On Friday, September 5, we finally got to leave Ft. Lauderdale for our Blue Water Sailing School class.  Captain Bill met with us Thursday morning to go over some navigation information.  He came back Friday morning at 10 and we took off about an hour later.  Then, we had perfect sailing weather for the 20 mile sail down to Miami.  Twenty miles by water sure takes a lot longer than 20 miles by land.  We put up the mainsail first, motored for a bit until we got out into the ocean, then we raised the jib.  The seas were calm and the wind was perfect for sailing.  We got lots of practice steering in a close reach most of the day. We kept at between 7 and 8 knots all the way down without using the motor and arrived in Miami about 4.  It took us almost two more hours to get through the channel and down to Biscayne Bay.   Then we arrived outside of Miami and tacked a few times before entering the bay.  We anchored in a small part of Biscayne Bay.  We were exhausted but hadn’t had a tinge of seasickness.  We had crabcakes and fresh fruit for dinner and were asleep almost before our heads hit the pillows.  We weren’t able to use the air conditioning as we haven’t gotten the knack of charging the batteries yet.  It’s obvious though that we’ll need those solar panels before we leave shore power at Las Olas.  They’ll keep almost everything going inside the boat.

Saturday morning, we got up about 7, had coffee and breakfast and another navigation lesson looking at some charts and plotting our sail for the day on a paper chart.  The electronic Raymarine plot charter is a lot of fun to look at and it’s going to be a huge asset, but learning paper charts and having them available is essential.  Next we set off under the Rickenbacker Causeway for Biscayne Bay.   I was a little nervous steering the boat through all of the Sunday boat traffic.  I learned you just have to pull out and hope no one decides to go at the same time, or you wait all day.  There was quite a bit of boat traffic once we got on the Bay, but it is 35 miles long so we had a lot of room to maneuver.  We practiced tacks and jibes, spent most of the day on the water and then headed back to another anchorage on the bay side of the bridge.  Spaghetti for dinner was on the menu along with some toasts with our glasses of wine for a good days work.

This morning we woke up at 7 am again, had coffee and breakfast, pulled up the anchor, headed under the causeway and we were on our way.  We were in the big channel where the cruise ships sail for awhile.  Coming in on Friday, we met one going out.  This time we were too early for that.  The weather conditions were not conducive to sailing today.  We did go three miles out to the Gulf Stream and then tacked back.  That took us so long, due to winds coming from the northeast, that we decided to motorsail back to Ft. Lauderdale.  It was much slower going, as we averaged about 4.5 knots heading into the wind.  We arrived back here to go under the 17th bridge at 4:00. It goes up every half hour.  As we cruised back from Miami we saw the clouds getting heavier and closer and worried that the rain would beat us to Ft. Lauderdale.  Ike has turned to the southwest and should miss us entirely, except for some heavy winds and rain.  As it turned out, the clouds never dropped any rain on us and in fact now, at 11 pm, we have clear skies and no rain.

We thought we would be coming back to an evacuation today.  I even e-mailed Doug, my brother who lives in China, and asked if we could evacuate to his house north of Tampa.  So, that was a possible plan.  When we left on Friday, we thought we would arrive back here on Sunday, tie down the boat for a hurricane, pick up Daisy from Camp Canine Monday morning and head inland.  Instead, we got back here, tied up the boat for heavy winds with lots of rope, removed the jib, and tied down the main in its cradle.

Mark washed down the deck and windows to remove all the sea water, filled the water tanks and we are back in our cozy home.   We’ll wait to see what  Hurricane Ike does and will probably go back out for some day sailing out of Ft. Lauderdale for the last three days of our classwork at the end of the week.

This was exhausting but boy did we leaning a lot.  Books are fine, but doing is much better.  Bill is a fabulous teacher - very calm and he explains things well.  He repeats, repeats and repeats.  The class should have lasted six days, but I like it better this way.  Now we have some time to absorb it all, rest up and be ready for the next round of lessons.