Still waiting...yawn

It appears to be true what people had been saying and what we had read - it's hard to cross from Florida to Bahamas in January. Every time we look at the weather forecast (which averages 26 times a day) it has changed. We're still really hoping there is a break in the wind speed and direction for just one day this week and we can make it to the sunny, warm Berry Islands.

Our neighbours took a pic of our boat in the pea-soup fog this week

Rain rain go away, come again after we've left!

There are still many, many jobs we could be doing on the boat but with the cold fronts that keep moving in it's just been to dark, rainy, windy and cool to be on deck getting much done. So we've been busy reading and watching Homeland - FYI season 4 episode 9 is not a good point in the show to realize you have no more episodes!! So any and all book suggestions welcome :) I also made James a new wallet which was long over due since his previous "wallet" was a piece of string used to tie his cards and money together! We found a bag of old sail scraps in the v-berth so I used that in keeping with the nautical theme our lifestyle has taken.

Wallet making

The other bit of entertainment we had was a pair of dolphins who came up to our boat the other evening and spent about half an hour swimming all around our boat. They were fishing and were making quite the display of it - one was swimming along on her back right against our boat, catching a fish in her mouth then lazily rolling over to eat it. The fish were freaking out and started jumping into our dingy!! I climbed down to get the poor things out and the dolphin swam right under my feet on the ladder - it looked an awful lot bigger that close up! James got the fish out of the dingy and threw them back into the water - which essentially was right into the dolphins mouth - I think they thought we were feeding them! They continued to swim on their sides and back all around and under our boat and their eyes were totally tracking us! Of course our camera was dead, other than the 1 second video below you'll just have to take our word for it.

We FINALLY enjoyed a day in Miami!!! We didn't worry about the boat and no one was rude/mean to us - it was delightful. One of the benefits of being delayed meant that I had time to order a folding bike since James got the last one on Amazon when we were at the marina in Cocoa. Yesterday, we set off on our folding bike maiden voyage to explore some more of South Beach. It was early on Saturday morning so the traffic wasn't bad (this made riding on the busy streets with no bike lanes a lot nicer). We biked through the city to South Point Park and then went along the boardwalk. There was a street festival there with food vendors and musicians and a play in the park - it was great! We found an awesome Italian Bakery and had homemade pizza for lunch. If you're in the area you have to check out Buon Panne Italiano http://www.buonpaneitaliano.com/. There are three older guys in the back baking away and two younger hilarious, friendly guys serving out front.  After that we headed out to the beach for a swim before the cold fronts move back in.

Last night we had our neighbours, Neil and Jeanette, from SV Echo Echo over - a really nice, funny Kiwi Aussie couple whose boat we went to last week. We had some much needed laughs and commiserated about being stuck in what we have dubbed "Break Down Harbour". They have also been stuck waiting for repairs and are in the same boat as us (sorry couldn't resist) waiting out the weather.  We're all pretty excited to get out of here.

Today we had some incredible winds. There had been a Tornado Watch issued so we made sure to have everything tied down tight. We sat in the cockpit this morning having our coffee and watching the front move in. Being out on the water really gives you the opportunity to see weather in effect. We could actually see the line of the front moving in!

You can see the line where the cold front moved in and destroyed our enclosure

It was moving a lot faster than we realized so no sooner had we stepped off the gangway ladder than my coffee went flying along with all the dishes in the drying rack! The 43knots of wind beat up our cockpit enclosure a bit. The wind pushed the dodger off the front and then pulled the stainless steel frame apart on one side and bent the screws on one of the fixtures! It wasn't until it was all over that we read a tornado had actually struck on the gulf coast and sadly two people died (parents: they were not on a boat, it was totally unrelated to sailing). The high winds mean we can definitely confirm our wind generator is working!! This 25+knot wind we've had all day has our charge controller reading over 12.7volts and still going - yee haw! We will be in serious power heaven once that other solar panel is wired-in and that hot, hot Caribbean sun is beating down!

Guess we're getting the tape out again

Enclosure no longer coving the wood

Those 2 pieces of metal should be connected

Some very bent screws