Not intentionally. But more later.

We took off from our slip in downtown Fort Lauderdale around 7 am and started down the river back to the waterway.

We approached the 17th Street Bridge, which was a 56′ bridge. Ed had measured our mast and down to the waterline and conservatively had estimated our clearance at 51′ at most.

But neither of us wanted to take a chance on the height, we asked for the bridge opening anyway, which was scheduled for 7:30 am.

The bridge tender came back and said it looked like we don’t need an opening, we can make it .

Nervous Nellie me, I watched the mast as we went under that bridge, scared to death our mast was going to crash into it.

But we cleared, and as Ed thanked the tender he said “Sure Captain, I was just trying to save you money, it’s a $10,000 fine for an unnecessary bridge opening.”

Whoa! That’s a shocker, we will remember that next time, we know we can do a 56′ bridge.

So we got out on the ocean with the sails, very calm seas, only a couple miles off the coast.

When the wind died, Ed went up to take the sail down. And I was at the helm with both motors going.

All of a sudden the speed died, I thought a motor had quit.

Ed came back and checked the port motor. It had stopped.

“Dammit, we are caught on a ball!”

“What?? A ball?” I was looking for Ziggys toy squeaky ball but it was on the boat.

It was a crab pot plastic float ball, caught on the prop with the line holding us stopped like an anchor, in 45+ deep seas.

Ed got the boat hook and tried to push the ball off.

No luck.

Then he made the decision.

“I’m going in.”

“What? You can’t do that, get the knife and cut the line.” I had no desire to have him in the water two miles out.

But he was adamant. “I have no choice, I have to get under there and get that ball off.” He headed down to put swim trunks on. Then he tied a line around him and to the boat and went in.

God please get us out of this, I was praying while he was working under there. I promised I would pray more often if He got us out of this.

“Kass move the boat forward.” I did that. Then, “Kass move the boat backward.” I did that too. Of course it was the other engine we were using, not the one he was working on, otherwise we would have run over my captain.

Finally he comes back up, saying we are clear, move forward. I did that and he started the engine that had been hung up.

Success! She started! We were back on our way with the f…ing plastic ball trailing away from us on the ocean ready to attack the next unsuspecting vessel.

The rest of the trip was thankfully un eventful, as we made our way to the Marine Stadium anchorage in view of the Miami skyline.

Oh, and we saw 4 or 5 more balls in our path before we got here.?? I sat on the bow to look for them as we came down the shoreline; we weren’t going to be victimized again.

Little bastards didn’t get us. So there!!