Hard to believe its been 17 days since our last post! Since then, we moved onto the boat, gave her her name, and were surprisingly able to fit most of what we brought with us into one of the many nooks and crannies in our beautifully designed boat. We spent about a week living aboard in Fort Lauderdale organizing things, and then took off with our training captains, Jerry and Jean Coleman, on Monday afternoon to make our way through the keys and up the west coast of Florida to Cape Coral which would be our final staging area for starting our loop. Our first stop was going to be south of Miami, but as we left Port Everglades and were about to throttle up heading south, we saw a submarine (nuclear?) performing operations and were subsequently stopped by the US Navy and told to go back into the intracoastal waterway in order to head south. What that meant was we had to motor slowly and therefore were only able to make it to Marine Stadium, an anchorage across Biscayne Bay from Miami. By the time we got there, the place was crowded, jet skis were zooming everywhere, and the rap music was blaring. We found a little window of space and were able to set our anchor, turn off the engines, and then relax, make dinner and hit the sack early, after our maiden voyage. That all sounds really good, right? Nope.... about 5:00am we get a knock on our stateroom door, and Jerry, one of our captains, told us that our anchor had slipped and that we needed to get up, start the engines and get the heck out of there. Say what??? Rob moved a lot faster than I did, and eventually everyone managed to get the boat safe and secure and anchored out in Biscayne Bay south of Miami to await the sunrise when we could make tracks to Key Largo.
The rest of our trip took us south to Marathon and then a 110 mile cruise north along the west coast to Marco Island. We had great flat seas and Off Leash performed magnificently, her shiny aluminum diesels purring like kittens. We had to move quickly as there were more significant winds forecast through the week. Along the way we got to experience the crab pots we had heard so much about. If you catch a crab pot in your prop, you are in for a bad day. The pots were everywhere! Most were white, yellow, or red and relatively easy to spot. Some crabbers however think it is a good idea to use marking balls painted the same turquoise as the waters of the keys. Dodging the pots is basically the boating equivalent of a video game! We were also joined along the way by a few hitch hiking dolphins. You just can't help but smile when Flipper is playing in your wake. The docking in Key Largo and Marathon were very tricky due to the building winds so Rob had to let Jerry handle much of the maneuvering. Marco Island was our first stop where Rob was able to dock the boat on his own.
Our first trip came to a close on Friday afternoon when we docked Off Leash at the water front home of the salesman, Martin, who sold us our new floating fiberglass villa. We parted ways with Jean and Jerry and made our way back to Ali's house for a couple of days in a real bed, long showers and a full size washer and dryer. We will load up the rest of our gear and head back to Off Leash tomorrow.
Next up... once we clean her all up... a tour of Off Leash!
