Saturday, March 7, 2015

Projects dominate today

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  Each day or almost every day Mazu and I go to this tiny island, a short 4 minute dinghy ride away from Shawnee for a leash-free jog and exercises for me in a tiki hut.
 


 
 You can see a sliver of the dinghy tied at the dock, late afternoon.






















 Dockway walk to the island



 Mazu on the run with me.  I jog the width then the length of the island, maybe half a mile max.
 Tiki hut where I exercise a little.


 Here's an island view looking toward Coconut Grove.  The building going up with the crane over it is amazing as it appears to be twisted - cool idea.


 Today I watched the sailfish get towed out to Biscayne Bay for a good sail.  The building below the one under construction with the white roof is the new Dinner Key Marina office that hasn't opened yet.  They are constructing a huge boating/marina waterfront park behind that marina building.  (Our car is back there in the free lot.)  It'll take a few years.

 

We are thinking about sailing to the Bahamas in the next 3 weeks before I drive up to New York City to take care of granddaughter, Isabelle, for 5 weeks when Sarah returns to work.  However, projects aboard seem to be paralyzing us as well as the fine weather (sunny, temp 77).  We like it here.


 One simple project:  We bought, clipped on and made my step up much easier : ).

 Other projects include replacing the bottom teak hatch board (closes up the boat from the cockpit) because somehow it slid overboard and is gone.  We also need to check the zincs under the boat again to see if they are intact. I'm looking forward to a swim under the boat on a calm clear-water day with our endoscope. It projects onto the computer screen so Drew can see what's going on.  One sailor reported that he had to replace the zincs monthly!   Here's a zinc that was corroded over several months (see Titusville for longer explanation).  Usually they are worse than this when replaced.

The Bahamas this year, they say, have had terrible winds and weather as well.  If we go it will be a trial crab over to Bimini.  I say crab = go sideways because the Gulf Stream is so strong it pushes boats north.  We have to point south to get due east.  Although it costs $300 to get into the country at immigration, we want to see how it goes with the sailing and the dog's Bahamian permit.  It takes about 10 hours to sail over/ a day.  We could stay  a couple days and sail back.
  We were supposed to go to the Miami Beach New World Symphony free Wallcast tonight (we sailed over a couple of weeks ago), but Drew is concentrating on projects. 
And then it rained anyway.  Our enclosed cockpit is cozy on rainy days with a view all around. We roll up the vinyl on sunny days.  
Hope all is well with everyone up in north country.  Presently reading: Strapless by Deborah Davis, the life of painter, John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X. 

2 comments:

Sara S. said...

How's Mazu doing after her ordeal with the aggressive dog?

and, thanks for going to DC to advocate for sanity amidst the rest of it.

Having your own island for daily exercise sounds all right!

Love to both of you, Sara

Sara S. said...

ps--If you do sail to Bimini, please promise me you'll avoid the Bermuda triangle! Seems you'd be awfully close, if not already into it there.