1st attempt to cross

During some heavy discussions and thorough planning last night at the Tiki bar, we have decided to attempt the crossing to Grand Bahamas from here, Ft. Pierce. It is still a reasonable trip as it is only 90 miles from here to there and the weather is going to get worse before it gets better. The plan is, we will go out to the ocean, if the Gulf Stream is too rough, then we will head south to West Palm Beach to lay up for a couple of days. At 6:30AM we woke up and I checked the weather. It did not look good, so I went back to bed. At 8:00AM, however, it was BJ that said, "let's just try and see how it goes". So by 9:00AM we were motoring out to the Ft. Pierce inlet. I called Karen with our float plan and ETA so if we did not check in, someone could call the Coast Guard (all standard protocol for the safety conscientious boater).
The seas were running 3ft with a light chop. The inlet was especially turbulent, so I did my best to get outside the inlet channel as fast as possible. It was better, but not good, but still, I motored on at a snails pace trying to get out far enough that the waves would not be so bad. Then I saw whitecaps on the horizon. This coupled with the knowledge that the Gulf Stream would probably be worse, we turned around. But instead of going down the coast, we actually went turned back into the inlet and started to make our way to West Palm Beach down the intracoastal waterway.
This was an easy 50 mile trip in great calm waters (inside). There were several Manatee zones, and we still did not see a manatee. We were really disappointed in the fact that we could not cross for at least 4 more days, but we are in sunny Florida now where the weather is great and the water is blue-green. It is so much nicer watching your wake when the water is not brown. There are numerous boats on the water down here, so we are constantly passing boats now. I am starting to get sick of sailboats (most of which are never sailing). If you blow by them, they get mad (probably because they are going so slow), but if you slow down to pass them gently, they do not slow down either. This means I have to plow through the water to get enough speed to pass them. The channel is real narrow down here, too. So when I pass other boats we are usually pretty close together. The nice thing about the Florida ICW, is that there are no floating docks, or docked boats. Everybody has boat lifts so there is no concern about waking boats in the channel.
We made it to West Palm Beach and found a great seafood restaurant in a place called the City Place. There is a free trolley that shuttles you around, and lots of great shops and restaurants and bars. We only did the restaurant last night, because I was pretty tired and needed to recharge my batteries. I found an awesome boat store (good thing) and was able to get the things that I needed. I needed more lines, since all the docks in Florida are just pilings with no floaters, there for it takes about 6 lines to properly tie up the boat. I also bought a new gas cap and will install that tomorrow. we will be here at least 2 days and possibly spend the new year here. I seems like a great city with a lot of attractions. We lucked out here because of the size of the boat. We are small enough to fit into slips that larger boats with deeper drafts cannot fit into.

The Marina
Palm Harbor Marina
This marina is pretty nice. It is definitely large. The staff here is the best and extremely helpful. They even lent me a line until I went to buy more. There are not facilities here at the marina, other than showers, laundry and a small C-store, but we are walking distance to some great shopping areas and just a trolley ride away from The City Place.

The Daily Stats

To be entered later.