It's Been One Heck of A Trip So Far

I wasn't ready to blog until now because so many things were going wrong.  We had to buy a new truck which is way nicer than any truck we would have ever bought, bent the trailer when unloading the boat, all our credit cards were being denied in FL because of security fraud so we had to call multiple times to get them working correctly, we kept dragging anchor the first night so we worried about hitting other boats, and our GPS was not working the way we thought it would, in addition to a multitude of other small problems that just kept adding to our already high stress level.  Yesterday, we were within one hour of packing up and going home. 

We contacted our friends Derrick and Stephanie, who were our sailing instructors a few years ago, and motored 20 miles south to meet them in Miami.  We so needed to see a familiar face and their encouragement was just what we needed to turn this trip around.  We tied up to them so we could get a good night's sleep.  We took their dinghy into Miami Beach and had some great sushi at the Lincoln Road Mall.

Today they are helping us locate good anchorages, marinas, and places to stop on our navigation charts.  Books and reading online are no match for their first hand knowledge!

Tonight we stay here and tomorrow we head to Key Largo.

Here are a few photos:

New truck

ICW around Golden Beach area

Huge homes along ICW

Scenery along the way to Miami

Stephanie's cat Cooper lives on their sail boat. 

He is a super brave cat. 

He leaps from boat to boat like he is crazy!