Wednesday, Feb 6, 2013

Today we moved from Miami Beach to Dinner Key mooring field.

The first part of the move had some glitches…in that we missed the opening of the West Venetian Causeway bridge by 4 minutes… and had to “mill about” for ½ hour. The once we got through the West venetian lift bridge… we found we were ‘trapped’ at the top of the Government cut… by a closed Railroad bridge.. opening only at 11:45; 1345; and 1545 hours… UG!!!! We called the USCG, and the police… for assistance… they did give permission to exit through the cruise ship channel, if we didn’t care to wait for the bridge workers. We waited… figuring it would take longer to go all the way out the Gov’t cut, and all the way back in the Dodge cut.. than it would be to wait for the RR bridge.

After passing the RR bridge, we (AB and the s/v Rhiannon) headed for Crandon Park marina to top up fuels. The tide was dead low, so Susan and I decided against moving AB to the pump-out wall at Crandon park….and gambled that we could get a pump-out at Dinner Key…

As we entered the Dinner Key channel, and called the marina…a friendly voice greeted us… It was James, one of the workers that was from the Buffalo area (a long time ago)… it was nice to talk to James again…

He not only got us a mooring assignment, but a pump-out, so quickly, the pump out boat came before Susan and I had the dinghy motor on the inflatable. Wow…!!! Nice service.

We took the bus to West Marine after the check in paperwork, to exchange a malfunctioning pump. That was a success.

Happy hour and dinner was taken at Scotties Restaurant on the waterfront. We called the Dailey's (Mike and Donna) to see if they could join us.... They could not.. :(

I did look at some weather sites tonight… It does look like we’ll get a weather window to cross the Gulf Stream on Friday. SO,… Communication frequency could change this Friday.