Nefertari was pulled out at 8am and my yard guy Jyrki was there to meet us and start evaluating the rudder problems right away. Turns out both the heel pin and the gudgeon had significant play and needed work. Over the next week, we had the rudder, propeller and drive shaft all removed. The heel pin and bushing needed to be machined and the bushing at the gudgeon needed replacing as well. When the drive shaft was removed, there was concerning wear under the packing gland and so we ended up replacing the shaft and gland as well as the cutlass bearing. A bit of work was needed at the rudder attachment points and so it took a lot longer than I had hoped and cost a pretty penny.
The first few nights we had the boat in the yard, we stayed in downtown Miami, right on the Miami River. This was centrally located and was a reasonable price for the three of us to lodge since the yard would not allow us to stay on the boat.
We met up with Lori, the mother of one of Sam’s friends at the ski resort, in South Beach one night for drinks and then dinner. It was fun with the exception that Lori was spit on by a crack whore street beggar that wandered by our table while we were eating, asking for a hand out. We wandered around a bit and then caught an Uber back. The next night, Sam & Alex met up with one of Sam’s friends who had come down from Ft Lauderdale and they went partying in Wynwood area, I opted to stay at the hotel as I had caught the cold that Sam had brought with him a few days earlier. They had a great time and slept the rest of the next day while I went to the boatyard.
We checked out the downtown mall at City Center the next day, did some shopping, had lunch and wandered around a bit. Then we got the news that we were not going to have the boat back in the water before the weekend as we were waiting on parts from California as well as the machine shop to finish their work. At this point, we decided that since we were going to be stuck over the weekend at least, that we should move to a beach location and try to enjoy our time a bit more.
We got a room over at mid-beach on Miami Beach that was right on the water. It was a nicer room and the free trolley that runs up and down the main strip was very nice for going out and shopping. We got sushi one night and then spent a very memorable night back down towards South Beach.
Stopped in to Senor Frog’s and ended up accidentally ordering a round of the “fucking super-big” long island iced teas in the take home cup. My god, it was $148 for three drinks but supposedly, each one contained 5 drinks… lol. What a bust. Sam displayed his amazing dance skills while donning the frog head and we actually got some great video of his antics. He was absolutely a hit.
Alex somehow got super-twisted on his drink and went from zero to 60 in about 30 minutes. We also met Loren and Soren, a great brother and sister that were visiting and on their last night in town. We ended up hanging out with them for the rest of the night as they had a bunch of booze in their room that they needed help to finish. Alex spent a couple hours recovering in their room while the four of us went to the beach to swim ( at 1am). We got back and Alex had recovered to some degree but I was about done for. Since both Sam and Alex wanted to stay, I went back to the hotel and they followed later in the morning.