Dinner Key – Enterprise car

The forecast is for high winds starting overnight. We expect to wake up to a wet ride in the dinghy to shore. It is relatively calm when we get ready to head in around 8:00AM. Even the launch is running. After some initial problems with water in our gas, again, I get the outboard running. I am getting pretty quick at getting the carburetor cleared of water and running. Still must be some residual water in our fuel can.

 

The Enterprise driver picks us up a little early. We get a compact car, any smaller and it would be a scooter. I can almost touch the back window from the drivers seat. It does excel at making U-turns.

We take the “scenic” ride through South Beach to north Miami to the Costco's there. The wind had really picked up and most of the restaurants on the beach road at South Beach have wind screens up for the sidewalk diners or their chairs are stacked up. Other places their chairs are just blowing around, because it is to windy for patrons to be outside sitting on them.

We get to Costco's around 10:00 and it is packed. It is very hard to find parking. This is a week day after New Years. Inside, you would think it was a rainy Sunday afternoon with all the people there. This is the only Costco's I have seen that does not have employees serving samples. If they did the place would grind to a halt, so I see why they don't. I guess we will have to buy our lunch somewhere else.

Anyways when we get back to the Marina, it is blowing pretty hard and the boats out on the mooring field are hobby horsing back and forth in 25-30 knot winds. It turns out the wind suddenly increased, right after we left. People that took the launch in then, had problems getting back to their boats since they stop running in winds over 15 knots. Life is to short to deal with this crap so we get a hotel room for the night near the Miami airport.

 

View from our room at the Airport