where is serenity

Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA
Coordinates: 26.136849, -80.11947
Weather: Sunny, 90F, Hot and humid

We arrived at the Blue Water Sailing School at 2:45 and met our instructor, CJay. He seems like a straight shooter and I think he will prove to be a good instructor. There are four students on the boat plus CJay. I lost the coin flip and will be sleeping in the salon. Everyone else will have there own cabin and head. I will share Scot’s bathroom. Next time I will make sure I bring along my two headed coin for the coin toss.

We went over CJay’s rules. He has three:

1. No Yelling, either by him or the students.
2. Do what he says when and how he says it.
3. When the vacation light is on, vacation, when it is not, class is in session and pay attention.

I think the point of rule number two is that he is the Captain and he is responsible for our safety. If he says, “Darley, duck now!” He wants you to duck, and ask him why later. No problem, I was in the Army, I can take orders if the situation necessitates.

We then when over provisioning and created our meal plan for the trip. CJay then went grocery shopping, while the rest of use tore the boat part looking in all the nooks and crannies. Our goal was to identify all the thru hulls and find things like the emergency tiller and fuse panel.

After that was accomplished we, the students, went in search of the liquor store and bought enough beer and spirits to hopefully last the week. Having secured the libations, we then went to dinner. It is now half past eight and I am sitting in the salon writing this summation. I am writing this rather quickly so please be patient with all the errors, I will come back later and correct them when the trip is over.

Update: It is now a little past 10:00 p.m. and I am sitting in a Starbucks using their wifi to send this post to the blog. I can tell that getting wifi connections on this trip is not going to be easy, so do not expect the next update to come until Tuesday evening. We may spend the night in a marina on Tuesday, so that will be my next best chance to post to the blog. If I can not get connected Tuesday, Scot and I will be back in the hotel Friday night, and I will post the daily entries then.

~ by Darley on May 10, 2008.