Adventure of a Lifetime

So, yesterday did not go well, but today was a new day. While we have no air conditioning, everything that involves the propulsion of the boat works great. Today's journey was as uneventful as yesterday's was problematic. We arrived in Rodriguez Key and dropped our anchor, and are enjoying a beautiful evening in a serene spot. We left Tuesday morning before sunrise. No idea the problems we had in store for us. While the sunrise was pretty, it was a pain going East all morning with the sun right in our faces. While we were not in the best of moods when we arrived at Marathon due to our having to abort our trip to the Bahamas, I had to take a picture of Empty Nest. Life could be worse. Were it not for the circumstances, we would have really enjoyed how pretty everything is in Marathon. We saw quite a few wild iguanas all around. Glad it wasn't freezing where they fall out of the trees onto your head. While I was on the boat with our mechanic dealing with stuff, Ann took a wal...

Well, today did not go as expected.  Timeline (as best I remember): 4:45 a.m.:   I woke up and stayed in bed for a bit. 5:05 a.m.:   I got out of bed and started getting things ready for our trip. Put the Jamaican flag up, took off some of the lines, turned on all the equipment at the helm and double checked our route in the chart plotter. Triple checked the weather. Did full engine room check, oil levels, coolant levels, valve settings, hydraulic fluid, etc. All good! 6:15 a.m.:   Ann wakes up and tells me how noisy I was being. 6:16 a.m.:   I turn on generator and main engines, text our friend Bill at the marina who graciously comes over to help with the lines. 6:35 a.m.:   We are off the dock, all is good. Heading for Rodriguez Key. 9:30 a.m.:   Spotify is on a particularly good channel. I'm singing along and dancing a bit. Never been happier. Off to Bahamas!!! 9:45 a.m.:   Ann says, look at the air handler. I...

 Today was busy. We fueled up the boat, filled the water tanks, borrowed a fellow boater's car and went grocery shopping to provision for the Bahamas and beyond. We plan on leaving the dock around 7:00. That is, I want to leave at 6:30, and Ann said closer to 7:30, so I assume we'll meet somewhere in the middle. The marina staff will not be here yet, but a friendly neighbor who is an early riser offered to help us with our lines as we depart. A reminder that if you want to track us in real time when we are under way, I have set up a Garmin InReach that will be online. Go to https://share.garmin.com/share/AviRubin   The password is Gimel. Every 10 minutes a dot will be placed on the map showing our location. Tomorrow, our plan is an 81 nautical mile run, mostly East and slightly North to Rodriguez Key where we will drop the anchor overnight. The next morning it's off to Bimini, Bahamas for 2 days. On either side of the fire extinguisher, you can see the sight guides for ou...

This blog entry chronicles our lives for 3 months in Key West. We are planning on heading North to the Bahamas on Feb 27, and then back to Annapolis, with several multi-day stops along the way. I'll keep the prose to a minimum and focus on the images of Key West. The TL;DR is that we had an amazing time, had some great visitors, made new friends, and played a lot of pickleball. I even managed to get a lot of work done and had a couple of depositions over zoom from the boat. Hoping for many more Winters like this. Anyone who has known me a long time knows that my favorite dessert is key lime pie. In Key West, it seems every restaurant has that for dessert. Here is the one from Blue Heaven. The best looking one (the best tasting one was at Moon Dog Cafe.) Kermit's has a few locations. Their KLP is very good. They also sell a frozen one with chocolate on a stick. Something to look forward to as I did not try it yet. We spent Hanukah here on the boat. It was a small lighting ceremo...