We were up before light making coffee and the boat ready for departure. After taking India into shore and returning our prox card, we hauled up the dingy motor then the dingy itself. While Scott made the dingy fast on the bow I prepared the salon and cockpit for take off. We dropped the line on the mooring ball at 0800 and the mooring was picked up by another sailboat before we had even left the field. They are dredging this section of the ICW and the dredge and tug were parked right in front of the mooring field. We maneuvered around it and into the channel pointing our nose South. Once underneath the 17th Street Bridge we entered the Ft Luaderdale inlet channel headed for sea. High Tide was just as we left the mooring field so we had slack water for a bit and then got a boost riding on the ebb tide out. We passed one big frieghter which was inbound without problems. We get rocked more by the pleasure craft speeding by us than we do by the big ships. The day was sunny and quite warm with just a whisper of wind so we motored the 34 miles down to the Biscayne channel where we turned in to anchor in No Name Harbor for the night. The dingy came off the bow, the motor came off the rail and we made our way into shore with India for a quick walk. There were a few boats anchored right in the harbor, but we chose to anchor just outside with 8 other sailboats. While I was prepping dinner another Pacific Seacraft came in and we struck up a conversation with them. Dave and Ali on SV Ali Oop sail a PSC 31 and were stopping just long enough to wait for the right time to leave for a Bahamas crossing. It was going to be a wonderful weather window to get there calm with no seas to speak of and a nearly full moon to sail by. Made us rather wish we were crossing with them.
After a nice evenings meal and clean up we headed to bed , planning to be up early the next morning for the 44 nm sail down to Rodriquez Key.
The picture was taken while we were underway today. No wind but it was a nice calm ride so no complaints.