Early to Bed, Early to Rise...

does not always make one healthy, wealthy or necessarily wise. I know that most boaters swear by "getting an early start" but we've been retired now for two years and have taken to sleeping in. Today we had over 100 miles of intercoastal to run so we set the alarm. Within the first couple of miles we had a bridge to deal with. Tom says check the bridge height on the chart - so I oriented myself on the chart and found the Addison Bridge with 29 ft vertical clearance. We need 21.5 ft so we were good to go and I could go back to getting my coffee. Except the Captain sees the bridge in the distance and says, "I don't think that's 29'" Just to confirm, I call the bridge master on the two-way radio: "Addison Bridge this is power vessel Uncorked. We are approaching the bridge and were wondering what the clearance is?" He replies, "29' Uncorked" There. But as we got closer I also thought it looked tight. I scrambled with the chart. WRONG BRIDGE! This one had about 7' clearance. I had to get back on the radio and call this bridge master and ask for a drawbridge opening. About 1/4 mile after clearing the little bridge we approached the 29 footer and the smartalec Bridge Master says "Well, Uncorked - we've been expecting you" Bastard.

Tom wasn't without challenges this morning either. I know I've been hard on sailboaters in previous blogs but c'mon some of the names they come up with I swear are just to screw with the powerboats who will inevitably have to call them on the radio to request a pass. For example, Tom comes up behind sailboat "Lagniappe" and ends up saying something like "Sailboat Long Leap this is powerboat Uncorked looking for a slow port side pass" What was he supposed to do - really? I can deal with the Greek mythology names as we all should have been paying attention in sixth grade and should know that Persephone is not pronounced Purse Phone but the ones that really ticked us off were those damned Irish names hailing from Boston. Today we passed one named "Gra Mo Chroi" - turns out it's Gaelic for "Love of my life" Ironically, Tom called it "Grab My Groin" I completely understand now why Tom was so vehemently opposed to my suggestion that we name the boat Laissez Faire. I can just imagine a southern accent calling out on the two-way, "Southbound Lesbian Powerboat..."

We ran for eight hours and made it to North Palm Beach before dark but not before the sky opened up. I scrambled to get lines and fenders out in the down pour and was really irritated that in spite of plenty of notice, the marina had no one on the dock to so much as grab a line for me. Finally a guy came up after I had snagged the cleat with the spring line and secured us. I snapped, "Oh just get the stern line, I've got the bow myself" as I threw the stern line to him. Come to find out, he wasn't the marina dock hand but was our boat neighbor! I was mortified!! Turns out that when the marina staff asked via radio, "Captain, need some help getting in?" Captain replied from his cozy little inside helm chair, "No, we have it" Love that royal "we".

Tomorrow is a relaxing day. "We" are going shopping and meeting friends for lunch. We head home on Sunday and the blog will go quiet until we return on the 22nd. Thanks for following along with us.