Somehow in my head I had envisioned us looking at weather forecasts, making plans and then setting out according to plan. That isn't the way it's been. Over the weekend, looking at the weather, we decided at one point that the next weather window was Tuesday. So we planned to sail outside like mad all day Tuesday to get to the next navigable inlet, Ponce Inlet.

But then we reconsidered. Monday was going to be by far the warmest day; the only problem with Monday was a chance of showers and a slight chance of a thunderstorm. Tuesday there wasn't going to be enough wind to sail anyway. So we thought, why not leave Monday and get part of the way on the inside (the ICW) and then finish up on Tuesday? That became the plan.

Monday morning it was warm. We got up and dressed, had the marina pump out our holding tanks (free with stay), disconnected the power and sat in the slip and watched the wind. We had 25 knots of wind in the harbor. The wind was blowing against the side of the boat, pushing it towards the dock. It was also blowing so that as Bud reversed out of the slip, the propwalk and the wind would be in the same direction. For non-boaters, many boats have a tendency to turn in one direction or the other in reverse because of the action of the prop. On our boat, the stern turns to starboard. You have to get going pretty quick (relatively speaking) until there is enough flow over the rudder for the wheel to overcome the propwalk. The way things were it looked likely that our bow would swing out to port and clip the guy tied next to us. Not at all a neighborly sort of thing to do.

After about a half hour of fiddling with things and waiting for the wind to die, we decided that we had better just ante up for another night at the marina (Bud thought check-out time was about 11 and it was 11). So Bud plugged the power in and I went to the marina office and paid for another night.

Within an hour the wind had started to die. We could have left about noon. By then I had already called Gary to say we were here for another night. Karen had the day off, since she had worked all weekend. We made plans to meet for lunch at a famous Cuban restaurant in the old part of the city. So we weren't leaving today.

It was nice to have lunch anyway. Bud and I walked over to the restaurant and then Karen and I walked back while Gary and Bud brought Gary's truck over. Karen got to see the boat after all.

In the afternoon I did a couple of loads of wash and we'll try to leave on Tuesday.

P.S. By the end of the day it got cold again!