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. 

Hello Miami

It’s a good thing we didn’t let the torrential downpour in Boca Raton keep us from moving south this morning, because if we did we then wouldn’t be relaxing in a cove off Virginia Key with Miami as a backdrop. I almost want to say we have arrived, but this is just another check point. We’ll wait here in Miami until the ocean is calm enough to cross over to the Bahamas. If it doesn’t look like a window to cross over is coming any time soon, we’ll head down to the Florida Keys instead, which isn’t too shabby of a Plan B if you ask me.

On the Gold Coast, just about every five miles there's a low bridge we had to signal or wait for before they would open. Many of the bridge tenders were easy going, accommodating people who were happy to open the bridge for us. Some of them even had a sense of humor. We heard their interactions with other boaters around us through our radio. In northern Florida there was a troller ahead of us who wasn’t sure if he could make it under one bridge, and he asked the bridge tender his opinion. The bridge tender just told him to come up closer, adding ‘I don’t mind opening the bridge if you think you can’t make it. I get paid to open and close the bridge. So just come on up and we’ll have a closer look.’

He wound up making it through okay.

In Fort Lauderdale, the bridge hailing was so commonplace that the people calling the bridges seemed to create a culture of their own with the bridge tenders. You'd think the city would be more accomdating to boaters and build bridges higher so more boats can pass underneath, considering that the city is known as the Yachting Capital of the World.

 Just about every minute we’d hear people requesting the next bridge’s next scheduled opening, while bridge tenders told boaters to ‘stay clear of the fenders’ near the bridge. They won’t open, even if they’re scheduled to, unless a boat is approaching, of course. But sometimes the bridge tenders will give boaters the benefit of the doubt and prepare to open even if the captain that called them isn’t in sight. “This is Atlantic Avenue Bridge, getting ready to open for a requesting vessel,” we heard a bridge tender say on the radio. ‘I don’t see you, but that doesn’t mean you’re not out there somewhere.’

The short conversations on the radio give us two lone stars a bit of extra company along the waterway that sometimes never seems to end. But once we hit Miami we ran into a little bit of bad company. It was nothing extreme really, but it was a little frustrating when we came to the Venetian Blvd. West Bridge just a few minutes past its scheduled opening at 1:30 pm , and they refused to stay open for an extra two minutes for us. We had to circle around the bridge for a half hour for its next scheduled opening. All is well, though. We were making good time. By 2:30 we found our anchorage in Virginia Key.

Once we were settled in we went for a swim. The light blue water seemed to wash away the long days of meandering through marshes, enduring long straightaways, choppy sounds, and congested city canals along the ICW. Yes, I know it was only about a 10 day voyage, but jumping in that water was as refreshing as seeing the ocean for the first time.

 Virginia Key, near Miami. Captain Ken photos.

 Replica of Blackbeard's pirate ship. 

 Fort Lauderdale.