A Week Aboard S/V Sabado: 5/30/2021 – 6/6/2021
Hi guys! Long time, no chat! I hope you had a great Memorial Day Weekend.
We spent all of last week killing time in Miami, waiting for our dock space to open up in Cape Canaveral so we can start our boat work. I didn’t do any filming or writing, but this week was a bit more eventful…
We kicked off the week by installing a new faucet in our galley. Our old faucet was a bit too small, making it difficult to wash larger pots and pans and, because the nozzle was so close to the edge of the basin, there would be water all over the counter all the time. In classic boat project fashion, the job involved contorting our bodies to fit into small spaces, took three times as long as we anticipated, and made quite a mess.
Several hours later, we got the faucet working and decided to postpone all our other projects until we’re on a dock, where we’ll have a dumpster nearby and be able to run our air conditioning.
Anyway, being in Miami on a holiday weekend was pretty entertaining. At one point on Monday someone reported over the radio that there was a vessel shooting flares at jet skiers, so for the most part we decided to lay low. We hung out on the boat, did some laundry, and watched a movie, successfully avoiding the crazy crowds of drunk beach-goers.
By Wednesday morning we were itching for a trip. We took our dinghy to shore, tied her up, and hopped into our friend Jamie’s dinghy. Jamie is a single handed sailor and needed some crew to help him sail up to Ft. Lauderdale, so Ray and I happily volunteered. Jamie lives on a Fountaine Pajot Helia named Saudade. We climbed aboard, pulled up the anchor, and headed out around 8am.
After navigating under a couple of bridges, we raised the mainsail, brought out the jib, and were sailing along at 6kn.
The wind started to die a bit, so we swapped out the jib for a code zero, and ended up gaining another knot of speed!
We tied off Saudade around 12pm, and grabbed some BBQ for lunch before Ray and I got a Lyft back to Miami to return to Sabado.
The next morning our friends RJ and Jenna came to visit! RJ and Jenna lived on Sabado when I first moved aboard, and together the 4 of us sailed from Georgia to Maine. Since then they’ve been running charters out of the USVI. Our paths have crossed a couple of times, but not nearly enough! So, we rented a car and picked them up from the airport.
The boys ran off to get haircuts in the city while Jenna and I drank margaritas and caught each other up on our now separate boat lives. Then of course, the partying began.
We started off the crew reunion with nachos, beer, and various other fried appetizers at a local dive bar in Delray Beach.
After thoroughly stuffing ourselves, we decided to call it a night and head to a hotel nearby. The next day we explored a little, wandered around the mall, then met up with one of RJ’s friends who works in the food/restaurant development industry. He recently opened up a new spot called Delray Beach Market– which has 27 different food and drink vendors. He gave us a full tour, stopping at his favorite spots for cocktails along the way.
All boozed up and ready to eat, we over- ordered from a bunch of different places.
We had fried chicken and green tomatoes with Old Bay ranch, fresh oysters, steak, shrimp and noodles, etc. etc. and topped it all off with ice cream and sake bombs.
After our Market experience, we headed back to the hotel for naps and showers before our late night dinner.
RJ’s friend was kind enough to pull some strings and get us a 9pm reservation at his other restaurant, Lionfish. For the first time in a long time, all us pirates got dressed up and headed out.
The dinner was phenomenal. We ordered two of nearly everything on the menu. My favorite was the tuna pizza- which was a fried tortilla with truffle aioli and thin sliced tuna- but the star of the show was the lionfish.
Lionfish are an invasive species in the Caribbean Sea, as well as the East Coast of the United States and the Mediterranean. Since their spines are venomous, they deter most predators, leading to overpopulation and stressed coral reefs. The best way to fight the growing numbers of lionfish is to hunt and eat them! It’s a flakey whitefish, so it was served fried with lemon and tartar sauce- it was fantastic!
After dinner we headed back to the Market. They keep the second floor open late with a DJ and a dance floor, so we attempted to dance off our hefty dinner.
Saturday morning we had some hair of the dog at brunch, and spent the day relaxing at the hotel before grabbing a couple slices of pizza for dinner and heading to bed early.
I’m posting this from the car— RJ and Jenna hopped on a flight back to the USVI this morning, and Ray and I are headed back to Sabado now. We got notice that our dock space in Cape Canaveral is available, so we’re planning on sailing up there in the next few days!
I don’t have enough footage for a video this week, but I’m planning on having one up next week for sure- thank you for all your kind messages about missing our videos! It means so much to me that you like watching them as much as I like making them.
I hope you had a lovely week! ❤️