Poised

4.26.08 Jupiter, Fl - at dock

We made it into Jupiter a day early (Thursday) which was a good thing because our todo list of things to do before heading to the Bahamas had grown to two single spaced pages. We've been living on the boat at the marina where our friend Bob Bruce keeps his boat at Johnathan's Landing in Jupiter. We've been able to run lots of errands, including West Marine (3 trips), Albertson's, the liquor store, the hardware store, the car parts store (oil for oil change), the dive shop (new goggles & snorkels), etc., etc.

We've forgotten to take any new pics here, so I just have a few from the 800 mile ICW voyage to post. The picture above is at a typical anchorage, with an ICW marker in the background. As you can see, the weather has been spectacular with lows in the 60's and highs around 80. Those windows surrounding the cockpit which were so valued up north are now too hot, so they're no longer there.

The pic to the right shows the wide expanses of water we've passed, again with a typical ICW marker. You steer the boat between the markers or find yourself aground in just a few feet of water on either side of the "ditch". So you have to pay attention. But Otto helps immensely with keeping you in the channel. You can see our dinghy raised on the davits on the stern. This day we forgot to replace a plug after inflating her, so she has a flat on starboard aft end! The outboard rides on the dinghy so all we have to do to get to shore from an anchorage is lower the dinghy and pull the starter cord twice.

This is a picture of our chart navigation screen. The GPS plots the position and direction of the boat (green, at bottom) and shows where you will be in 10 minutes (green dashed line). Here we're crossing the North - South Carolina boarder (and celebrating!). The red line is the route of the Intracoastal Waterway. This flat screen is up in the cockpit so we can view it while cruising. It is linked to the laptop down on the chart table which is actually running the software and contains all the charts.



Andy flies in tomorrow (Sunday) and Monday looks like a great day to cross the Gulf Stream and transit the 60 miles to Great Bahama Island. We are looking for winds from the south which will flow the same direction as the Stream. Winds from the north whip up a nasty chop going against the 3-4 kt northbound current, so we don't want that. Nor do we want big seas left over from a big storm somewhere in the Atlantic. But Monday looks good at this point, so we'll hope to find a wifi spot in the Abacos from which to post another update. We're both anxious and excited to make our first real ocean crossing in Mystique!