Mishaps, Maintenance, Maneuvering New River, and Moving On
Hello, everyone! Hope I haven't lost you all. I had internet issues and then, as fate would have it, when I did get a chance to have great internet in Marathon, my computer crashed. And the fun doesn't stop there. Oh, no. See, while this is very frustrating and quite upsetting for me, it did provide a great opportunity for an "I told you so." My sweet, loving husband did a pretty good job and held it in for several days, but eventually couldn't contain himself any longer and had to ask, "How many times are we going to go through this, dear?" As this isn't the first, or the second, time I've had a computer crash, losing all those precious files stored on it. I know... I know. I'm awful. It's like my own little version of Russian Roulette, tempting fate with my most precious moments memorialized in my photos. I had been doing such a great job being very diligent about taking my photos and backing them up to an external drive. I had been. Then I got a little lax and, well, all my photos and videos since December were lost... for now. I'm hopeful that when we get back, I can take my computer in and get everything recovered. But, with that behind us and Captain back on board, who does have a computer, let's get caught up.
While in Fort Lauderdale, we had our new cradle for the main sail installed as well as having a sacrificial sun cover sewn onto the head sail. The cradle is where the main sail is stored while not in use and will now zip up and protect the sail from the elements. The sacrificial sun cover for the head sail is sewn on the outer edge of the sail and when it is furled, the sacrificial is what is exposed to the elements, again, protecting the sail. They both look so nice. It's exciting to be making the boat "ours" with upgrades and maintenance and seeing how nice the results are.
While going through systems, we soon discovered that the watermaker was not getting any power. We had not used it while in Savannah, but planned to use it in the Bahamas. After Steve did what he could to troubleshoot without finding the cause of the issue, we made a call to the Lauderdale Marine Center. Lucky for us, last year while at the Miami boat show, we had met a few of the Lagoon dealer guys that worked from this location and were able to contact them. They were happy to help us figure out the issue, only they weren't able to come out to where we were anchored. We had to come to them.
Fort Lauderdale has several waterways, canals, rivers that will get you around. To get to the marine center, we had to navigate up New River. From the map it didn't look too bad, but it's something we hadn't done before, so there's always a little apprehension that goes along with the unknown. Steve made a call to our friend Rick who has spent a lot of time in Fort Lauderdale, as well as being very knowledgeable about boats in general, and the conversation was a little unsettling for me. Steve had the call on speaker and, let me just tell you, by the time they hung up, I was willing to go without the watermaker this season as Rick was quite adamant that we avoid going up the river. The phrase that sticks with me most is that it is "not for the faint at heart." He described a winding, tight, congested, very difficult to maneuver waterway. And let's not forget to mention the "Jungle Queen," a rather large, paddle wheel boat that does not move for anyone as well as the multiple draw bridges that we would have to pass through. Gulp!
We mulled over the options. We had met a new friend there in the anchorage and he agreed to join us, which was a great comfort to me. I was envisioning a circus: boats crashing all around us, running aground, the Jungle Queen powering through the chaos, all the while I'm trying to wrangle in two little monkeys and Captain is hollering for some assistance. Fortunately, this was not our reality. It was actually quite an uneventful, very pretty cruise up the river. And while, yes, it was very tight and there were some pretty sharp corners, and we did need to get out of the way of the Jungle Queen, there were beautiful homes all along the river. Communication with the draw bridges and other boats was pretty straightforward and not as chaotic as I had anticipated. We did have one little glitch, the VHF radio went out at the fly bridge, so I was contacting them from the salon and relaying to the Captain what was happening and when we needed to yield to the few tow boats escorting the occasional super yachts through the river, which was a treat to see. They're so massive and beautiful! The VHF issue got a little complicated when I was having to relay messages from Tom at the marine center to Steve. I tried to get Saylor to be the in-between, but there was a little loss in translation. We got settled and the next day had guys out working on the boat, the cradle was installed, the head sail was taken down to get the new sacrificial sewn on, and we found the problem with the water maker, got the part ordered and on its way from France.
We finished up our business in Fort Lauderdale, pulled up anchor, and headed south to the Florida Keys. We decided to take it easy, sail during the day and get to where we could and drop anchor before the sun went down. It was about 150 nautical miles to Boca Chica. We first headed out into blue water and then ducked into the Intercoastal Waterway at the Biscayne Bay Inlet and traveled to Card Sound Bridge, a 19.83 meter bridge that was a smidge too low for our 21.5 meter mast. We turned around and spent the night at Angel Fish Creek.
As a side story, Steve has this friend named Pete. Once Pete heard about what we were doing, he called Steve and told him he needed to get in contact with his other friends who were living on their boat in the Keys, Frank and Tena. Well, Pete kept asking Steve if he had contacted Frank yet. "No, no, not yet." But then Steve, the night we're anchored in Angel Fish Creek, decides to call Frank, told him where we were and what our plans were. Initially we thought we were going to have to sail all the way back to Biscayne Bay as the charts we had didn't show any other cuts with enough depth to get back to blue water. Frank let us know that, no, we didn't need to do that, there was a way out, which was about 100 yards from where we were anchored. How sweet is that?!? Someone was looking out for us. That little phone call saved us an entire day of sailing. Thank You, Pete! The next morning we made our way through the canal and back out into open water.
Our second night we dropped anchor near the Seven-Mile Bridge outside of Marathon. The next morning sailing into Key West was an easy sail. The water was beautiful shades of blue and green. The girls spent most of the trip at the bow pulpits watching for sea life. We were able to see several jellyfish, which at first sight seemed to be purple, iridescent garbage bags floating through the sea, flying fish were abundant, and we caught a glimpse of one lone turtle before he dove under the water. Captain and the girls had a great time navigating our way through the crab pot minefields and we were welcomed in to the Naval Air Station anchorage by a very large sting ray and the jet planes flying overhead.
