Tuesday, January 05, 2010 16:52

We've departed Port St Lucie for our annual cruise to the Keys. Left our dock mid-day, Dec 23, to make it thru the shallow entrance to our harbor at high tide. (a previous attempt, early last year,1-hr after high, tide resulted in a grounding and trapped us overnite). Anyway, we made it out and anchored overnite in Hobe Sound. Next day, we motored down to Palm Beach and anchored in Lake Worth, a great anchorage but with a long Southern exposure. You quessed it! Late that Christmas eve Santa blew up a strong south breeze that kept the Captain awake all night as conquest jumped around but failed to loose her grip on the bottom. Anyway, we took a layday for Christmas Day and waited for the wind to die down, which it did. Next day the wind clocked to the west and we set out from the inlet for a delightful offshore run to Fort Lauderdale, anchoring there overnite. Next day wind came out of NW and we had another offshore run, past Miami, to an anchorage oceanside off Key Largo. Next day we made a short run to an oceanside anchorage off Islamorada to shelter from forcast strong coldfront with N winds and another sleepless nite. Anyway, we got early start next day and ran 7 knots all day making it to Marathon mid afternoon and our slip at Sombrerro Resort. I wish all you guys up there would stop making and sending all this ugly cold air down here.

New Radar and Autopilot, both Digital, are functional. The autopilot is extremly tight; it continually "learns" the steering response of the boat, quite remarkable!

Any rate, we went up to PSL to pick up our car and found your Christmas card in the mail. You certainly have two beautiful Children. Tell Eve she did a great job. Hard to believe you had anything to do with it. Any way, hope you all had a great holiday !

Happy New Year

Ken and Jane