Week Ending Sunday 12/3

The hazardous weather warning issued on 11/25 turned out to be a bust.  While it was overcast and threatening all day, there was nary a drop of rain, let alone lightening.  Better safe than sorry.

Under improving skies on Sunday, 11/26, we again proceeded south.  The destination was the Stuart, Florida area.  The recommended anchorages here on the St. Lucie are Manatee Pocket and behind Sewell Point on the St. Lucie River.  The chart shows pretty skinny water in Manatee Pocket, although there are about half dozen boat yards there.  The cruising guides also advise that the pocket shoals to four feet.  On our arrival we looked into Manatee Pocket.  It looked rather narrow and lined with marinas to us, so we proceeded on up the St Lucie River to check out the opportunities behind Sewell Point.  Although the St Lucie River is part of the Lake Okeechobee waterway, the channel here at the entrance is twisty, very narrow and flanked by shoals that are bare at low water.  The saving grace is that it is very well marked.  For those following in our wake, we anchored above Sewell Point behind marker 19 in the lee of the bridge.  We had this large anchorage to ourselves; the first time since we anchored on The Glebe up on the Potomac.  There was some roll from passing boats, but no more than we've experienced in other places.  Given the lemming behavior of cruisers on the ICW and our solitude behind Sewell Point, we're pretty sure that Manatee Pocket was crowded.

The start of the 11/27 leg was marked by a passage through the a state park flanking the ICW so we still have some of the more verdant beauty we have seen since getting south of Titusville.  Oh yes, the landscape in the vicinity of Titusville is very dry and austere.  There are no tall trees other than palms.  The grass is brown and dry, the shrubs low and thin.  From 10 miles above Vero Beach the landscape has flavors of Maine.  There are small islands on either side of the ICW.  The trees on shore are now evergreen and deciduous.  The Vero Beach mooring field itself is snuggled among some of these small islands. In fact, when there is no breeze Vero Beach even has mosquitoes and other biting insects like Maine.  As one continues on south toward Jupiter Inlet the ICW is once again lined with expensive homes.  Back to the chronology.

As we came through the junction with the St Lucie inlet we picked up a few other boats headed down the ICW.  Since we are quite fast under power we soon left all but one of them far behind.  That remaining boat stayed doggedly on our heels.  Each time we reached a bridge he would race up and try to squeeze between us and the bridge.  When got to Jupiter Inlet just above Lake Worth I finally gave up this dangerous and silly game.  He got what he wanted.  He was the first boat on the day heading into the anchorage in the north end of Lake Worth.  He then proceeded to race through the anchorage and dropped the hook in the middle of the implicit fairway that the 50 other boats already there had left to give access to both sides of the anchorage.  Are you surprised to learn that his hail port was New York, NY?

In spite of the many bridges  on the way, Lake Worth is a great anchorage.  There is easy access to grocery shopping and West Marine.  CNG is available at the gas company at 3704 Burns Road, North Palm Beach.

Did I say bridges?  There is nothing to compare with the leg from Lake Worth to Pampano Beach or Ft Lauderdale. After 8 nerve wracking hrs, 40 nautical miles and 16 bridges we finally dropped the hook in Lake Santa Barbara.

What's so nerve wracking about bridges?  Well, the published restrictions are almost invariably out of date.  The consequence is that it is very hard to time one's passage to hit them on the scheduled openings.  Since you can't hit the schedule you have to keep the boat roughly in place at the foot of the bridge in spite of wind and current.  This is made harder if there are other boats trying to do the same thing.  As we approached our first bridge of the day we hailed the tender.  The return call, from a boat awaiting an opening, informed us that the bridge tender was not answering and that work crews hoped to have the bridge open at noon.  Luckily for us this was only 20 minutes.  Most of the other 8 boats had been waiting so long that they had anchored in the channel.  The bridge did open at noon and the whole entourage scurried through to get the next bridge just 1/2 mile further on.  We were last through so witnessed a new catamaran lose power ahead of us.  Another boat with them took them in tow and the next bridge stayed open so that they could get through without trying to stop, an impossibility.

The towing boat and the disabled boat then proceeded on, in spite of other more prudent courses of action!  They proceeded on through not just one, but many bridges.  Each time they would hail the next bridge, announce their inability to stop, request an immediate opening and proceed through the 8-10 other boats all waiting for the bridge.  We and the other boats could not get far enough ahead of the tow in order to get out of this routine and the tow wouldn't slow enough to break the sequence.  By the end of the day my nerves were fried.

In spite of the fatigue of the day we passed up our first anchorage, a round man-made lake at statute mile 1042.2 on the ICW.  It was too small and lined with private piers and there is a reported shoal at the entrance.  Each time we tried to enter one of these small anchorages with possible shoaling we ended up aground, so prudence ruled.  The next anchorage was Lake Boca Raton.  We passed on this also since the chart showed only a small sliver of deep water for us and there were already two boats in the anchorage.  Now we were beginning to feel desperate.  There are marinas along in here and there was only one place left to anchor.  Upon our arrival at the remaining anchorage before dark there were no other cruisers.  Hallelujah.  Lake Santa Barbara is a misnomer, it is more like a suburban cul de sac that has been filled with water; but what the heck, at the end of a long day it has deep enough water and is protected.  It also put is only 6 nm and four bridges from our next stop in Ft Lauderdale.

On the morning we upped anchor and headed for Ft Lauderdale.  There was an empty city mooring at the Las Olas Bridge so we didn't even go down to look at the Lake Sylvia anchorage.  As it happened we didn't even have to pay for the mooring.

For all of you heading down the ICW some day:  I will never again stay inside on the leg from Lake Worth to Ft Lauderdale.  There are too many bridges, too much boat traffic and the channel is too narrow.  The 45 miles from Lake Worth to Ft Lauderdale are only rivaled by a really bad day on the Long Island Expressway in NY. The homes lining the waterway through here are very attractive, but they can't make up for the other drawbacks.

For the first time since our trip from St Augustine to Ponce de Leon Inlet (Smyrna Beach), we actually sailed on 11/30 from Ft Lauderdale to Miami.  For the first half we sailed wing-and-wing making 5.5 knots over the ground.  At about the half way point the wind picked up and shifted more to the NE so we trimmed to a broad reach and raced along at just above 8 knots over the ground.

It's Sunday, 12/3, and we've been here since Thursday.  Since Maria went to work in the Miami office of GMAC Commercial Mortgage on Friday we made the decision to stay in the marina in the heart of downtown.  We'll be leaving the marina on Tuesday or Wednesday and heading down to the anchorages (Hurricane Harbor and No Name Harbor) at Cape Florida at the southern end of Key Biscayne.  Here we'll wait for the weather fronts to bring the wind around to anything from ESE to WSW so we can dart across the Gulf Stream.  We'll be crossing onto the Great Bahama Bank at North Rock north of Bimini, then continuing on to the Northwest Channel and over to Chub Cay to clear customs in the Berry Islands.