After leaving the St. Augustine inlet behind we raised the sails and turned right to let fair winds on our aft quarter push us South. It was eerie not to see any other vessel of any kind until well past midnight. We reached Cape Canaveral, our first possible destination, at 3am, so we continued to the next one, Fort Pierce, and went inside to retake the ICW.
To recover from our longest leg so far we spent two lazy days anchored at Fort Pierce, and two more at beautiful Peck Lake, before reaching Palm Beach (yeah, the place that has gained notoriety in the news lately).
At 55ft of fixed height, the Julia Tuttle bridge in Miami is the only bridge in the entire Intracoastal Waterway that we cannot pass underneath. From Palm Beach to that bridge there’s only 63 nautical miles and a whopping 29 drawbridges, most of which open every 30 minutes. Getting on time for the opening of the next bridge always requires an impossibly fast speed, or a tedious drift. Get there too soon and you have to backup or turn around in a small space. Get there too late and you may miss the opening. Luckily we are not going any further on the ICW. We did seven draw bridges in the last 12 miles, and we had enough of bridges so close together.
I think I will remember Florida as mostly boats, buildings and bridges. Bombastic boats, blocky buildings, bascule bridges. Wherever there aren’t many of those, it’s beautiful though.
While in Palm Beach we’ll continue our preparation to cross the Gulf Stream. That includes buying 35 kilos of cat food. And replacing the hot water tank’s thermostat—which didn’t fix the problem, so now we need an electrician. And calling Garmin to ask them why is it that I cannot update the chart plotter with the latest charts. And figuring out what’s wrong with the watermaker; we’ve been taking good care of it for six months, and now that we really want it working, it quit in a rather spectacular way, with massive amounts of water gushing out of places it clearly shoudn’t. It never ends. On the plus side, have you noticed I haven’t mentioned the alternators in the past several posts?
The location map is a great addition. Congratulations!.
Now I am getting greedy. At some point, when the mechanical events under better control, the public would like you to consider enabling an easy way to see the best pictures for each location and perhaps even an easy link to the post for that location.
The photos are getting to be so nice it is unreal.
V
Thanks for the praise uncle V. I see the public is getting sophisticated!
Love the picture of Kat on the beach 😊
Yeah, ain’t she cute?
By the way Juan, I have been reading all of your posts and replying to most of them. However, due to my lack of tech savviness, I haven’t seen the responses and replies until now. Keep your posts coming. They are fun!