Monthly Archives: February 2013

It’s not often that you are welcomed into town with fire boat hoses and an armada of boats! Well, how about our good friends Jeff and Nancy on their 40′ sportfisherman and a squirting washdown hose? Pretty impressive.

The first night out of Stuart we started out on the ICW because it was still blowing like stink, and anchored behind Peanut Island in Lake Worth. It’s great to drop the hook in sand instead of mud.

It was still blowing early the next morning and we noticed a few catamarans had come in during the night. I won’t say we were the first boat out of the anchorage but we were the first cat to leave. That’s a kind of victory. The up anchor went smoothly and we were immediately faced with this in the channel.

Good timing gave us a fairly easy exit out Lake Worth Inlet and we raised sail and turned South. The sea state was lumpy with a moderate chop. We found ourselves in company with three other sailboats, all monohulls rolling from gunwhale to gunwhale, sails slatting and making me sea sick just to watch. I’m not saying we didn’t roll some but really, there are limits. Marce took a “non-drowsy” pill to avoid mal-de-mer and nearly immediately passed out, leaving me alone to soldier on. Which I did.

As we approached Fort Lauderdale Inlet I had to wake her up to help navigate a busy harbor. We’d decided to try for Jeff and Nancy’s in Surfside, Miami, even though we’d have to come back up this way again because there’s a little matter of a fixed bridge we can’t fit under further south. We just had to try.

Marce warned me that the 15 odd miles to Miami would mean making a bridge opening every couple of miles but you have to try. I had to push EV pretty hard a few times but we made every opening and Jeff was surprised that we were already at Broad Causeway Bridge when they came storming up to welcome us with the aforementioned squirting hoses.

Hero’s welcome? Close enough. More than we deserve.

This is our official Florida residence and this is the view from and of our back porch. Take THAT Rick Scott, two more bed wetting liberals in your midst.

Home at last.

We had every intention of dropping our mooring on Thursday morning. But between Jack’s cold and the bad weather we decided to stay put and let Jack get another night of healing sleep. By morning, he didn’t seem much better, but we knew we needed to get going.

It was a cold night and a chilly morning and we had to bundle up, something we were hoping not to have to do again for a while. By mid day the sun warmed the air but the wind never died down at all and was directly behind us all day so we didn’t have any protection from it.

We stayed inside to Lake Worth because the seas were choppy outside. This stretch wasn’t too bad for bridge openings and the water color was downright tropical blue for a while.

We saw a house being moved on a barge.

It took us two tries to anchor because on our first attempt the wind slammed us sideways just as the anchor went down and when we settled we were too close to another boat. When Jack raised the anchor the windlass jammed again — it was supposed to be fixed! — and the wind and current were tossing us every which way. It took a good 45 minutes to get the anchor set again; we’re in a much better spot with more swinging room. The wind was supposed to die down but it hasn’t yet.