Tuesday, June 7. I woke up at 5:30 and checked the ship locator websites. YAHOO! AAL GENOA is berthed in Port Everglades!! 🥳
We got up, went and picked up our Budget Rental car to take us to the airport tomorrow. We’ve received no communications regarding loading today, so we’re assuming that means we’re still on schedule for 1830 tonight. I made us a couple of sandwiches and we took off for Port Everglades at about 9:30. I know that’s way early, but I just had visions of a traffic jam somewhere between here and there, and we cannot afford to miss the ship!!
Traffic and weather was easy peazy, and we arrived at Island Girl at 1:30. Kenny got our gangplank across and hooked up the power so we’d have A/C while we sat and waited. We did a few last minute preparations, like take the rest of the canvas off of the seats and helm upstairs, finished taping all of the drawers and cabinets so they don’t fly open, and secured everything as best as possible. Then we just sat around to wait. And then a big giant thunderstorm came by. NO! 🫣 It rained, and we had some thunder. Mr. Positive said something like – “the lightening will probably shut down the loading process and postpone our time to tomorrow”. AGH!! That nearly gave me a panic attack, so that means I prayed a whole bunch. I was pleasantly relieved when we got a text message just after the worst of the thunderstorm had passed, saying we were still on for 1830. YAY!
We started pulling our lines at about 4:15, with plans to be off the dock by 4:40. We had help getting the ladder/gangplank pulled back to shore, and we were off! We arrived at the first bridge by 4:45, and there were boats just coming north through an opening. UH-OH! It’s supposed to open on the :00 and the :30. We called the bridge, and they confirmed it would open again at 5:00. WHEW! I was just pondering what we would do if the bridge was malfunctioning and we missed the opening. This was the last ”timed” obstacle that could really mess us up. More prayers!
We treaded water until 5:00, and sure enough, it opened on time. Thank the Good Lord for His hand on our adventure! We only had about seven miles to go, and several no-wake zones. There were some beautiful homes and yachts along the way. It was still very cloudy, but it wasn’t raining, which we were very thankful for!
Captain happened to glance down at the hour meter and noticed that Miss Island Girl just turned over 3,000 hours! That’s pretty good for a 22 year old Bayliner, huh? 😉
We kept just cruising along, with no canvas top. We didn’t get a single drop of rain, and with the cloud cover, we weren’t broiling at 150 degrees. It was a very comfortable day!!
We arrived at the north staging area just south of the 17th Street Bridge at 5:45 and I texted Oliver, our loadmaster, to let him know we were there. He just replied with ”Ok, thanks”. So we treaded water and went around in circles in the designated area. There was quite a bit of outgoing current, so we couldn’t just sit peacefully in one spot. We could see where our AAL GENOA was, down that waterway ahead of us, with the yellow cranes. The main port channel out the the Atlantic was between here and there. This is the port where cruise ships come into Fort Lauderdale, although at this time of the day, there weren’t any cruise ships, just lots of freight moving about. We watched two large container ships get pushed and pulled around by tug boats, and sent on their way out the channel, like this one headed off to the east. Then we watched one come into the port and go down the waterway past AAL GENOA. We weren’t positive how our ship was going to contact us, but we assumed it would be through Oliver and text message. We hadn’t heard a peep from him for over an hour, so I finally texted him at 7:20 (our load time was supposed to be 6:30!), to see if we missed something from him. He finally responded a few minutes later that we could come to the ship now. So Captain called the Port Harbormaster to get permission to go there. Apparently all boat movements here should be cleared with the Port Authority.
YAHOO! There’s our ship!! Our simple instructions from Oliver were to come to just behind the forward crane, our starboard side to the ship to tie off. We wondered how we were supposed to do that, but when we got there, there was a rope ladder hanging down, and loading crew there to help us. They wanted the ladder at our mid ship, and I had fenders out to help protect our Girl.
They tossed down big wide straps for me to tie our lines to, and they hauled our lines up and tied them off to a railing. I was able to just give a good toss of the bow line up…years of ski-rope tosses, you know. They tied off lines fore, mid, and aft, then had us turn everything off and make our final check to make sure everything was secure. I asked about our lines and fenders, and they said they’d secure them to the rails or put them inside. We left the door unlocked so that they could put them inside. Maybe we shouldn’t have? I don’t know, but we did. They didn’t rush us at all. I think the cranes were busy doing something else because they weren’t ready to lift us. There was a little boat waiting to pick us up and take us away.
I just had one little bag of things to take with us, so we left our Girl and our tender boat took us out so that I could get some pictures. We assumed Island Girl would be lifted and put up on the bow somewhere. You can just see the bow of another boat behind those containers. Oh great. Island Girl is going to be playing ”Titanic” and sticking her nose way out front. 🤨
As we drove away, she looked so little! I hope they remember she’s there, and don’t just drag her all the way to Victoria! 😉 We visited with our tender captain, and he said that he didn’t know what the hang-up was with getting us over here from the staging area and loaded, because they’d been pretty much on schedule all day. We were the last boat of the day; they loaded six boats before us, and this was day one. I think he said there were eleven to be loaded on day two, and I didn’t ask him about day three.
The tender dropped us off at a boat dock/park, and we called an Uber to come get us and take us back to our car. Then, the long drive home. We got home just after midnight, slept fast, then got up at about 5:00 am to head to Orlando to catch our flight to Seattle. WHEW! It was a very busy day!
There were two more loading days for the AAL GENOA, and she left Port Everglades early in the morning on June 10th. Then we got an e-mail from Cross Chartering Yacht Transport with a picture of the loaded ship. We think Island Girl is in the front/port side with her bow facing back. (It’s hard to tell, she looks to tiny here!) They said that the ship was headed for the Panama Canal, and was expected to arrive there on June 14 for it’s scheduled transit. And (bad news) expected arrival in Victoria is JULY 4. Ah man! But that makes sense, I guess. We wondered about unloading around July 1, which is Canada Day, and not likely to be a good time to try to get much work done in port.
Here is the marinetraffic.com tracker, showing the facts, Jack.
So, I guess we won’t be on Island Girl for the 4th of July weekend like we’d hoped. Why would that work out, right? At least she is on a ship and headed in the right direction FINALLY! Let’s pray for no hurricanes. She’s not an ocean loving boat. 🫣
Here is the post on Facebook about our sailing. Yachts in the 90-118’ range? Yea, Island Girl is small taters.
***********
June 15: We received an update from CCYT that AAL GENOA arrived at Panama Canal on 14 June, transit on 20 June. I wondered…. I could see on the marinetraffic and vesselfinder sites that she was sitting at anchor with a pile of other ships. I guess this is partly why she needs 3.5 weeks to get to Victoria, because she gets to sit for a week and wait her turn at the big Canal.
But THIS doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy. Look at the next ETA that marinetraffic is reporting: It says the ETA for Cristobal is June 26!! WHAT?! 😳 Cristobal is the port at Colon, Panama. On the CARIBBEAN side of the Canal. THAT is not the same as 20 June.
And then, there is the weather. There are a few swirlies in the Central America zone. That’s not good, either.
Stay tuned. The shipping saga continues.