1/2/15
Cooleys Landing, Ft Lauderdale FL
Posted by Bill

New Years day was a pretty unique one for us this year. Usually, we would be sitting inside the house watching football, trying to stay warm, and Tricia would be cooking something fantastic all day. Today, we dinghied down the New River to the Las Olas Marina which is a sister marina to Cooleys Landing where we are staying. The sister relationship allowed us to use the dinghy dock at Las Olas with no charge, and it is a block from the beach. We walked the beach for a bit. It was really crowded!

It was cool by the water but it was hot and humid…almost too hot. There were scattered showers threatening so we walked the main drag parallel to the beach and looked for a place to get an adult beverage and watch some football, and we ducked into Dirty Blondes just as a brief downpour moved in. It was funny to watch everyone outside freak out and run every which way like Godzilla was coming or something! We sat nice and dry.

On previous vacations here and in Miami, I have always loved the clarity of the water and the different colors in this part of Florida.

Also, the Gulf Stream is very close to shore and the water temp was in the upper 70s. That doesn’t suck.

We were really low on gas for the dinghy, so we figured we better get back to the dinghy and get some gas at the Bahia Mar Marina, one of the only ones close by that has a fuel dock. We get to the fuel dock and they had just closed early, and wouldn’t sell us any gas. I told them I didn’t know if we could make it back up the New River and would appreciate an exception. Holding out his bag of Cheetos, the guy says “I can offer you some Cheetos.” Nice dude…if you were driving a boat with that helpful attitude, you would be getting an award…you got it – Ass Captain.

We decided to see how far we got with the gas we had, and made it back to the boat with a little to spare.

The dock here has cable TV, but the connector at the pedestal was a male, so we needed a female to female connector to attach our cable. In anticipation of watching the OSU/Alabama game, we had been looking for a store that sells them in walking proximity. No such luck, so when we got back to the boat, I tried to jumper the two cables with alligator clip jumper wires…not happening. Then we turned to watching online on our laptop. After an hour of screwing around we called one of the kids for help. They, and their friends that they were watching football with, got us hooked up and we watched the second half of the Rose Bowl, followed by the Sugar Bowl. Tricia cooked steak, green beans and hash brown potatoes…man it was good! Last time we were at Costco, we bought a 12 pack of dehydrated hash browns to try out. You add boiling water, let them hydrate, and then Tricia cooks them with onions and cheese. They are fantastic! We will need to get to Costco to stock up on more of those. And how about those Buckeyes! Great game, and even better ending. Thanks to our kids and their friends for helping us watch the game at home instead of a bar!