Palm Beach Yacht Center in Hypoluxo - At a dock

Impossible to clean fish witout an audience!

Today we went through 15 bridges and never had a wait longer than 5 minutes. The opening times are chosen so a boat can make the bridges if it can maintain 7 knots. It's like timed traffic lights, don't go too fast or too slow and you can proceed without having to stop. Of course motorboats have no problem maintaining the 7 kt target but some of the smaller sailboats will miss some of the openings and have to wait the usual 1/2 hour for the next one. Also, if the current is especially perverse, it can also mess up your timing but all was with us today. We also traveled on a no-no day, a weekend through the "canyon", an area where the ICW is narrow and both sides are lined with concrete bulkheads. There's nothing to dampen the waves and any passing boats send out waves that reflect off the "canyon" walls back into the ICW creating very confused water. The action on the boat is similar to what's experienced in going through the east river in NYC when a tug passes except that it lasts for 30 miles! Sunday morning wasn't so bad but in the afternoon, the canyon demonstrated its reputation. The passing powerboats showed no mercy to us slow sailboats, sometimes only a few feet off one side of the boat but we made it through in one piece.

Typical fixed docks as found in many marinas in Florida

We like Palm Beach Yacht Center  because it's close to Joe Mastri and it's only $1.50/ft with the BOAT/US discount. Joe met us a 6:00 and we went out to one of Joe's favorite places, The Golden Corral, a buffet type restaurant that was packed. For $11.00 each for all you can eat, it was very reasonable.

On Monday we'll meet Joe again and get provisions for the next stage of our trip north. We'll start that leg on Tuesday. Meanwhile, we are having our kitchen remodeled by Ron Converse and with every step along the way, we can see the progress through one of the webcams I have installed in the house. Ron will move it around to show us various aspects of his progress, very interesting. Ann loves to watch.