Jan 5, 2019
After finding out my rudder needed some serious attention, I called around and was faced with the reality of a week or two delay. I made the difficult call to my nephew Alex who I was preparing to meet in Nassau in a few days and let him know the situation. After going over the option, Alex and his friend Sam both decided to change their flights and meet me in Miami. Yay!
On the day they were both scheduled to fly in, I moved the boat across the harbor to Dinner Key marina. Dinner Key was hit pretty hard last year by the hurricanes but the had mooring balls available. My first mooring ball attempt in Nefertari was not pretty. I actually caught the loop on the first try, but I was way too hot and not only could I not hold it, I needed to race back to the cockpit to avoid t-boning another moored boat. After circling around a bit, an old-timer yelled over and suggested to grab one of the more open balls instead of trying to get the one assigned by the marina. Great Idea; I got moored on the next try!
I forewent getting the dinghy and motor lowered and set up since it is such a pain in the ass and had the marina shuttle boat pick me up. I Uber’ed to the airport and met Alex. It took a little while to find each other as I was at the rental car building, a couple miles from the terminal but we met up and got a rental car and headed back to the boat. Since I had a rental car, we also decided to pick Sam up that evening at the Fort Lauderdale airport as opposed to having him take a bus and Alex and I got busy launching the dinghy and putting on the outboard. We found Sam at the airport and headed back to the marina made it to the boat a bit after midnight. We were all now on the boat and excited for the adventures that waited for us over the next few weeks.