Our Miami Vacation

Miami has been a combination of Awe inspiring views and people, lots of sleeping in and relaxing, and pain in the butt repairs.

To get to town we take a 5 min dinghy ride down this canal.

We have to go under this cool lil bridges

The first thing we did was run to the beach!

Apparently they have a man-o-war problem down here.  There sting is worse than jelly fish.  They are full of air and pop when you step on them. Beware!

We finally got chain to keep our dinghy secure.  It makes us feel much better as we roam town.

For my sister Jessie!

We set up our solar shower with curtain.  That 5 gallon bag above had been sitting out in the sun all day and provides warm water.  We set it up at night to reduce our embarrassment.

We spent a day laying out at the beach.  It was pretty crowded.  I prefer just laying out on the bow of our boat.

Miami provides lots of scenic walking

The main strip, Lincoln Rd, is full of shops and restaurants.  The restaurants have outdoor seating so your just walking past ppl eating and hostesses. The people of Miami are very "people watching" worthy!

We accidently ran over one of our lines on the way down but luckily our prop guard cut it.  However there was still some line wrapped around the prop so I had to dive down and cut it off.

Our Miami sunset from our boat at anchor.  We love watching it each night.

When we dinghy to the grocery store we have to park at the dinghy lot where other cruisers are doing the same.  It can get kinda crowded.

Our cats being cats

We had to go to West Marine, which involved an hour walk, 15 min air tran, and 45 min metro ride.

The Miami Boat Show was going on

A doggy with its own dinghy

I finally replaced the on board VHF, pretty fancy!

MY favorite restaurant was Masters, an Italian all you can eat buffet for $8

We also fixed our stern propane grill and celebrated with pork chops and corn.

We found this mess on our anchor when pulling it up, it took away to cut away.

We still need Bahama Charts which we forgot to get at West Marine.  So we will have to take the 2 hour trek again tomorrow.  And then on the way back to our boat one day the dinghy bottomed out and the engine prop stopped working.  Great...

After rowing home, I took it apart and found it had a broken pin, the shear pin.  After calling around to find a replacement we found that our dinghy came with spare pins!  However the old pin that broke was stuck in the drive shaft so we had to find a machine shop.  After visiting a few hardware stores we stopped at an auto repair shop and for $20 a guy got the pin out for us.  Sweet, that could have been a lot harder.

As soon as we get our Bahama Charts we will leave asap!  So this will be our last blog in the US.  

See ya in the Bahamas!