Battling the Florida Straights; Key West and Fort Lauderdale….

We have had our fair share of rough passages given that we have only been sailing for just under 4 months- and the sail across the Florida Straights was another bouncy and uncomfortable ride! It got wild as soon as we left the safety of Marina Hemingway and we looked back longingly at the rapidly disappearing land-mass of Cuba as we slammed straight into big seas and 25 knot winds. We contemplated turning back but ploughed on into an upwind beat with current against wind…Russ has an image of Tika’s bows burying into the waves up to her second hatches etched in his memory…

Although we had planned a full 2 day, 1 night passage straight through to Fort Lauderdale with forecasted 15-18 knot winds, we were so exhausted by the crazy (25+ knot) conditions that we gratefully snuck into Key West, anchored and hankered down with a hot chocolate at 10pm that night… Fort Lauderdale would have to wait!

We hung out in Key West for two days, sampled key lime pie and checked into the U.S.A- which it turns out we need a visa for. WHAA????? We flew in to L.A on an ESTA- no problem. And if we had have sailed back in within 90 days of that all would be fine (we were 4 days out) It seems that in the fine print there is a link that gives a detailed description of what a ‘signature carrier’ (an approved mode of entry to the USA; commercial airline, ship etc) is. A private sailboat is unfortunately not one of them.

Although we freaked when the uniformed immigration official read us the riot act that included a $580 per person fine and being immediately sent on our way, we soon sniffed a well-worn script and a standard procedure as the conversation moved to ‘we’ll see what we can do” and “ well we do sometimes waive the visa in these circumstances…” Obviously it happens all the time and we are not surprised at all- Doesn’t the US and Australia have a visa waiver agreement??  I suppose we should have known about it and applied for a visa before we left Australia…

A number of hours later, our visa was waived and by the time we left the immigration office we were best friends with the nice officer and he was googling ratings for local sushi restaurants to find us our best option- he even called ahead and made a reservation for us!

We took off for Fort Lauderdale dodging the minefields of lobster pot Buoys on the way. . .As the sun set, and after wrapping a buoy around our rudder and having to dive on it to untangle the rope we headed out in to deeper water to avoid this navigational hazard.

After a night at sea I was on watch in the early hours of the morning, dodging ships and navigating into Port Everglades. I had my eye on a cargo ship but she seemed to be way ahead of us and heading North so I wasn’t too worried. I was closely watching an ocean liner that was close and moving fast but so lit up like a Christmas tree that I couldn’t see it’s navigation lights and therefore could not tell in which direction she was traveling…I was relieved when it finally became obvious he was cruising away from us and out to sea. I was down in the Starboard hull waking Russ up for the entry into port when I heard a voice hailing us on the radio. By the time I got back on deck (maybe 30 seconds) a pilot boat was speeding towards us, the massive, Finnish cargo ship was not far behind and the hailing was becoming a little more insistent…. “sailing vessel entering Port Everglades…what is your intention???”….. “errr um…this is sailing vessel Tika…um….you’re a little bigger than us so I think we will just turn to port here and go in behind you…” We followed him in feeling a little humble…

Below: we arrived at the marina just before 6am so there was no-one to take our lines. The space we had been told to park in was wedged in between 4 other boats with literally inches to spare front and back. Russ must be getting used to close encounter manoeuvring because he pulled off a perfect parallel park! (not to take away from my kamikaze leap onto the dock with bow line in hand)

Check out how tight it was! I am sure to experienced, large catamaran sailors, docking like this is a walk in the park. But we were nervous as hell and still can’t quite believe we pulled it off with inches to spare…

As work on Tika commenced the next day we were excited to receive a few packages from home and a big package that we had ordered from Gig Harbour Boats- our new dinghy!  It is a sailing dinghy, a row boat with 2 sets of beautiful wooden, polished oars and with the outboard on, it is a fast, planing dinghy! The kids helped me unwrap it- biggest Christmas present ever!

Below: forklifting the dinghy to the water

Our time in Fort Lauderdale was a crazy and hectic 8 days all up. We had big plans for our time in the U.S and had promised the kids the world…day trips to Miami, Cape Canaveral and Universal Studios, bike rides to the beach, pre-Christmas treats and hi-speed internet connection! the works! It felt like we had been saying “in Florida we will do that/buy that/get that” for months. The expectations were high and we felt terrible that we ended up being time-restricted and busy and didn’t really squeeze in any fun times (other than picking up our evening meals at Wholefoods- a humungous, fabulously well stocked and healthy farmers market and grocery store- it’s amazing what we get excited about after 3 months away from the gluttony of the West!) Unfortunately and much to the kids disgust, the internet speed was pretty dismal…

We had a massive list of boat jobs to get through including installing 2 wind generators, some fibre glass work at the anchor winch and some fabulous signage on both hulls- Tika has a boring, small, blue (!) Helvetica name at the back and (anyone who knows Greer will understand) that will never do. A rough (unfinished, cropped) sketch of the artwork intended below;

The list was long and also included a host of other small but important boat maintenance tasks. Apart from managing the signage we decided that I would take on kid patrol, do school, shopping, provisioning etc and Russ would manage the boat work. With workmen crawling all over Tika from dusk to dawn, the kids and I simply couldn’t be there getting in the way… We hung out in cafes doing school and traipsed around the shops ticking off items on our provision and ‘to do’ list. The list included Christmas gifts, haircuts, school supplies, medical kit supplies and lots of first world items that simply aren’t available in many other places in the Caribbean. 

As the days went on it slowly dawned on us that we may not get the work finished and get across the gulf stream to The Bahamas in time for Christmas. We had originally planned a 2 week stay but had arrived late due to our unscheduled stop in key west. Also the weather had to line up for our crossing …..We saw a  ‘window’ that would have us cross just before a big front and we locked onto it. It looked to be our only chance to get somewhere wonderful for Christmas. The already tight schedule now had to be compressed into 8 days only……

It got stressful trying to live aboard during all the work. Russ was pushing the workmen (and one woman) to work to an extremely tight deadline. He made many cups of Aero Press coffees in the hope that caffeine would speed up the process   At certain points we decided it wasn’t do-able and started googling for last minute flights and accommodation some-where with snow.   We certainly didn’t want to be in the marina for Christmas! Many non-essential items (including Tika’s new, gorgeous signage ) got scratched from the work list….

The fabricator making the new frame for the wind generators ended up working until 2am one night, and right through until dawn on our last night. The deadline got pushed out three times as we left departing to the very last possible minute whilst desperately trying to get as much as possible completed!

Above: Behind all the saloon seats and backing boards lies Tika’s electrical wiring system. Everything runs back to the battery bank under the port side saloon seat. We had one marine electrician working on the electrical systems (installing the cables for the new wind generators, fixing an issue with our chart plotter etc) for 8 days solid.

We left for the Bahamas with a filthy boat, a sleep deprived skipper and an unhappy crew. We nearly had to turn around in the channel on our way out to sea when we realised we had no port steering…it turned out that a tradesman had inadvertently flipped a hydraulic lever so our rudders were not aligned!

Once the U.S mainland had become a blur off our stern, we did a little post mortem and promised each other that we wouldn’t push things so hard in the future! We had pulled it off but we were all frazzled (and determined to find some fun in the sun for Christmas in the Bahamas!) I guess boat-work is all part of cruising and necessary to keep the boat functioning for when we are out in the islands enjoying ourselves…

Next post:  Meeting other kid boats, a sailing community, Christmas and some R&R in The Bahamas…