Kumquats

 Gasparilla festival this year has come and gone. Once again the pirates took Tampa by storm and the Mayor gave up the Key to the city. Everything went fairly well.... That is until the end. I had the Blue Heaven out during the Invasion. The Invasion is comprised of a dozen large boats carrying the Krews from different organizations and one big pirate ship carrying 100s of Pirates. Add to that Hundreds of other private boats. They all make their way across Tampa Bay and end up in a narrowing channel. This channel comes to an abrupt end at the Turning basin. Hundreds of boats all come to the turning basin and bunch up with no where to go. It is ugly. I had the Blue heaven right in the middle of it.

 Right as I slowly inched my way through the throngs of boat, I noticed I had no response from my port shifter. It was stuck in forward gear. With a raft of hundreds of boats looming under my bow, I shut that motor down and went into emergency mode. I kept fairly calm. Ha We are talking about a pucker factor of 32. I told Kyle to let any boats in our way that we had lost our port engine and that they needed to get out of the way. Pucker factor now is 38 and rising. With only one engine and no bow thruster, The Blue Heaven steers like a one legged pig. I looked ahead and saw a welcome sight. The Seahawk, a 74 Viking was tide side to at the docks ahead. Man what a lucky break.

 The wind ,tide, current and moon and stars all lined up and I slid the Blue Heaven in next to the Sea Hawk without issue.

Man did I get lucky... I would rather be good than lucky. As it turns out I had a belt break on a servo motor that runs the shifters. We got repaired the next morning ( Thanks to Mike Galati).

The Blue is back in her slip now and readying for her next adventure.
I have one month to load and prepare the Blue Heaven for its next big adventure. Around the 15th of March we will leave Miami and start our trek southward. to the land of Mangos, cigars, Rum and Kumquats, The Dominican Republic. My plan is to be in the DR by the 30th of March. So between the 15th and the 30th I will be island hopping the Bahamas southward. Our plan is for the boss to meet me in the Middle of the Bahamas at San Salvador. He will then make the second half of the trip to the Turks and Caicos before we jump over to the DR. We will spend a couple months in the DR then we plan to fish St Thomas for a while before we head home. There is lots to plan for and to stock up for on a trip like this. But it gets more exciting everyday as we get closer to that time.  In another month I will be posting sunset pics from the coast of somewhere beautiful.