Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Home port!

We arrived at Jensen Beach early Monday morning, after an unbelievably beautiful moonlit cruise down the Florida coast. We switched watch schedules, so Ron did the early 8-midnight split, then Karyn did midnight-4 am. The moonlight was so intense, it lit up everything with this pale shimmering silver glow. Watching the waves move and slide past under the moonglow was just mesmerizing. Our porpoise escort continued too, as we had porpoises surface and dive alongside the boat during the night too...rather than just play in the bow wave, they were jumping and diving right next to the pilothouse door, so I could peek at them over the rail as they sailed past. It was really very cool.

We arrived at Outrigger Harbour at 8:00, and tied up with ease in the slip graciously made available to us. This isn't a permanent slip for Equinox, as we will be heading over to West End, Grand Bahamas shortly to spend the next month or two, before heading to points south (either the Berries or the Exumas) for the spring. Right now though, it's luxurious to have the boat so close to our new home! We're very excited about the place, and are even more excited to have Ally see it this coming week. After the boat was tied up and secure, we celebrated our landfall & homecoming with a bit of champagne, and had a reunion with Joie from the OH sales office, who has been so wonderfully helpful during this transition. We also met some of the other folks who work here, and are looking forward to meeting our neighbors. We're very excited about the place! We thoroughly enjoyed the pool and hot tub after the journey, let me tell you!

The pool and hot tub at Outrigger Harbour

View of Equinox from the pool area

We crashed early Monday night after a great dinner at The Dolphin Bar, then were up bright and early the next morning. We spent the morning washing down Equinox thoroughly from stem to stern, mast to waterline. She wasn't that grubby as Ron had done a mid-cruise wash-down, but considering we were offshore for 45 hours, there's always a bit of salt somewhere, so we wanted to rinse her off. The new hardtop makes cleaning her a lot easier...we can get to the radar mast and the equipment there with ease, which wasn't the case before. Equinox is looking beautiful for herself once again!

During the next couple of weeks we are getting a few items tweaked and repaired: Martek is trying to get the KVH system working (along with the Sirius radio as well, which also just stopped working); we need to have the Frigibar freezer checked, as the unit controls don't appear to be working properly (although it certainly is freezing things!) and Ron wants Nuvair to add a oil-capture unit to the air dryer for the low pressure compressor. SO, some work to be done, per usual. As the saying goes, cruising is simply fixing your boat in exotic locations!


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