First Day on the Way to the Bahamas

April 14 - After spending weeks and weeks buying food, drink and dry goods and then trying to find places to store them all in the boat, and an equal number of weeks of doing repairs and upgrades, we’re ready to go, or as ready as we’ll ever be, and we have a good weather window.  We have guests aboard for this trip, Jane and Steve Koenig, our friends from Boca, who sail out of Newport, RI.  We depart Boca Raton at 7:00 a.m. with a rising tide and we take the ICW to the Hillsboro Inlet. We make all of the bridges along the way right on schedule and we’re out of the Hillsboro Inlet by 8:45 a.m. or so. We were hoping for an Easterly breeze but the wind is SE and mainly S and it’s tough to sail the course we need to get to Miami with the wind coming from the SSE. I put up the jib only to see how well we will be sailing given our course and the wind direction, and it was a good decision because we really couldn’t sail the course we needed. We do the best we can with jib and "iron jenny" (that’s the engine for you non-sailors), and make a series of short tacks, and get to Miami around 3:00 p.m., which isn’t bad given the fact that we couldn’t really sail. We had a problem with the jib furler in that it didn’t want to allow the jib to be unfurled, but I went forward and turned it by hand and then it unfurled fine. We also had a little difficulty with furling, but we managed and I’m hoping that the "stiffness" is due to its not having been used for the last 4 months because we had no problem with in on the way down from Maine. Anyway, we stop at the Miami Beach Marina, which is right inside the inlet known as "Government Cut" and we fuel up and go to a slip for the night. The slip is way too big for us and we really have a tough time getting "situated" (read I’m p_ssed), but we get it done and we’re in the for the night, and planning to make the crossing to North Cat Cay Bahamas tomorrow in what is predicted to be good sailing conditions. North Cat Cay is in the "Bimini Chain" and our jumping off point for the "real" Bahamas. Time will tell.