Hundreds of words about hundreds of miles

We've traveled so much the past few days that it's tough to remember many details. As we passed through the Golden Coast of Florida, with cities that have as many canals as streets, we saw many multi-million dollar mansions that didn't cease to impress us even when we remembered seeing the same ones on the way down.

One extra thing we did notice though was that many of the mansions seemed empty. They were well-kept with manicured lawns, well-maintained pools and all around pristine grounds; but not one mansion had a single person lounging in the backyard, or doing some yard work. The lack of life in these supreme edifices was perplexing, and I soon began to realize that the lifelessness kind of symbolized how lonely it must be to be rich.

Trolling along the waterway with these mansions on either side, we also continued to see many mega yachts with names like "Sexy" and "Cool Cat".  But all of this excessive wealth didn't make us blind to the fewer, and therefore more cherished, wonders of nature that came in sight. Near Ft. Lauderdale we saw a large creature swimming quickly past us. It was too fast to be a manatee, and it didn't come up for air so it couldn't have been a porpoise. We concluded that it thus must have been an alligator, and said nothing more about it. So that's how the story will remain. No one else saw what we saw. Not to say seeing an alligator is even that much of a novelty in this area, but it was the first time we "saw" one on this trip, so don't ruin the experience for us by saying it might not have been an alligator.

So we left Virginia Key Tuesday and  traveled to Boca Raton, which is really only about 45 miles, but after factoring in all of the no wake zones and bridges we needed opened, the trip wound up taking about 8 hours.  The next day we traveled much further, starting in Boca Raton and anchoring out near the bridge at Jensen Beach.

The first part of the day was slow going because there were still many low bridges that needed opening. We tried our best to time them just right, figuring if a bridge opens on the hour and half hour and is about 10 miles away, and it's now 10 a.m., we should slow our speed to about 5 knots to get there without having to sit in idle speed for the next opening. Then there was always the risk of getting there too late, and having to wait even longer for the next opening. At times I would have preferred the choppy Hawk Channel, with the seasickness and all, over lethargically moving through these tedious ICW passages of Southern Florida.

The Southern Coast has the Palm Beach cities, which I found to be architecturally authentic and pleasing to pass on the water. The downtown's buildings had a sort of neo-art deco look to them, but they also had the bright colors of the Florida landscape rather than the earth tone colors of older northern art deco buildings.

West Palm Beach

After another early start and long day, today we are staying at Titusville City Marina. It's the first time we've been hooked up to shore power since our stop in Jacksonville on the way down about five weeks ago. In case you were wondering why this post is unusually long, having shore power means we have all the electricity we can possibly need on a boat, and we don't have to run on the generator when we want Internet access. One of the best parts of this trip is having simple conveniences and pleasures become like luxuries. After checking into the Marina we walked down the road to get KFC for dinner. I'm not a big fan of fast food, but when you only have it after traveling on the sea all week, and then you have to walk a mile from the marina to get it, the fried food and free refills become less of an indulgence, and more like a reward for surviving so many days without the creature comforts so many Americans often take for granted.