Monday, January 30: Still at Barnes Sound

We checked the weather, again. For the hundredth time in the last few days. NOAA with it's graphical forecasts is our favorite place but we also use www.weather.com for the radar weather maps. This is what it looked like for the wave heights for today. Good thing we aren't on the ocean side!! The second picture shows the winds - strength and direction. Our nice anchorage is very well protected from the NE and it's a good thing.

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The sunset last night was again wonderful. I am reminded time and again why it is that we choose to do what we are doing.There were still lots of dark, ugly clouds rolling around but apparently weren't doing much harm other than some rain.

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It was a late dinner last night with Steve cooking cod on the grill. He tried his hand at catching something fresh but there wasn't much cooperation on the part of the fish! And of course he was up early again catching the rising sun. Me - I slept in until 8:45 - what a treat! After all it would be a day of relaxing, right??

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Wrong :-) Steve decided this would be a perfect day for sanding and refinishing the teak railings that hadn't had any attention since he broke his arm last August. And I got sucked into helping since it's hard to lay around and do nothing when I can hear him out working. So I helped paint the cetol finish.

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There was some time for fishing again today but nothing that was eating size. Lots of grunts. See the video below for what they look and sound like!

Banana Bay is a short 70 miles yet so we'll go 35 tomorrow and then arrive at our place for the next two months on Wednesday. It'll be good to be tied up again :-)

Sunday, January 29: At Anchor in Barnes Sound

The plan for today: get up early so we could get across Biscayne Bay before the giant winds come tomorrow! All went well - more bridges to time - and we soon left Fort Lauderdale in the distance. Two bridges left and our GPS arrival time at the bridge was right on 8:15. Oh no - a no wake zone :-( Now our arrival at the bridge in question (according to the GPS) was 8:20. The bridge opened at 8:15 and then again at 8:45. Sadly it looked as though we weren't going to make it. Once out of the no wake zone we hit our blazing high speed of 8.5 mph and just made it on time!! YEA!! Only one more bridge and it was on demand (so you can go through anytime you want) - except there was a marathon this morning and guess which bridge everyone was running over. Right you are - so we dropped the anchor by the bridge and waited for about 50 minutes. Oh well - made us think of Matt and Rebecca! Headquarters for the marathon appeared to be in the park right downtown but we really couldn't spot the finish line.

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Goodbye Miami and Hello Biscayne Bay! What a difference in travel between downtown Ft. Lauderdale and Miami and the openness of the Bay. Looking back at Miami always puts how far we have come in perspective as we move slowly along.

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There is little wind (our front burgee wasn't hardly moving as we headed to the south end of the bay. Finally - the blue, clear waters of the Keys. The clouds all around continued to look threatening and it was easy to see the rain in the distance. Steve decided his job for today would be to clean all of the snaps and put zipper lubricant on the flybridge plastic. We felt quite sure we would be needing it tomorrow if not today. Note the use of the right arm!!! He continues faithfully do his exercises and it shows.

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The anchorage for tonight is about as protected as you can get around here. The chart shows where we are - tucked nicely into the little corner that will protect us from the predicted 20 mph winds that are supposed to start tonight and blow for the next 2 or 3 days. We may just stay here for a couple of days. Good news was the generator started!!! Steve suggested that perhaps because the engine compartment was quite hot that maybe the generator would start as it would be hot also. So all of the work on the solenoid paid off .. but we will still address the issue when we reach Marathon.

Saturday January 28: Hollywood, FL

Left Nettles Island yesterday morning bright an early to get a jump on the storms rolling through the coast and it would have worked but we just couldn't go fast enough! Fortunately we were able to make it past the most open places (Lake Worth Inlet and St. Lucie Inlet) before we started seeing what definitely looked like rain clouds. And we just kind of continued watching as the clouds seemed to be destined to descent upon us. Steve was in the cabin watching the storms path on weather.com so we sort of knew when and where it was. Fortunately, it was just rain - no thunder or lightening. The rain lasted maybe 1/2 hour and then passed by us.

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We ended up staying at Delray Beach for the night. A dock + electric for a bargain price of $60. Many places along the 'gold coast' would be $80+ for our boat. But it was a nice place to stay. Steve took a short walk around (it was getting dark so we didn't want to ride our bikes) and decided he had found Los Angeles East! Really. Just like LA. Interesting. This place is the land of mega houses and mega yachts with the occasional holdout living in a normal sized place on the water.

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Pictures of some of the more interesting yachts:

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The real game of today was the timing of the bridges. Going north we skipped to the outside rather than do all of the bridges. Too bad we couldn't do that today! We lost about 1 1/2 hours yesterday waiting for bridges even though we knew where they were and when they opened (some on the hour/half hour, some on the quarter after and quarter 'til the hour, some every 20 minutes. It is a mystery to me how they determined the schedule! Anyway, just a few more of them tomorrow and that's it.f a;seiow;m oi kfskskdth is tihe tohioaiwnt that makes ithsi leaedoi soiea oieoaps ioaei adjfoeiapasjfoea,.

Joe's Tiki Bar is our home for tonight. This is where we left the boat for a month last April so we sort of felt like we were actually coming home! Off for a ride on the boardwalk (our favorite place in FL) and then on to the pier so Steve could check out the fishing.

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Best shots for today: a relatively small yacht with a helicopter and the very cute (and friendly) rabbit a lady was pushing around in a little stroller. Interesting ......

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Tomorrow: the plan is to get across Biscayne Bay before the REALLY strong winds on Monday are scheduled to roll through the area. Actually, they are scheduled to stay for 3 or 4 days so it's go now or sit for 4 days. We'll leave a first light :-)

Thursday January 26: Nettle's Island

Sunrise .... again. I keep thinking that one of these days we'll sleep in! Of course it is still getting dark so early that by the time 9:30 or so rolls around, it seems like it must be bedtime!The night was peaceful enough even though the wind picked up and made for a bouncier night than last night. Lifted the anchor and we were off by 7:15. ggggggggggggg ggggggggggggggggggggggggg ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg gggggggggggggggggggggggggg gggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg gggggggggggggggggg ggggggggggg gggggggggggggggggggg ggggggggggggggg ggggggggggggggggg

But what a day of crazy winds! Even though it was 80 degrees, the plastic was up on the flybridge all day just to break the wind. Part of the trouble is we are traveling INTO the wind at 8 mph so a wind from the south at 15 mph turns into a 23 mph wind as we travel. Other than that, still a nice day. The shoals are easily visible as we pass by them (fortunately not over them :-)) and the blue water as we neared the Ft. Pierce inlet was great to see. Many dolphins around and diving pelicans to watch as we move south. And even though this is inland some of the areas are large enough to produce crazy rough water even though it doesn't really look like it in the pictures. We took spray over the flybridge so that tells me it's a bit rough!

Off tomorrow for - not sure. Depends on the winds and weather but we'll get an early start again. If it rains as predicted we may not travel too far.

Wednesday January 25: Anchored off of Serenity Island

The fair weather gods must be smiling on the east coast of Florida. It was another wonderful day yesterday and again today. We've traveled about 225 miles since leaving Jacksonville on Saturday with all of the travel in at least a mixture of sun and clouds. Only ??? more to Marathon!

Given the opportunity, we'll always go out for breakfast - so yesterday morning - off we went. The security guard at the dock in Daytona pointed us to the Daytona Diner located about a mile down the street. Very nice place to ride with almost no traffic early on a Tuesday morning. Time to untie and go. Mmmmm.... sometimes it's harder to get the lines off than it is to get them on! Either one generally requires the use of the boat hook.

I asked Steve if there were any Rollo's in the freezer (my usual mid-morning pick me up) but alas there were none. But ever the inventor, Steve brought up celery with peanut butter and chocolate syrup on it! Edible but perhaps not the replacement for the Rollo :-)

Many fishing camps were located along the stretch of waterway yesterday. People having fun doing what they love - although I have to say I just don't get fishing, unless of course I'm catching something. So maybe if they called it catching instead of fishing I could get into it! One problem with these nice bright sunny days is trying to see the buoys if we are headed directly into the sun. Makes for cautious travel sometimes.

Last night we stayed in Titusville (near the Kennedy Space Center) and just picked up a mooring ball instead of going into the marina. By morning, the water was so calm it was crazy - and it stayed that way for the first couple of hours of travel today.

In for the night! Tonight we are anchored off of Serenity Island - and it for now is living up to it's name. My guess is that on weekends it's probably crazy with locals but for now all we see are dolphins and an osprey sitting in it's nest high in a tree on the island. With no generator, Steve isn't able to use the stove/oven to cook so out came his new crock pot! This is the 3rd time he's used it. It just sits nicely in the sink (so it won't get rocked off of the counter by passing boat wakes) and cooks away - powered by the inverter as we travel along. By the time we arrive at our destination for the evening, dinner is already cooked. What a great Christmas gift from Matt and Wendy :-)