We are currently anchored in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. We should be in the Bahamas right now, but a mechanical failure nixed our travel plans, one hour before departure…I’ll save that story for the end.
Since our last post, we have been very busy visiting our children and grandchildren, as we head south. For the most part, we have traveled on the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway), because the wind and waves in the ocean have been insane! As we have traveled this route many times, I will not bore you with too many ICW pictures…that will give me room to bore you with grand daughter pictures🤣
The best part about the sun’s angle, this time of year, is that the ‘golden’ hour is much longer than an hour!
I love how the sunlight makes the teak interior glow!
Our first granddaughter (first born and the first one we come to) lives just outside of Atlanta. Since we can’t take the boat there, this visit required a marina for the boat, and a rental car for us.
Even though our visit was before Thanksgiving, Alexis was determined to have Christmas with us…so we helped decorate and had a wonderful Christmas Day filled with presents and a turkey dinner.
We were also able to see the town’s Christmas parade. My favorite part of the parade was the tractors!
After returning to the boat, we continued south the visit granddaughters #2 and #3 just outside of Charleston, SC.
And…they organized all of our Caribbean flags, in the order we will need them as we hop down the island chain. Lucy thinks the Martinique flag is the coolest of them all!
The image on the left is what we woke up to, and the image on the right was 90 minutes later.
This anchorage provided several beautiful photo opportunities.
It is a rare occurrence when my whole clan is together. Matthew and Beth traveled to Nicole’s so we could all be together to celebrate Maggie’s birthday! Are you wondering why there is a chicken in my family photo…🤷♀️ I’m wondering that too😂
With another wonderful visit behind us, we are off to see Anna (4th and final😂, our kids have told us we aren’t getting any more) just outside of Jacksonville, FL
The weather was still chilly and windy, but Anna enjoyed her time on the boat.
And once again, we had perfect timing to enjoy the town’s Christmas celebration!
It did warm up on one day, and Anna took full advantage of the opportunity to take a swim.
We even had a great view of the drone laser show from our anchorage. It wasn’t until the end that we realized we were watching the ‘back’ side of the show😂
Anna selected Elf as her ‘big screen’ movie.
After another wonderful visit, and another wonderful Christmas celebration it was time for us to get the boat south to prepare to cross to the Bahamas.
Not funny, but this guy was passing us😂
Saw this beauty in the ICW. The Honey Fitz was a presidential yacht from 1945 to 1971, serving five U. S. presidents. John F. Kennedy reportedly gave it this name in honor of his maternal grandfather John F. Fitzgerald. The yacht has been recently restored, and is currently in Palm Beach.
And now, let’s talk about this week. We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale on Christmas Day, and planned to do some final provisioning of fresh fruits and veggies before leaving to cross to the Bahamas. Finally, there was a decent weather window forecasted for Wednesday. We planned to leave around noon on Wednesday and arrive at Great Harbour Cay early Thursday morning.
Our friends Eddie and Gail, on Seaquel, were staged just south of us, and were heading our way so we could cross together. Our last task, before heading to the inlet, was to lift Alma Joy to the top deck to be strapped down for the journey. During the lift, a boat blasted past us and hit us with a series of large waves. Alma Joy got lifted and slammed several times, resulting in this…
The cable on our crane snapped, and our hopes of leaving in this weather window were dashed. We had to convince Seaquel’s crew to go without us, as they wanted to come and help. However, there was nothing they could do to remedy our situation, and we didn’t want them to miss the weather window.
Yesterday, Dec. 28, we had a repair man scheduled to come out to the boat to replace the cable. We woke up to this beautiful sunrise. I’m sure you have heard the saying “Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.”
The bank of storm clouds moved in quickly, and it proceeded to rain heavily all day. This prompted our repair guy to reschedule.
After raining all day yesterday, the clouds moved off just in time to capture an amazing sunset. This is actually the sunset reflecting off the clouds to the east.
It is now 3:00 on Dec 29, and our repair guy has called to tell us his truck broke down😬. I am very close to panicking, because we have grandchildren flying into Great Harbour on Jan 8, to spend three weeks cruising with us. The only weather window between now and Jan 8 will be this coming Sunday/Monday. We MUST cross the Gulf Stream this week!!!
Normally, we would never depend on someone else to fix something on the boat. This cable is an item that we are capable of fixing ourselves, if we had the materials and specialty tools required for the job. Keith has spent all afternoon searching for the tool and materials needed, in every hardware and boat store within a 30 mile radius…with no luck.
Plan B…worst case scenario, Amazon will be delivering all materials and tools needed for the job, to a pick up box nearby. If the repair guy shows up (we have offered to pay for an Uber to get him here) we will have spare materials and tools onboard in the event this ever happens again. If he doesn’t show, we will be in a mad dash to fix the cable ourselves between Saturday afternoon (hopefully Amazon delivers early) and Sunday morning…ugh!
