All the food was loaded, crew Don arrived from Bozeman, Montana, we had a final lovely meal with Bob's mom Elana in Jupiter, and after an anxious night dreaming about the voyage we left the dock at 9am on Tuesday. The sun finally poked through the clouds as we headed south down the ICW, and we had a wonderful day. We learned later that those clouds produced torrential downpours, lightning and tornadoes around Jupiter! We anchored for the night in a peaceful round basin in Delray Beach and threw some chicken on the barby.
After a sound sleep we had breakfast and made preparations to weigh anchor with Don and I at the bow. Bob moved the boat slowly forward to put slack in the anchor chain and we pressed
the 'up' button on the windlass. "Click click". No movement! This brought back vivid memories of our Abacos adventure with son Andy aboard when Mystique's windlass did the same thing. Don and I pulled the chain in hand over hand, and we set out for Ft. Lauderdale knowing the windlass would need to be fixed before going any further.
Casa del Sol to the rescue again!! This wonderful small condo with docks and swimming pool and party patio with awning had been Mystique's first home after we bought her two years ago and spent two weeks refitting our new boat. And home again last fall when we waited for favorable weather with Swabby Jim aboard - attending the Boat Show. What a perfect place for working on boats and enjoying the friendship of Shelly and Arone, the owner/managers. Bob found a mechanic through a friend who came over right away, removed a non-working electric motor from the winch and delivered it to an armature repair shop. Another "mechanical opportunity", but this time another mechanic did the work;-)
The motor will be installed in the morning, and we plan on heading south to Key Biscayne south of Miami by noon. Saturday morning the weather forecast is for mild winds which should make for a good Gulf Stream crossing to Bimini.
For more pictures, click on our Flickr photo album link on the left of this page.
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