Strictly Sail

The reason we picked up a mooring at Dinner Key versus anchoring was so we could dinghy to shore and catch a cab to the Apple store. Saturday a.m we received a text from our friend Steve, who lives in Key West on his Valiant 40, Chandara, and he happened to be in Miami for the Strictly Sail show. He offered to pick us up and take us to Apple. After weaving our way around the barricades of the Coconut Grove Arts festival, we met up with Steve and his friend Patricia and headed over to Dadeland mall. It turned out our video card was bad and the laptop had to be sent off to be serviced - ugh! We left it behind and Steve drove us to Little Haiti on a crusade to find a vegan restaurant - again a true adventure. The restaurant was closed so instead I found one downtown close to the boat show. Afterwards we stopped by the show hitting up Beta marine (unpredictable foreshadowing), Newfound metals and Hot Wire. We found out later that John and Amanda Neal who we sailed with last summer in the South Pacific had also been at the show but we just missed them. On display at the waterfront, they had the new Tartan 4000 which got Cruising World's Boat of the Year (Go Tartan) and we went for a look. Beautiful boats but we still love Stella Blue. By this time, we were anxious about leaving Kala so we took a cab back to the boat to take her for a walk before dark.

The next couple days involved waiting out high winds with trips to West Marine for West Florida charts, an unsuccessful attempt to find a dog park, and looking for Internet cafes. While we were at West Marine, one of the people who worked there suggested we go through Channel Five bridge and through Yacht Channel to Florida's west coast versus going all the way down to Marathon and back up. That route would save us a day and a half! That bit of info was well worth the trip to West Marine. We celebrated our last night in Miami with a big lunch at Scotty's Landing and then went back to Stella Blue, put the route in the chart plotter and were ready to head out the next day.

Love restaurants that give her water.

Love restaurants that give us beer.