old! We tried tacking at angles but still didn't make much progress. Then, by Monday afternoon, the waves got a lot bigger so we were really rocking around, and we had some lightning and a bit of rain. Yes, our favorite. We decided that it might be a good idea to come into the next inlet, and anchor a night and see if the intracoastal waterway (ICW) might be a better option. The next inlet was pretty far, and with our slow progress, we didn't get to Ft. Pierce and anchor until 2 am (Tues. morning). Luckily, the anchor went in easy and we got some good sleep and some relief from the major swaying. That was nice. Tuesday, the forecast was still for some strong south winds and some occas. thunderstorms, so we stayed on the ICW all day today. That was a good move we think. It has good and bad points. It was a nice break from the swaying because it is very calm, and we made better time too, but it is a pain at times to have to keep such a close watch on the shallower waters and to have to wait for draw bridges to open for us often. We made it to North Palm beach this evening and are anchored here. It doesn't really work to go down the ICW when it is dark. But now I am glad we decided to anchor and not to go out on the ocean tonight, because soon after we anchored here, it started pouring and it has been pouring and tons of lightning the past couple of hours. I am very glad I am here and not going through this storm out in the ocean right now.
Anyway, it has been a pretty exhausting few days. We keep just trying to think about how nice it will be when we get to the Bahamas, and I am trying to learn to be patient. I can't control the weather and some of the other boat issues we encounter, so we are just plugging along. Some of this stuff is very challenging but I know it is good for me. Learning to do new things is good for me right? Like trying to anchor in the dark (done it twice now), trying to navigate in the dark or in stormy weather, making dinner while the boat is totally swaying like crazy- wish I had a picture of that, it was probably petty entertaining to watch, etc. Anyway, we know that this adventure is a lot of hard work, and just hope we can learn and grow as we go through it. :)
OK, so I will end with the positive. Yes, there are some real challenges to this, but there are some amazingly cool things too. Like this. Sunday afternoon, we had calm seas and sunshine and were loving it and then, the coolest thing happened. We see dolphins really often, but usually they don't come super close to us but we had 4 dolphins come right up to us and swim with our boat for a few minutes- right at the bow. It was the VERY coolest thing! I even got it videoed but it is not loading with our slow internet connection right now. Hopefully I can add it in later. I'm just feeling lucky to get any internet connection I can right now out in this anchorage in the middle of a storm, but it is a little slow. Anyway, today, we saw lots of dolphins on the ICW too and they came close too. That was fun.
So we have another day or so until we get to Biscayne Bay -depending on the weather. We will see how it goes. Then we will watch for the right weather for the big crossing.
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