Up and underway by 6:30 a.m. Today we have a 10hr offshore passage from the Ft Pierce Inlet to the Lake Worth inlet. This is our final destination before crossing to the Bahamas (yes, definitely getting excited!).
No wind so we had to motor the entire trip ... but, we missed 9 bridges and had to dodge no other boats or pay attention to any channel markers. Love it!
Beautiful day ... 75 degree and sunny!
Capt working hard at the helm! Autopilot does all the steering for us now.
About 3 miles offshore. Can still see civilization.
View from a chartplotter.
The water! It's definitely clear here. And blue.
Alas, the wonderful day offshore had to come to an end when we reached the Lake Worth Inlet. Time to bring Maja back into the channel and navigate the inside waters. We have a slip reserved at the Riviera Beach Marina (these beach town all run together along the inlet ... Riviera Beach, WPalm Beach, Palm Beach, Lake Worth ...). Funny thing about this marina is that we've been here before. We pulled in here in June 2009 when we were bringing Maja from FLL to GA, after our autopilot quit working. And here we are, back again ... and how much has changed from when we were on our maiden voyage!
Unfortunately, it was still a fixed dock, which meant positioning our boat between 6 large pilings, then lassoing the pilings with our dock lines before we crash our bow sprit into the cement pier off our bow! Not a preety sight ... especially when you add in a quickly flowing current. We had 3 guys yelling directions at us, and we still managed to come in sideways on attemtp #1. Dan managed to get Maja to reverse back into the channel (and reverse is something this baby does not do well), and then masterfully landed us right on target with attempt #2.
It took about a hour to get all the dock lines right. We are connected at 6 spots with 8 lines!
Friendly place, and they've redone the bathrooms. Glad we are not leaving for awhile.
Monday, Jan 31.
The day of reckoning with the water tank has finally arrived. After developing a dozen different plans for getting the water tank out of the boat, where it sits deep in the bilge, Dan came armed with every power tool on the boat, expecting to have to saw and hack the aluminium tank to remove it.
In the end, the damn thing came right out. Piece of cake!
The leaks were pretty easy to see on the tank. 4 patches were failing and the bottom edge of pitted. But Dan was so thrilled to have the tank out in one piece, he thought it was worth trying to patch the tank and save $800 on a new one. So, we carried the tank over the a DIY boatyard shed, and Dan spent the day grinding and patching the tank.
The bilge.
While Dan was working away on the tank, it was obvious that one rather unpleasant task had to get done before the water tank when back inside the boat. And this task required only unskilled labor, so that meant it landed on my plate! Into the icky, dirty bilge I climbed, with my bucked of bilge cleaner, hose and rags.
Actually, the fiberglass was easy to clean and the majority of the gook washed away easily (we still need to see how the bilge pump looks after all this!). We laid new dry-deck tile on the bottom of the bilge so both the water tank and diesel tank now rest above the hull ... staying drier.
So pretty and clean now!
Happy bilge.
We treated ourselves to dinner at the Tiki Bar after this long day.
Tuesday, Feb 1
The weather is absolutely wonderful! Blue skiies, light breeze, 80degrees. Can this really be February? We still remember last year ... the boat wasn't even in the water yet ... and we were freezing! So this is definitely more like what we imagined. I figure any task is easier when the weather is so nice ...
Dan was up bright and early to test his patch job on the tank ... and he was back on the boat not too much later, with news that the bottom of the tank was still seeping water. So after several calls to various welders, we were back where we started. Repairing the tank would take longer and cost more than to replace it with plastic. So, back to Plan A, and we contacted the local company that will make a custom tank for us.
With that project done, off we went into Riviera Beach.
Nothing beats a marina town for having easy access to marine stores, and our favorites are the marine salvage shops. A vertifable bazaar of every boat part and accessory you can imagine ... you just have to be willing to dig! The Sea Chest marine salvage store is closing so we got a sweet deal on a 3rd anchor, plus chain and rope, plus a ride back to the marina from the owner with our heavy load!
Wednesday, Feb 2
The new tank should be ready by end of day, so we spent today reorganizing our food storage and finding enough room to warrent another trip to the store. Just how much toilet paper should we bring? Every time we find a new spot, we fill it.
It's about a 1.5 mile walk to the store, which is a lot of fun on the way over b/c we stop at each of the marina supply stores and look for misc stuff. Walking back to the marina is another matter, as we definitely look like pack mules with our shopping bags draped from every limb. We continue to find space to store another 12-pack of beer.
As much as we empathsize with our MN family every time a new storm dumps a foot of snow, we cannot marvel enough about the weather here. It's February, and we are wearing shorts every day and sleeping with the hatches open! We feel so due for this weather, though, remembering the cold temps we suffered through last year. Sunshine. 80degrees. We've started wearing sunscreen ... I wonder if we've stored enough of that?
Thursday, Feb 3
Dan finished the last of the boat maintenance projects today and got ready for the big arrival of the new water tank.
Ta Dah!
90gals. And so pretty!
Of course, as with every boat project, this one required 3 separate trips to the marine supply store to get the correct size connectors, but end of day, we had a a full tank of water in our keel!
Friday, February 4
Today was our moment of decision ... we were ready to leave the marina, but should we? We will probably need to hang out in Palm Beach for another week, waiting for good weather to cross the Gulf Stream and for the arrival of Deb and Dan (s/v About Time), so we picked a place to anchor out close by. That just leaves the decison about the Super Bowl. I know, the Vikings arent' even playing, and we have a hard time rooting for the Packers, so why should we care??? Well, it good be a damn fine game that we'd hate to miss. We could dinghy in from the anchorage to watch the game at the Tiki Bar ... but we figured we'd spend as much on food and drink at the Tiki Bar as we'd pay for the slip, so we decided to stay on here thru Monday morning. Such lightweights .....
Where does the time go????
More shopping ....
More boat cleaning ...
More weather watching ...
More map plotting ...
More discussion with other boaters about their Bahama experience...
More prep work to be away from easy internet access (2010 taxes, banking, bills ...)
One last load of laundry ...
It's always something, right?
Saturday, February 5
HAPPY BIRTHDAY RENEE DEVEREAUX! LOVE YOU. MISS YOU.
Sunday, February 6.
Another beautiful day in paradise. A good day to give the boat a good scrubbing (after spending 1.5 hours talking with Jim and Robert on Skype! What a great invention!).
We are ready with martinis and steak for the big game, and we've decided to root for whoever wins!
Tomorrow, we leave the marina and anchor in the Palm Beach channel. There we'll wait for the right weather window to cross to the Bahamas.
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