Mallory and Shannon visited for the long weekend, primarily to see their brothers and to go diving. Within the family unit, we own two GoPros, perfect for underwater photography. We’ll get some great video of the girls playing amongst the sharks and rays and fish and coral and submerged statues of Jesus to post on the blog. Nope. One camera was left in a Washington, D.C. apartment. The other one safely was in a St. Petersburg dorm room. We don’t assign blame in this family, of course, but it’s ok to say who’s not to blame. That’d be mom and dad. Fortunately we had some old video from when the girls were little.
We also played pickleball. Lots of pickleball. Every day some pickleball. We’re not pros yet, but we’re getting to the point where we aren’t always beaten soundly by the 70-year-old ladies.
On Monday the girls returned to their schools, leaving us at Pilothouse Marina without the numbers we need for cards, what with the boys lacking opposable thumbs and all.
Not many liveaboards here, which differs significantly from Faro Blanco.
It’s probably because the fixed finger piers are life-threateningly short and narrow.
We’d feel a bit lonely, except for, you know, pickleball. Fortunately the local courts are just a short walk from our short finger pier.
Pilothouse is a pretty small marina, and Misty Pearl is one of the larger vessels here.
There’s nothing bad about being the big boat in a small pond, except when the exit is shallow. Very shallow, and very narrow.
We hit the high tide just fine coming in, and can leave on a high tide with relative confidence. Unfortunately, high tide isn’t always at a convenient time. For example, we hope to leave on the 25th. The first high tide on the 25th is roughly at 1:20 a.m. We ain’t leaving at 1:20 a.m. The next high tide is at about 1:30 p.m. But the sun sets in Miami—our next stop—at 6:20. Call it five hours of cruising time. To go 50 nautical miles. At 7.5 knots. Hmmmm. Something doesn’t add up favorably for the good guys. Misty Pearl isn’t going to go much faster, and we can’t do much about the tide or the sun.
Right now we think we’ll have to gamble and leave at 11:30. June Moon is the sailboat that shares that toothpick-sized finger dock with us. John has been working on her from time to time. He once took an underwater scooter down the canal to find the submerged rocks. Hopefully before we leave he’ll be around to mark them on a chart for us.
The bad news is that it’s been hot. The good news is that Bob from SALT Services came up and confirmed that the AC problem was related to his tech overcharging the system. So now we won’t be sleeping in sweat puddles any more.
This weekend we’ll join other parents at Eckerd. Lunch at Chuy’s in Homestead on the way, but no pickleball for a few days.
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* Darling it’s better down where it’s wetter.