The Journey
On Thursday morning, the weather looked tolerably stable. We woke up at 6:00, and loaded up all the equipment strewn in the living room, going by the main list that has spawned a number of sub-lists. I still had several legal loopholes (like the automatic deduction plan with Qwest and Discover cards). The perishables have already been stored in two bins. The diving equipment (minus the weighs and the flippers) in another one. We stuffed the Nissan to the gills and drove to Rodneys’s, stopping on the way for last minute shopping. Once there, I expected to finish loading the boat in a couple of hours and leave by noon. Of course, we found out that the equipment left under the tarp was already soggy, so we spread the spare sails in the tepid mud, and unzipped the cockpit cushions already heavy with last night’s rain. There were a few last-minute adjustments to be done to the boat (like carrying the old dinghy from the cove, taking care of  the main mast plug that didn’t make a clean contact, and of the nose light that was kind of wobbly, emptying the starboard tank of the fouled gasoline, and other merry little chores). What with several such adjustments, the last minutes turned into last hours, and we were finally ready to take off by 4:00. We celebrated the end of the preparatory phase with a spectacular cake that Amanda made for us and we took off at 4:30.

The wind was making treetops sway in the 90 degree heat (typical Iowa August weather). As soon as we descended the hillside into North Liberty, Mihai noticed that the boat was beginning to swing behind the Nissan (something I never bothered me before, even at higher speeds). Once on the highway, it became obvious that the trailer would wag at 45 miles/hour and higher, as badly as it did when we used to trailer with the sprightly and light Cherokee). We crawled all the way to West Branch where we moved all the heavy equipment from the Nissan onto by bunk bed in the back of the boat, thereby lightening the trailer tongue. We did have a wise plan to weigh the tongue before we left, but that important operation was lost in the shuffle. Wonder how many other wise decisions have been likewise overlooked. Getting the boat ready took us no less than a month, but it already felt like we would have had enough to work on until Christmas.
It was a joyless drive to Illinois in the gusty wind that was the cause of so much swaying (or so we hoped). The speed stabilized around 55 m/h and the Nissan was taking about a tankful of gas every 250 miles . Night fell when we had to stop to fill her up the first time and it turned out that the trailer lights were no longer working. The trailer plug ground pin was broken, so we rigged a bypass with an extra wire and “duck-tape” and we were off again. We drove for another 150 miles and we stopped in a parking lot, feeling utterly spent. I wanted to push it a little more, but it was already midnight, we were hungry and hopeless. The road stretched ahead of us for 1500 miles, and the prospect of spending three days in a swaying Nissan, with a wagging boat behind us, aiming to make it to Miami on Monday to pick up the new sail and launch, looked more and more like a pipe dream.
We woke up the following morning to the noise of revving Diesel engines; the truckers were getting ready for a brand new day. We joined the convoy, modestly keeping the speed down to 55 m/h until I noticed the “Check the Engine” ominous yellow light appear on my dashboard. What the hell?! Last time it acted up, the cause was an oxygen sensor that I had changed a year ago. We checked the engine that was still in place under the hood and kept driving on. We passed the Blue Mountains of Tennessee safely enough, where it became abundantly clear that the trailer brakes were inoperable or frozen—a minor inconvenience if we kept the speed constant, at 55 miles/hour. The sense of the brakeless trailer behind, poised to uncoil like a giant, angry cobra when we hit a downhill slope or passed the 60 m/hour limit, was anything but reassuring. The last leg of that day’s journey would take us through Atlanta—a crazily busy hub that I recalled passing through several times, with the same sense of dread and foreboding. I took the wheel and downed a cold can of Dr Pepper. T was 11:00 pm; we had lost one hour crossing into Easter time.
Even so, the traffic was hectic. We descended into Atlanta for 70 miles, keeping close to the shoulder of the road, while gigantic trucks merrily roared by, honking their encouraging curses. When we got close to the downtown, there were no less than ten lanes swarming with traffic—ten from the opposite direction, in so many strings of streaming headlights. We managed to squeeze through though, and once on the other side of Atlanta, we breathed more freely. Talked to Dan over the cell and he told us that we could stay one night at Windstar, in Naples, over at his parents’ condominium which had not been sold yet. Sweet! That meant we could get there by Sunday, do our stinking laundry dripping with so many gallons of cold sweat, take a dip in the pool at midnight, a hot shower, maybe, and sleep well for once in an air-conditioned room. The only caveat though was to leave everything spotless since the real estate agent would show the condo early Monday morning. Of course, that went without saying and we would have done it anyways. But the prospect of reaching Windstar (a paradise in itself) shone like a beacon in this hopeless murk.

I was willing to push it as much as we could and reach Naples in the morning, but we were already approaching the Florida border after another neck-breaking day. We pulled over a side road and found an excellent, quiet spot in the empty parking lot of an electric company. Everything was spotlessly clean, with empty garbage cans and little benches under the yellow sodium street lights. No guard and no other cars in sight. The highway traffic reduced to a lulling buzz in the distance. We slept very well and hit the road again in the morning, after a Spartan breakfast of cold pineapple (courtesy of IC Aldi store) and Dr Pepper and crossed into Florida by late morning.
The first disappointment was the lack of palm trees. Where the hell are the palm trees? I had been harping on this old joke for hours (“Daddy, I want to see the palm trees…”) but now the joke became grim. I didn’t remember Florida so palmless. Finally, we swerved right on highway 74, the road to Naples, and we started catching glimpses of them, mainly around parking lots. That was still a far cry from the profusion of palm trees that I remembered having seen with my mother, the previous year. Looked like blight had decimated the palm trees that used to thrive on the side of the road, or maybe a cunning entrepreneur had unearthed them at night and sold them to local builders. The highway snaked through rows of unprepossessing pine trees and puny tropical oaks, with tufts of trunkless, baby palm trees in between. Maybe after 20 odd years the Royal palm trees would grow back, but I sure do miss them now.
Dan called around noon to let us know that the deal with Windstar was off; the agent was going to show the condo early in the morning which would leave us very little time to clean up or even to rest, for that matter. Oh well. Maybe on the way back, if the condo doesn’t get sold first. On the good side of things, the “Check the Engine” light went off by itself, proving that I had failed to set the gas cap back properly, after fuelling. The oxygen sensor was still Ok—which didn’t surprise me all that much; the Nissan was topping 300 miles to the gallon by now. We still decided to push to Naples and find a place to camp in a known area—maybe go shopping to the West Marine store for a water plastic bladder and other odds and ends. The GPS wasn’t very helpful in revealing motels and campgrounds, so we relied on intuition and found an Inn at the South end of town. The first thing that caught my eye was a huge Laundromat next door. The inn was part of a golfing resort, with several different buildings and an imposing main one in front of a private swimming pool. And yes, palm tree galore all around. We pulled right in and got a room for $60 (breakfast included). A cold shower and internet connection. A humming, ass-kicking AC. We still had a couple of beers in the fridge which we transferred in the hotel room’s icebox and considered the possibility of taking a dip in the pool—which was officially open until 10, but still  available to quiet guests, according to the winking receptionist. That had to wait though since we were both hungry as hell, so we ambled to the restaurant in the main building and grabbed a table in the back, under hanging pots of plastic orchids.
The waitress who seemed to be the only Anglo-Saxon around (everybody else from the reception desk manager to the gardener spoke in heavy Spanish accents) doted on her only customers in sight. She brought us tiny cups of chili and clam chowder, too small for our raging appetites, and quickly upgraded them to more suitable bowls. She also brought us a heap of shrimp cooked in the kind of hot sauce that is typically used on chicken wings, and a jumbo shrimp cocktail that also hit the spot nicely. Mihai insisted on sampling the Beck beer (bleah!) and the Heineken (yuck!) even though I had told him that European beer doesn’t taste the same in America at all, despite its priced which is three times as high as the local one. We drank it even so and topped the bill with some Pabst industrial beer of our own that we had upstairs, foregoing the swimming pool. The spicy shrimp made me get up four times at night to water my horses. Every time I would put several paper glasses filled with water in the freezer, and have fresh, icy water for the next round.

In the morning, we took advantage of the local breakfast, rock heavy on the sugary side: Danish rolls, Waffles, flavored yogurt, cranberry juice, and the like. My cellphone battery was already half-dead, even though I had charged it the whole previous day in the car. I managed to speak to the sailmaster who expected us today or tomorrow. I also attempted to reach the Immigration/Customs office through the net, in order to finalize the small boaters’ option that would have saved us a trip to the Customs’ office on our way back. The Adobe form on the computer wouldn’t allow me to insert any information though. After a couple of fruitless phone calls with the Miami customs officers (who insisted that the form should be filled out on line, as if every goddamn boater were automatically supposed to have internet access as well), I tried my luck with the Fort Myers office which is only ten miles north of Naples. A helpful lady granted us an appointment at 2:00 today, to fill out the forms in person. That seemed like an excellent plan, leaving us enough time to reach the sailmaster before 6:00, pick up our new jib, and head towards South Dade Marina, our presumable launching spot. We could still relax an entire morning in Naples, leave the room by noon, do the laundry next door, and get to Fort Myers in our own sweet time
Our sense of elation was short-lived.  I called South Dade Marina and spoke to Bob. He sounded like a nice person who seemed ready to accommodate us, provided that we reached his marina before 5:00 today, or miss him altogether—he was going to be gone for the next three days or so. Damn! No way we could make it to Fort Myers by 2:00 and reach South Dade in three hours, even if we were to skip the sailmaster and return to Miami to pick up the sail the following day. Another change of plans for the worse. We cancelled the appointment with the Fort Myers helpful lady, settled the bill with the hotel, tossed our sparse luggage in the Nissan and left in a hurry, forgetting two beers and a small bottle of tzuica in the hotel fridge. Wonder what the cleaning lady would make of it when she found it. We took the alligator highway that slices through the Everglades for some 100 miles. Nothing around but swamps and marshes with a clump of solitary palm trees or two. Every once in a while, a sign would proclaim “Indian Village” marking settlements walled in like miniature Fort Knoxes, to keep the alligators and the tourists away. The enclosed huts with thatched roofs are not unlike our Lipovanian versions in the Danube Delta. We passed a couple of restaurants advertising alligator tail lunches, but we were too much in a hurry to sample them. The GPS took us into West Miami, straight to the door of the Doyle shop where we parked arrogantly across three spaces, disturbing the traffic.
The sail was ready, but when I asked the sailmaster to help us mount it on the furler (as he had initially promised over the telephone, and which service I had vectored into the steep price) he took me by the hand in the back of his shop and showed me a miniature model of the furling jib system, pointing at the key components and assuring me that anyone could do it in a jiffy and with no problem whatsoever. He threw in a sailbag instead and gave us some weather-related advice, hunched over his weather program on his computer. According to him, the winds were going to be pretty strong and from the east for the next week or so. We could have snatched a safe passage today, but the weather was going to deteriorate with winds peaking on Wednesday night and Thursday, so leaving before the end of the week was becoming more and more unlikely. We tossed the jib into the back of the Nissan and headed down South on infamous Highway one of ill repute, towards the mysterious South Dade Marina, to keep our appointment with Bob. The GPS faithfully followed the cheapskate directions I had given it, avoiding the much speedier interstate. We bumped along Highway one, towards ever poorer, dusty districts, stopping at every blooming redlight in sight.