And, after watching the weather very closely for a week, Saturday became the day that we ventured south to Fort Lauderdale via the ocean.
Going out into the ocean (in our boat) is much like getting ready to go on a full-day, high altitude hike: wake early, full day's work in the elements with the promise of some earthly reward (beer) at the end.
Our day began at 3am- because that's when Tyler and I woke up...and couldn't go back to sleep. We managed to push away from the dock at 4am- just in time to catch the 4:15 Flagler Memorial draw-bridge opening. After venturing north for about 5 minutes, the following exchange took place between me and Tyler: Tyler, "I can't see sh*t," me, "I know, sunrise doesn't happen until 6:30 I think," Tyler, "well, I don't want to go out into the ocean in the dark," me, " then why did we leave at 4am?," Tyler, " because everyone leaves at 4am..." At this point, for the voyage and our marriage, we decided to anchor for a while, have some eggs and wait until first light.
At approximately 6:45, we were underway, headed out Lake Worth inlet and into the big wide-open ocean.
The wind was about 20-25 knots from the east and the waves were 2-3 meters high- which, we soon learned, is a little bit uncomfortable on our boat. A little bit uncomfortable= no one went below except for dire bathroom needs- and that was at their own peril, Zander lost his cookies 3 times, Tyler was at the helm almost all day ( I only had the guts to try steering our boat for about 20 minutes). Our tiny boat did almost 7 knots the entire trip, if the waves had been smaller, we would have gone faster- we were actually moved off course every time a wave rolled in behind us and Tyler would have to counter steer to accommodate for the change.
We did get to see a ton of flying fish throughout the trip- that was cool... I've never seen them before! Cyrus also did very well after an initial bout of seasickness. He was comfortable enough to be bored- which is a good sign.
What would be a trip out on the ocean without engine trouble though? As we made our final turn upwind to douce the main sail, Tyler pushed the gear shift to forward and... No go. He tried again and it would not engage. The sequence of events that followed was like the scene in A Christmas Story when the furnace blew up and the dad went downstairs, swearing up a storm, smoke billowing, tools clanging, but add in a rolling sea and rain. After about 10 minutes, Tyler emerged successfully and we were able to put the boat in to gear once more.
But wait, there's more!
As you can imagine, inlets for large cities are very busy. They are full of commercial and recreational boats- especially on the weekend. Inlets also have handy little walls called jetties that come out maybe 100 feet that help keep the inlet from changing shape/ eroding/shifting. As Mirage headed into the inlet and approached the jetties, a cargo ship began to exit the inlet. We moved enough to clear the cargo ship, however, a mega yacht was also creeping up behind us. I admit I've never been the captain of a mega yacht, however, I feel as though I would not try to squeeze tiny sailboats between my boat and a cargo ship...ever. The captain of the yacht actually radioed us to make sure we saw that he was behind us (and going to overtake us) and to make sure we knew that he was close to the jetty wall. I tried to point out that we were also trying to avoid a head-on course with a cargo ship... Funny how when you release the radio button, you can add all kinds of nice words to the end of your communication.
We eventually found a very calm anchorage in a beautiful part of Ft Lauderdale.
I noticed a bride getting her pictures done at the hotel next to our anchorage and thought about the partnership our ocean journey (and this whole adventure) requires. Patience, trust, communication, empathy, love- every day.
This 50+ nautical mile trek taught all of us a great deal. Not only was this distance very similar (actually a bit further) to our planned crossing to the Bahamas, it was by far not a perfect sailing day. Things went wrong, the sea was big, Zander puked... And we were successful. We are the better for our trials.
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