THAWING OUT

Thawing out
Last week there was sheet ice on the ICW at Jacksonville, and a few boats travelling in the sunshine state had to use their boats as ice-breakers. One memorable day snow was reported falling in Fort Lauderdale….well, maybe a drop or two! Happily, things have changed since then.
‘Southern Vectis’ is now in Fort Lauderdale, at Las Olas Marina. We stayed here for some time last year and enjoyed the location so much. It’s a two minute walk from the beach and all the good things beach living brings….shops, restaurants ….and Bill said to include bikinis (not mine!!!)
The last time we wrote our blog we were staying at a hotel in Fort Pierce, as it was too cold to stay overnight on the boat. The temperatures plunged to 38F on deck and a tooth chattering, bone chilling 34F down below, and we couldn’t figure out if we had a heating system or not!
As luck would have it, once we sorted out the heating system (we do have one!) the temperatures warmed up a bit! We moved on board last Monday with heat blasting out of every one of ‘Southern Vectis’ orifices!
While we were at Fort Pierce we met up with some friendly boaters and some old friends from last year – Irv and Jane on the Island Packet, ‘Karaya’ and Wendy and Tony from Toronto on ‘Delta G’. We had some enjoyable evenings at the dockside bar, and also at the little Italian restaurant that Carole and Bob had introduced us to last year – ‘Brooklyn Pizza’.
We had rented a car so were able to move around and do lots of provisioning for the boat. We also spent a lovely evening with ‘joint’ grandparents, Fruji and John, and talked a lot about ‘the boys’ – our three joint grandsons, Leo, Orson and Simon. As we had to spend some time in the charming little town of Stuart getting our dinghy mended we took the opportunity to check out the brand new marina and anchorage just past the Roosevelt bridge, ‘Sunset Bay’. It is lovely, and we will plan a stopover there on our return.
So, on Thursday the weather was warming up, our dinghy was repaired and we set off down the ICW to Lake Worth (West Palm Beach). It was a peaceful trip and we anchored at the north end of Lake Worth beside the Old Port Cove Marina as the sun was setting. The next day we pressed on to Fort Lauderdale as the weather was supposed to turn nasty (but warm!!!) on Saturday. There are 18 opening bridges on the ICW to negotiate between Lake Worth and Fort Lauderdale, and each bridge has its’ own opening schedule. This means that you must race the boat between bridges to keep up with the equivalent of a ‘green wave’ or you lose a lot of time. We had 50 miles to cover, and darkness comes at around 6:15 p.m. so we gunned the motor and went for it! We arrived at the marina just after the sun had sunk below the highrises, and were helped into a dock by a friendly neighbouring boater. We talked to a lot of boaters yesterday. Most are waiting for ‘weather windows’ to go over to the Bahamas or south to Miami. We haven’t decide what we’ll do yet. It’s a wild and windy (but still very warm!!) day today and we’ll walk the beach and maybe take the bus to do some more provisioning.
Tomorrow we are having our solar panels fitted to the boat – a days’ work.
Then, on Tuesday we are looking forward to meeting up with our RCYC travelling buddies from last year, Carole and Bob, Eileen and John and Peter and Donna. They are driving over from their condos in Naples for a reunion. Carole and Bob will stay over on the boat for a night, as a ‘remembrance of things past’ and maybe a foretaste of things to come!! We are also looking forward to seeing Fraser and Edi, who took such good care of ‘Southern Vectis’ during our first summer as proud boat owners.
More anon.