New River Downtown Docks (docked)
February 20, 2022
We are leaving this dockage early tomorrow morning to make use of the slack tide (when the water is almost still). We should be able to untie and turn around, then motor outbound on the river. The tide will start coming in as we proceed which is beneficial when we have to stop at the two bridges (and maybe the railroad bridge if it’s down) because we won’t be pushed into the bridge.
We plan to get back on the ICW and head past Miami to No Name Harbor where we’ll anchor and wait for a weather window. No Name Harbor is a staging area for boats heading to the Bahamas so it’s likely we’ll find others who will be heading east when we do.
Bimini is almost directly east of Miami but since the Gulf Stream will push us north, we will leave from further south. The Gulf Stream moves north at about 2.5 miles an hour- Lailia comfortably motors at about 6 miles an hour, so for every hour we are in the stream, we will move (approximately) 6 miles east and 2.5 miles north.
We did another trip to Publix (John actually did two) today. Since we don’t have a car our purchases are limited to what we can carry. I tried to buy food for the week that we won’t easily get in the Bahamas (like meatballs). We also don’t have a true freezer (just a really cold metal box in our fridge) so we really can’t just grab extras to freeze for later.
I saw an iguana on the way to the store, so there’s that!
Tonight we’re refilling our water tank with fresh water We hope to find a spot with clear water to try out our water maker further south of here. We originally thought we might make some salt water in a bucket to test the water maker but read that we don’t want to use “city water” because chlorine can damage the reverse osmosis membranes. There’s heavy boat traffic here so we don’t want to use the system here and foul the membranes.
This dockage has been pretty entertaining. We haven’t seen many super yachts this weekend, but we have seen all manner of smaller motor boats, paddle boarders, kayakers, water taxis, tiki bar boats, and the multi-level faux riverboat, The Jungle Queen. The Queen does both a daily tour and a daily dinner cruise.
We will have to go under approximately 13 bridges tomorrow. My enchantment with bridges has definitely diminished.
Life on Lailia 