Our Voyage South

January 27, 2013

We booked an extra night on the dock in Stuart, rather than going to the mooring field, because the engine had been running warmer than Dave liked and he hadn’t been able to find the problem. He called a mechanic and left a message. Before we got a call back, Vic and Wendy came over. Vic had a look in the engine, while it was running, and poking around found a small hose that was leaking coolant. A $5.00 piece of hose later, the engine was fixed, thankfully, rather than the hundreds of dollars Dave had envisioned. Cherie and Dan, Vic and Wendy’s friends, invited us to a picnic potluck in the park that night. We went and also met another couple, Bonnie and Lonnie. Had a nice time and said our good-byes to Vic and Wendy.

Tuesday morning we moved out onto the mooring field to allow us time to catch up on some small jobs on the boat. We also got talking about our plans and decided we would not go to the Bahamas this trip. The weather windows for making the trip across have been short and very few and far between. With the time we have left, before returning to Canada, we felt that we would use a lot of that time waiting for a weather window to go across, and one to come back.

Wednesday morning we started heading south towards the Florida Keys. This section of the ICW has a lot of bridges, most of which open at a specified time. Most of the bridges we have dealt with so far, have opened ‘on demand’ by calling the Bridgemaster on channel 9. We travelled through 8 bridges to get to Lake Worth Inlet Anchorage. On the way there we passed Mile Marker #1000 (Norfolk, VA is Mile Marker #1). It was a large anchorage and even with a large number of boats, there was a lot of room.

Thirteen bridges later on Thursday, we arrived at Lake Boca Raton Anchorage. This anchorage is Florida’s version of Covered Portage Cove in the North Channel, but instead of being surrounded by granite cliffs and trees, you are surrounded by high rise hotels and condos (feels a little bit like a fish bowl).

Our timing on Friday was better... of the 8 bridges, we only missed the opening time on one. We arrived at Lake Sylvia in Fort Lauderdale, at noon. We planned on staying here for the weekend to avoid the heavy boat traffic on the ICW. We tried to get in touch with friends, Liz, BA, and Judy from the 12th of Bruce that were vacationing in Fort Lauderdale. We were unable to arrange anything since BA and Judy were leaving in the morning and had plans for that evening.

Saturday morning we set out to go shopping. We visited a really good nautical book store called Bluewater Books and Charts and as we were leaving, the phone rang and it was Liz. On her way back from dropping Judy and BA at the airport, she decided to stop at a mall near where we were anchored and call us. It turned out to be the same mall we were in and so we met up at the fountain a couple of minutes later. We picked up a few supplies at the grocery store and then went back for a visit at Liz’s condo. Later in the afternoon Liz brought us back to our dinghy and we took the dinghy across the ICW back to Time 2 Go.

We had planned Sunday to get things ready to go and work on our blog. It just wasn’t meant to be. Several large boats came into the anchorage to party - all with very powerful stereos and different tastes in music. The large power boat that anchored near us had a party going on the back deck plus a photo shoot on the front deck. The young models must have been Dental Assistants, as they were all wearing bikinis that looked to made of dental floss! As the sun set and the air started to get cooler, the boats left.