Monday, March 11, 2013

Hypoluxo - at Palm BeachYacht Center

Like miniature castles
The towns along the ICW take their bridges seriously and many have unique architecture - like in the photo above.  The bridge operators will ask the name of each boat asking for an opening and usually the state the boat is from. After a few trips you get to know them by name.

Palm Beach Yacht Center is the closest marina to Joe Mastri's condo and is also close to the Pulmonary doctor Ann will see tomorrow - so we are here for a few days. Joe's condo is right on the ICW and is very well kept. He invited us over for dinner tonight and for catching up on things happening back home (he keeps in touch better than we do).

Joe's condo is at the bottom right, has his own palm tree!
On the way we passed under 15 bridges and made every one without a delay. The Florida bridges stagger their opening times tuned to a boat doing 7 kts. So one bridge may open only on the hour and 1/2 hour and depending how far away the next bridge is, it may open on 15 min after and before the hour or repeat the hour and 1/2 hour opening. So you can go from bridge to bridge without having to stop and idle to wait for the opening. There's even one bridge that opens every 20 minutes because it didn't fit into the twice an hour schedule. However, if you can't do 7 kts, you'll have long waits for openings.

We'll take Joe to one of his doctors and then provision for the rest of the trip before heading north again on Thursday.


0 comments: