Marine Stadium at Miami - Waiting for weather

He was aimed right at us! What a strange sight!

The front came through around 3:00 am Wednesday morning with 20 plus wind gusts. We were secure but you could hear the wind blow through the rigging. We need a two day window to reach Marathon and although Thursday could be a good day, Friday is another 20 to 25 kts wind day, not good. So we sat at anchor and did things we would have done if at home.

Hoolie was entranced too

Ann spent most of the day with pastels in the cockpit. With the full sun, it was summertime there. I was down below downloading the latest version of Quicken which has built in obsolescence (the links for downloading transaction data from banks expire every three years) which requires purchasing the latest version, now Quicken 2014. At least you can buy the program from Amazon.com and download it right to your computer.

Michael Taylor

We met an old friend in the anchorage today, Michael Taylor. He's of indeterminate (old) age and sails by himself on a 30 ft catamaran built during WWII (or before). He's originally from England so we had tea in the afternoon on his boat. Ann invited him over for dinner tonight and we had a nice round of conversation about his experiences during WWII and the following years. It was an interesting evening. He sure liked Ann's cooking!

At last a decent sunset

We continue to watch the weather, we're experts at doing that! When the time comes, we'll immediately head out, most likely Saturday as it appears now.

Marine Stadium in Miami - at anchor with sailing school

Team USA practicing

As usual here, there are lots of Olympic type sailing boats, the small two man type. Today we saw mostly the USA two man sailboats that were out practicing with an accompanying instructor in an inflatable taking video. We were being used as a turning buoy and they whizzed by inches from our dinghy but they always missed us!

How's one of these for the Hudson River!

The most unusual sailboat were the one man types that raised up on hydrofoils as they gained speed. It's really weird seeing a sailboat levitate with only a thin support beam connecting it to the water! They can really make good time!

Here's a closeup as he rounded our dinghy

We're continuing to look at the weather and it appears that the cold front that's hitting the northeast will coast down here dipping our temperatures into the 60's and causing high winds and generally miserable weather for going anywhere. If the predictions hold up it looks like we'll be here until Saturday before we can continue onward towards Marathon. We're aiming for 1/28 for our arrival date in Key West, a Tuesday, and we're still on target for that but it's iffy. We won't go in bad weather, stay tuned.

Marine Stadium at Miami - at anchor

Miami skyline during the day from Marine Stadium anchorage

The cruise down the coast today was picture perfect, at least for us. The ocean was like a lake, about a 10 kt wind out of the west which was just enough to steady us but not enough to produce any chop. We left Ft Lauderdale around 7:30 and arrived at our anchorage by 12:45. The Coast Guard had been known to close Government Cut, the entrance to Miami, at times when large cruise ships leave or enter but we made it okay. There was a closing shortly after we got in. I suppose you just go around in circles until the Coast Guard decides to reopen the inlet? We've never ran into this situation at any other inlet, just Miami.

The girls like their pink sails!

The anchorage can accommodate an armada in comfort but there are more boats here than we've ever seen. We anchored at our usual spot in the northeast corner, away from everyone else. The weather does not look good over the next few days. It's looks to be a stretch to reach Key West  by January 28th, our scheduled arrival date. There are strong winds out of the north due the rest of the week. As one member of my Beneteau 423 forum stated when asked how the boat handled in rough weather, "The boat did fine, it's the crew that had problems!" So we'll wait for better weather before going on south.

Miami skyline at night from Marine Stadium

With that, it's nice and calm here and we're anchored securely, no winds are going to move us! We'll wait and watch the weather forecasts  before going on. It looks like the weekend is the first window now.

Ft Lauderdale - at a mooring

Ah, Ft Lauderdale and warm weather!

Finally it is getting warm! We left Boynton Beach this morning with temperatures in the 50's, that's cold for Florida! However, we had a full sun and with our cockpit enclosure, it warmed up nicely to an extent that we had to open the curtains to get rid of the excess heat, it felt good. Today, Sunday, was the day of 15 bridges. They are all spaced and timed so you don't have to slow down or wait for them to open but we did run into one bridge that was inoperable for awhile. We had to tie up to a park bulkhead for 1/2 hour waiting for them to fix it. Eventually, the mechanics arrived and we made it through.

Downtown was bumper to bumper

The trip down through the "canyon" wasn't nearly as bad as we expected, there wasn't that much traffic. At one point we actually got stopped for speeding!! We were tooling along at 6.5 knots and a police boat with flashing blue lights pulled up along side and said to back off to 1000 rpm. For us that's about 3 kts, way too slow to make the next bridge in time. He didn't give us a ticket, just a warning so after he continued on north, we increased our speed just enough to make the bridge. Seriously, we were not putting out any wake, I think it was a slow morning and we were the only boat out that early, what else to do?

Hoolie never fails to attract a few admirers

We're now in the Ft Lauderdale mooring field, right in the middle of downtown, close enough to walk to the beach, which of course we did! Even in the middle of winter the place was packed. The beach was not as crowded as during spring break but there were plenty of bikinis out.

Nighttime at the mooring field

Since the weather forecast is good, we'll leave Monday morning for Miami and Marine Stadium and even warmer weather! 

Hypoluxo - last day at a dock

The ever present pelicans - they are well fed

We left home and forgot to take our photo calendar with us, the one that we designed on the CVS website with all the family pictures. It's hanging faithfully on the kitchen wall. Oh well, it'll be there when we return in late May but we sure would have liked to have it on our boat. Wait a minute, it's in digital form on the CVS website and there are CVS stores all over the place. So I placed another order for the family calendar and arranged for it to be printed at the nearest CVS. We went over this morning to pick it up and now we have our family calendar on Fleeting. Isn't the digital age wonderful...

Notice the absence of an "ICW Mustache" - two coats of wax on the hull solves that problem

We provisioned today and had dinner over at Joe's condo for a nice, evening meal with lots of catching up on local news. Joe is getting along fine and very active, we enjoyed the visit. We're off Sunday morning for Ft Lauderdale and 15 bridges! This section is also known as "the canyon" which resembles the East River of New York City with concrete bulkheads along both sides of the channel. As those who have traversed the East River know, the bulkheads are great at reflecting waves from passing boats so you get a very confused wave pattern that takes a long time to die off with lots of tossing about of your boat. The wise advice is never to traverse this area on a weekend. However, we're still due to do just that on Sunday, it's getting late and we want warmer weather! So we'll brave the boat traffic and the 15 bridges to hopefully make Ft Lauderdale by late afternoon. 

At Hypoluxo - at a dock

Typical "gate house" along the ICW on Jupiter Island (main house further back)

It was a very quiet night but was it ever cold in the morning, around 40 just before the sun came up. So I "volunteered" to jump out of a warm bunk and start the genset followed by turning on the main A/C (to heat), the aft A/C (to heat), the main cabin ceramic heater, the forward cabin small heater, the switch to heat the hot water for showers and, of course, our heated mattress cover. Out of the 6kw capacity of our genset, we were using 4.5 kw. After about 1/2 hour, everything was cozy. We like comfort.

They do like their boats here - that's signed artwork

Today was the first of two bridge days. There were 11 bridges on the way to Hypoluxo close to where Joe Mastri has a condo in Boynton Beach. Most unfortunately, current was against us all day. It didn't matter if we were north of an inlet or south of the same inlet, the current was always opposing (for the scientifically minded, we happened to hit high tide just as we crossed the inlet leading to the opposing currents on both side of the inlet). With an opposing 1 to 1.5 kt current, we were missing bridge openings by about 5 minutes even though we were motoring at 8 kts. So instead of arriving at Joe's place by 1:30 it was closer to 4:00 before we finally docked.

We're at the Palm Beach Yachting Center which is mostly a small boat marina. Small but not inexpensive! They take fishing in a big way here and some of the boats are a work of art. They only have two transients slips and they don't take reservations but we had no trouble getting in.

Joe Mastri came by to pick us up at 5:00 for a trip over to his place for dinner and trading of the latest news. Hoolie was very glad to see Joe since he always get multiple treats whenever he's around, the dog learns fast when it comes to food! We'll spend one more day here provisioning and visiting with Joe before we leave for Ft Lauderdale on Sunday.

Hobe Sound - at anchor

Hoolie's beach  by the anchorage

The forecast was for 20 to 30- kt winds out of the northwest but grib only predicted 20 kts tops. We've learned to trust more to grib than to the NOAA or Coast Guard forecasts. The Coast Guard forecasts seem to be tailored to make their job easier by keeps as many people off the water as possible (don't say we didn't warn you...) We followed grib and left Vero around 8:30 with an 18 kt wind behind us which was fine. You don't want to head into a 20 kt wind but having it behind you is no problem.

Nice neighborhood 

We had our normal 7.3 kts of speed, the prop was the problem after all and with it now clean, we made good time. It seems that almost all of the power boats are going the same speed as us. We were followed by a 62 ft powerboat most of the way. It's expensive to motor much faster than 7 kts!

A magical night

Grib said the winds would abate by late afternoon so we planned on anchoring in our traditional spot in Hobe Sound after briefly considering what appeared to be a more protected anchorage. It's now almost 8:00 and the wind has died to less than 5 kts but the temperature is falling fast, under 60 already. It's headed for a low of 40 tonight.

A hand-held shot of the moon off the back of the boat

On the way back to the boat after taking Hoolie into shore I saw the moonrise, what a sight! With the perfectly dark night and still waters, the sight was incredible! We're headed for Joe Mastri's place on Fridy at Boynton Beach for two days. We'll just hang out and have a good time with Joe.