We have been living aboard Seas the Day for one week now.  It has been incredibly busy - no time to rest and relax yet.

We had to postpone our class at Blue Water Sailing School and will now start it a week later, this Saturday.  We’ll spend one week aboard Seas the Day with an instructor, sailing down to the Keys and back.  Last week, Tropical Storm Fay affected the weather here enough that it delayed us bringing Seas the Day over from the CatCo docks for day.  Now, Hurricane Gustav is headed toward the States.  We talked with Dave at BWSC this morning and he said they have no plans to postpone the class as the hurricane is not headed this way.  However, I suspect we’ll have some stormy weather.

There is something wrong with the charging system on the Seas the Day.  The two sides aren’t charging properly.  Parts were ordered from France the day after she arrived three weeks ago and they finally reached the Miami airport on Monday, August 25.  Apparently, this is vacation time in France.  There were a number of other minor problems which needed to be fixed, so we’ve had a crew from CatCo onboard this week working on them.  Also, we are installing a radar system and upgrades to our Raymarine navigational system.  There is now a E120 Chart Plotter with a 12 inch screen in the cockpit and Mark’s 17 inch Dell will handle the navigation at the saloon nav station.

On Monday, we spent several hours at West Marine.  Their “flagship store” is in Ft. Lauderdale, and it had everything we needed and much more we wish we had.  Four carts were filled, with the able advice of Scott from CatCo.   We still have more to buy, but are now much better provisioned for sailing.

We did bring most of the items we needed to fill the galley, heads, and cabins in our UHaul from MInnesota, but needed all sorts of marine related supplies.  We have two small refrigerator/freezers and one small freezer but due to the electrical problems we are only using one refrigerator.  They can be turned on after the charger is installed today.  We’ll have to get provisions for a week when we leave with our instructor for our sailing class.  I went to Sam’s Club yesterday and it was difficult not to buy my usual large quantities.  We do have a lot of storage space aboard, but most spaces are filled.  Whoever designed the Lagoon 420 did make use of every available space for storage.

Las Olas is a city marina, so while it doesn’t have amenities such as a swimming pool, restaurants, etc. that a private marina would provide, it does have a sparkling clean laundry room, restrooms, and TV/reading room.  We are on the Intracoastal, and there is a lot of boat traffic, especially on the weekends.  The traffic creates waves and we rock a lot, but it’s a slow, comfortable rock. F Dock is at the far end of the marina and there are only seven slips in it.  We are docked next to a large yacht with no one onboard, and the rest of the slips are empty.  Therefore, we have our own private dock, which is great for Daisy.  We can drive up to the gate, within a few feet of Seas the Day, to unload things.  We’ve had a lot to unload, so that’s a great bonus.  Our car is parked close as well.

The best part is the location.  We have a two block walk to the Atlantic Beach.  Unfortunately, when we have Daisy (which is always) we can’t walk on the sandy beach, but there is a beautiful sidewalk that runs next to it.  There is a dog beach which is open Friday - Sunday evenings for $5 a visit.  There are unlimited restaurants in the area, most with outdoor eating available and are dog friendly.   Unfortunately, this part of Ft. Lauderdale Beach is apparently the party place to go at night and walking on the beach then is a little noisy.   It’s “battle of the bands” from restaurant to restaurant all down the street.

Daisy has adapted very well to boat life.  She now jumps on and off the deck, even at high tide when the jump is several feet.   She won’t go down the steps to the cabins, but she is at easy in the saloon, galley and outside in the cockpit and deck area.  It is very hot in Ft. Lauderdale right now, so she prefers to lie under the saloon table next to an air conditioning vent.  Last week, we brought her to Camp Canine for a day to have them check her out.  It’s similar to Doggie Daycare where she occasionally stayed in Minnesota, and she loved running around playing all day.  She’ll stay there for a week while we go out on our sailing class.

A carpenter, Franco, came aboard this morning to give us an estimate on converting the master cabin sitting area into an office.  He’ll give us a price tomorrow, and if it’s acceptable he’ll come over and make the templates before we leave and be ready after we get back from our class to start installing shelves and a desk area.  We also need to get a watermaker installed when we get back.  Right now we are using city water from the marina as well as shore electricity, but after we leave here, we’ll rarely be staying at marinas.

A few nights ago we “skyped” my brother Doug and his family in China.  They are 12 hours ahead of us and called when they saw we were online Monday evening with Mark’s grandchildren from Minnesota.  My brother Duane in Duluth also has Skype so hopefully we can talk to and see them and my mom in Duluth. 

Overall, after living aboard a week we are extremely pleased with Seas the Day.  While we haven’t sailed her yet, we’ve done that in the past on a 420 and everyone else says they sail beautifully.  We’ll probably be going out tomorrow or Friday with Scott, to see all of the systems in action.