April 29

What a difference a storm makes! Writing this at 8:30 am as a cool wind breezes through the cockpit. Of course the angle of that wind keeps shifting making for tricky motor sailing with the genoa. Dave received lessons on pulling in the anchor, including detaching the bridle, following last nights lesson on deploying said anchor. We all had a good laugh when a cormorant scrambled out from under the side of Nemo, having surfaced in the wrong spot! Cloudy day for sure, we just hope the storms hold off.

Dolphin sightings continue throughout the day, breaking up the monotony of long distance river travel. The wind stayed pretty close to 90 degrees and 10 knots off our port side, helping power us along. The promised storms have not materialized and the blue sky is amass with variable cloud forms. Lovely day with the steady breeze. A day for reading, watching gulls, pelicans, cormorants, sailboats, NASA, and riverside towns pass by. Don introduced Dave to Soduko, keeping him busy for many miles.

The trip through the Haulover Canal was awesome! Started with osprey sitting in the casuarina trees lining the canal, almost at eye level and so close. Then came the manatee sightings! The first two we spotted we weren't sure if it was dolphin, rays or sharks. Getting closer we saw there were two smaller manatee rolling around together at the surface, tails and fins showing alternately. It was adorable seeing them play like that. We crawled through the canal, spotting manatee after manatee, 6 or 7 in all. We ended up anchoring pretty much in open water just off the ICW since we did not want to stop at our first choice (having arrived there at 3:00 pm). Just as Dave dropped the anchor at 6:00 pm the wind gusted to 20 knots and the waves kicked up to two feet, a mini squall. Luckily things calmed back down by the time we finished eating our nachos. Dave was then introduced to Mexican Train Dominoes. He and I pretty much tied for the loss, no beginners luck tonight! We buttoned up as the insects started finding there way inside. We took to the deck to try and spot bait fish but no luck in the murky waters. We will have to wait for another night to try out the drop net we got after seeing the schools of bait fish at Rodriguez Key. One last look at the moon and stars and bed for us. Thank heavens the wind and waves settled down!