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| Park Adjacent to Titusville Marina |
With Christmas over, it was time to get to work! There were a few things that needed to be taken care of before leaving Florida. The most maddening of those things were fixing a persistent oil leak in our truck (Steve's task) and fixing a persistent toilet leak in one of the heads on the boat (Laura's task). It seemed we were on parallel paths identifying and fixing the source of the leak, ordering spare parts, replacing the parts, and then finding leaks in another location. After many iterations by each of us, we finally resolved both of the leaks.
I won't go into details about the additional routine maintenance projects we worked on, but we had plenty to keep us busy for a couple of weeks.
I will mention the nice gentlemen that helped me out with a repair to the doggie drawbridge, while Steve was in Satellite Beach and it was just Jake and I on the boat. As I mentioned, without the drawbridge Jake must be lifted to get off the boat, and I'm not able to cantilever his 55 pounds from the boat to the dock or pick him up, stand on the boat cleat and jump to the dock like Steve does. Anyway, it was very windy during this time, and the wind load sheared the rivets on the bracket which attached the ramp to the dock. Unfortunately, the ramp was tied into an upright position, but with only one functioning bracket it was going to be difficult to lower it without having it fall into the water. While I was figuring out how to approach the problem, a local man who had pulled into the adjacent dock to have some work done on his boat offered to help; he even offered to drive to his shop in town to get tools and stainless steel hardware for me. Luckily, all I really needed was an extra set of hands since Starry Night is fully equipped with the necessary tools and hardware. I really appreciated the offer though and wanted to use this opportunity to give a shout out to Steve at AutoBeYours in Tituusville, whose company provides service to hybrid vehicles.
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| Doggie Bridge in Upright Position |
The primary task we needed to do in preparation for our trip to the Bahamas was provisioning. This year we are planning to spend more time in remote areas and once again have a lot of guests coming, so we needed to be sure to have enough supplies to last us four months. So, while "provisioning" sounds like a one-day task, I can assure you it is not! First there's the calculation of consumption estimates, then taking full inventory of the stores already on the boat. Last but not least, are the umpteen shopping trips to buy all the supplies and then finding places to store everything.
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| Excerpt from Provisioning List |
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Sorting Provisions
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In between the chores, there was also time spent celebrating the joys of life with friends and sharing sorrow as well.
Our marina in Titusviille offered a spectacular view of rocket launches and we witnessed several.
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View of Rocket Launch from Starry Night
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We also evacuated Starry Night for a few minutes one evening as a tornado made its way through Titusville. I'm pretty sure the marina building wasn't really any safer - had a tornado actually hit - but I felt safer nontheless.
Before we knew it, we had nearly reached the end of January and everything was ready. We left Titusville on January 26th. Once again, we were unable to sail, but we wanted to start heading down to South Florida so that when the weather was right, we could launch from the Palm Beach inlet to make our crossing to the Bahamas. And so, we donned our fancy new headsets (my main Christmas present this year) and started heading south.
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Leaving Titusville
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| Steve at the Helm |
The non-sailing trend with wind on our nose and sometimes running against the current continued for the duration of our trip to West Palm Beach, so our progress was slow but steady. We stopped at the free dock in Cocoa Village and took advantage of an opportunity for Thai food while we were there since Asian food is hard to come by in the Bahamas.
From there, we went to an anchorage near the Wabasso Bridge, then to Hobe Sound, and finally arrived in the Lake Worth Anchorage in West Palm Beach on January 29th.
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| West Palm Beach Skyline |
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| "Andrea" Docked Near Our Anchorage in Lake Worth |
We met my parents for a Bon Voyage meal later that afternoon and then returned to Starry Night to prepare for a sunrise departure to the Berry Islands. The forecast for the passage wasn't really great: we didn't expect that we'd be able to sail, and the waves were predicted to be between 5 and 7 ft, but the predictions for the next week were prohibitive to crossing at all so we decided to take a chance and turn around if the conditions were worse than anticipated.
Mother Nature provided a glorious display the next morning, and with that as a sign of good luck, we said goodbye to Florida and set our course to Great Harbour Cay.
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| Sunrise Departure from Lake Worth Inlet |
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