Ahoy!
We’ll were off! That is Thurs Nov. 27th! We are frantically getting ready, picking up supplies, trying to get seven months of meds, selling a truck, seeing friends before we leave and making sure SongBird is, in general, ship shape. We are ready for a vacation! It has all been quite exciting but exhausting.
Friends, Noel and Letti, are flying out this Thurs. to crew as we head to the Bahamas. The weather seems to be cooperating nicely which is wonderful! It looks like everything is falling into place and all systems are a go!
Or so we thought… we started out Thursday our heading dead north up the Intercoastal waterway passing under the three draw bridges that separate us from the open waters of the deep blue sea. All systems are a go. I am so nervous. I can’t seem to get Carey to slow down enough as he approaches each bridge to help relieve my building anxiety as we are headed towards each bridge at lightning speed while I am sure we are going to hit a bridge before it is fully raised! Just how fast could we be going?! We have two 8 HP engines on a 40’ catamaran for Pete’s sake, we can only go slow! Are these the moments of sheer terror I have heard about…? I don’t think so but I am so excited and nervous and can’t wait to get out into the open where our chances of hitting anything are slim.
We are finally out of the ICW and Port Everglades heading south for Fowey Rocks where we will anchor for the night before our crossing to the Bahamas. We are also ready to set the auto pilot we have named Otto. We love Otto, he is worth three crew members and we fondly call him our German crew member. Once Otto takes over we hope to settle into some long awaited and well deserved “wind in our hair, salt water in our teeth” hanging out. We’re tired and looking forward to taking a few moments to just breathe in what we are doing.
Otto is turned on but something unfamiliar is flashing on his screen… INT COMP. Hmm, have you seen this before… no…I don’t remember this being here before do you…. no…what would that mean… I don’t know… me either… well, let’s set the course and find the book. Things start looking funny… Otto is not running the same course as our compass or chart plotter and he keeps making sharp turns to starboard. Our German crew member is misbehaving!
Once the book is obtained Carey and Noel spend the afternoon trying to reset his internal compass and trouble shoot the problem. They think they have fixed it numerous times only to discover differently. Noel gets online via his iphone (sometimes you gottta love technology) to find a service center that we hope to call on Friday… what were we thinking! Friday is still part of the long weekend for Thanksgiving! We also discover all the service centers are in Ft Lauderdale where we have just come from. We continue on south anyway where we will pull into No Name Harbour hoping to spend a quiet night relaxing under the stars while we ponder our current circumstances. We pull into No Name along with every boat from Ft Lauderdale to Miami that will fit into this very small harbor. What were we thinking! Its Thanksgiving weekend! We find a spot near the mangroves where we hope to be out of the way and find less congestion. We lower the dinghy and head to a restaurant located at the end of the cove. The place is hoppin’ and people are everywhere. Boats, kids, dinghies, skateboards, bicycles, and some other 2 wheeled rolling boards we have never seen pass us in entertainment.
Once back on the boat we discover no see ems’, our peaceful spot near the mangroves turns out to be a favorite place for these bugs, that you can’t see but with teeth the size of Kansas, like to hang out. We quickly put the screen up before they haul Noel off the boat or he decides to jump over board to get away from these annoying and painful bugs. The noise outside starts to escalate and get louder the later in the evening it becomes… someone starts singing and we think, Oh, live entertainment, this guy has a nice voice. Two songs later we hear something else coming from the restaurant at the end of the cove and realize someone else is singing… or at least giving it their best shot… karaoke has arrived!! It’s a long night. Around 2 am some boater has had enough and starts blowing his very loud boat horn hoping the wildlife will take the hint. No one notices. Sometime around sunrise it’s quiet and sleep finally comes.
We leave No Name, my guess is this harbor has come by way of its name because once the wild parties are over no one would remember the name of this place anyway so why bother. Heading towards Miami Harbor while we again try to find an open service center, we get an email from some guy doing a little work from home telling us our internal compass has died and we need to take it in for service in Ft Lauderdale. Last night we figured we would not be making it to the Bahamas but now our thoughts are confirmed. We have also missed our weather window and will have to wait for another.
We are now back in Ft Lauderdale, anchored on the ICW by our old marina. We take the dinghy to shore and have rented a car. We drove Noel and Letti down to Miami yesterday from a vacation that did not include the Bahamas as they had hoped and we took Otto to the service center. We hope to hear back from them in a couple of days as to his condition. We went to see Jared and Ruthie and d found them putting plastic and tarps over their boat as the down pour the night before made for the discovery of many a leak. They leave Thursday for VA and hope to come home to a dry boat.
Today we will continue to work on SongBird and run errands with Jared and Ruthie. Otto with get fixed and we will wait out our weather window. Right now Friday or Saturday may be looking good. We will stay where we are if we can, there is suppose to be a 24 hour limit for anchoring on the ICW but so far no one has bothered us.
We do hope our next communication will be from the Bahamas, but until then we still say life is good on a boat but life is never routine on a boat.
Love as always, Carey and Lisa
Casualties and lessons learned:
Two pairs of reading glasses and one engine key sacrificed to the ocean.
Don’t leave reading glasses in your pocket while dropping the anchor
One pair of sunglasses sat on, again leave glasses in pockets
Make sure the dinghy is completely secured before leaving
Don’t leave port on a long holiday weekend
We’ll were off! That is Thurs Nov. 27th! We are frantically getting ready, picking up supplies, trying to get seven months of meds, selling a truck, seeing friends before we leave and making sure SongBird is, in general, ship shape. We are ready for a vacation! It has all been quite exciting but exhausting.
Friends, Noel and Letti, are flying out this Thurs. to crew as we head to the Bahamas. The weather seems to be cooperating nicely which is wonderful! It looks like everything is falling into place and all systems are a go!
Or so we thought… we started out Thursday our heading dead north up the Intercoastal waterway passing under the three draw bridges that separate us from the open waters of the deep blue sea. All systems are a go. I am so nervous. I can’t seem to get Carey to slow down enough as he approaches each bridge to help relieve my building anxiety as we are headed towards each bridge at lightning speed while I am sure we are going to hit a bridge before it is fully raised! Just how fast could we be going?! We have two 8 HP engines on a 40’ catamaran for Pete’s sake, we can only go slow! Are these the moments of sheer terror I have heard about…? I don’t think so but I am so excited and nervous and can’t wait to get out into the open where our chances of hitting anything are slim.
We are finally out of the ICW and Port Everglades heading south for Fowey Rocks where we will anchor for the night before our crossing to the Bahamas. We are also ready to set the auto pilot we have named Otto. We love Otto, he is worth three crew members and we fondly call him our German crew member. Once Otto takes over we hope to settle into some long awaited and well deserved “wind in our hair, salt water in our teeth” hanging out. We’re tired and looking forward to taking a few moments to just breathe in what we are doing.
Otto is turned on but something unfamiliar is flashing on his screen… INT COMP. Hmm, have you seen this before… no…I don’t remember this being here before do you…. no…what would that mean… I don’t know… me either… well, let’s set the course and find the book. Things start looking funny… Otto is not running the same course as our compass or chart plotter and he keeps making sharp turns to starboard. Our German crew member is misbehaving!
Once the book is obtained Carey and Noel spend the afternoon trying to reset his internal compass and trouble shoot the problem. They think they have fixed it numerous times only to discover differently. Noel gets online via his iphone (sometimes you gottta love technology) to find a service center that we hope to call on Friday… what were we thinking! Friday is still part of the long weekend for Thanksgiving! We also discover all the service centers are in Ft Lauderdale where we have just come from. We continue on south anyway where we will pull into No Name Harbour hoping to spend a quiet night relaxing under the stars while we ponder our current circumstances. We pull into No Name along with every boat from Ft Lauderdale to Miami that will fit into this very small harbor. What were we thinking! Its Thanksgiving weekend! We find a spot near the mangroves where we hope to be out of the way and find less congestion. We lower the dinghy and head to a restaurant located at the end of the cove. The place is hoppin’ and people are everywhere. Boats, kids, dinghies, skateboards, bicycles, and some other 2 wheeled rolling boards we have never seen pass us in entertainment.
Once back on the boat we discover no see ems’, our peaceful spot near the mangroves turns out to be a favorite place for these bugs, that you can’t see but with teeth the size of Kansas, like to hang out. We quickly put the screen up before they haul Noel off the boat or he decides to jump over board to get away from these annoying and painful bugs. The noise outside starts to escalate and get louder the later in the evening it becomes… someone starts singing and we think, Oh, live entertainment, this guy has a nice voice. Two songs later we hear something else coming from the restaurant at the end of the cove and realize someone else is singing… or at least giving it their best shot… karaoke has arrived!! It’s a long night. Around 2 am some boater has had enough and starts blowing his very loud boat horn hoping the wildlife will take the hint. No one notices. Sometime around sunrise it’s quiet and sleep finally comes.
We leave No Name, my guess is this harbor has come by way of its name because once the wild parties are over no one would remember the name of this place anyway so why bother. Heading towards Miami Harbor while we again try to find an open service center, we get an email from some guy doing a little work from home telling us our internal compass has died and we need to take it in for service in Ft Lauderdale. Last night we figured we would not be making it to the Bahamas but now our thoughts are confirmed. We have also missed our weather window and will have to wait for another.
We are now back in Ft Lauderdale, anchored on the ICW by our old marina. We take the dinghy to shore and have rented a car. We drove Noel and Letti down to Miami yesterday from a vacation that did not include the Bahamas as they had hoped and we took Otto to the service center. We hope to hear back from them in a couple of days as to his condition. We went to see Jared and Ruthie and d found them putting plastic and tarps over their boat as the down pour the night before made for the discovery of many a leak. They leave Thursday for VA and hope to come home to a dry boat.
Today we will continue to work on SongBird and run errands with Jared and Ruthie. Otto with get fixed and we will wait out our weather window. Right now Friday or Saturday may be looking good. We will stay where we are if we can, there is suppose to be a 24 hour limit for anchoring on the ICW but so far no one has bothered us.
We do hope our next communication will be from the Bahamas, but until then we still say life is good on a boat but life is never routine on a boat.
Love as always, Carey and Lisa
Casualties and lessons learned:
Two pairs of reading glasses and one engine key sacrificed to the ocean.
Don’t leave reading glasses in your pocket while dropping the anchor
One pair of sunglasses sat on, again leave glasses in pockets
Make sure the dinghy is completely secured before leaving
Don’t leave port on a long holiday weekend
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