Balls in the Air – Ramrod Key, Florida, USA, February 27, 2025

Well, we made it!  Ron has done nothing but battle logistics of trying to get all the work done and pick up all the items we needed to launch.  In addition, we have battled the weather once again.  Since we took possession of Mariposa on February 10^th it took us 16 days to overhaul the boat into something we can actually sail to the Bahamas.  In that time, we have completed the shockingly long list of projects:

• Acid washed, sanded, and painted the new bottom job
• Buffed the entire boat
• Fixed the fiberglass issue for the crack we found on the port side
• Attending the boat show in Miami
• Bought and picked up a new dinghy, dinghy engine, and life raft in Miami.  The only rain we saw in Key West was when we arrived back to Key West from Miami and needed to unload our provisioning, dinghy, dinghy engine, and life raft.  Imagine here we come with a pickup truck 110% loaded up and Key West got 6’ – yes 6’ of rain and completely flooded. Not only did we drive in it we got to unload in the rain too.  Top that off with traffic which instead of a 3-hour trip from Miami to a 5-hour trip from Miami.  It was a very very long day.
• Tested the windlass and remarked the anchor chain
• Completed registration of our new dinghy, picked up our running papers, and transferred the title of the old dinghy to the new owner
• Sold the old dinghy, stove, grill and house batteries.
• Overhauled the kitchen, wired and installed a new induction cooktop, air fryer oven, and new outdoor grill
• Defrosted the fridge and freezer and completed multiple provisioning trips to prepare ourselves to not buy much food in the expensive Bahamas
• Wired up the washer space and made it ready for when we pick it up (not here yet)
• Cleaned and organized the entire boat
• Serviced the sail drives and Yanmar Engine
• Added 1400 hours of lithium batteries replacing and reselling the old AGM batteries which increases our power ability by a factor of x5

Not too bad for a couple of weeks but to get this much lined up and complete (all of which was DIY) has been nothing short of a miracle!  The only thing we have left to do is fix some rigging and complete a solar arch.  We need to outsource both items and will not do in Key West.  The rigging must be done before we head to the Bahamas (since we cannot sail at all until we do so).  The solar arch we are going to save for a future date and likely not complete til we get to the Chesapeake where it can be done much cheaper than either Florida or the Bahamas. 

So, after all of this, we launched yesterday!  After living on the hard in the boatyard, it is so nice to be back on the water.  It was an early launch, which gave us time to move out of Key West (very shallow, poor holding on anchor, expensive, and crowded).  Moving a couple hours north gets us closer to Marathon, Florida (where we hope to get our rigging done) and we are in a nice little calm anchorage with no one else around. It’s been a wild ride so far!