Heading North

The repaired sail was ready on Friday, the 18th. We took the bus to and from UK Sailmakers and used the 2-wheeled cart to transport the sail which saved our backs. They trimmed 9 inches off the leach (the back side of the triangle) to repair the torn area.

It felt great to be on our way again on Saturday. We were actually glad to leave the Miami area. We felt rather in the minority speaking English; almost like we were in a foreign country! It took almost two hours to make our way through the Port of Miami and out into the Atlantic. Here are some of the sights we saw:

We went under the Rickenbacher Causeway Bridge. That's the Miami skyline on the left; about five cruise ships were docked on the right.

It was interesting to see how they load the massive container ships. This one was from St. John's; others had Nassau and Majuro on the stern.

We passed these condos just as we were heading out into the Atlantic Ocean.

Further up the coast was Miami Beach; high rise after high rise!

We were able to sail most of the way heading northeast with an easterly wind. No worries about running aground here; we saw depths from 310 to 583 feet (this is per the charts; our depth meter was stuck at 195 feet). We think we may have been getting a boost from the Gulf Stream because our knot meter showed 5.2 and the GPS showed 7 knots; it’s sort of hard to tell for sure. We came through the inlet at Fort Lauderdale and into the ICW.

We hooked onto a mooring ball next to the Las Olmos Bridge in Ft. Lauderdale, “the yachting capital of the world”. There are an amazing number of HUGE yachts here, most flying the flag of the Cayman Islands. Paul thinks they register them outside of the U.S. for the tax advantage. It was $30 for the mooring ball which gave you access to the dinghy dock and marina facilities. Here’s a view of what they call “the miracle mile”. Million dollar yacht after million dollar yacht!

No sailing on Sunday; we stayed on the “inside”, the ICW. The view along the way was like lifestyles of the rich and famous! We haven’t seen mansions like this since Naples. Here’s a nice one with a dock for your yacht. This one wasn’t for sale but a lot of them were.

It probably wasn’t the best idea being on this stretch on a weekend; lots of “Sunday drivers”. The county we’re traveling through, Broward County, has the most registered vessels in Florida, 42,000! One power boater cut us off as we were coming through a bridge and Capt. Paul was just a bit upset with him. We used our horn but the guy was totally oblivious. Here’s some of the Sunday boat traffic on the ICW.

We needed to have a total of 19 bridges opened. The first one was the Las Olmos in Fort Lauderdale and the last was the Flagler Memorial Bridge near Palm Beach. A lot of them open on request, you call them on the marine radio, and others open every quarter hour or half hour. I thought this was one of the nicer looking ones, the Ocean Avenue Bridge:

After making 42 nautical miles we anchored in a large mooring field/ anchorage on Lake Worth in 10 ft. of water. The winds picked up and it rained some but no problems with the anchor holding.