Miami Lights

At Sea
26 04.64 N 080 04.39 W

It has been quite a while since I posted a blog with "At Sea" byline.  The previous time was that awful night when we feared losing the mast.   This passage should be nicer.  Soon after leaving, we were joined by a pod of 50 or more dolphins.  They stayed with us for half an hour.  What a delight to see them, daddy, mommy and baby all swimming close to Tarwathie.  Anyhow, that is considered to be a good omen.

You know how nice Miami and Miami Beach look.   If you watch CSI Miami on TV, you see wonderful scenes of Miami and Miami Beach both day and night. Well, we're going past Miami today but we're not going to get to see much.   The weather is cold, rainy and foggy.  In fact, today's weather is more appropriate to Maine than southern Florida.  Oh well, we're heading warmward; that's what I tell everyone when they ask where we're going -- warmward.

Actually, we just passed Fort Lauderdale at 1400 and we'll pass Miami around 1730 so it won't be dark when we go by.

As I write, Libby just called me up to the cockpit.  There's a boomer submarine just 1/2 mile east of us.  First time I ever saw one this close.  There's also a red zodiac security boat with a machine gun just itching to shoot us if we get too close.  He doesn't appear to have his finger on the trigger though so I guess we're OK.

The good side of this weather is that tonight won't be much colder than the day.  The clouds prevent drastic nighttime cooling.  The other good thing is that we have favorable winds.  We've been able to maintain 6 knots or better since leaving Lake Worth Inlet this morning.

If things go well, we should be in Marathon by Friday evening, Saturday morning worst case.  That's good because there's a nasty cold front heading our way with arrival forecast for Sunday afternoon.  By then we should be securely moored in Boot Key Harbor.