So much for global warming. We received about 8 inches more snow here in a storm that swept in late Friday and continued all day Saturday. It was chaos on the raods and at the airport as this week is March break here and there are a lot of people heading out of town on vacation. We're heading for a record this winter with more snow than we have received in Toronto since the 1930's. I guess it's good news as water levels in the Great Lakes and specifically Lake Ontario have been rising steadily this winter; Lake Ontario is currently 26 inches over chart datum, and with this extra snow will be going higher. Let's hope we get a break soon as we're supposed to be launching boats in a month.
It's been a couple of weeks since we returned from Miami, and I am finally getting around to posting some pics from our visit. We had an early 6:55am flight out of Toronto on Feb 13th so had a really early start and a long first day. Overnight it snowed, so with the limo arriving at 4am to take us to the airport, I was out shovelling snow from the driveway and walks at 3am. The plane was about 45mins late leaving as there was 3 inches of snow on it's wings. We finally got off the ground and made it to Miami by about 10:30am. After collecting our luggage and securing a rental car, we set out for our Hotel in a place called Hollywood Beach which is mid way between Miami and Fort Lauderdale. We took it a bit easy the first day, as we were pretty tired. Next day, we headed to Miami for the show. The Miami Boat show is quite spectacular, probably 5 times the size of the Toronto Boat show. There are several different venues for the show including a Strictly sail in-water show at Bayside, a power-boat in-water show at the Marriott and a trade show at the Convention Centre in Miami Beach. The trade show is in multiple buildings and tents outside. It's huge. We split our time between the 3 venues spending more time at the sail show. Lot's of big blue water boats to climb aboard including the usual Benteaus, Catalina and Jeanneaus along with the full Island Packet line, an Oyster, Pasport, Hylas, Outbound, Caliber & Amel centre cockpit 50+ footers. The class of the show was a Friendship 53 (pics below) built in New Zealand that goes for a a cool $2 million. Beautiful workmanship both top side and below, but a little out of our league. We checked out the power show and spent a bit of time looking at the Nordhavn and Krogen Trawlers. These trawlers are kind of neat as they use fuel sparingly ( 1.5 gal of diesel fuel per hour) and have a long cruising range (3000 miles). Very well equipped and very seaworthy. Friday night we bought tickets for the Florida Panthers hockey game. They play out of a new rink in Sunrise, Florida which isn't far from Hollywood. Tickets for games are readilly available from the box office and you pay half what you would in Toronto. It's a little different of course. Don't think you will see cheerleaders and Peter Butter Jelly man at a Toronto Maple Leafs game anytime soon. It was a fun time and the weather was great with temperatures in the mid 80's every day. We didn't get a chance to swim in the ocean, but had a couple of nice walks along the beach with our feet in the ocean. We're going to have to do this again next year.
