Melanie and Disney World

6 December 2003

Winter in Florida is from December to April, so by now the weather had cooled off and life was much more pleasant. Apart from mosquitoes, the summer months produce some spectacular thunderstorms, the worst I have ever witnessed. We got caught in a storm one day and the lightening was so violent that we took shelter in a shop on Las Olas Boulevard. When it eased, we jumped on a bus, bikes and all, and discovered on our return that one of the yachts in our marina had been struck and suffered considerable damage. 2003 was a particularly active year for hurricanes and in early September we held our breath as Hurricane Isabel came howling along. The locals had us worried stiff with tales of the appalling storm water surge that is so destructive. We were debating whether to take Forever way inland up some little canal when Isabel obligingly turned and headed up the coast, making landfall in Virginnia and the Carolinas. Lucky for us but not for them, though the intensity of the hurricane had dissipated by then.

Melanie flew in the day after our little ‘run in’ with the Immigration folk and once again dear Bob Jobe drove us to the airport to collect her. She was exhausted on arrival but I had booked tickets to take her to the Fort Lauderdale Christmas Pageant that evening. It was wonderful but the poor child fell asleep on my shoulder half way through. Melanie was with us for five weeks and we thought she had a really good holiday.

We took a memorable three day trip to Disney World, picking Sea World, the Magic Kingdom and Paramount Pictures as our three venues and were all extremely happy with our choice.  Orlando is cooler than Fort Lauderdale and it was positively chilly during our visit, which made a welcome change for us.

Mel particularly loved the big roller coasters and we had trouble getting her off them!  Luckily we went during school term so there was no waiting time for the rides and she could go as often as she liked. We went round and round on the roller coasters till Mike and I felt sick, and then she’d go again on her own!  She loved the dolphins and we all fell totally in love with Shamu. 

 

She was just at the right age - old enough to appreciate but young enough to be charmed by everything – but even we old fogeys had a ball.

We also took her to an Imax cinema to see Cirque du Soleil in 3D, took a day trip to the Everglades, and a ride in the dinghy down the New River.



Bob and Trissa’s daughter, Ali, was only a year or so older and the two girls became great friends. Ali and her friends included Melanie in all manner of things - movies, parties and ice hockey matches. They lived on each other’s boats and during the Christmas school break we hardly saw them. Despite the lack of extended family, we had a festive Christmas dinner with most of the marina residents in one of the ground floor flats which the manager kindly made available to us.

Together with Prue, we tracked down a South African pub called the Kalahari Bar and went there a couple of times to watch rugby. They also had a shop that sold biltong, boerevors and pies! The Kalahari was run by a bunch of good Afrikaans people who befriended us and invited us to a great braai party on Pompano Beach one day.

In early January, our marina friends arranged a farewell party for Mel and she was given a few gifts. Broken hearted, we said goodbye and put her on the plane back to Johannesburg. Our next plan was to sail across the Pacific Ocean and we expected to get to New Zealand (where Mike’s brother Nick lives) by November 2004 so we knew we would not get to see her again until then, when we hoped she would come and spend Christmas with us, her uncle and aunt and cousins. Sadly for us, she declined, and we didn’t see her again until 2006.

We had our farewell party at the marina on 9 January and everyone came, including Prue and her friend Stephanie. We’d made such good friends in FL, I felt really sad to be leaving but it had to be. We had given some serious thought to doing the Green Card thing and had investigated various business opportunities, but it was going to be difficult and in the final analysis we decided that America was not for us. My greatest regret is that we didn’t see more of the States. It is a beautiful country and Florida is just not representative - at all. Our plan to sail up the Intracoastal and then through to the Great Lakes and down the TomTenn never materialised, partly because we didn’t have the money and felt we would do better staying where we were and doing what little work we could and partly because of Melanie’s planned trip. We needed to stay in one place.

We had bought a new motor for our recalcitrant autopilot, which we’d tested during our visa trip to the Bahamas and it worked beautifully. We also bought a small 12 volt fridge which operated off the batteries and a (very expensive) 406MHz EPIRB to update our old, and totally obsolete, 121.5MHz. Mike also bought a new storm sail.

And so, with Forever in ship shape condition, we sailed under the Las Olas Bridge and out of Fort Lauderdale for the last time on 13 January, heading for the Panama Canal.

Goodbye Fort Lauderdale