“You know, we don’t have to do an overnighter. We could just do a day-hop?”

I don’t know why it took us so long to get to this point. We’d been stalling in Marathon all week, neither of us feeling particularly pumped to pack up the boat and make our first jump along the Florida coast… until suddenly it dawned: we didn’t have to do an overnight trip if we didn’t want to — we could just do a little day-trip.

This, dear friends, is an extremely novel concept. We’ve now done 3 single day-hops in a row, and it. is. awesome.

We wake up early to a boat that’s already ready to go, ghost along flat waters with 10-15 knots of breeze, read, install more fans, work on our tans, dodge thunderstorms, play with the GoPro kite… and then, around 4:00 or 5:00 pm, we drop the anchor. Turn the engine off. Sleep in the same bed. Marvel at the fact that we’re not moving.

Why did we ever think we’d rather do overnights?!?

Some of our anchorages haven’t been anchorages per se — more like convenient little divots in the mangroves that give some protection from the small amount of wind and chop. Kind of like pulling over on a particularly wide shoulder on the edge of a highway… not always glamorous, but it gets the job done 🙂

A super fun bonus of all this flat-water sailing (and “I’ve-had-a-full-night’s-sleep-so-I’m-willing-to-play-with-kites-ness”) is that we’ve finally been able to get the much-desired GoPro footage we’ve been dreaming about for years…

That schmancy contraption that Jon is flying is a sled kite with a GoPro camera attached to a picavet (to keep it stable). One of these days I’ll write more about picavets than you ever wanted to know, but for now let’s just focus on what that magical contraption can capture, shall we?

Behold, the wonder of Kite Aerial Photography (KAP for short), from a sailboat:

Okay I’m being a little dramatic, but this is like the equivalent of discovering the selfie… Brio can now take some pretty sweet selfies. She’s happy. We’re happy. And the pictures are awesome!

(Oh and actually these are just screenshots from the video — the live footage is even cooler 😀 )

Anyways, I did manage to take some other pictures today too — this is the approach to Miami, with the skyline in the background…

I don’t know what’s up with these houses, but there were 5-6 of them, all abandoned, all along the channel on the way in. Jon and I decided they must’ve been nightclubs gone bust 😉 . Also, do you like that thunderstorm waiting to rush in? Cuz we didn’t!!

We did however manage to have a beautiful sail right into Miami’s inner harbour…

So perfect, in fact, that we had to get the GoPro kite camera rig out again, for just one more shot…

Miami skyline in the background

And now we’re happily anchored (who knew you could anchor in Miami?!?) just a couple of miles away from city centre, with this for an evening view…

Yep, I’d say day-hoppin’ is for us!

– LMK