Lake Boca anchorage to Dania Beach City Marina
This was a pretty exciting day, all around. We headed into Ft Lauderdale, an area we spent so many years in. The kids were both born in FL, and we had a wonderful community all raising kids of the same age together. So we saw much of an area we know, but from a totally new water-based perspective.
It was a Bridge Day, for sure. TEN of them, each one with a restricted opening of either the hour & half-hour, or quarter & 3/4 after. Some we could pass under, others we had to wait for the opening. It was like a horrible math word problem - those still give me PTSD. "If you travel at 8.6 miles per hour and need to make a bridge opening at 10:15, with a wind from the west, and you are slowed down by an average of 7 boats waking the shit out of you every 15 minutes, and the tide is coming up...what time will your husband make you get up to leave the anchorage in the morning." *ahhhhhh - runs screaming from the room*
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| I did some Superman exercises to calm down |
Eventually we fell in behind a fancy yacht, Symphony, with three uniformed crew members taking her somewhere. We figured they would know how to do things right and decided to just follow them down the channel. Waiting for one bridge a BIG boy fishing vessel came stalking out of a side channel behind us like a T-Rex, so we let Rolling Rooster go ahead of us as well; seemed safer not to have a predator behind us.
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| Symphony - we're not too close yet |
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| Rolling Rooster - she is much closer than she appears! |
On land Rick has a, shall we say 'issue', with tailgating (oh - he is saying it is my 'issue'. Yeah...No). It turns out that this is also true on the water. When you are waiting for a bridge and the fancy vessels in front of you have 'hover' mode where the craft will stay in the same space regardless of current/wind and you do NOT have such a magical button it is hard not to creep forward. But if you weren't too close TO BEGIN WITH you would have less of a problem. Just sayin... I had to take over for a bit.
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| Now there is a jam-up at the bridge because the little boats can't go under once the bridge has started up so everyone is tailgating everyone else |
We forgot to argue though, because we saw the coolest thing. We both happened to look up at the same time (probably to make sure I wasn't going to hit something) and saw a big ray jump out of the water and slide back in, just like on TV! We didn't know there were even rays in the ICW, and it was just pure chance that we happened to see it. Wonderful!
Ft Lauderdale is considered the yachting capital of the US, and it is hard to understand how this many people have this much money. And more money than manners, which is always a pet peeve of mine...
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| On our next boat I want the helicopter accoutrement... |
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| Cutie-pea Ft Lauderdale water taxi! |
As we came through the Ft Lauderdale harbor (MANY cruise ships) I thought to look ahead to our marina - the Dania Beach City Marina. We've been looking forward to it as it is right by the beach and next to a wild park area....but we didn't look closely at how we would be in to the marina. There is a fixed (DOES NOT OPEN) bridge there that carries A1A, and the water is S K I N N Y. It was just as well not to know this ahead of time as Rick would have just freaked out for much longer than the 15 minutes he had. Thank goodness we had had some practice with other bridges understanding our true height. He dropped the mast and the antenna, and I took the helm so he could stand on the back deck to be sure we could squeak under. And squeak we did. It was a balancing act between needing the water to be high enough that we could make it to the dock, and low enough that we could make it under the bridge. With no elaborate calculations SOMEHOW we made it...
Feels good to be back in the Hollywood area - hello SoFl moon and palms. It's HOT though...
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