February 10, 2017
We are currently in Miami.
We made a quick 3 day trip from Marco arriving on Tuesday (2/7) afternoon. We typically do Miami from Marco as a 4 day trip. We would love to do some overnight sails to get here quicker, but the tremendous number of crab/lobster pots on the lower southwest Florida coast would make a night sail very risky.
The short days this time of year are also challenging. We 'cut the corner' on Florida Bay, going down the so-called 'Yacht Channel' to save a day. But the trip from Little Shark River down the Yacht Channel and up to Rodriguez Key (near Key Largo) was over 12 hours and we departed and arrived in near darkness. The Yacht Channel is not our favorite passage. It is very shallow, and in parts we get depth readings under 4', a water depth in which we should be aground. I think some of the underwater grass beds are so thick, that the depth sounder readings are erroneous. We never touched, but depth soundings like this are absolutely nerve-racking!
Also motor-sailing into a 15-20 knot wind from dead ahead, we ripped our mainsail. We are lucky that Mack Sails in Stuart is going to be able to get us a new main (the old one was over 20 years old) in about 3 weeks.
After catching up on some sleep, we have been enjoying Miami. We went to a University of Miami women's basketball game last night - they beat Virginia in a somewhat ugly game with less than stellar shooting and many 'intentional' Virginia fouls in the last 5 minutes. The Miami women have a good team this year and are currently ranked 17th.
We had a wonderful telephone call this morning with a dear Bahamian friend. To celebrate this conversation, I made 'steam corned beef' and grits for breakfast - you don't get more Bahamian than that! The grits are also a blend of white and yellow grits - a mixture we learned from this Bahamian friend.
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| Steam Corned Beef & Grits |
Tom
Moored Coconut Grove (Miami)
