We had been moored at Boot Key for 3 days already, and were tired of waiting for the perfect weather, so we decided we'd head out for our next port which was about 15 miles away. "How bad could it be?" we thought. Well, at about 5 miles out of Boot Key, the weather service emergency warning system sounded, and alerted all boats in our area to seek shelter immediately. We turned up the engine till it sounded like it was going to explode, and hightailed it back to Boot. We kept an eye on the sky which kept getting darker and darker. We were just under a mile away from the entrance channel to Boot when the skies let loose. The rain was so heavy that it was literally white-out conditions. I wasn't sure whether we should even try to enter the harbor, as all I could see was the blinking green light of the entrance buoy, and nothing beyond it.

Did I mention that the winds were 35-35 knots out of the north? So not only was it difficult to see, but it was hard to stay on a track as the wind was on the beam. At any rate, we decided to give it a try. The scariest part of the entrance was going through the dismantled bascule bridge opening (oh yes, I forgot to mention the current, too!), where I thought we might touch one of the bridge spans.

Once we got to the mooring field, John did a great job getting us attached to the ball. Of course, he got soaked through and through! In fact, in the middle of the night we heard a strange "Pfffft" sound, and discovered in the morning that John's inflatable life jacket did its thing in the middle of the night. It had gotten so wet that the tablet dissolved and the jacket inflated!

All's well that ends well, as the saying goes. We waited another two days at Boot until conditions were finally right for leaving. While waiting, we met up with Terry and Suzanne of Chasseur, who we'd met in the Oswego Canal in New York. What are the chances?