Monday 20th November

Miami

An overcast start to the day. We have tried to find an internet connection here but haven’t been successful. Gerry spoke with Bob this morning, there would be a space for us in the Marina where they are however there are no laundry or shower facilities there and we don’t see any point in going there so we are going to stay put for at least another day. Gerry found something else to fix this morning; the cockpit shower tap has a small leak so it has been taken apart, fiddled with and hopefully will not leak in future.
Once the fixing things came to an end we decided that I needed to learn how to operate the new outboard motor so we donned our life jackets and launched the dink. We then proceeded to roar around the bay, I managed to get us both soaked in a matter of minutes (well it was a bit choppy at the time) but at least I now know the workings of the new outboard. The weather forecast was for increasing winds over the next couple of days so Gerry decided that we should check back into the marina where we can do laundry, shopping and watch TV in comfort, so at just after midday we stowed all the gear away, donned the life jackets and hauled up the anchor. In increasing winds, which were not suitable for sailing, we motored down the bay to our next proposed staging point to check it out prior to heading into the marina. The staging point – no name harbour, is a hurricane safe hole. It’s an almost enclosed bay with a narrow entrance. Our charts showed the depth to be only 3feet so we approached it with great caution as we need 5.5 feet clearance and we were very glad to find the chart was wrong and we had at least 7feet under the keel at the important places. The harbour has limited facilities but will make an excellent jumping off point for our next passage – over to the Bahamas – when the weather improves. Having checked it out we headed back to Dinner Key marina and checked in for a couple of days. We walked to a local restaurant for dinner however it was closed so we ended up back on the boat cooking for ourselves. The good thing about being back here is that there is an internet connection so I’ll be able to up load this blog.