Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Florida East Coast to Long Key

We had a wonderful weekend in Stuart and Ft. Pierce visiting our long time friends.  We spent a night at Bev and Colin’s home, in Stuart and enjoyed visiting with Jim and Kathy, Bev and Colin, Ann, Jim, and Kathy’s brother and sister in law from Indiana. Bev and Colin live on a canal and have a group of Ibis’ that hang out in the area and come visit on a daily basis.  We particularly enjoyed watching “Peg Leg”, a very special Ibis who has been with Bev and Colin for at least 3 years.  He/she has a broken or deformed leg, but seems to get around great regardless. However, he/she has fallen in the pool once.


"Peg leg"

We also had the opportunity to visit Ft. Pierce and our old neighborhood.  Kathy and Jim were our next door neighbors when we built our first house there in 1977 and they are still in the house they built the year before that. The neighborhood looks great, mature landscape and homes all kept up very nicely, except our old home.  Nothing has been done to keep it up, and the landscaping we had put in had all been taken out.  Such a pity, it was a really nice house (we thought, anyway!)

Our first home in Ft. Pierce

We enjoyed a nice drive to the waterfront and marinas and were able to appreciate the “facelift” Ft. Pierce has experienced in the last 30 years!  The downtown and the waterfront all have been modernized and are very inviting to mariners and travelers alike. After a nice dinner at Archie’s on the beach and great company, we returned back to the boat for the evening.

Stuart/Ft. Pierce friends at Archie's

Ann picked us up the following morning and drove us to the produce stand, liquor store and Walmart to grab some needed groceries, pizza for lunch at her place and back to the boat for the evening. Thank you, Ann! It was then time to continue our journey down the coast towards Key Largo.
We got had a nice run down the intracoastal waterway, uneventful and the weather was in our favor.  We stopped for an afternoon and night at Peck Lake, a childhood favorite of Ed’s.

Peck Lake walk on the beach

Peck Lake at sunset

We continued south and managed to time most of the bridges to make very good time. We continued to be surprised (well, not really) of how many people are on the East Coast compared to the West Coast of Florida.
Condo in North Palm Beach

Juno Park- We used to take the kids there when they were very young, used to launch our jon boat there!

Lake Worth Inlet anchorage

We went past a few large inlets and ports. We watched the freighters at work,  reminiscent of our trip down the Mississippi.



We listened to a distress call being placed by a boater taking on water outside the Dania inlet and watched the fire rescue boat come barreling down the waterway and out the inlet.

They were on the ball!! GO! GO!

 The homes along the ICW were outrageously huge and beautiful at the same time.




My FAVORITE palm trees, a light silvery green in color

The "Peace Sign" house

We anchored just off the channel in Lantana within earshot of The Key Lime Tree Restaurant and enjoyed live music by “Shauna" from the cockpit of Manatee. She was really good!

The following night we anchored by Oleta State Park and very close to Florida International University in North Miami.  It was a beautiful spot, just minutes away from the insanity of the waterway.


Anchorage- Oleta State Park/FIU


Going past Miami Beach and Miami was fun…lots of bridges and lots of very large yachts everywhere.  We were unsure about getting under the Julia Tuttle Bridge, which according to Active Captain, has 55 ft. clearance.  While anchored the night before we took a line and ran it up to the top of the mast, added the estimated inches for the windex and light, added the inches from the deck to the water and it looked like we were right at 55 ft. So it would be close. We didn’t time the tide very well and approached the bridge at high tide.  Ed was biting his nails, and thumping his foot in nervous energy and I was desperately looking in the binoculars for the fender boards with the clearance displayed.  There were no fender board, no fenders! The bridge was being worked on.  Yikes!  There was a worker on the far side of the bridge working off a small boat.  I tried to holler to him and sign language him to ask if there was a clearance display on his side, but he didn’t seem to understand  what I was asking or saying.  He just kept looking up at the top of our mast and the bridge.  Ed went as slow as he possibly could go with his hand on the shifter ready to pop the boat into reverse if needed.  Luckily there were no other boaters around pulling a wake and the winds were calm.  We squeezed under with only the flexible antenna bending.  The worker showed a sigh of relief and signed we had only a couple of inches to spare. WHEW!  Now we know exactly how much clearance Manatee needs to go under bridges! That’s how we roll!!

A sailboat with no mast...and tons of solar panels. Folks crazier than us!

They're building an island! In the intracoastal between Port Everglades and Miami

A shrink-wrapped yacht! Really??

Miami Beach

Look close- A window washer way way up there.  Hope he gets paid well!!

American Airlines building


Water taxi

Tequesta Point, Miami 
(Is that Capt Ed blowing that conch horn?)

Stiltsville

Anhingas hanging out

We were finally out of the Miami area and in Biscayne Bay, headed south to Key Largo. We were planning on anchoring by Pumpkin Key, but there wasn’t enough protection from the wind that was kicking up, so we continued on to Key Largo. We enjoyed a great sail in Card and Barnes Sounds before going under the bridge and anchoring by Gilbert’s Resort.  We’ll hang out here for the weekend and visit with Georgeanne and Rob before continuing on to Long Key on Monday.

Bye bye Georgeanne! Thanks for a great dinner!

Georgeanne up at the crack of dawn to see us off!

A farewell to Georgeanne and Rob Sunday evening and we were off once again.  We took the ICW this time and risked the shallow water areas.  We skipped over a few spots with 4.5 ft showing on the depth gauge, but due to the nice wind on our stern, we blew over the shallow spots and never got grounded. Another close call, but we did it!

Shallow water!!!

We found a nice spot on the west side of the bridge and after dragging anchor one time (actually this time during daylight!) we set the anchor and slept good.





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