Catching up

Wednesday, November 7 - Our trip down the east coast of Florida has been a delight, and if you're wondering why you haven't heard from me, it's because I've been enjoying the sights, the beautiful weather, clear blue skies, dolphins frolicking alongside the boat, and an occasional manatee sighting. Now we're approaching Miami Beach. Here's a brief synopsis of the past few days:

On Saturday we traveled the ICW from St. Augustine to Daytona Beach, where we anchored for the night. Sunday and Monday nights we docked at Melbourne Harbor Marina, where we rented a car and drove up to the Kennedy Space Center for the day. The three of us agreed that it was fascinating and well worth the visit.

En route to the Space Center, we traveled over a bridge that we had traveled under the previous day, which is notable because our antenna went plink plink plink as it hit the support beams of the bridge going through. 

We've been traveling on and off with another Island Packet, Gigi, and together we've braved the bridges, sometimes taking turns at being the first to pass under. We've had some very close calls, including one yesterday where we backed under in order to extricate ourselves more easily if it looked like the anemometer would hit. The flexible antenna of about 18" bent in half as it hit the support beams, but the anemometer was clear.

If you're getting sick of hearing about bridges, imagine how sick we are of passing under them.

We've been able to have the genoa (one of the sails) up quite a bit in the ICW. Gary is a very experienced sailor, and by his account, 99% of his experience has been racing. It doesn't matter that there's no one to race with; he's like a race horse who just has to do what he was bred to do, so if the sail is up, he is constantly trimming it to maximize speed. I told him we would have been in Punta Gorda weeks ago if he had been with us the whole trip. It's been fun having him aboard.

Yesterday we left the confines of the ICW for the blue waters of the Atlantic so we could fly our spinnaker and avoid a multitude of bridges.

Surprisingly, there are very few safe inlets for passing between the ICW and the ocean because of shoaling and other hazards, and we would have gone outside sooner had there been the opportunity. We didn't have a lot of wind, but definitely made the most of what we had. It was much more pleasant than our day out last week.

As much as I like to sleep with a little wave action, last night's anchorage (in the ocean, about half a mile off Jupiter Island beach) wasn't much fun. There was way too much rolling with the waves hitting us from the side, and that made dinner preparation a worse chore than normal, even though I only needed to heat things up. Sleep was another challenge, and I don't think the three of us got a combined total of eight hours. We decided not to fight it and got under way at about 3:30; Gary and I were able to go down and catch a few more hours of sleep.

It's 1:40 p.m. and we just docked at South Beach, so please excuse me while I grab my bikini...

HUH?

WHAT THE...?