Look Out Miami, Here We Come

At Sea, 26 23 58 N 080 01 37 W

I was planning to wait until Monday to sail to Miami. Accordingly, I was going to sleep in late on Sunday. Libby got up, however, and looked at the weather and looked at the charts and started making hints that we should go today. I got up, looked around, thought about it, and decided that she was right (she's right maddeningly often).

Anyhow, we prepared for an offshore voyage. It has been 4 months since we were on the outside. We secured things and dogged hatches, and rigged the jack lines. By 11:00 we were away. Since then it has been a delightful day for sailing. The wind is behind us at about 17 knots. We deployed only the foresail and the whisker pole, which makes Tarwathie very easy to handle. We rigged the monitor to steer us a course only a couple of miles off shore (to avoid the Gulf Stream), sat back and relaxed.
We've averaged 4.8 knots since then with seldom the need to touch anything.

Near Palm Beach we encountered a lot of sport fishing boats. They now have kites on their lines as well as outriggers. I guess when the kite dips, they have a bite.

After a while the fishermen dropped behind us and the water turned from green to blue. Ah so. I glanced at the depth sounder. The depth had dropped from 130 feet to 400 feet. She shallow shelf down here doesn't extend so far off shore as it does north of here.

One thing we didn't plan well is that the GPS says we'll arrive at 0300. We plan to come in through government cut. If we feel nervous doing it in the dark we'll just stand off until first light.

p.s. Our GPS's tide tables are off by one hour until the traditional time for daylight savings begins. It is going to be wrong two times every year until 2009 when my chip runs out and I have to buy a new one. Why can't they leave well enough alone. Should I be mad at Congress for passing such a bad law or mad at Bush for signing it?