Time travelled: 10 hours
Nautical miles: about 10 hours worth so probably 100
Docked at: Rickenbacker Marina, Key Biscayne /Virginia Key
fuel dock
slip B 84
face dock in front of restaurant
back to the fuel dock
I believe that we just went full circle and it only took 2 and a half hours!! Just what we needed after a ten hour day. If you read yesterdays blog I mentioned that we may have to anchor out. Well, this morning I called my list of marinas again just in case they had a cancellation. I called here and Jay had told me the first time that he might have a face dock available but otherwise everything else is off the stern and that does not work for us. So, this morning he said he had a slip with a finger pier - great - paid in advance and life was good! We arrived about five and were told to pull up to the fuel dock - two very nice gentlemen got on the boat to take us to our slip. The slip was thirty five feet wide and the finger pier at the stern was about 4 feet long ......we tried to make it work but in reality it was impossible. We left with the two men still on the boat - our plan was to drop them off at the fuel dock and go anchor out. Jay said - I have another slip but there is only 30 amp service - no problem we have a splitter - so off the four us go. Did I mention that these two lovely gentlemen spoke NO ENGLISH. So, we get into the next slip and reel out the power cord only to find out that the 30 amp service cannot be split - it only has one leg??? No, problemo (the extent of my Spanish) we will run the generator. Woops the generator starts but it is not pushing power. Humm, Garth called Jay and he was at the fuel dock - there is 50 amp power here but no water...no problemo, we had filled the water tanks in Key West and i had already hosed down the boat. By this time it is dark .....no one is around and we have six lines out holding us to this dock. Garth spotted a man over the way and asked him if he could throw us a line. He came over and stood there - I thought he was just going to wait and hand me the bow line last so I went and got one of the spring lines and Garth was off the boat getting the stern line. The face dock only ran about 3/4 of the length of our boat so I did not want to haul that line in through the water..........before I could say una cerveza,por favor the man had untied both bow lines and the boat was leaving the dock with just Zeke and I. I nicely yelled at him to tie up the boat and I ran to the other side and pushed us off the pilon and Garth did the splits hurling himself onto the boat......OH VEY!!!!! We arrived back to the fuel dock and I threw the spring lines and asked them to cross them - luckily one of this crew spoke English but he did not want to cross the lines - I threw up my arms in exasperation and said just tie the boat up.
Our friends Peggy and Steve live on Key Biscayne and we had planned on going out for dinner --- well plans and a boat ---when the generator would not start I called Steve and cancelled dinner cause I could tell this night was headed in the wrong direction.
So, now we have power - kind of (it flickers) - no water and are tied up to the fuel dock right at the base of the bridge. I asked Jay "how to we get to the restaurant from here? Oh, he says it is a long way - if you let me know what time you want to go I will send a golf cart over for you. AHHHH I am hot, sweaty,tired and hungry!!! Don;t worry about it I said...thinking to myself that a bowl of cereal sounded good. Garth on the other hand said I am going to call Steve back - so about forty minutes later Peggy and Steve showed up with pizza and cookies. We had had toast this morning and that was it so we pretty much devoured the pizza and cookies. I have to mention the cookies - as I said earlier to Peggy they don't get much better - shortbread circles stuck together with caramel. Decant and delicious!! Thanks guys, it was truly appreciated!
Some pics of our day - mostly from the last hour. Actually I am too tired to post the pictures so I will ad them tomorrow. it's been a looong day!!
