Ft Lauderdale - at a mooring

Sunrise - a good start to the new day at Hypoluxo

Today could be described as "Bridge Day". In this stretch of the ICW we had 15 bridges to pass through. As I've said in the past, if you can maintain 7 knots, then you have a chance to make all the bridges without a delay. The only caveat would be concerning current. If you have 1.5 kts against you, it's really tough making the bridges. We had that situation on one of the bridges, otherwise we made them all. Additionally, this section of the ICW is known as "The Canyon". It gets its name from the bulkheads along both sides of the ICW. The waves created by passing boats reflect off both sides and result in confused wave action in the middle. The wave action is especially strong on weekends so it's advised to only pass through the area during a weekday.

The bulkheads are on both sides of the ICW along here

Compounding all this is slowing of Fleetwing due to some buildup of marine growth while being docked at Stuart for 1.5 months without being used. We've lost about 1/2 knot which is a lot for a sailboat. I tried getting the bottom scrubbed by a diver but so far have run out of luck. They are either too busy or hard to find. We'll have the bottom scraped for sure before we leave Key West.

Our mooring field is just south of the bridge - boats slow down for the bridge so it's not so bad for us

Ann continues to improve as evidenced by our move south today, she felt good enough to travel. We're carefully looking at the weather and either Thursday or Monday look like good days to make the outside passage to Miami. Needless to say, the weather report will be a popular read tonight and tomorrow morning.