Thursday, January 3rd, 2013, Take Two

Launch time: 8:30am. Finally at 10:30am Plumpuppet was hoisted from the workspace and slowly brought to the launch site. All seemed well. Ken started the engine and was told we had one hour. One hour? One hour to ready the boat and ourselves with no where to go but out. We rushed around, unloaded the car, prepared the car for the 3 months we’d be gone, paid the bill, and jumped aboard. No time to put up sails. Katja and Geoff were ready to hand us our lines when Ken checked the engine temperature gauge only to find it registering off the gauge! I turned off the engine and he rushed below to check it. It felt cool and he decided it was an electrical problem and must be connected to the tachometer he removed. We would leave anyway. Katja and Geoff threw us our lines, Ken slowly backed the boat almost into the trawler behind us, forgetting to put it in gear (how easily we forget). I fended off the boat on the side and we were on our way. It was one of those glorious Florida days, sunny, hot, with no wind. It was wonderful to be on the boat and on the water! Almost to the first hi-rise into Vero Beach, we hear on VHF channel 16, ‘Caution near red 152, we are aground.’ I look up to see we’re almost to red 150, look ahead and see a sailboat coming towards us. We hail them and they said they saw 2 ½ ft at 152 and could they follow us. We slowly crawl past red marker 152 seeing no less than 8 feet, where they were seeing 4 ½ feet. We never talked to them afterwards to find out what was going on. Arriving near the marina we pull up to the fuel dock to fill up with water, register, and get our mooring number, #9. I prepared deviled eggs with the intention of joining the cruisers for happy hour at the pavilion. Ken changed the transmission fluid and charged the starter battery. We put on the dinghy motor, only to find it leaking a black fluid. No happy hour tonight. Later he installed the tachometer which corrected the gauges. We were ready to party!, or I was.