Boat Prep & Away We Go!

After spending a delightful evening Monday, 1/ 18 with Jim’s brother Mike & his wife, Beth in New Smyrna Beach, FL, we arrived at our boatyard in Stuart, FL a little after lunch on Tuesday. Fortunately, they had just splashed the boat so Samba was ready for our onslaught.

The long summer and fall was pretty hard on Samba. With 3 near misses of hurricanes and lots of rain, she was truly a mess. One day, they had 20” of rain in 3 hours and we ended up with water in our lazarette and up to the floorboards in the engine room! From the looks of everything, the water was there for weeks before they pumped it out.

As a result, several of our engine room floor boards had delaminated and were black with mold. Ughhh. That took a while to remake. In this picture, Jim is just finishing one of the boards. Behind him, you can see our teak rail with blue tape on it. He revarnished it while working on the floor boards.

One of the heavy duty battery switches in the bilge area pooped out & we had trouble with our thruster batteries so Jim spent quite a bit of time in the bilge under the bathroom.

Nearly every morning in the boatyard was like this! Wow!

It isn’t everyday you see a gator swimming next to your boat! Welcome to southern Florida.

Since the boat is in the water, we are marking our anchor chain with tie wraps. We put them at 25’ intervals so we know how much chain we are putting out with the anchor.

Even our deck chairs were a mess.

Some areas of the boat are a little more difficult to clean than others. Here, Carol is trying to clean the glass at the main helm station. It was easier to see the bad places at night than during the day.

Brother-in-law Chris gave us an amaryllis bulb for Christmas. It was just starting to grow when we left home so we brought it with us. Now look at it!

While Jim was doing boat projects, Carol was provisioning, organizing and cleaning. After many trips to the grocery and boat store and a full week of cleaning, repairing and replacing, we finally were able to cast off our lines on Tuesday, 1/26 and head west. Woo hoo! Here, Jim was doing some final electronics checks before heading out.

Our 20 mile trip to the edge of Lake Okeechobee was spectacular. Calm, clear and around 80. A perfect day for cruising!

There were some guys working on this swinging railroad bridge. Fortunately, they stopped long enough to open so we could pass.

This railroad bridge raises instead of swinging - interesting. Not long after we passed through it, it lowered for a train.

The only bad thing about our trip was when we passed through lots of smoke and ash from a nearby sugar cane field that they were burning. In short order, the boat was covered in ashes and soot. Now we know how Santa Claus felt after he dropped down the chimney!

We stopped for the night right before the lock that opens into Lake Okeechobee. This was an interesting mooring where we tied the boat between 2 widely separated pilings that were actually made for barges. It ended up being a wonderful place to tie up. Calm, no wind or current, and miles from the nearest town or house.

Not long after we tied up we were entertained by a guy in a motorized parachute. He sailed around us several times before leaving. If you tap on this picture & zoom in, you can see both the parachutist and a small plane. Fortunately, the two didn't meet.

Notice the nearly full moon reflecting off the water behind the boat. Soooo beautiful

Tomorrow, we head 30 miles across Lake Okeechobee and then another 15 down the Caloosahatchee River to meet up with Randy and Jane Stouder from Warsaw who are here in their motor home. It seems like an awful long distance to go to have dinner with your neighbors from home.