It felt good to cast the lines off. There's something slightly disturbing about living aboard a cruising boat that isn't cruising. As predicted winds were SE under 10kts and the swell was 3' or less. Not a dry-deck crossing by any means but not bad. Lunch underway was a fitting salute to the country in our wake; it included both coconut bread and the last of the seafood pizza.
Once across and safely in the mooring field at Las Olas in Ft Lauderdale, the first challenge was to check back into the US. As luck would have it next to us we're some folks we'd met in Bimini and they'd just done the check-in. It was painless they said, other than the $40 in taxi fare. We were determined to do better and we did. Our cost was $30 and that included two all day bus passes, a several hour tour of the city, and a fabulous dinner at a Chinese restaurant.
We arrived back at the dinghy after dark. This was a problem as the Ft Lauderdale marine police are zealous--a friend got a $90 ticket for a burned-out nav light on his dink. Our dink has no nav lights at all. Not to worry, there's an app for that! With Bicki in the dink's bow holding an iTouch in each hand; one screen glowing bright red the other bright green, I pointed a flashlight aft and confidently steered us towards Nellie. I'm sure we weren't completely legal--but what self respecting cop could ticket this kind of ingenuity? Safely back in the US after a 52nm Gulf Stream crossing bringing the total miles thus far to 725nm. DBH.
