Heading North

We lifted our anchor at first light, motored out the channel to Boot Key Harbour at Marathon (took a short cut under the seven mile bridge) and pointed our bow North.  We're going home!  We've had a good run on Gran Vida here in the South but we're both ready for a change.  We're going to take Gran Vida for a long drive -- all the way up to Canada -- and finally finish our loop.



It has been stormy and windy lately.  Checking the weather forecast, few days ahead was showing one nice day coming, with low winds.  Knowing we had to cross Biscayne Bay, which is a fairly large, open body of water, we planned our course to coincide that crossing with the nice day.  After that, there were several days of "wind event" weather and rain so we needed a place to hide.

With a bit of planning, it all worked out fine.

Day one: We drove for about eight hours and pulled off the Intracoastal, and had dinner and slept somewhere around Key Largo.

Day two:  We crossed Biscayne Bay in lovely calm conditions, then drove through Miami, which is always exciting and provides lots of eye candy for boat lovers.
So many comings and goings and a multitude of bridges, most of which we can scooch under.

 We anchored in Oleta State Park, which is right in North Miami, but if you didn't look up and see the buildings looming over the Palm trees, you'd think you were anchored off Gilligan's Island.  What a contrast to the busy city.  Oleta park is an oasis in a sea of chaos and it's a great, protected place to hide from weather.

Once we dropped the anchor a guy in the next boat came over to tell us that the last boat that had anchored there had snagged a cable or something with his anchor and had a hard time getting off.  Oh oh!  There was nothing shown on the charts.  Thanks for telling us but I wish he had said something sooner!

We spent several days here hiding from the stormy weather.  I dinghied Jeff into shore and he walked several miles in the heat to pick up a spare fan belt he had ordered to replace the one we had just replaced a few weeks ago and also to get a new air filter.   Ours needed a change.  We have been running with a bit of an exhaust leak these last few days.  Jeff's McGyver repair of our exhaust system he had pieced together in the Bahamas was finally demanding a proper clamp.  The clamp is on order to be picked up in Daytona Beach and it will need to be repaired soon, but in the meantime we're running with all windows and hatches open for extra ventilation.  It's not too bad.  It's a relatively small leak.  The exhaust in the bilge made a bit of mess of our air filter though.  Unfortunately, after his lomg walk to pick up the belt and filter that was ordered and supposedly waiting for him, surprise.  It was not.

Finally, after a few days the weather calmed and it was time to weigh anchor and get going.  Ugh.  The anchor had found that errant cable and was firmly snagged.  Sometimes you just have to marvel at how bad luck seems to come in clusters.  We've been so lucky with Gran Vida.  She's an old boat and she really has been surprisingly trouble free.  It's seems we're now paying the piper.  First the fan belt, then the generator, then an exhaust leak and now a snagged anchor.  Jeeze.

We tried several different strategies to get unsnagged.  Nothing.  We finally called tow boat U.S. Fearing we'd have to cut the chain and leave our eight-hundred-dollar-to-replace-anchor there, or hire an expensive diver, Jeff came up with a plan.  Start talking money and he starts thinking!  He put that marina-worker experience to work, looped a piece of chain around our anchor rode and dropped it down to the anchor.  While Jeff fed off more rode I was on the helm driving forward, the tow boat used it's powerful winch to unsnag the anchor.  Yay!  We got to keep our anchor!  We were on our way again.  Heading home!