A Glimpse of the Sweet Life - Sailing Our Dream Boat

Remember how we left you last? You know, being towed in by Seatow? Yeah, when our sailing instructor friend and his catamaran went kaput. Ouch. Now think way back. Now remember that leopard we saw that was almost perfect? Yes, almost perfect. Well, we ended up befriending the owner John and he knew that we were on this trip. So when he sent a text message asking, how's it going? We responded back with To which he responded, I'm gonna come get you and you can stay with me. Thank you. And please. Yeah. Which brings us to a couple days later. Things are bananas. Within the last week we put in an offer on a boat. It was accepted and now we've got to get the boat from Vero to Fort Lauderdale for the survey, the sea trial, the haul out, signing papers, handing over money, and I'm sure a whole bunch of other stuff. But the good news is the owner of the boat is way awesome and is helping us do all of that. So we're getting to learn the ropes of the boat with the guy who owns the boat for now. So we're going sailing. There she is. What are we doing today? We're going sailing. What are you doing right now? We just reset a knot fog and it's a little bit of a wet job. Why don't you tell everybody what that is? You don't know? I guess it counts how many knots we've locked. Good luck guys. Have fun. Thank you. How friendly are all the other boaters at the dock? So far extremely friendly. Are they helpful? They're very helpful. Yeah. You read my mind. Thanks Mark. Bye Dad. We are literally learning the ropes here. Right? Right. So we are moving. This is our autopilot navigation system and look. Nobody's steering. That's awesome. Reset. Reset. Perfect. Easy peasy. Then it's that. Remember turning into the wind setting the autopilot and then we're going to raise the mainsail. I was like wow that's no trouble at all. We're headed out to sea right now and we haven't quite gotten out there yet so this is kind of the most crazy part tumultuous with the waves and the swell coming in at us. We're almost at the last marker and this is nothing nothing at all compared to what we dealt with just last time on the last boat. Yeah nothing at all like this is so much better. Yeah we're rolling pretty good though. Just goes to prove that timing and going out at the you know at the perfect moment really makes a huge difference you know where the tide is how the wind is what your waves what your swells all of it it's amazing the differences. I think he's already getting into the swing of things. And they say sailing is hard. Yeah flying baby 9.4 knots. Nikki's falling over. So we're cruising along cruising along with the jib out the mainsail autopilot having lunch and all of a sudden we saw it hit 9.5 and now we're kind of going 8.5 9.2 9.3 yeah we're definitely catching some steam apparent wind is 14 knots true winds 21 knots speed over ground is well currently 8.0 but we're not cooking as much as we were just a second ago. Hey we're at 9.2 8.6 speed over ground. Nikki working away over there editing our last video. Somebody's got to do the work around here. Thankfully I have a weaker stomach than her so I can get out of it this time. That's what he says. Not today. There's a whale out there sounding with his arm it's hard to see him. Lots of action here at Jupiter Beach right? Yeah flying fish flying fish big sea turtles whale mooring balls and crab pots you know you gotta look for all kinds of stuff out there. I forgot to get a video of the Jupiter lighthouse but that's way over there. This experience has been oh about a hundred times better than a couple of days ago which is good every day could be like this everybody would want to sail. Hard work here just chatting away. What's going on? See that monorail we're blowing by? That's half of a boat as Kent would say. It's gone down. Darn it I hope I got him. It was at least a six foot shark. Oh yeah yeah. I mean he was he was big. By the time he got right about here on the boat I mean he was the length of the dinghy. He's a big shark. Want to go swimming? Get your workout in. Good? Good thing it's good. Okay all right well we're getting ready to pull into our first because it's not a really a harbor is it? No it's an anchorage. An anchorage because we're going to lake work and we're going to take down the sails motor our way in. Sail's creaking just a little bit so we won't be able to sleep tonight as well so we're going to lower it so it doesn't creak as much. Not the sail it's the arm thing. The boom. The boom. Not quite as elegant as John but. It's loops all the same. I get better. And flip it around. Like a boss. Yay. Did you put your rum in there? Strategic pour. Save a glass. Pour in the game. You don't look like you're doing much. Working man. I'm working hard here. Better win today. Cruising. Boca Raton lighthouse. It's been a really hard day at sea obviously just awoken from a slumber and we are heading in almost to Fort Lauderdale. Nikki's at the helm and she's going to be taking us in again for another night of anchoring. Another good night. There's a giant cruise ship coming out too. A little tight. We have arrived and we found another party crew party cove Maybe they'll offer us a drink. I think we'd rather have a drink on this boat than that crowded thing. We've made it to Fort Lauderdale from Vero Beach. It's been two great days of sailing. Mostly sailing. Very little motoring. Well motoring to get out of the inlets and then back in the inlets but that's it otherwise we were able to sail the entire way. We've learned a ton about planning. Most importantly first and foremost planning. Looking at wind guru and all these other apps to make sure we have the best seas possible. Best conditions. Learning to plan routes and find anchorages. John's been really great about teaching us his ways and his little techniques and the way he likes to do things. It's been really informational. I feel like we've soaked up a ton in the past two days. And so hopefully if all goes well we have made an offer on this boat and we have survey. Survey. Sea trial. Sea trial. If those go perfectly we might own this boat in less than a week. Keep your fingers crossed for us please. Okay. See ya. That's it. We're gonna go drink. No we gotta make dinner. Oh well you know. I mean there might be a beverage but we have to celebrate. We do other things besides drink. We make ourselves look like alcoholics sometimes.