Riviera Marina - at a dock

The sight at our marina when we left this morning

Today was our first day just on the ICW and it felt good. Starting out from Ft Lauderdale, we had 27 bridges to get through today! All the bridge tenders were great except one at the Lantana bridge. On the way south in the fall, he demanded we snug up against the bridge before he would open it even though we had a 1 kt current behind us at the time which required putting Fleetwing in reverse while waiting for the bridge to fully open. We had been going south and timing our arrival at the bridge to coincide with its opening but that was not good enough for the bridge tender. This time, he was the only bridge tender that did not answer us on VHF when we called for an opening. The guy needs some personal instruction on how to interact with their customers.

We particularly liked the one with the helicopter!

The mega yachts were just out of this world. Ft Lauderdale must one of the megayacht capitals of the world. We heard that the Las Olas City Marina was being redone so they could accommodate more megayachts. Supposedly, there's a shortage of megayacht facilities in Ft Lauderdale. On the plus side, the Las Olas mooring field was up and running with several moorings available as we passe by this morning.

The new parking garage at Ft Lauderdale is finally done - it just to just be a parking lot, always full

In the last two days, we've stayed in two large marinas, and both times we were told the wrong side to put out fenders, not wonderful. At Riviera Beach Marina, the facilities are top-notch but the help at the desk is not up to par. Aside from the wrong instructions on docking, they could not tell us the WiFi code over the phone and neglected to tell us the code when we checked in. Since t's about a 15-minute walk to the dock office, we did without tonight. We're not impressed with the marina service.

We are headed to our Hobe Sound anchorage for Tuesday night and then on to Vero Beach the next day followed by Titusville. We are on a cannonball run headed north!