Poised and Ready to Cross

We holed up in Ft. Pierce last night and revisited a great little Tiki Bar at the marina. That was the first attempt of crossing 3 years ago when we were in Sweet Caroline. We ultimately turned around when we were about half way through the cut because the waves were so big. BJ's eyes were huge by my recollection and since she had never been on a trip like this I chose to move further south and wait for a better window. The Staff at the City Marina is by far the best. We had to pull into a typical tropical slip where there is no floating dock and you have to lasso the front pilings and use 6 lines to secure the boat properly. BJ was loud and obvious when she stated it had been a while since she had to do this type of slip so the dock hand volunteered to jump on board and give us a hand. It was kind of humorous because I took my time and eased into the slip, extremely cautious as not to put any more dings in the boat than I just had repaired. Once I landed and we secured the boat, I saw a sport fisher come in at about 10 knots in reverse and turned 90 degrees into his slip without any room to miss. It made me realize that it has been a while since I maneuvered in tight marinas as well.

We have been having a few boat problems in the last couple of days. When we left Port Canaveral, I could not get my genny started, and my port motor would not start as well. I finally got my port motor started and just left without the genny. It is a good thing I installed an inverter before we left, so as long as we do not need HVAC, we are fine. When we got to Ft. Pierce, we fueled up. Afterwards, my STBD motor would not start. When I got into the slip, I tried to start everything and it all worked great. The plan was, if everything started this morning we would go, if not we would stay and I would tend to all the motor problems. Well, everything started just fine this morning, so away we went.

Since the water was still rough outside, we again continued down the ditch, only now it is almost all populated so we came mostly at 7 knots. It is amazing that the manatees seam to really congregate around the most expensive homes, or at least that is where most of the no wake zones are. We hit West Palm Beach around 1:30PM so we decided to keep going. We then passed Delray Beach where we saw John Massey cruising around in his whaler while we were waiting for a bridge opening. We kept heading down to Ft. Lauderdale even though it was getting dark.

We finally got to our dark marina without any signs or markings on the docks except from the shore side, when I went to turn on the bow thruster and amazingly enough; it did not work! Luckily I was just getting prepared in case I needed it so I backed into our slip without incident (or bow thruster). We got a helping hand from our slip neighbor, Dave who owns Living Large, a nice 45' Carver that we met 2 years ago in Highborne Cay, Bahamas. He had (and still has) the best kept boat in the world. I have often thought that if I could get Executive Sweet that nice, it would be a lot of hard work.

So here we are in Ft Lauderdale with one day to finalize our provisions before we cross the pond to the Bahamas. I am sorry the eloquent descriptions and sarcastic whip are missing from the post, but I am tired and just wanted to get everyone up to date.