The Adventures of Avalon: Day 10: Entering the Gold Coast

The water is getting bluer and it’s getting hotter as we cruise down Florida’s Gold Coast, where waterfront houses try to outdo each other in size and luxury. After a while, after passing through Jupiter and Palm Beach, and by the time we reached Boca Raton, we got tired of saying ‘Wow, look at that house!’ because we knew five minutes later we’d be saying ‘Man, look at that house that’s even bigger.’

The over-the-top sleek yachts in this area are called things like ‘Sexy’ and the party boats treat the ICW like a main street. Half the bridges are too low for 18-foot tall Avalon to pass under, a paddle boarders, water skiers, kayakers, and sunbathers on little boats have little concern for the speeding jet skies and sporting boats that zip by them.

It really is a different world down here, and it’s only going to get crazier when we reach Fort Lauderdale and then Miami tomorrow. I can’t even anticipate what it’s going to be like. But then again, every day seems to present new surprises, new scenery, and new challenges. Every night our anchorage has a completely different theme to it. Yesterday, we anchored right on the south side of a bridge in Stuart, and tonight we’re parked in Lake Boca Raton with pastel-colored condominiums, resorts and modern mansions all around us. When we came into the lake at about 5:15 pm it was packed, then the weekend boaters slowly left. Now we practically have the entire lake to ourselves with the city all around us.

So we started at 8:15 am today, cruised for nine hours through congested waterways, and ended our day after covering about 60 miles. The small wake zones, boat traffic and bridges slowed us down significantly.

Here are some photos from recent days.