Ft Lauderdale - at a mooring

The spring breakers are all gone but the beach is still nice

We were going to anchor in Marine Stadium at Miami, one of our favorite anchorages, but then the winds were fair and the seas were calm so we pushed on and made Ft Lauderdale from
Caesar's Creek instead. The next several days were not favorable with increasing winds and building waves so we took advantage of the weather window and headed further north than we intended. One thing we've learned cruising is to take the good weather when it's available, never mind what we wanted to do, take the weather window!

Our mooring field, close to the beach

On the way out of Caesar's Creek, we cleared the bar on the ocean side, unlike yesterday when we hit the bar and skidded about 50 feet on the bottom with added rpms to the engine to push us onward to known deeper water once over the bar. In our early days of going down the ICW that might have been a heart stopping moment but anymore, it's just part of the ICW experience. I knew there was deeper water once I reached the channel so I just gunned the engine and made the passage. It also helps that we have a flat bottom on the keel, it skids well.

A sunset over condos

However, one thing I should have done and didn't was to have the bottom scrubbed clean of barnacles. I have good bottom paint, better than when I first started coming south but no bottom paint can stand up to two weeks of being in a Key West harbor at a dock with abundant sunshine and warm waters, things grow. So instead of doing my usual 7.3 kts, I'm down to 6.5 kts and that's a big difference for a sailboat! I've got calls into a diver for service on Monday so we'll see if I can get it done in time for the 28 bridges over two days of going north. You have to be able to maintain 7 kts at least to make some of the bridges.

We took Hoolie ashore and it's very calm here and cooling off with the current temperature still at 78. We're close enough to the ocean to get a cooling breeze at night. We plan on staying another day to do laundry and buy a few necessities before moving on Tuesday.