On te move North

We finally had a weather window to leave Marathon, FL to head North. We spent a rough night at Rodrigues Key on our way to No Name Harbor in Biscayne Bay Miami then two nights of rough waters at Dinner key moorings, but caught up with cruising friends and had a good time. Then onto Ft Laurderdale out Government cut into high seas and strong South wind. Had a bad accidental Jibe that damaged some canvas on the Bimini and broke a block and bent part of the boom vang. No one was hurt and we are still able to use the boat. We are now in Vero Beach (Velcro Beach to cruisers) and will be departing Monday to Daytona with stops along the way.

Still in Marathon

It is now April 13 and we are still in Marathon waiting for the wind to change from the north, northeast at 15 to 20 miles per hour so we can leave. The weather has been good, some very hot humid days and some nice hot (80's) windy(blowing 15-20 mph) dry days like today. We continue to meet new arrivals who are also waiting to go north. we will let you all know when we leave, maybe this weekend?? (Barb is getting anxious to leave as it is a long trip back to RI) Hope all is well up north.

It's April 4th and we are still in Marathon

We hope everyone had a nice Easter day. We went to the Marathon Yacht Club for an Easter buffet which was very good. The weather was in the high 70's, and windy and sunny. We hope to leave Marathon Wednesday if the wind cooperates. It has been blowing (10 to 15 knots with higher gusts) out of the east for the last 4 days. And of course east is the direction we want to go, so for those of you who are not sailors it would mean that we would be trying to sail directly into the wind, not fun, it would be very rocky and we would not make much progress. So we sit in paradise waiting for the wind to change to the south or southwest which hopefully will be Wednesday. Then we will head for Miami, a two day trip. We may visit a place called Dinner Key and see Coconut Grove and stay a couple of nights, or depending on the wind we may just keep heading north to our next stop which would be Ft Lauderdale and then to North Palm Beach. We are both well and have enjoyed our stay here. We have met a lot of people, one who is a member at the Marathon Yacht Club who has taken us shopping, to lunch and just about anywhere we want to go. He has been great and he has made the stay much easier for me. We met another couple who own an Island Packet and live in Portsmouth, RI. They will be leaving when we do, but will be sailing on the outside most of the way and not going on the ICW doing day hops as we do. Packet is doing ok, he seems to have aged on this trip but he still tries to chase the sea birds when in the dinghy. We hope all our RI friends have dried out and did not have a lot of damage from the rains. Spring is on the way and so are we, hopefully.