Sunday morning, 6/5 0945: We just got an email saying that the third crane on our ship is not functioning, so the ship will anchor at Port Everglades until that is fixed, before berthing in the Port. 🤨 Schedule to be determined. Are you kidding me?! So we wait ⏰ some more.
The ship sat at anchor offshore from Cape Canaveral for about eight hours today. Grrrrr. You know me… I kept checking the websites (www.marinetraffic.com and www.vesselfinder.com). Neither of them showed any movement, but they both still said Port Everglades ETA of tomorrow morning at 06:00. And the Port said the same thing every time I checked.
Finally, at about 9:00 t0night, the ship was moving! YAY!! Then Kenny checked his text messages, and he had a message from Oliver who said he is assisting Carlos the Loadmaster. Apparently we have a new load date and time! 🥳 Tuesday 6/7 at 18:30. OK – at least we have something! Maybe they got the crane fixed while they were just hanging out in the ocean today? 🤷♀️
Airfare prices have been all over the place today for flying this week. It is spendy! We could just give up our hopes of camping with the kids this weekend if next week was any better, but it isn’t. It’s just spendy $$$ in June – like $500 0ne way per person $pendy!! 🤦🏼♀️ I’ve been watching, and it looked like I could still get some seats using mileage points out of Orlando on Wednesday. That’s a little tight, but Thursday is really more expensive. So I thought – well, I’ll look in the morning. I figured that once our ship is actually AT a pier in Port Everglades, I’d believe our loading date/time, and then I’d book our air. But … we decided to go ahead and book it tonight while it’s available, and we have 24 hours to cancel if we get any different news.
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Monday, 6/6: I couldn’t sleep this morning, wondering what our ship was up to. I looked at 7:00, and she was motoring south towards Port Everglades. YAY! Neither of the vessel locator websites were updated though, still saying she was arriving today at 0600. Well, that didn’t happen, so that made me a bit nervous. So I kept watching. Just about 10:00, I saw that she dropped anchor in the Port Everglades anchorage. Dang! Finally at about noon, the Port Everglades website updated and shows her ETA into Port at 0500 tomorrow, Tuesday 6/7. Hmmm. 🤔 I sure hope our load time for tomorrow evening stays the same at 18:30 since we plan to jet outta here on Wednesday. I think it might? since we were originally booked for 1830 on her first day of loading, so that is all the same kind of timeline. And our last email from Jiles did say that she’d anchor at PEV. So, we wait. ⏰ Some more.
Monday, 9:00pm…..we’ve received no further communications, so we take that to mean there are NO CHANGES, so far 🙏🏼 we pray.
Tomorrow morning, we’ll go pick up a rental car (for going to Orlando on Wednesday morning to fly out to Seattle). Then we’ll drive over to Fort Lauderdale. It takes us just less than four hours to get to Island Girl. I talked with our landlord to let him know that we should be leaving tomorrow, and to request his assistance in lifting our ’gangplank’ after we’re aboard. (Remember, we don’t have a dock, just a ladder across from the bulkhead to the boat.)
Our load time is 18:30. The Port is 7.5 miles from Island Girl, so we need to allow just over an hour to get there, with several bridges (just one that we have to open) and no-wake zones. But we don’t want to get there too early, because there isn’t anyplace to just sit peacefully and wait. We have to tread water and wait in a staging area that is essentially just outside of the channel. See that pink area? That’s where we’re supposed to just hang out and try to stay out of the way of all that goes on in the port! 🥴 Here’s the map we got from Cross Charter.
And for you navigators out there, here is how that pink area translates to the Navionics chart. We have to stay in a sliver of waterway, just west of the red buoy #30, but not crossing the line into the Security Zone to the west. But hey – at least the water is deep. 👍
On our route, there is only ONE bridge that we need to open, and it is right at the end of our residential channel. It opens on the :00 and the :30, so we’ll be there for the 5:00pm opening, then boogie on down the waterway and wait our turn! From what we understand, we’ll coordinate with the loadmaster. When we are notified to load, we have to call the Port Everglades Harbormaster on VHF Ch.14 and advise him of our location in the north staging area and which berth we’re going to for loading. Once we’re given permission to proceed, we go to the ship and get further instructions from the loadmaster. That’s all I know for sure. Then I think what happens is that the ship’s crew will put our Girl in slings, we turn EVERYTHING off, including the batteries, and we get off of Island Girl and into a pilot boat. The ship’s crew takes her up, sets her down, straps her down, puts the fenders inside and gets her all secure for her high-seas adventure. The pilot boat takes us to a dock on nearby 15th Street. Then we’ll need to get an Uber ride back to the house where Island Girl has been and where our car is parked. Then we’ll peel out and head for home! We’ll see our Girl in Victoria BC in about three weeks.
At least that’s what I think happens. Hopefully I’ll be telling you the REAL story in about 24 hours! In the meantime…. here sits AAL GENOA.
