Florida!

We have spent the last week in Florida, in the Fort Lauderdale area. We knew we would be here a few days because we were meeting up with Kevin’s parents to collect the stuff we couldn’t bring on the plane to the boat at the start of the trip, including our much needed new batteries. We also had more boat parts that we were collecting that we had sent to a postal office here. Yes, more boat parts. As I have previously written, we completed a lot of the repair of our boat in Carriacou. Then, we started the process of refitting (or upgrading our boat) on Sint Maarten. However, there were things that were just patched together with what was available on the small island of Carriacou and we started the refit project mostly with buying the necessary parts but not installing them. So, yes, we still have lots of parts to buy and things to do to the boat before it is fully ready for our trip across the Atlantic. The boat part buying seems to be an endless process! There are so many tiny parts that are needed to competed every project, and just when you think you have all of them, something more comes up or a special tool is needed to finish. Hence the reason we are still buying and waiting for boat parts. I should also say, that with the addition of the solar panels, Kevin is effectively rewiring the whole power system for the boat – no small feat! Now that hurricane season is upon us, our main goal is to get the parts we need to completed our projects in the boating capital of North America (Florida) before heading north out of the hurricane zone. Then, we will take another week or so in the Chesapeake Bay area to do the installs before heading to New York and then across the Atlantic.

Admittedly, beside waiting and shopping for boat parts, we also planned to do some sight-seeing in Florida. Kevin and I made a trip down here 15 years ago when we did our Learn-to-sail course, and we were eager to show it to the kids. Plus, we wanted to spend some time with Kevin’s parents.

Fort Lauderdale is really pretty interesting city in my experience. There is a very extensive network of canals and natural inland bays, rivers and inlets that runs from the southern tip of Florida all the way up to Massachusetts, called the Intercoastal Waterway or ICW. It is primarily canals in southern Florida and there are branches upon branches off the ICW that allow many people in Florida to live right next to the water and have a boat in their backyard (admitted mostly the wealthy and super wealthy). The amount of opulance and luxury here is astounding. Boating, and the water, seem to play a big part of the people’s lives down here. We found a tight anchorage just a few minutes into Fort Lauderdale harbor. We had to go under 2 bridges to get to the anchorage. Most of the bridges crossing the ICW are not tall enough for our 24 meter high mast. So, we need to wait for the designated bridge opening times and request an opening. Fort Lauderdale is busy! Especially after being in the Caribbean for the last few months. The first night we took a very lengthy dinghy ride and then an uber to the customs office to check into the country. The online app CBP ROAM, which was supposed to make checking in easy, wasn’t working for us because it required a two-step authentication that wanted to send a text message to Kevin’s phone. However, given that we are changing out our SIM cards in different countries and using electronic SIM cards (or our home numbers which are forwarded to VOIP numbers that we can always get access to), we weren’t able to get the text message and login to the app. So, we had to go in. After a quick check in (that only got us through immigration and not customs for our boat) we met up with and went to dinner with Kevin’s parents. It truly was a pleasure to see family. We had been craving this more than we knew.

The next morning had an adventurous start. A nasty thunderstorm blew in. Our boat in the tight anchorage got moved around and so did the other boats. Our new anchor is monterous but the bridle has been giving us problems and during the storm it came right off. Which mean that we moved a lot on our anchor when gusts up to 45 knots hit the boat. Other boats were also having troubles and got awfully close to us. We had to pick up anchor and adjust our position. This was pretty unsettling when lightening was striking so nearby. We were thankful to be amoung tall buildings but I could practically feel the buzz in the anchor chain when one lightening struck too close for comfort. Thankfully, it wasn’t long before the sun was shining again. Unfortunately, Kevin spent most of the day checking into customs and getting fuel so we could move up the ICW the next day. Plus, we had to unload all the stuff from the van that Kevin’s parents had driven down for us. That took several trips. At the very end of the day we did manage to walk along the beach and go out of another nice dinner with Kevin’s parents. They had to leave the next day to make their long drive back because they have other commitments in mid June. So, unfortunately that was our very short visit with them. We did manage to give them a quick tour of our now very crowded boat. We are so thankful for what they did for us and for the short visit we did have with them.

The next day after seeing Kevin’s parents off, we went up the ICW to Lake Boca Raton. It was at the suggestion of another pair of cruisers. They said that the anchorage there was a little larger, and had a nice dinghy dock with easy access to services. There was no official dinghy dock with the first anchorage so this was particularly appealing to us. Furthermore, we quickly came to realize that thunderstorms seem to roll into the area most afternoons and we wanted to give our boat more space for when these happen. The trip up the ICW was very lovely. We passed under 5 bridges and motoring at just over 5 knots made sure we got to the opening times of each bridge with little waiting around. Lake Boca Raton is pretty shallow and the centre has a very shallow shoal (so shallow that you can get out and stand in the water, and at low tide it will only come up to your knees). It is a very popular place for people to come and visit with their motor boats during the day, especially on the weekend. We found a spot for ourselves on the outside. That evening the kids finally blew up the stand up paddle boards that came with the boat and paddled around the lake.

The next day we ran a whole lot of errands before ending the day with dinner at a Mexican restaurant and enjoying a very yummy chocolate cake for my birthday. We tried to get to bed more on time that day because we had early plans for the next morning. We went to the Everglades! And we went on a airboat ride to see alligators. We saw three, including a male and female both of which were very large (13 feet and 8 feet, respectively). After the airboat ride, which is incredible noisy, but also lots of fun, we saw the reptile exhibition they had on site, which included more alligators. They even let us pet a baby alligator (this was a family run rescue place and they need to regularly expose the babies to humans so that they can care for them, and their mouths were lightly held shut with an elastic). The Everglades are home to hundreds of different species; including reptiles, birds, fish and mammals. If you ever go to Florida, I strongly suggest you visit the Sawgrass Recreation Area for a unique experience. Bring your own earplugs though, the ones they provided for the airboat weren’t as good as they needed to be.

The next day we took the morning to visit the Museum of Discovery and Science. The museum was so much fun for the kids and included many interactive exhibits as well as similators. We took the extra time to watch a 3D Imax on the Secrets of the Sea, a documentary on life under the ocean. It seemed appropriate.

We tried to spend Sunday doing boat installations. Kevin took out the alternators when we first got to Fort Lauderdale and took them to a shop for repair, but was informed that it wasn’t worth fixing them because they could get replacements for us for only slightly more money. So, he brought new ones back on board, along with all the stuff from the van, and started to install them on Sunday. Of course, more parts were needed and we had to go and get them in the afternoon.

The next day we were hoping to leave and head north, but there were still more packages to arrive in the post office, so we decided to do some sight-seeing to pass the time with the hopes that we would be ready to leave the next morning. We drove ourselves up to Cape Canaveral to visit the Kennedy Space Center. Kevin and I had visited this 15 years previously but since that time they had been gifted the Atlantis space shuttle which was very cool to see. We only got 5 hours there and it wasn’t actually enough time. They have set up different buildings that cover different topics and include lots of movies to tell the stories of different space missions, as well as having the Saturn V moon rocket and the shuttle to see. They also have similations and you can see artifacts and touch pieces of the moon. We had a lot of fun.

Tuesday was supposed to be our day to leave, but of course we had to pick up the rest of the packages and finally fill-up our propane tank (the last time we filled it was in Carriacou just before we left so it lasts about 6 weeks even with cooking most dinners and running the oven lots). We also started to realize that the weather was going to need to be factored into our passage planning more. We had hoped that since we were in Florida so long, that we could do a 2-day sail to Charleston, N.C. but the forecast predicts lots of thunderstorms in the next few days. So, we are going to try take multiple smaller day trips that get us out of Florida but still anchoring each day before the thunderstorms hit. We will see if it works. Once we get to the weekend, and northern Florida, it looks like we have longer stretches of sunshine, so we will reserve our overnight passages for that time.