Beasely has been an absolute gem as a boat dog so far. He is both the best and the worst of choices for a boat. Worst, because he is heavy, with short legs, and can't stay afloat for more than a minute or two. He has his own PFD, but we haven't actually tried it out yet to see if it will support his head above water. When we get to a cay with nice, warm water on a shallow  beach, we'll test it. In the meantime, we keep him on a short leash on board the boat, in case he sees a bird or dolphin and decides to join them for play.

He excels as a boat dog because he is calm, quiet, not bothered by being confined to relatively small quarters, and basically just happy to be anywhere with us. He doesn't require a lot of exercise, in fact he disdains it :-) We were very concerned about the elimination issue, but our catamaran has a trampoline up front, and we added a piece of "astroturf" that we had him "christen" before we put it on the boat. (Photo shows it just past him and Shirley.) Like the good boy that he is, he used it the morning of the second day he was on the boat, and has ever since. Even when we are underway, and the boat is rockin' and rollin', he will use it as needed. Beasely is now a member of the "I Peed In The Gulf Stream" club. (Here's a photo of him enjoying the breeze as we crossed the Stream.)

Beasely has been ashore twice while we were at the marina in Marathon, by dinghy.  It's a bit tricky, because the sterns have steps but they are too steep and deep for him to use, so we basically have to carry him down the steps and into the dinghy. He is fine once he gets inside the dinghy, although he doesn't wear his PFD often enough to get comfortable with it. We took him to Coral Gables when we took Shirley to the Miami Breast Institute for a stereotactic biopsy (negative,thank goodness) and when we went to Key West to sign up with Customs/Border Patrol for the "local boater option" I mentioned in an earlier post.

So, back to the travel news. We left Daytona Beach on the 3rd of January 2009. We would have left on the 31st of December, but had repairs that had not been completed, so had to extend. We moved south on the Intra-Coastal Waterway (ICW), anchoring out the first night, then spending a night on a mooring in Vero Beach, then anchoring for another night further south. Then we "went outside", leaving the ICW at Lake Worth Inlet, entering the Atlantic Ocean. We motor sailed through the night (nice full moon), ending up re-entering the ICW at Government Cut in Miami (see photos). From there we motor-sailed south down Biscayne Bay to Angelfish Cut, were we moved into Hawk Channel, between the Keys and the reefs that separate the channel from the Atlantic Ocean. 

We sent a night anchored at Rodriguez Key, and fueled the next morning at a dock in Key Largo that is accessed  by a canal that was extremely narrow. The canal makes a more than ninety degree turn at a place called, appropriately, "Crash Corner" or "Suicide Corner". Thank goodness the catamaran has an engine in the rear of each hull, as that wide spacing provides for excellent manueverability. By putting one engine in forward gear and the other in reverse, I was able to spin the boat 180 degrees in its own length. We made it back out without mishap, and got all the way down to Boot Key (Marathon) that night. As it was dark when we arrived, we elected to anchor outside for the night. The Boot Key Harbor bridge doesn't open at night anyway, so we would have had to motor up Sister's Creek to enter, and that is shallow and narrow, not something I would want to try in the dark if I didn't have to for some reason. 

As I obviously run off at the keyboard every time I post, I'll wait until the next post to give the low-down on Marathon, the City Marina, and some of the great people (and snobs) we met there.