Hello hello!

It’s been a while since I’ve taken the time to write. We’ve been in Miami for nearly a month now, simply enjoying life! This is our 4th or 5th time here, and for once, the familiarity and comfort were welcomed. We picked up a mooring ball at the tried and true Dinner Key Marina, where the price to stay for an entire month is less than it would cost to stay for two weeks- an excellent deal. We got ourselves and Sabado settled, grabbed a couple of cocktails at our favorite local restaurant, and came up with a plan.

We rarely stay put for this long, so we decided to take advantage of it! I flew to Texas for a couple of days to take care of some healthcare-related things, visit my family, and try on my wedding dress. Ray stayed with the boat, getting to the bottom of our water maker malfunctions and securing some spare parts for us to keep on board. 

Once we were reunited, we decided to start prioritizing restoring our good boat-keeper habits. It’s no secret that the beginning of this year was hard for us, and we had to settle on our route for this season. We let that disappointment seep into our daily lives and consequently spent too much time moping around and not enough time taking care of our usual chores. So, we picked up some new cleaning supplies + tools and got back to regularly caring for our floating home. We saw a dead cockroach on the marina’s dinghy dock, so we started with an immediate deep clean of the interior and bought some poison to keep on board just in case. We also spent some time testing our safety gear, replacing our deck light on the mast, treating our canvas hatch covers, and learning how to protect our new white vinyl helm seat.  

We filmed bits and pieces of these projects, so check out our latest YouTube video to see how it went!

Last week we had some friends come to town, so we took a break from boat life and rented an Airbnb in Little Havana, a part of Miami we hadn’t yet explored, and spent some time with them living out our Cuban dreams.

We returned to Sabado late last week and spent the first half of this week preparing to leave- we finished up all our projects, did some laundry, got groceries, and returned our marina keys before ditching our mooring ball on Thursday. 

We motored ever so slowly over to No Name Harbor– a mere 4 miles away- so that we could run our watermaker for a while. We didn’t have any wind, so we dropped anchor that afternoon. 

It was beautiful and hot, so I figured it would be a good time to jump in and clean the bottom of the boat. The water looked clear and bright from above, but once I got in, it was dark and murky… I could only see a few feet in front of me, and the ocean floor was nowhere in sight. I quickly climbed out and gave myself a little pep talk. Swimming alone off the back of the boat is different from swimming off the beach or with friends, you’re on your own, and after a couple of shark encounters last year, I get easily freaked out when the visibility is bad. I reminded myself that I am not scared of the ocean, and I know how to behave if a shark/stingray/barracuda were to express interest in me (which they most likely wouldn’t). Plus, we’re literally in Miami, so if anything were to happen, I could get help in minutes. 

I jumped back in and began scraping and scrubbing from stern to bow. Just as I was starting to enjoy myself, I felt my fingers and hands start tingling… I swam back to the ladder and realized my hands were covered in tiny little shrimp! Well, at first, I thought they were leeches, so I launched myself out of the water and began swatting them off myself in a frenzy. Ray saw me panicking and quickly informed me that they were shrimp. Since we had been moored in a nasty, still watered marina water for the past few weeks, these tiny shrimp had populated our hulls to feed on the algae. Once I started poking around at their meal, they decided to start nibbling on me! They’re harmless, but their little bites (plus the freaky-ness of seeing them all over me) were enough to deter me from finishing the job that day. They should move on after a few days in this anchorage.

Anyway, we’ve spent the weekend relaxing on Sabado, enjoying being on anchor again, and watching the crazy Miami weekender boat traffic fly by. We were anticipating some bad weather yesterday, but we lucked out! The worst of it missed us; we just had some wind and a sprinkle of rain. 

We’d love to get out of here ASAP, but the wind seems to have other plans, so we’ll see. I’m sure we can come up with some jobs to keep us busy in the meantime.

I hope you had a great week. ❤️