28.3 nm
Wind: E 10 knots, building to 15
Seas: light chop
Maximum speed: 6.7 knots
Average speed: 4.1 knots
Latitude: 28°37.66’N
Longitude: 080°48.38’W
Life is good. Perfect, in fact. Karl’s cooking us up a pot of spaghetti, there’s fresh garlic bread in the oven and a green salad on the table. I’m slightly sunburned, but just enough to make me remember those glorious childhood days at the beach. I can see the sun painting hte sky peach just out the companionway, and a cool breeze is blowing through the forward hatch. We’ve opened a lovely bottle of Shiraz to share with our dinner, a celebratory bottle we’ve held onto for months.
We saw manatees today. At least ten of them. Karl yelled at me as I was doing dishes--“look, a whale!”--and I ran up the stps to see the rounded black-gray tail of a manatee dip back below the surface. After that, all day today, we saw them--surfacing, circling around the boat, feeding on the vegetation in the water. Dolphins have surrounded us since we’ve been back on the boat, too. We saw about twenty groups of dolphins (porpoises?) today. Plus: our first flamingos, two of them, flying over the boat. Pink birds make you think something’s gone awry in the universe. And a raccoon fishing, white pelicans, which are, evidently, rare, and blue ibises, and a space shuttle under construction in the distance at Cape Canaveral.
We checked out our budget last night, and--miracle of miracles--we may have enough money for another four months. If we’re careful. Every doubt has been quelled. Whatever we decide--the Bahamas, the Gulf Coast, the Keys, even staying in Florida and earning some more freedom chips--we’re back on our path. The right one.
No comments:
Post a Comment