We finally left Ft. Lauderdale this morning to go to No Name Harbor to stage our departure for the Bahamas early on Monday morning. According to Chris Parker, the Bahamas weather guy, the winds on Monday will be best to go to Nassau from here in Key Biscayne. That is our plan for now. We’ll have to see what Monday morning brings. Unfortunately there will be no more weather reports from him before we have to leave.

There were a number of opening drawbridges we had to go through today. Luckily they were mostly timed well enough that we didn’t have to race from one to the other. There were about four or five other sailboats that were going through all the bridges with us. On about the second bridge I made the mistake of mentioning how much better I had gotten at driving the boat while waiting for the bridges. On the third bridge the wind swept us out of the channel and I ran aground. Unfortunately at the time Bill was on hold on the phone. He came up to check on me and I told him we were aground. That is when we call in the “special teams” – in other words, Bill takes over at the wheel. He easily backed off and did a circle and all the other boats went around us. At that point we were at the back of the pack. That is not where Bill likes to be though, it only took another bridge before we were now in the front of the pack and that is where we stayed for the rest of the day.

Today we went past Miami. There are lots of tall beautiful buildings and lots of boats in the water, as you can see from the picture above. After we finished with the bridges the day got less stressful, until we got to the anchorage. This anchorage is well known as where you leave for the Bahamas from. It’s got plenty of room in it, it’s a protected harbor with a small entrance. It is pretty crowded right now but we managed to find a spot. A big power boat just anchored right next to us though. A lot of locals come in and spend the day in here, right now it’s very noisy. We hope it will quiet down, even though it is Saturday night.

Tomorrow we will get the boat all ready for sea again, and hopefully get to watch some football too. It may be the last football for a while though. TV in the Bahamas is not always accessible.