New Years Eve - The start of the Phase 3 … Monday 31st Dec 2012
1.45 am is not my favorite time of the day. I rarely, if ever stay up that late, but on this occasion Tash and I needed to get up at this time to drive to Orlando airport iso she could catch the 6am flight to JFK and on to South Africa. Last night, the three of us went out for an Italian meal, which was a lot of fun and very good food. After that we turned in fairly early to catch a few brief hours of sleep. It was sad to see Tash go, but it's a fantastic opportunity for her to spend 6 months studying in a foreign country. The courses she will take fall under the general heading of "Globalization and the Environment", a topic that really interests her. There are about 7 students on the program and they will live together in a house and it seems that they will get to spend some time in the first few weeks traveling within the country.
After I got back from the airport I managed to get a couple of hours sleep, but by 9 am we were up an ready to head out from Loggerhead Marina and start our journey to the Bahamas. Gloria's brother Paul is joining us for a week or so on the trip to Marsh Harbor and his wife Fran was there to wave us off. During today and tomorrow we need to cover 65 mies down to West Palm Beach and the Lake Worth Inlet, ready to head offshore to the Bahamas on Wednesday. Conditions today were not attractive for covering this off the coast, with high winds, waves and a small craft advisory in place, so we motored south down the Intra Coastal Waterway past Vero Beach, Fort Pierce, Stuart and across the St Lucie Inlet. At about 4 pm we reached an area called Peck Lake and anchored just off the ICW in fairly shallow water. The charts would have you believe that the water is far too shallow for us, but guidebooks describe a narrow deeper section of water. The area is relatively small with uncharted depths and there were probably 20 boats already anchored when we arrived. It took us three attempts to find a spot that we felt comfortable with in terms of depth and swinging room. We saw one other boat run aground and need to deploy anchors from a dinghy to pull it off. As I write this, it's coming up to 9pm and pitch black, and it seems the boat is making more efforts to get to deeper water as the tide has now risen. Anyway, it's new years eve, and as any cursing sailor knows, 9pm is boaters midnight so Happy New Year to you all!
Mike
27 06 50.8 N, 80 08 33.4 W
On the dock ready to leave Loggerhead Marina
Pecks Lake - this boat seemed to know where it was going
... and this boat unfortunately hard aground and trying to kedge off with dinghy deployed anchors
Mike - glad to hear you two are doing well. Happy New Year!
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