Ft Lauderdale - Mundane stuff, laundry and boat cleaning

No snow down here! A view of Ft Lauderdale  beach today

Today was another day. We started it off with a walk. We saw lots of birds on our walk. Then we had breakfast. I had bagels with peanut butter. After that came math then spelling, writing and finally we read 2 years before the mast, a journal about a man with measles that embarks on a journey with a crew to get to San Francisco. After that we went to the laundromat to clean our clothes (thank god my cabin was starting to smell). That’s all I got for you today.      

The marina is right next to a bridge but you get used to it

People say, isn't it so nice to be on vacation 9 months of the year! Well, it's your home and it requires upkeep. There are no maids to do the work, it's all you and your wife - with an occasional helping hand from a kid on board. With the genset, it's two engines to keep running and all the subsystems you would find in a house but you try to fix everything you can. If you start counting all the systems aboard a boat and then multiply the probabilities together of each one working - the result is not a high number. For example, let's estimate that each systems works 95% of the time (genset, main diesel, house water pump, 2 heads, sump pump, headsail, jib furling, charging system off engine, charging system off land, inverter, and so on. The probability of everything working at the same time is the probability of each one working multiplied times each other. In the above example of only 11 items, that's 0.95 raised to the 11th power which equals 57%. That means if you have 11 systems and they all work 95% of the time, then only 57% of the time will they all work at the same time! In other words, there's always something to fix - after all, 95% chance of a system working is pretty good. The 11 systems I listed are far from a complete list. You can be very busy on a boat!

They lover to wrap palm trees with LED lights down here, they are all over

The clubhouse and office are in temporary quarters but they are fine, especially with 6 washers and 6 dryers. On Wednesday, we will rent a car to provision for the rest of the trip. Friday tentatively looks okay for getting to Miami where we'll hang out until we get another weather window to Marathon.