Shake Down Cruise before the Bahamas!

Our first big sail from Fort Lauderdale to the Florida Keys has exceeded our expectations in every way. We knew we would love this lifestyle but didn't realize how amazing it really is until you get to experience it. We woke up at sunrise on Friday to start our sail. It was such a beautiful morning with a full moon lighting up the entire sky. The coolest thing about sailing is if the conditions are nice you can live your life normally while cruising! We made breakfast, worked on some wedding stuff, did some yoga, & more. As we entered into Key Biscayne, where we planned to anchor for the night, our trolling rods started getting hit left and right with slammer mutton snapper! This really was icing on the cake for this first big sail trip! We got 4 in total, one being 25 inches! Yesterday we took advantage of an opportunity to go spear fishings since there was no winds to continue practicing our sailing. We anchored up right outside of Alligator Reef off Islamorada at a reef Carson had marked years ago when we spent a summer in the keys. We jumped in to check the anchor was holding before going to hunt for some fish and right there in front of the boat was a lobster trap. The line was cut and there was no buoy so we loaded up on 4 lobsters for dinner that night! Talk about luck.. Those are rare finds. Carson also shot the tail of a decent black grouper. We hunted him down from hole to hole for about a 1/2 hour before deciding it was time to clean the bottom of the boat and make poke mackerel bowls for lunch then kick it until we made it our next anchorage for the night. Last night's anchorage was our first testing night. A storm blew through with gusts up to 25 MPH in minutes. Our anchor alarm went off at 3 AM alerting us that we were moving outside the perimeter that we set incase our anchor slips. Fortunately, everything was fine but Carson didn't get much sleep last night. Woke up this morning to 30 MPH gusts. Going to be a gusty, stormy day. Perfect day to settle in and work on our trading! We are looking forward to seeing how it feels to work while at an anchorage. Living the life!!Read more