The decision to go cruising comes with lots of changes.  Things break, new items don’t fit, and you lose your dock space due to circumstances outside your control.  In other words, stuff happens.  The only thing you CAN control is your response to the event or crisis.

We were to splash back into the water last Thursday after a haul out, bottom paint, and getting some work done on Mahi.  The night before, we received word that a very large barge was anchored outside the canal, blocking our only deep water access to the canal and dock.

In other words, we can’t take Mahi back to the dock space due to this barge.  Marine Patrol was called, the owner of the barge tracked down, and the bottom line is he refused to move it.   Marine Patrol said it was not their jurisdiction.  So that put us in a bit of a pickle.

We were able to keep the boat at the yard, but that costs us extra money each day.  So now we are scrambling like mad to find new dock space or a marina to park our boat while we finish the work.

We have two potential options, with calls out to several dockmasters at local marinas.  Only problem is that the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show is going on, so everywhere is full.

One potential dock space is in a canal next to our current one.  But the charts suggest it may be too shallow for the draft of our boat.  This means that we pull out our handy inflatable kayak, pump it up, and with a handheld depth sounder, map out the canal depth to ensure we do not run aground.

If this doesn’t work, we have one more canal we can check out, plus visit several marinas and talk to all the dockmasters in person.  One way or another, we will figure out where to take our boat.

In cruising, you must “go with the flow,” so to speak.  Unanticipated things happens and you must adjust and look for potential solutions.  I promise to keep you posted as to what we do and how we resolve this.