Our first night at anchor was beautiful!

Our first night at anchor was beautiful!

As of April 1, we have officially joined the ranks of full-time cruisers! (And no this is not an April Fool’s joke.) Dan finished off his last few days at work and brought home an awesome cruising gift from his boss David that will be a great addition to our interior. We also off-loaded our remaining car to some friends of our marina neighbors who were kind enough to let us use it all the way up to our departure. With all of our last minute tasks wrapped up, we were ready to go!

This beautiful anchor light now has a place of honor in our main salon.

This beautiful anchor light now has a place of honor in our main salon.

The only problem is how much mud the anchor brings back up with it!

The only problem is how much mud the anchor brings back up with it!

Though we had never anchored over night before, our first couple of nights have gone smoothly thanks to our over-sized Mantus* anchor. It was important to us to have an anchor that we could trust and after many hours of online research and talking to other cruisers, we think we have made the right choice. The ease with which our anchor has set these first few nights has been very important for our confidence in anchoring, which is a must if we want to keep marina expenses to a minimum. We’ll do an update on our anchoring experience after the first couple of months, but thus far we are very happy with the performance.

The opening was a little too close for comfort...

The opening was a little too close for comfort…

After a full 4 hours of ICW bridges on Thursday (and 11 hours from Lantana to Hollywood in July), I’m happy to report that we are free of the drawbridge prison that is South Florida. Hopefully, the next time we come through the area we’ll be able to do more of that time on the ocean side, but at least it was mostly uneventful. The Broad Causeway bridge in Miami was having construction done on it when we went through, which meant that only one side was opening. Talk about a tight squeeze! We also made it through the Julia Tuttle bridge which the the only fixed bridge under 65 feet along the entire East Coast ICW. The story goes that the architect accidentally made the plans for 56′ instead of 65′ and now a good percentage of larger sailboats can’t fit through.

That's 95 feet to the top!

That’s 95 feet to the top!

Thursday afternoon and night were spent checking out South Beach Miami, where there are certainly a lot of interesting people, to say the least. One night was enough for us though and we are now anchored just outside of No Name Harbor on Biscayne Bay. We got to tour the old lighthouse on the island and even Carter made it up the 109 steps to the top! It was a beautiful view from the top, though Dan wasn’t too happy about the swaying old staircase as we came to the end of our 95 foot climb. Then back to the boat to finish preparations for our Gulf Stream crossing tomorrow! To Bimini we go!

Carter loved the view

Carter loved the view

 

*Mantus gave us a generous discount on the purchase of our anchor and bridle in exchange for honest reviews of their products. While this a factor in choosing to go with them, we would not have agreed to the arrangement if they were not already on our top choices list.