We’ve been at the Harbour Towne Marina for a while.  A beautiful and busy place.  Fun to watch boats launched and hauled out by forklift, all at amazing speed and efficiency.

A few “firsts” here too… among them being calling a fuel company and having a truck come to our dock and deliver – wait for it – 749 gallons of diesel!  Isn’t that fun! A bit of a silver lining is that marine diesel is cheaper than over the road diesel, even if it’s personally delivered, because it doesn’t need to include highway taxes.

People have asked me when and how I’m going to sell my van.  We drove here in our trusty little Toyota van, and have used it a lot as we drive all over town getting parts and otherwise provisioning our boat.  Long term plans have us using our cool folding bikes and nifty bike trailer once we are underway, but we sure have liked having the van handy.  So how to sell it, when we use it so much?  I said I’d really like to sell it the evening before we leave.  God answers prayers in amazing ways sometimes!  Monday  morning I offered it to one of the workers here at the marina.  He said he might be interested, and would also mention it to some of the other guys.  Then we spent all day driving around getting last minute things done.  Back to the marina about 4:30, I drove it to the Harbor Master’s office and found the guy.  We had about 6 people interested, all saying what a great little van!  One of them really wanted it, and found the cash for a done deal.  So we effortlessly sold our van the very evening we had hoped to.  Amazing!

In our walking around the marina, we saw another trawler which I thought had very nice lines… turns out it was another Selene 53.  We met with the owners, Scott and Cathy, and had a great time talking with them, asking tons of questions and learning a lot! It is really helpful to compare boats and learn what others have done who live aboard.

Here is sunrise Monday morning.  We were going to get a fairly early start, and head up to Palm Beach.

Soon we were out of the channel and offshore, waving goodbye to beautiful Ft Lauderdale.

The view from the flybridge is great.  Fresh air, shade and a beautiful day.  We saw a few flying fish, and they were way more exciting than the ones I remember from Southern California.  I remembered little silvery fish jumping a foot out of the water, and then “flying” maybe twenty feet before falling back in the water.  These fish seemed larger, with lots of pretty blue markings.  They would “fly” for a long ways, up to 70 or 80 feet!  I spent a lot of time trying to catch one in a photograph… pretty hard to do!

Soon we were seeing dozens of them!  Still pretty hard to get a good shot.  We were talking with my daughter and her kids on the phone when we saw two dolphins, cavorting right near our bow. Such beautiful creatures!  Not there nearly long enough for a picture.

Tuesday evening in Palm Beach. Another gorgeous evening.

And now about the catastrophe.  Well, maybe that’s a bit of exaggeration… but it feels like it.  Wednesday morning we set out somewhat early.  We needed a right turn after we left our slip, and then left again out into the channel.  I underestimated the strength of the current and the wind, both fairly strong and right behind us, and ended up hitting the dock on the other side.  Kind of like a parking lot accident, where things are moving so slowly but you know it’s going to end badly.  So it’s hard to tell which was hurt worse – my heart or my beautiful boat.  Yes, I damaged the fiberglass.  Nobody got hurt, no other boats were scratched, just my bow and my pride. Sigh.  So we have to get it fixed before we go further. Sigh again.  A big problem is that all the boatyards here are booked out 2-3 weeks! Not in our original plan!  We found a good yard that worked hard to find us a place on the hard, and now we wait to see how long till we can get her fixed up again.  Bummer.  So our boat is on the hard now, and we are back in a hotel.  Upside is Palm Beach is a gorgeous place, and with our cool bikes we can get around fine.  Since we created a lemon, we might as well enjoy the lemonade!