Our Last Night in Miami!

Miami, Florida

Sanely awake this morning, sans hangover, although when we rolled back to the boat from Monty’s at about 10:30 last night, we sat down, thought 2 or 3 thoughts, then went to bed. We were asleep before our heads hit the pillow!

There was nice turnout at Monty’s last night to wish us well.There was a contingent from Riverview Marina — aboard Chris’ “South Forty” were Kim, Brendan, Debbie, and Chris; and Frank and Leslie (Maggie’s kids) drove down from Ft. Lauderdale.

Lots of folks from Royal Caribbean came as well — and as far as we know, many stayed well beyond our bedtime! Almost the entire complement of Lera Consulting showed up — Martha and Abel; Michael and Magda.

We have been working so hard these last two weeks that an early night was called for. But we loved that so many friends came to wish us well!

This morning we had planned to fuel — contacted the fuel barge early last week and made an appointment for this morning just off Bayside — but got a call saying their driver had “called in sick.” Let’s see … the barge would have charged us $2.14 for diesel…Miami Beach Marina wanted $2.97 for the same diesel… at 800 gallons, that was Svein Taklo to the rescue! Found a marina a couple of hours back up the ICW and diesel at a reasonable $2.34 (!). Since I had some Barnes & Nobel gift cards burning a hole in my wallet, and hadn’t had a minute to stock up the library before we left, I begged off the fueling trip, borrowed a Mercedes, and went bargain book shopping in Coral Gables. What a guilty pleasure!

Because we had agreed to be available for visitors this afternoon, we tied up at Bayside for a couple of hours, and entertained Susan and Terje for a couple of hours. Their visit was interrupted by the world’s fastest business meeting — Martha leaping onto the boat with a ream and a half of paper, then leaping off again. Seemed like a total waste of Margaritas to me, but I guess she had plans.

After visiting hours, we decided to save ourselves a few cruising dollars and anchor off Star Island for the night. Tomorrow is the BIG DAY!