We woke up in the morning hemming and hawing and full of question marks.
We could stay... but oh, what would we do?
We could leave... but oh, where would we go?

Oh no, are we having another one of THOSE days?

If we stayed, we would provision one last time with the fresh fruits and vegetables types of things.

However there's no knowing how long it would be till we crossed to the Bahamas, weather window was looking good for Wednesday-ish.

That was a good week away and fresh things you know they don't last too too long.
And there be places to provision for fresh things further down South.

It would also be prudent to do one more laundry load (or two) before we left.
(Harbortown laundry facilities are still not up and running - when they are though, they will be fabulous, i'm sure !)

So if we left today, we were facing Choices A and Choice B.

Choice A would be the trek down the ICW and Choice B would be let's go offshore.
If we went down the ICW we were going to contend with weekend congestion.
And most of the cruising guides highly recommend avoiding travelling on the weekends.

From what we've experienced so far, even with our numerous offshore jumps, that's a pretty accurate.

Secondly, there's the bridges. Some not an issue, some opening twice an hour, so you're either racing to go from one bridge to another, or idling to waste time cause you got there too fast.

And although I haven't counted them, there's way too many of them after I start counting on my second hand and then my toes !

If we went offshore today would be a good day to do so as the winds were forecast to be Easterly, wave action negligble, although the Coast Guard was broadcasting small craft advisory warnings.

And I thought it would be good practice to go offshore for a bit, before doing the Bahamas crossing as well...
After all it has been a while since we've gone out into "deep water".

Deep water lately for Banyan seems to be 10 feet.

And just to be safe on all fronts, the last of our "TO DO" items is to commision our Spectra Watermaker which has been pickled since last year.

That meant to flush it out, see if it was working (if not, it could be repaired before we left the good ole US of Plenty).
And that's something that you "should only do" offshore in clean salt-water.

And so at 8:30 we decided that we would leave with the 9:30 high tide and so we immediately and promptly hopped out of bed, into our clothes and voila...
That gave us an hour to get ready, unplug from shore, fill up the water-tanks, pay our bill, drop off the garbage, cast-off the lines, and back out of our slip.
And we did it with not a minute to spare.

So since we had talked ourselves into going offshore, we zigged straight out the Fort Pierce Inlet. The big blue was waiting for us with beautiful crystal clear green waters and clear blue, sunny skies, and a few dolphins jumping alongside waving hi and bye with their tails. Nice. Water temperatures clocking in at 28 degrees (Celsius!) WOW !



Given that we'd had an hour to mentally prepare for this, and less than that to physically prepare for our offshore jaunt, to say that we were a little dazed when the shock of our decision as we put on our sailling gloves and Dave said something about lines and sheets and yikes, I had to think twice... did I even remember how to sail ?

Although the winds were a little SOUTH-easterly and not Easterly as predicted, we motor-sailed between 5.5 and 6.5 knots.



Dave fiddled with the watermaker, and used up pretty much the whole, recently filled (GASP), tank of water we had in order to flush out the water maker. After a few minor hicups, the lights came one, salinity levels went down, and our little baby was churning out fresh, drinkable water from the clear blue-green sea water we were travelling through. Dave, being the court jester, took a sip or two, and I waited a moment or two, he seemd fine and no mayday calls needed to be made, and voila.. we're both still alive to tell the tale. And about 3 hours later, the whole tank that had just been emptied, was filled up to the brim with water. Yah-baby !!

The sun started to set,



and we entered Lake Worth Inlet (with a few other boats navigating the channel !)



and saw a pretty ritzy area, and look there be another Banyan 'round here!



We dropped our hook just a a tad before sunset,



where, after some serious Hollywood showers (thanks to our terrific water maker!), a terrific meal, and I think I got two pages of my recently started novel done, and I was down and out, Happy ZZZ's.