January 29, 2012- Florida Keys

 We were up before three and had the anchor up just after that. We took our time getting out, and made it through the 3:30 am 17th Street bridge. On our way there we had an interesting side show. We saw this boat coming out of New River as we had just gone by, and who ever was in it was yelling something but, we couldn't make out what he was saying. As he caught up to us in his small wooden hand made skiff, we realized that he was heavily intoxicated. He was hanging on to the wheel of his boat, waving a beer bottle in the air, screaming at the top of his lungs "Obama is a fraud", repetitively. If we hadn't been concerned that he was going to smash into one of the channel markers (which he came very close to...twice) it would have been really funny. Only in Ft. Lauderdale!
 The transit out of the inlet was effortless. The wind was blowing NE at 15 knots, and we could have sailed, but I was too lazy to raise the mainsail at that hour so we ended up motor-sailing with just the head sail out. We were traveling along at 7 knots for quite a while until our wind had dropped off in the afternoon and we had to roll the genoa in. It was a very comfortable ride, we had a trailing wind and following seas the whole way, if the sun had been out a little more it would have been perfect.
We made it to Long Key around 5:30, but we decided that we would have better wind protection on the inside of the Keys. The wind had started to pick back up after 3pm. So, we crossed under the bridge and anchored just off of Lower Matecumbe Key. It was a little more protected from the wind, and the waters were relatively calm for the amount of wind there was. It was blowing steady at around 20 knots, but both Chris and I were so exhausted that I probably could have slept through a hurricane!