Splashdown and launch!

We arrived at the boat at 3am on the 29th, and have worked steadily since then to get her cleaned up and in the water. After changing all fuel filters and the oil, the engine starts and runs. The bilge pump is functioning. Alot of things are "frozen" but with application after application of WD-40 things are freeing up. The weather has been incomparably gorgeous - mid to high 70's and sunny with a light breeze and scattered clouds. We are SO happy to be out in the sun that the hard work and long walks to town to provision are a joy. We intend to leave the marina today and anchor in the Manatee Pocket as the lovely South Anchorage in Stuart is presently closed and won't re-open until January 15th. It's wonderful to be back in Florida, and in the sun for the first of the year.

On the road again

Here is the misty view from our lovely hotel room in beautiful downtown…Green Bay. I guess we are slow starters. Just a week ago or so, we had some sailor friends over to dinner. While discussing our last trip, Wayne observed that we experienced our first difficulties at Shot Point, about 10 miles from Marquette. One gentleman remarked, “You must mean Whitefish Point”. No. Shot Point. As the faithful may recall, this was the first time our brand-new diesel engine stalled due to a clogged fuel filter. We seem to be leading a parallel existence, as our first impossible barrier to forward progress occurred a mere 3-hour car ride from Marquette: the vortex of Green Bay. Never mind the confusion the night before leaving regarding whether or not Wayne had a reservation, followed by the discovery we were routed two different ways: by cosmic coincidence we were both re-booked through Green Bay (I had gone to the airport ostensibly to bring him home after his flight was cancelled) and put on a van to this Cheese Capital of the Midwest. We obtained a room at the downtown Holiday Inn on a dreary and foggy night, in the anticipation of a 6:30 am flight to Minneapolis followed by a first-class flight to Fort Lauderdale. Yes, we could not be re-booked to West Palm Beach in any way, shape, or form. But hey, we thought we would just figure it out from there. Who cares when you are in Florida? We set the alarm for 4:30 am, and drifted off to a blissful vision of palm trees and crashing ocean waves. Awakening was not difficult; given the exciting day we were to have. As a last-minute thought, I turned on the cell phone and discovered we had a message. I naively thought it was my daughter calling to tell me how much she loved me. Not a chance. It was a computer from Northwest Airlines telling us our 6:30 flight had been cancelled and we were re-booked the following evening at 6pm via Detroit, arriving in Fort Lauderdale on midnight the 28th. Cold shards of fear knifed into our otherwise sleepy and warmly optimistic little head clouds and straight down into our guts. We went to the airport anyway, hoping for a miracle. Any number of entreaties, wild plans, visions of renting a car and driving to Chicago, taking Amtrak, or taking a bus to Milwaukee disappeared into the oppressive fog as we slowly believed the word and the word was this: three days of holiday traffic and miserable weather in the Midwest has left hundreds of travelers stranded in Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis, and anywhere else we could get to from here. We were the last in a LONG line of sufferers. We were assured that our re-booking was secure, and having a confirmed reservation was about as good as gold at this point. The fog goggles were lifted from our eyes, and we finally noticed that our fellow travelers all had the classic UP “deer in the headlight” look. Wide, blankly staring eyes, red-rimmed and unbelieving were the norm among the other airport shufflers. Finally understanding the magnitude of the situation, we headed back to the lovely Holiday Inn City Centre, Green Bay. Tomorrow the Packers play the Lions in their final home game, and we will be in town to witness it. Hope Aaron Rodgers can see the end zone by then.

Southbound...I think....

Merry Christmas everyone! Ours was going quite well, getting organized, everything humming for our departure tomorrow. The lovely snowy scene you see is indeed Marquette, a great day on the Cross Country Ski trails. But the lure of the warm climates and warm waters is too great and we are heading down the ICW again...almost. Nothing is without some drama. I pulled up my reservations on Northwest Airlines' frequent flyer page and printed my boarding pass a scant hour or so ago. Not so for Wayne. I looked with every variable at my command, but could not find a reservation for him at NWA.com. No panic, these things happen. Knowing that he had booked the flight with a credit card reward program, we figured the credit card company could provide us with some kind of number with which we could extract his flight info and print out a boarding pass. No luck there either! The E-ticket number we were given produced absolutely no current reservations. The only thing left was to try Northwest again. Again, because with the overload of people being re-booked due to atmospheric conditions, our earlier attempt was rebuffed with the message, "our system is overloaded, try your call again later." Luckily, our "later" call went through and after about 15 minutes on hold we were able to speak with our saviour of the day, Josh. Josh was a really nice guy who seemed to understand what we were saying. He could not pick up Wayne's reservation with just a first and last name, we already knew Wayne's frequent flyer number wasn't going to do us any good, but when we arrived at the idea that (for other and incredibly silly reasons) Wayne's credit card had been reissued in a different number, we were a little bit stumped. But then Josh said..."did you get a bunch of schedule changes?" Well right off the bat, Josh and I were on the same page and while I checked Wayne's email (because in fact, he had) Josh was able to root around in the old Northwest Airlines computer and pull up Wayne's reservation after all. Hosanna in the highest! While Josh gave me numbers, I plugged them into the nwa.com webpage and, miracle of miracles, there was Wayne's reservation. Too bad he is flying out at a different time than me and has to connect first through Detroit and then through Newark. No matter, our vision of having to buy a $500 plane ticket to get Wayne to Palm Beach disappeared, and we are just happy enough that he has a boarding pass. You see, we still need to buy a functioning 8hp dinghy motor when we hit Nassau (yes, Claude, we have a propeller now for the Tohatsu). With a $500 plane ticket in the unexpected budget column, the nice new dinghy motor was fading fast. That, coupled with the economic downturn in general, would have resulted in a rather dreary Christmas. But no! By hook or by crook, no matter how, we WILL bloody get to Florida, pick up the boat, and float around in Stuart for as long as it takes to get a little suntan. The action never stops on this blog, so stay tuned, sports fans!

In the Hood

We are back in the gorgeous outback of Northern Michigan. Wayne is making art in his studio and I am selling jewelry on Saturday mornings. The children take up alot of our time, but it is well as we were away quite a bit. We have had winter (in April it was snowing), spring and a taste of summer. We went to a solistice party on the lovely beach of Marquette's Lakewood Lane this weekend, and the sun was high and full until 10PM. Gotta love it.

Homeward Bound

We left Nassau on a good weather window and sailed like crazy for two days across the banks, anchoring near the Northwest Channel Light the first day (in the middle of nowhere on the ocean, basically) and made it to Bimini the next day. After a day of recovery, we anchored out on the ocean side -which was supposedly in the lee that night - and awaited the Gulf Stream Crossing planned for the next morning. Did we realize that night would blow up like crazy with lightening and thunderstorms all around? I guess not. It was a bit hellish. No, that's an understatement. It was hellish. The boat was being tossed about like crazy, things flying from one side to the other all night, meanwhile lightening is flashing all around and it's raining torrents. Yikes! When it finally all settled down there was no question but we had to limp back to the dock (Weech's Bimini Dock) and tie up and get some rest. Whew! Although the predictions were good for crossing the Gulf Stream in terms of wind direction and wave heights, the threat of thunderstorms was high. I already had flights booked from Palm Beach to Marquette, and was relatively determined to make them. This left us only one option - to go the next day or get stuck behind a new weather front and wait another week in Bimini. We made a deal that if it was nice in the morning we would go. Around midnight, the thunderstorms and lightening blew up again, and persisted throughout the night and into the morning. It all started to lighten up around 7:30am, at which time we started to think really hard. Luckily, a number of other sailors were on the VHF talking about the single sideband reports they had heard and their Sirius weather connections, etc. While Wayne was talking to the guys in the boat next door, I heard a conversation between 2 parties, one of whom said the latest report was rising barometric pressure in Miami and the other who said the radar showed the thunderstorms moving off to the north. I popped up out of the boat and said, "we're going". Wayne looked at me for a minute (having had hair-raising experiences with thunderstorms on Lake Superior) and said, "ok." By 9:00 that morning we had gotten out the tricky entrance channel and were in the Gulf Stream. The wind was pretty good - South-Southwest - which gave us a close-hauled reach. The current was pushing us north and the wave heights were very decent. We blasted across the Ocean at maximum speed and ended up in the Fort Lauderdale mooring field by 5pm. Heaven! We made it! We were beat but euphoric. Didn't get off the boat till the next day. About 30 miles and 13 bridges later (each bridge requires one to wait for the next "opening" time) we dropped anchor in Lantana near the Old Lime House restaurant. We knew this anchorage from our way down with Claude. We inflated the dinghy, put the motor on (which by some miracle worked) and got into town. There may in fact be a god or maybe it was the force. Well, whatever it was - there was a public library within 6 blocks with internet and printer capabilities. Wayne managed to activate the cell phone, book his own flights with frequent flyer miles, and call the marina in Indiantown. I booked a hotel room near the airport on Hotwire, printed out my flight and hotel confirmations, and we were golden. Had a lovely dinner at the Old Key Lime House and took the dinghy back to Cassie for my last night on board. The anchorage was wonderfully calm and we spend a lovely night. Bags packed and ready for action, Wayne dropped me off this morning and went on to do battle with about 45 more miles of the ICW (including bridges, bummer) to take the boat to Stuart on the St. Lucie River. He will anchor in the Hobe Sound tonight and with any luck reach civilization again tomorrow. I feel awful for bailing on him but... I just took a very long, luxurious shower in the lovely room I have at the Doubletree (used to be the Radisson) after a great run and workout in the clean and well-equipt gym. I am using a computer which is available to guests at all times, and I feel and smell great! I have HBO in the room and am not likely to leave it very often. I have books, television, a bathroom, individually controlled climate, all the soap and lotion and toilet paper I could ever want. In short, nirvana. I understand it's snowing at home and have asked my son to bring me warm socks, boots and a jacket when he picks me up (with any luck my plane will make it) tomorrow night. Maybe I'll still get a chance to do some cross-country skiing this year! The Carribean chapter closed for me now, my thoughts are entirely with my family and friends up north. We have decided, however, to keep Cassie another year and venture off to and through the Florida Keys next winter. Yeehaw!

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Bimini and the trip home

We blasted up to Bimini from Nassau in 2 days, and took the day off today to recover. Bimini as you may know is a famed fishing haunt of Ernest Hemingway. We saw a lot of photos and interesting memorabilia in the museum and just generally hung out all day. It's a very fun place, but not a fun place to take your boat in and out of - the channel is narrow and inobvious. We'll be basically going by sight to the deeper waters. We're leaving in just a couple of hours to navigate this treacherous channel, make a big arc and swing around to the ocean side of north Bimini where we will drop the hook asap and just hang on until the wee hours of the morning. This will require more navigation by sight and depth sounder but we are communing with the medichlorians and hope the force will be with us. Then we'll lift up the anchor in the wee hours and head straight over to Lake Worth, thereby crossing the Gulf Stream during what we hope is an excellent weather window. Homeward bound!