Underway Again #8 Vero to Fort Lauderdale

We left Vero and headed off to Peck Lake where we anchored quite comfortably and the next morning on to Lake Worth where we anchored in about 10 feet of water and held well all night.  Since there was lots of wind and solar power we watched a movie "Torn Apart" which illustrates just how far people will go to preserve their culture. 

 

On we went to Fort Lauderdale.  The current was with us and we just flew at about 7.5 kn.  Some of the bridges open on the hour and half hour and others quarter past and quarter to the hour.  We were behind two large catamarans  most of the way and we quickly passed one bridge after another. 

 

 

 

 Some boaters hate this stretch and go out along the outside but we quite enjoyed  seeing one mansion after another. 

 

 

Looking around on the waterway, you wonder how there could possibly be an economic slowdown in the United States.  And yet Roman mentioned that as he had travelled down the Intercoastal Waterway, he noticed a lot of empty homes with For Sale signs.

 

As we were dropping anchor in Middle River Fort Lauderdale there were two small power boats who were already anchored.  Six children were jumping in and climbing out of the water.  Even two of the adults were swimming.  It was as nice a spot as I had remembered from last time, surrounded by million dollar plus homes each one with a large boat and many with an additional small one for just running around in.  The internet reception was intermittent and the signal very weak.  The next day Roman dropped me of, by dinghy, at Borders where we had used internet the last time and went off to do a few errands.  Borders had closed and I spied a medical building across the parking lot and thought to myself that that would be a much better place to wait for Roman than standing in the hot sun in front of a deserted store.  As luck would have it there was a nice little cafe there with internet and I managed to send off a couple of blogs in the next few days.

Rick's new hobby?

I managed to Skype with the kids and answer my e-mails. We let our friend, Dr. Rick who was in Florida at a conference, know where we were.  His conference finished, he surprised us by coming by the next day on his friend's 42 ft. motor yacht which was a far cry from our sailboat.  It was really great to see him!

On our "little" boat

 

There were several boats in the anchorage and we met a few other boats who were planning to cross over and we planned to make the crossing, sailing together, on Thursday morning and spent Wednesday getting ready, making sure everything was secured and lashed to the deck for  example.  Roman went and bought the last few grocery items we needed and filled up the diesel tanks.

Las Olas Bridge opening at 5:45 a.m.

Thursday we were up early, made sandwiches, had breakfast, got out what we might need and we were at the Las Olas Bridge at 5:45 and got the 6:00 opening at the 17th street bridge and we were going out the inlet.  This was it!
We were finally crossing to the Bahamas!  It was quite choppy but the wind picked up and Roman first put up the stay sail and went to put up the main and oh, oh, nothing happened.  Ours is an in-furling system which means that the sail is pulled in and out of the mast.  But this time, Roman just could not get the sail out.  We decided to turn back and let the others know and back we went to Middle River where we dropped anchor by 10:00.  Roman fixed the problem by that evening but the weather window had gone by and we had to wait for the next one.

When we were going back it was fully light.