Alex, hot, cold and windy, hot...
A Christmas Tree, A Christmas Tree
A Perfect Look on this Sailboat.
A Christmas Tree, A Christmas Tree...
Wait, What?
****
We've been hanging around in Fort Lauderdale the last little while. I daren't dare say that we're "stuck" here, but really, we kinda are.
We've watched two absolutely perfect weather windows go by. And here we are. Why? We're waiting on a WaterMaker part to arrive.
A few days of running diagnostics,
had it narrowed it down to a DC Motor, dangerously overheating with time as it desperatley tries to pump out fresh water from salt, with dwindling mpg numbers.
"Any phone calls" asks Dave, hoping our WaterMaker guy had called telling us that the part has arrived.
"Nope" I answer. Nada. None. Nothing.
And we pick up the phone, for the millionth time, as if, by some slim chance our looking at it will make it ring. It doesn't.
We're just off the Las Olas Blvd, with views of spectacular million dollar homes standing on beautifully landscaped lots of land on the perfectly straight waterways, the holiday lights twinkling in the sunset hours as Christmas decorations abound, everywhere.
Fort Lauderdale is a beautiful place but not one necessarily sailboat friendly with its many marinas of yachts, mini-yachts, mega yachts and multi mega yachts. There's two anchorages with room for a few boats each, but nowhere to tie up your dinghy and go ashore.
It's easy enough to tie up to a restaurant dock, support the establishment with the purchase of a drink or a meal, go run errands, and voila. Problem solved, but that too can get expensive if you just want to go ashore for a walk.
The Las Olas Marina will charge you $20 a day to use their dinghy dock. But you have to be back by 5 when they shut their gates. There are 6 mooring balls and it's a first come first serve basis that'll cost you $40/night. But that price allows you to use the marina services: showers, trash and laundry. So all things considering, it's not a bad rate. After a week in the anchorage, we snag a mooring ball.
So back to being stuck here. It's not necessarily a place we'd stay for this long if we didn't have to be here. There's nothing like knowing you can't leave to making you feel even more stuck, right?
"Any e-mails?" asks Dave, just in case the arrival message might be delivered via our inbox. Ever hopeful.
"Nope". Nada. None. Nothing. I sigh and lay the phone back down.
It'll be here. It'll take a week. And the week ends either Today. Or Tomorrow. And then we test systems and keep our fingers crossed that our diagnostics were correct.
A few days ago the rains and winds hit. Another cold front, this one packs a punch.
And we couldn't, and wouldn't leave here, even if we wanted to. The seas out there are huge and menacing. So for a few days we are boat bound as the rain washes the salt crystals from our last passage off
Banyan, making her nice and shiny once again. We cross a few more things off our To Do list, and create more To Do lists. And bring out a few Christmas decorations, but with one more big passage to go, there's not really much point, is there?
We've met some other cruisers, also
stuck here. We've gone exploring to downtown Ft Lauderdale, and enjoyed the RiverWalk, a fun place to meander. Every now and then we take the phone out, glance surreptitiously on the screen in the pretence of checking the time, when you and I both know we're really checking to see if there's been any missed calls.
We've had a great reunion with our friend Jim from back home, on the shores of the beach, with the giant 2 4 1, 45 oz Margaritas, after all, why not?
And we had perfect, albeit windy, front row seats on
Banyan, as we watched the greatest show on H2O, the Ft Lauderdale Winterfest Christmas Boat Parade,
go by. We hummed the lyrics to O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, hoping that
Banyan's latest gift comes in plenty of time to install, test and exclaim in glee as it works beautifully, and all that just in time to head out and grab the weather window shaping up this week.
Wait... do you hear a phone ringing?