What a great day! We decided to leave the dock -- tomorrow to get into the boatyard is 4 feet of water, high tide is at 6:03 AM ... 1.87 feet, hopefully 4 + 1.87 = more than 5 1/2 feet for our draft!
So we leave the dock, plan to anchor out and "pretend to be cruisers" -- only one night anchored out does not a cruiser make! But, it's better than NO nights anchored out!
But before the day even gets started, dolphins have a feeding frenzy while we enjoy morning coffee and got the day off to a great start ...
So we leave the dock, plan to anchor out and "pretend to be cruisers" -- only one night anchored out does not a cruiser make! But, it's better than NO nights anchored out!
But before the day even gets started, dolphins have a feeding frenzy while we enjoy morning coffee and got the day off to a great start ...
Someday I'll actually get a photo of the dolphin tossing the fish in the air instead of just churned up water and a fish ... or a dolphin flying out of the water! It is one of the coolest games of "toss" I've ever been privileged to witness!
And we're off -- toss off the dock lines and out through the channel into Charlotte Harbor ... going out this channel represents ADVENTURE ... even if it's only going to a boatyard...
White pelicans are cool, not so frequently seen as the kamikaze diving brown pelicans and the cormorants and seagulls beside them stand on the sandbars outside the marina just because it's low enough tide that they can.
Sails are up, GPS is pointing us toward our evening anchorage.... notice anything about this sail ... like the wind was forecast from the WEST and it's north, which unfortunately, (story of our sailing lives) is the direction we need to go... Oh well, motorsail... the good news is the ancient Nanni Kubota diesel doesn't seem to know it's old and just keeps purring along .... (knock on teak again)
The bad news, if there is any, is that our blankety blank depth sounder is reading perfectly (keep in mind, last winter in the Bahamas, it refused to function at all...) so this summer we spent hours on the phone with Raymarine trying to figure out how to replace an out of production depth sounder transducer, Raymarine referred us to Gemeco who is sending us a new transducer Monday... and now David is questioning whether we should replace it. Of course, it can only be replaced when you're out of the water since it involves a rather substantial hole in the bottom of the boat .... so do we put in the new one or gamble... only time will tell! Like two days from now!
We had dolphins play with our bow wake, our stern wake and just come up alongside to look us over, but no good photos. Even cooler were the rays that swam along beside us and the two sea turtles that raised their heads to check us out and quickly decided we were not worth their time and ducked back under the water where we couldn't see (or photograph) them!
Unfortunately the promised sea breeze never materialized and the day turned into a motor BUT we still saw amazing stuff and had a wonderful sunny day out on the water.
Capped off by a beautiful sunset, and yes we BOTH practiced blowing the conch shell horn - since there was no one around where we were anchored, we couldn't embarrass ourselves while we practice our technique. Tomorrow at 6:03 AM (sunrise isn't until later than that!!!) we'll be upping the anchor and headed toward the channel and lock that are just out to the left side of this photo. And hopefully make it through that 4 feet of water with our 5 1/2 foot boat! Cheers until tomorrow! :)
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