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Cruise Day 1, Sunday July 4th
We’ll be celebrating Independence Day on the boat in Hawk Cay on
Duck Key! We left our dock at 8:30 am, being about an hour and
a half later than we had wanted but all in all, it was a pretty
decent time to get out. The Bridge air conditioner wasn’t
working – great – and with the knowledge from last year’s trip,
we knew that having air conditioning at the helm while under way
in the Bahamas was an absolute must. There’s one more thing to
get fixed when we get to where we are going. The weather was
great and the seas only a 1-2’ chop just off of Fort Myers Beach
and Bonita. At about 12:30 pm we were just off Cape Romano
which is the last bit of land we will see for a while and the
waves began to ROLL. It’s a good thing I had an audio book to
keep me occupied otherwise I would have been hanging over the
side being sick. By 4:00 pm it calmed right down to barely a 6”
wave when we reached the Keys and was just like glass. We
passed through Florida Bay this time to go through the Mosher
Channel past Marathon and were running in 7’ depth at mean low
tide. Even though we have a brand new Standard Horizon chart
plotter, the Captain read charts all day, marking our course and
double checking with the Standard Horizon and installing the Way
points. The markers going into Mosher Channel were real screwy
and if you thought you could just go straight toward the Bridge,
you would be sadly mistaken and would run aground real fast.
Once under the Bridge and through the Channel into the Atlantic
the waves rose up into a very rocky 2-3’ chop but even still,
the boat handled them very well and wasn’t bad at all. At 5:30
pm we reached the Channel going into Duck Key and entered the
mouth of the Channel where the canals running through there are
very narrow with rocks on one side of them and seawalls/docks on
the other. As luck (or un-luck) would have it, right at the
mouth the Captain discovered as he tried to turn up the canal
toward Hawk Cay Resort, that he had no steering – great. He
spun the boat around in the narrow space and all the while,
boats were coming toward us and behind us, obviously not knowing
what this mountain of a boat was doing spinning around in the
mouth of the Channel. Using the controls and bow thruster to
keep the boat out of the rocks, he finally figured out at the
Auto Pilot was stuck and was still on! Once that was corrected,
we had steering again and were able to be on our way up the
canal and into Hawk Cay finally docking at 6:00 pm. There is a
basin in the Marina that is very shallow and we thought it
strange they didn’t mention that while we were going through the
shallowest part of it on our way to the dock. Salty gets so
excited when he’s able to get off the boat and just jumped right
off once he was released from this “docking” harness. This is a
very dog friendly place and there’s lots of space for him to run
around in the Resort grounds without the worry of traffic. We
got all settled in, took showers and were getting ready to go to
the Waters Edge Restaurant for a lovely dinner before watching
the fireworks display. We have black shades on the front
windows which I assumed would provide protection from little
eyes looking into the boat at night – wrong. When we went up to
sit on the bow after dinner with our comfy chairs and Grand
Marnier, I discovered you could see into the boat through the
shades. Needless to say, I won’t be walking around naked
anymore! The fireworks display was awesome, at least we thought
so; Salty likes fireworks about as much as he likes thunder –
drives him crazy. After he was forced to behave and not bark
back at them, we all lounged on the bow under the stars and life
was good.
Marina Day 2, Monday July 5th
We decided to stay another day and just relax, it is such a
beautiful place and has everything you’d ever want and at $3.00
a foot dockage fee, it should have everything! Salty ran around
and then went swimming at the boat ramp – he’s in his element
here! The Captain worked on the air conditioning for a few hours
and seemed to have fixed the problem. We were pretty close to
the gas dock and were able to gas up on one side without having
to move the boat and then he just balanced the tanks. After a
few hours we gassed up again on that side, balanced the tanks
and poof – full tanks without moving the boat in the morning
when it was time to take off. We went up to the Cantina at the
pool to have a snack, a “Marg” (or two) and played like
tourists. It was HOT out and it seems that it’s always hot here,
just like last year with not a breeze in sight. The pool was so
hot last year, we couldn’t even get in it, but this year we were
told, they had “chillers” on the pools – good move. We both got
new cell phones before we left and they have the capability of
taking pictures and then emailing from the phones. We tested
them out and were quite thrilled when I spoke to my daughter
Becky that they actually work and she was able to pick up the
pictures from her email – the joys of technology. We went back
to the boat, had some cocktails and sat around watching the
entertainment at the fuel pumps. There’s a decent current here
and it definitely played havoc with the boats trying to dock to
fuel up and on more than one occasion, I thought the dock was
going to take chunks out of the boats bouncing off of it. There
are lots of kids fishing and lots of fish to catch! Funny it
hasn’t rained since we’ve been here which is a very strange
thing for this time of year.
Cruise Day 3, Tuesday July 6th
Left Hawk Cay at 8:30 am and on our way out the canal, were
interested to see that most houses have very little grass and
mostly all rock landscaping around their houses. It was breezy
out in the Atlantic with a 2-3’ chop. The Captain was not
impressed that he immediately lost the “Navigation/Auto Pilot”
function on the boat and would have to actually steer himself
all the way to Fort Lauderdale – now that’s annoying. There were
lots of boats out, both pleasure boats and working vessels; one
freighter that looked like it was intentionally coming right at
us. The waves leveled out a bit after an hour or so which gave
both Salty and I a reprieve from the motion sickness that was
rearing its ugly head again – at least I wasn’t the only one who
was a little green around the gills. Why didn’t I take that
Bonine? We left the shallow, crystal clear water in the Keys
that was a beautiful aqua color and went into the very deep
(350’) water of the Atlantic that was a dark ominous Navy blue.
At 12:30 pm we could see Key Biscayne and Miami as a hazy
outline in the distance and at 3:00 pm were heading into the
Fort Lauderdale Channel and then into Bahia Mar Marina. As we
enter the channel there is a string of little “cottage” type
houses just lined up all in a row looking out at the Atlantic
Ocean. Those houses would have cost a pittance 20 years ago and
must be worth a fortune now! Bahia Mar has a lot of working
boats at the marina for vacationers, such as Riverfront tour
boats, water taxis and fishing charters. Bahia Mar also has
floating docks (which I love) as it is so much easier to get on
and off the boat, especially for Salty. Only bad thing about
floating docks is they are cement and very hot on poor ole
Salty’s feet, not to mention the two parking lots he has to walk
through to get to that very sacred “grass”. Another bad thing
is, even though Fort Lauderdale beach is just across the street
from the Marina, it is very dog UN-friendly and we won’t be
allowed on the beach with Salty. Cripes, this is the place where
they don’t even want you to walk a dog on the street! Once
settled in, the Captain went off to register and try and track
down someone to come and look at the Navigation because cruising
to and in the Bahamas without it was just not something he
wanted to do. A mechanic came by shortly thereafter and
determined that at least the problem was not mechanical and
suggested we find a Marine electronics technician to fix it. He
did suggest we call a particular guy but the number wasn’t even
in directory assistance – great. So he went to another boat
docked here and noticing it was from Fort Lauderdale “La Bella
Vista” and figured they would surely know of a good marine
electrician, which they did. Seems they just bought their boat
and it didn’t have any electronics on it, so the guy would be by
in the morning to work on their boat, then when he was finished,
he could come by and take a look at ours. We got cleaned up,
jumped in a cab and went to the “Thai on the Beach” Restaurant
to have the absolute BEST Thai food we’ve ever had – and we’ve
had a lot!
Marina Day 4, Wednesday July 7th
Obviously, we had to stay yet another day here to get the Marine
electrician to look at the Navigation. We didn’t hose the boat
down yesterday as it looked like we were going to get a storm
blowing in anyway, however, that passed over and again we had no
rain. So the Captain spent a couple of hours and hosed Salty Old
Dog down this morning but thought there was no sense in using
soap as it’s only going to get salty again tomorrow. The Marine
electrician showed up and luckily there was a diver working on
the boat beside us so he was readily available to take care of
anything that needed to be done under the water level. The Nav
problem, so it seems, was that when Barry was fixing the bridge
A/C he had to get the tool box out from under the seat and when
it was put back he put it up against the flux-gate which created
a vara-magnetic conflict and that affected the compass that
operates the Navigation function. A simple fix to what could
have been an annoying problem….move the tool box! The diver did
his thing underwater, cleaned and checked several things, found
paint in one of the engines intake and cleaned that up and so,
all in all, we appear to be back in business. The next project
is to change the bilge pump that has been acting up for weeks
now and so you see, boating is a lot of fun but a lot of work as
well. Captain Richard who was on the boat behind us said we
could borrow his car to go to West Marine so off we went to make
a quick trip to Publix, then West Marine to get the pump and
various other “parts”. Barry thinks he’s died and gone to heaven
– this West Marine is huge and has everything a boater could
dream of wanting or needing. I thought the best thing there was
the free internet service that I quickly checked email and made
some replies for our vacation rental Paradise Place. When we got
back to the boat, I got my usual “Wheaten Greetin” from Salty
but also found that he’d been sick on the salon rug – three
times – great. Can’t figure out why that would have happened but
oh well; could it have been the fact that the air conditioners
had stopped due to an overload in power? Let’s hope this is just
a “marina” and there isn’t anything wrong with the internal air
conditioners! Then Barry found that the bilge pump he had just
purchased wasn’t exactly the one he needed – it didn’t have an
automatic something or other, so he had to ……. Now that is
replaced and working just fine but now the Air Conditioners seem
to be tripping the breaker and shutting everything down! Lord
love a duck, does it ever end? Barry seemed to believe it wasn’t
the boat acting up (of course not) but it was the electricity
coming from the Marina so he just switched the cable out to the
one next to us and lo and behold, he was right (thank you, thank
you, thank you). After getting cleaned up (great to be able to
shower on your own boat) we went off at 10:00 pm in search of
food. We walked down the beach area and although a lot of places
were closed (this is not South Beach) we did manage to find a
place that even had a five piece jazz band belting out tunes as
we ate a pretty good meal.
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