It took us quite a while to
recover from our awful sail from Havana to Key West. As mentioned in our
previous post, we were utterly exhausted from the sail.
We thought our time in Havana
finding some Wi-Fi connection was frustrating, well trying to find a SMS card
for our phones here in the USA was equally as frustrating. Apparently, our
phones are not compatible to the networks here. At least in many places there
is free Wi- Fi so we can connect to the outside world and most important of all,
check the weather.
We stayed in Perry Marina, Stock
Island for a few days while we recovered and got sorted, ready for Passages to
go up on the hard which Mel had arranged for on Tuesday 25 April. Many of the
goodies we had bought while at the Miami Boat show, were waiting for us at the
3D Boatyard so Mel was eager to start work on Passages.
Unfortunately, it is a boatyard, and the bathroom facilities were not great, so we booked into the “Southernmost Inn’ in Key West for the 6 days that Passages would be on the hard. We arranged for a car so Mel would be able to go back and forth to West Marine or ACE Hardware, all the shops that had the necessary supplies and accessories to assist Mel with the work he was planning on doing on Passages.
In the meantime, I enjoyed
staying in the coolness of an air-conditioned room, catching up on the blog and
computer work.
While we stayed at the Inn, we
enjoyed using the swimming pool, the 24/7 coffee and tea machine and especially the
cheese, wine, and nibbles between 5 – 7pm every night. We met some interesting
people like a lovely couple from Heidelberg in Germany, Katja and Jens who we
later met for dinner. There are some wonderful restaurants in Key West, but
most places close between 9 – 10.00pm.
In Key West, both around the town centre and the outskirts, there are hens with their chicks and plenty of roosters walking around. Every morning, we were woken up with not just one rooster but quite a few crowing, ushering the start of a new day. They seem to have right of passage, even when crossing the main US Highway 1.
Back to Passages…. Mel fitted the
new feathering prop onto her – it looked good, plus he put in the new depth
sounder, GPS, display unit and Bluetooth receiver for the wind instrument, so
as planned Passages went back into the water on Monday 1 May, and we went back
to Perry Marina on Stock Island. While Passages was on the hard, Mel also had a
chance to look at the air con. We haven’t used the air con since the Dominican
Republic, April 2014, so we weren’t even sure it would work once we were back
in the water. Thankfully it did! We can never use it when we are anchored as it
uses far too much power but since we are on shore power at the marina, we took
advantage of the situation.
While we were back in the marina,
Mel worked on the windvane and fixing our windless (it helps to drop the
anchor) and a few other bits and pieces.
The marina is very close to an
air force base, so every day we hear fighter jets, swish past – it makes us
think of Top Gun and Maverick.
We enjoyed our time in Perry
Marina as we had use of a swimming pool and transportation into Key West
centre. We took advantage of the ‘free’ transport service and spent a wonderful
evening in Key West once again as we knew our days were numbered and we would
be sailing up north towards Fort Lauderdale.
 |
| Our new prop. |
On Sunday 7 May, as the sun was
slowly rising, we released our lines from the dock and started our journey up
to Fort Lauderdale. Our plan was to stop off at Marathon, which is at the start
of the Seven Mile bridge across the Keys, stay a day anchored there to enjoy
some time being at an anchorage, then ‘sail’ to Rodriguez Cay, Key Largo, then to No Name Harbor in Biscayne
Bay, Miami and finally to Fort Lauderdale to Pier 66 Marina, where our new
radio, radar, and chart plotter were waiting for us.
So..., until the next update of
our adventure, take care and enjoy whatever you are
doing.
Bye for
now.
Mel and
Caryn
sv Passages
