Defeated

We've had a change of plans, and as I begin typing we are underway southbound toward the Moser Channel under the Seven Mile Bridge, near Marathon. We had a miserable night and are both dog-tired, but we've been trading places to nap underway.

While we had a comfortable cruise yesterday, and we were fairly comfortable at anchor through dinner, with just a light chop, the forecast for light winds, less than five knots, overnight proved to be entirely wrong. Winds steadily picked up, and by the time I turned it it was blowing 15-20, and we were pounding over 2-3' seas at anchor; I had to run around the boat at midnight dogging things down as if for sea. We were still probably having a better night than the sailboat that arrived after dark and anchored just west of us, with likely less than a third our displacement.

In the dark, in heavy seas, and less than high tide, it was too late to change our decision and seek the shelter of the Little Shark River, and we had no choice but to tough it out. That kind of motion does not bother me or keep me from sleeping, but what did was anxiety -- the morning tide would be below zero, and with just 18" under the keel in that spot, I was worried we'd be slamming against the bottom. Fortunately, the winds dropped off, but not completely, before dawn.

With the tide at just three inches and falling, we weighed anchor just before civil twilight this morning to get back out to deeper water before it dropped another full foot. Once back in 8' soundings we made the turn northward to Marco Island, thankful to have the stabilizers working and making us at least a little comfortable.

Within the span of an hour we found ourselves bashing into 2'-3' head seas, with 15-20 knots of wind on the nose. There were whitecaps, and we were taking spray over the bow all the way to the pilothouse windows. This was definitely not the forecast, which was for light winds to five knots and seas of just one foot. Louise spent half of that hour combing through forecasts for any inkling of what was happening, but none was accurate.

While a little uncomfortable, we could have soldiered through those conditions all day. But we still had nine full hours to Marco Island, with no heavy-weather bail-out options in between. With the forecast completely wrong, we had no way to know whether the conditions would stay the same throughout those nine hours, or deteriorate further into something truly uncomfortable or which would make the shallow entrance at Marco Island, near sunset, a problem. If we continued much further, we'd be committed, too late to turn around and make safe harbor in the daylight.

The great U-turn.

We conceded defeat to the vagaries of mother nature and the inaccuracies of a forecast in a remote part of the state, and made a U-turn. As soon as I finished the turn, life got vastly better, because wind and seas that had been on the nose were now on the stern. The boat stopped pitching and bashing, and there was no more spray. It was just 7:30am.

It's now nearly 3pm and we've passed under the Seven Mile Bridge and made the eastward turn into the Hawk Channel. (Typing in these conditions is a slow process, interrupted by dodging pot floats and looking at charts to figure out just what we are doing). Conditions improved throughout the day, and it was downright pleasant for the last couple of hours before the bridge. We've both had naps.

We are now under the gun to make it into Biscayne Bay before the next system moves in. If we had stopped in Marathon we'd be pinned there for a week, so we're going to press on up the Keys until we run out of day, and tuck in someplace to anchor. Tomorrow we'll get an early start, and we should be in Key Biscayne early on Sunday.

We'd already started making plans to connect with friends on the west coast, and those will have to be rearranged. I still want to get there, and we'll have to decide whether to cross the lake to do it, or drop the boat someplace, rent a car, and make a week's road trip out of it. Even with the ~450-mile round trip in the boat, taking the boat is cheaper, but convenience and logistics will likely drive the decision. Stay tuned. It's at least five days before we even reach the fork in the road, at St. Lucie Inlet.

Conch Republic

We are underway across the southeastern corner of the Gulf of Mexico, just west of Florida Bay, headed for an anchorage in Shark River from Key West. Shark River is in Everglades National Park, and I have my spiffy new lifetime National Parks Pass to cover the entrance fee, and my boating certificate from the park to allow us to operate there.

Vector at the dock, Key West Bight Marina.

It's a long day, some 10-11 hours under way, and then we'll be in the middle of nowhere, with three or four more hops up to the Tampa Bay region, but the only alternative was a 30-hour overnight. That's normally not a problem for us, but we made the decision to head up the west coast at the very last minute, and we need more advance warning to sync our sleep schedules to the overnight watch schedule. Also, dodging pot floats in the dark is both a pain and stressful.

We arrived to Key West shortly after my last post, proceeded directly to our assigned slip (map), and lined up to back in. I had 15 knots of wind on the port beam for a port-side tie, so backing in was a bit of a challenge. That involved using the starboard rub rails up against a pair of pilings separating us from the next slip. All well and good, but we miscalculated slightly and I ended up knocking the BBQ grill off the starboard rail as I backed in. It landed on the deck, upside-down, with a mighty crash. Fortunately, a small ding in the deck paint was the only damage to the boat.

Tango Uniform.

We had booked two weeks at the marina, where the weekly rate is roughly five times the daily rate. In the middle of our stay we decided we were enjoying it enough this time around to try to extend to a third week, but the best they could do was another four nights, at the daily rate, which took us all the way to yesterday morning.

It's chick season in Key West. We saw them all over town.

We've been to Key West numerous times, staying at this very marina several times, out in the anchorage a number of times, and even at the high-zoot Galleon marina across the way once. I can honestly say that this visit was the least crowded we have ever seen Key West. Free scooter parking, often tight in town, was widely available, there was room every day at the normally always-overfull dinghy dock, and we sauntered right in to pretty much every restaurant. I'm not sure why.

Key West is a scooter-friendly town, with free designated scooter parking all over the place, and specially marked spots for them in all the shopping centers. We put my scooter down the day after we arrived, and with scooters everywhere, we also started looking for a replacement for Louise's scooter, which we sold a couple of months ago. Most of the scooters here are 50s, of course, and we wanted at least a 125.

Helpful instructions in the rest room at Harpoon Harry's.

We ended up taking a used one off the lot at the big scooter dealer in town, which carries the SYM/Lance brand of Taiwanese models. Louise is now the proud owner of a Lance Cabo 200i, which is a 170cc fuel-injected model similar to mine. The dealer gave us a 30-day warranty of sorts, so we tried to ride it all over the island for a week as a shakedown. We found a missing bolt, and the built-in USB charging port was inoperative, and they fixed both of those things.

Louise's new scoot, before sale. I'll need to clean up the poultice corrosion on all this aluminum; every Cabo in town looked just like this.

Among the many scooter excursions were a couple of trips to the auto parts store, where I needed fresh coolant for the main engine, a wiper blade, and a spark plug for my scooter, the lone decent bagel joint in town, Goldman's, Home Depot, and the grocery stores for provisions and distilled water to go along with the coolant.

I tackled projects pretty much every day. That included replacing the tap water in the main engine, from the pump replacement in Marathon, with fresh coolant. Key West has an excellent and convenient recycling program and I was able to offload all the used coolant from the project right there near the marina. Of course, I had to fix the BBQ as well, which involved ordering a new HDPE cutting board on Amazon to replace the one that shattered into pieces, and also reattaching one side of the lid handle with JB Weld. I also took the opportunity to remove the element and clean the whole thing out.

It fits! I think Louise is enjoying the peppier bike; I will enjoy not having to work on a carburetor.

The main engine was long overdue for a valve adjustment, something I am only willing to tackle while secured to a dock; the engine is considerably quieter now without all the valve clatter. I also replaced the main engine oil, again with convenient access to recycling for the used oil, filters, and sorbents.

The other big project that has been waiting for dock time was a persistent fuel leak on the generator. I had previously tracked it down to a banjo bolt in the return line, but the head stripped rather than the bolt coming quietly, so we needed dock power in case I broke something during extraction. I had to take all the injector lines off the engine to get a tool onto the bolt head but eventually I got it out. I found a generic replacement which seems to have cured the problem, but I need a few hours of run time to be sure. Lots of fuel-soaked sorbents went to recycling once I was done.

The recalcitrant banjo bolt. The composite rubber-over-metal washer has extruded well down into the banjo; I think that was the source of the leak.

With a good Amazon address and some extra time I converted our Starlink terminal to DC power, which saves maybe 15% of the power consumption. It consumes over a kWh per day, so the power saving is measurable. I converted more of the house lighting to LED, and I replaced some corroded lifting tackle for the dinghy. I also replaced the grab line on our life ring, which had disintegrated in the weather for the third time.

Replacement bolt, left, has a bigger head so I am less likely to round it off.

Of course, the new scooter also required attention. I had to remove brush guards (for real -- on a scooter) from the handlebars in order that the lifting and tie-down tackle would work, and I mounted Louise's tail trunk. The dealer kindly swapped the factory grab bar on the back for the accessory package rack from one of the bikes in their enormous rental fleet so I could mount the trunk. We also updated the first aid kits in both scooters while we had them out.

A couple of weeks at a dock makes it possible to schedule other work, and we had a day worker come by to wash the boat, and a diver to clean the bottom and inspect everything. All is good down there, but our outermost layer of black paint is mostly gone and the bottom is now ship-bottom red.

The Margaritaville cruise ship, as seen on my way from the anchorage yesterday. One of many to call here, but this one seems like a homecoming.

Our very good friends Dorsey and Bruce were in town aboard their lovely vessel Esmeralde, docked over at the Galleon, and we had several nice evenings with them. That included one where we met them at Roostica out on Stock Island, giving Louise's new scoot some additional workout, which was followed by a nice walk around Boyd's campground, where we've all stayed in RVs at one time or another. One evening they introduced us to their long-time friend Chris, who is one of those larger-than-life characters from the boating world, and we look forward to seeing him again somewhere along the line. And, of course, we got a bit of dog love from terriers Maisie and Ollie.

We tried to walk a bit every morning, and I've been continuing with my physical therapy. We had near-perfect weather for almost the entire stay, and I was in shorts up until the last day or two. On Tuesday, though, a storm moved through that dumped an all-time record amount of rain on Key West in just a few hours. Parts of town flooded; the water was two feet deep in Harpoon Harry's just a block from our dock. Our scooters were on higher ground and only saw a couple of inches, though others were less fortunate. It was wild, and afterwards I waded through town in my watermen's boots taking photos.

Harpoon Harry's as the water recedes. An hour earlier it was another foot deep; an hour later the street was dry.

One of the great things about Key West is that you can stay here for a month and never eat at the same joint twice. We hit most of our old favorites, and added a couple to the list, including Mangia Mangia!, a decent Italian place a bit away from the crowds, Misohappy, a Thai and sushi place where Bruce and Dorsey brought us with Chris, which was quite good, the Celtic Conch, where you have to squeeze in between the live music acts if you want to talk over one of their many drafts, and Jack Flats, which is a "why bother" place that's been here forever, drawn in by a free beer (barely worth it). Dishonorable mention to the Southernmost Pint, whose only redeeming quality is the name, and the Wicked Lick, whose ice cream was both expensive and terrible.

White watermen boots I bought for TS Colin a decade ago.

Old favorites we revisited this time included La Trattoria, Harpoon Harry's (breakfast and dinner), The Boat House, Waterfront Brewery, Onlywood (Caroline location), Amigos, Bruschetta Francesca, Roostica, Carolines (giant burgers), Old Town Mexican (who puts too much squash in the fajitas), Pepe's, and Fogarty's.

No Conch Tour Train today.

We somehow missed the Cuban Coffee Queen on this visit, usually a standby for us for breakfast, but we did get excellent breakfast sandwiches a couple of times at the Fisherman's Cafe, which is a walk-up stand in spite of the name, and had a traditional diner breakfast, complete with mimosa, at Harpoon Harry's just a day after they flooded. We also got pastries at Old Town Bakery, which is always packed. It would not be a visit to Key West without a stop at Fausto's Market, which is overpriced but convenient.

Mind your wake! I had to jump back up on higher ground several times to keep the wakes from overtopping my boots.

We rolled the new scooter out to the dock Tuesday to see what it was going to take to squeeze it on deck, since it's 5" longer than the old one. Just lifting it was a challenge; the handlebars are so wide that our usual lifting harness did not fit, and I had to root around for some combination of straps to do the trick. Once up on deck, it was not as tight a fit ahead of the dinghy as I had feared, but we do have to lift the back end to swing it into place. We loaded the other scooter yesterday and it's a tight fit at the handlebars, but it all worked out. I'll need new tackle, and maybe to remove the bar-end weights.

Yesterday we settled up and left the dock at checkout time and headed out to the anchorage. With east wind we decided to try anchoring west of Wisteria Island (map), a popular anchorage, so that I would not have to thread my way between Wisteria and Tank Islands in the dark this morning. That turned out to be a bad choice, as we rolled all night. We tendered back ashore for a final dinner with Dorsey and Bruce, followed by final dog petting and tearful goodbyes.

Kelly the sloth, Louise's pillion, with the loot, gifted by Esmeralde.

This morning we weighed anchor at civil twilight and got underway. We had a nice push behind us out the Northwest Channel, and favorable current for the first half of the trip. As I wrap up tying in our final hours we have a knot against us. Tomorrow, if the weather holds, we will continue up the coast to Marco Island.

Update: We are anchored in Ponce de Leon Bay, just off the Shark River entrance (map). I had to stop working on the post well offshore due to shallows and pot floats. I was hoping to make it all the way in to Little Shark River, which is well-protected, for the night, but tomorrow morning's tide is three quarters of a foot below zero, and we started running over 8' soundings at a tide of +2'. We'd be stuck in there until well after 10am tomorrow, and we have a nine hour day ahead of us.

Key West bound

We are underway "southbound," which here is really closer to westbound, in the Hawk Channel, on the final leg of our journey to Key West. We have a slip booked at the city marina for two weeks, and the plotter says we should be docked by 3pm. It has been a somewhat eventful trip.

Six of the eight dolphins playing off our bow today. A good omen.

Saturday evening we walked down to one of our long-time favorites, Serafina, for dinner on their patio overlooking the Middle River. We discovered this place just by chance, back when we used to be able to anchor in the Middle River (now illegal), but it turns out to be one of the best Italian places in all of Fort Lauderdale, and we're happy it is just within walking distance of the yacht club.

Dinner at Serafina.

We get one night free at the club, and after that we have to pay. We took the second night to finish errands, but Sunday we wanted to be off the dock. That said, a pleasant Sunday is about the worst time to navigate the ICW through Fort Lauderdale, and we decided to just move to the adjacent Sunrise Bay anchorage. The club dockmaster was happy to let us stay on the dock all day, but the anchorage fills up with day boats on the weekends, and so we dropped lines first thing to get a good spot (map). We splashed the tender and came right back to the club for the brunch buffet.

Obligatory beach shot from the Broadwalk, for our friends and family in the wintry north.

One of the things we usually do at this anchorage is tender down to Coconuts, another of our perennial favorites, for dinner, and at dinner time we tried to do just that. Weekend traffic in the concrete-lined ICW made for a choppy mess, which might have been tolerable had we been able to plane, but that's only allowed on weekdays (I often joke that the manatees in Fort Lauderdale have calendars). After bashing our way over two footers down to the Middle River we gave up and turned around, having a light snack at home. We were still pretty full from the giant brunch anyway.

The historic Hollywood Beach Resort, 100 this year, is still shuttered. I hear it might be razed.

Things are so much more peaceful on Monday, and we weighed anchor for the relatively short cruise through Port Everglades down to Hollywood, where we dropped the hook in our usual spot in the South Lake "key slot" (map). We noted the county has finally installed signage designating North Lake and South Lake as anchoring limitation areas, limited to 45 days in a six-month period.

New anchoring limit signs. This is North Lake, which formerly was packed with near-derelict boats.

I splashed the tender, gassed it up at the Hollywood Marina, and had my usual stroll on the Broadwalk. Our stealth tender landing is less accessible now, with the lone mooring ring buried under tree canopy, so I just tied up at GG's Waterfront. Later in the afternoon we took the tender down to stock up at the new waterfront Publix, near the Diplomat Hotel, which has its very own dock for boat-in provisioning. It was a nice store, if a bit on the small side, and much easier than the mountaineering I had to do to access the Walmart a little further along.

Taking the groceries out to the dock. So civilized.

In the evening we tendered back to GG's, where we met up with long-time friends and fellow Neoplan owners Steve and Harriet, who were in town on a visit and parked over at Yacht Haven in their "other bus," a Prevost. Regular readers may remember we sometimes parked our bus in their driveway when they lived here in Fort Lauderdale. It was great catching up with them, the first time in a long while, and we're glad our paths intersected here briefly.

The dock from the water.

We had a quiet night in Hollywood, weighing anchor in the morning for slog down the inside to Key Biscayne, running yet another gantlet of timed bridges. With a very low tide we were able to just squeak underneath the Hallandale Beach bridge without an opening, for the first time ever. We were disappointed to see that the docks at the Intracostal Mall are now entirely closed off, even in front of Duffy's.

The entire mall dock is now closed, likely because it is unsafe. I hope they reopen it.

The Miami Boat Show is coming right up, and we had to maneuver through some of the show prep. That includied some exhibitor boat that thought it was a good idea to cut right across the ICW just as a whole line of boats was making its way through a bridge opening.

Setting up the Miami boat show.

We had our sights set on the Key Biscayne Yacht club, and I had checked several times to see if they had room for us, but they did not. We figured to anchor off Nixon Beach and tender in to the club for dinner, as we've done in the past. When we arrived in the neighborhood, however, we realized it was calm enough to have a pleasant night anchored off No Name Harbor, a bit further along, which would save us a half hour in the morning. We dropped the hook there (map) and tendered in to the Boaters Grill for dinner and a walk.

Vector at anchor as seen from Bill Baggs State Park on Key Biscayne.

Wednesday morning we go an early start for the outside run, leaving at low slack, which had us just skating over a couple of the shoals in the Biscayne Channel with barely a foot under keel. Once over the bar it was a bumpy ride until we passed Fowey Rock, the northern end of the reef.

We were having a fine cruise, if a bit more rolly than we had anticipated, but in the middle of the day things started to go pear-shaped. Louise came up from a routine engine room check, which she does every 90 minutes, and reported a burning smell in the engine room. We both spent time in there over the course of the next half hour trying to pin it down, and eventually I concluded it was coming from the engine belts. The belts have several thousand hours on them, so it was not out of the question that one was slipping.

Looking back at Cape Florida Light, in the park, as we depart the eponymous channel.

Then I notice an almost imperceptible wobble at the end of the coolant pump pulley, the only one of the three pulleys visible with the belt guard in place. There was no evidence of coolant coming out the pump weep hole, though, and the overflow bottle had a normal level. We opted to continue to the anchorage at reduced RPM, forego the daily engine run-up, and double the frequency of engine room checks. By the time we reached Rodriguez Key the wobble had become more noticeable.

We worked our way into the shallows behind Rodriguez for whatever meager protection it might offer and dropped the hook (map). We turned on the engine room fan so it might be tolerable to work in there after dinner, splashed the tender, and headed toward Key Largo for dinner. We did not get far; it's a two mile tender ride, and we got so beat up in the first half mile that we turned around and I grilled sausages for dinner instead.

Sunset over Rodriguez Key in Key Largo.

After dinner I pulled the belt guard off, loosened the belts, and inspected everything. As I feared, there was lots of end play in the pump pulley, suggesting the bearings were going. Long-time readers may remember that we've been here before, replacing the pump in Florence. Alabama. We later had the old pump rebuilt by a friend of ours in the commercial pump business while were in New Orleans, and I set it aside as a spare for "some day." I spent hours poring over engine manuals and the photos from the last time before turning in for the night. The original pump lasted just 3,300 hours, and this one made it twice as long, so it's hard to complain.

Spare pump. The guys who rebuilt it gave it a fresh coat of white paint.

I had the pump and enough gaskets to do the job, and now we were were faced with a decision: spend the day at Rodriguez and do it right there, turn around and head back to Miami, or continue on to either a calmer anchorage or Marathon. The bounciness of the Rodriguez anchorage and the difficulty of getting ashore for any needed parts or supplies, as driven home by our dinner about-face, eliminated that option. It would also be a very bad place to be stuck should something go wrong and we needed to wait on parts or help.

These guys surfing the Flowrider at Margaritaville Resort Hollywood were pretty good.

The lack of any bail-out anchorages on the full day back to Miami persuaded us the best course was to proceed to Marathon, where there was plenty of help, and at least two good bail-out anchorages en route if it came to that. We weighed anchor first thing and continued southbound in Hawk Channel at reduced RPM and with frequent engine room checks. I left the belt guard off and so we wore safety glasses in the ER. We also charged the batteries up with the generator before departure to take the load of the alternator and thus the belts.

The wobble visibly worsened throughout the day, ending any thoughts we might have entertained about limping all the way to Key West, where we already had a dock booked. I spent most of the day calling every marina in Marathon to see if we could get a dock; the anchorage just outside the harbor can be miserably bouncy, making for a couple of uncomfortable nights on top of difficult working conditions.

With the belt guard off the wobble was pretty evident.

One marina on the north side had room for us, at a staggering $375 per night, and we would have paid that, but the charts said there was less than 6' of depth on the way there, and the dozen extra miles around to that side would have put us in at dusk, leaving no fall-back. We decided to suck it up and tough it out in the anchorage, with a nice dinner at the Sunset Grill as our consolation.

One of our go-to joints on the Broadwalk has, sadly, closed.

We got an 11th-hour reprieve when one of the dockmasters I had been trying to reach all day got back to me just as we were making the turn toward the anchorage. In light of our circumstances she said she could put us on a partly busted-up face dock with no working power and she would charge us just $100 per night. When she agreed we could run our generator as needed and we would not need to leave the dock should the engine repair fall short, we jumped on it.

The marina in question is at the Skipjack Resort, which is on a canal about as far from the Boot Key Harbor entrance as you can get. Part of the channel that leads there is less than five feet deep, and we had to detour through the mooring field to get there, leading to quite a few stares en route. We made it without incident and were tied up at the Skipjack Marina (map) just before the dockmaster left at 5.

Docked at Skipjack. You can see where the dock has collapsed aft of our fashion plate and has been fenced off. It was a challenge to get tied up.

I had posted of our travails on one of my Facebook boating groups. That led to several offers of assistance in Marathon, including from some folks we've met before. As we were coming alongside the dock, the couple on the Defever 49 immediately in front of us recognized me from the post. They immediately offered us the use of their car while they would be away in Key West (via bus) and left their key where we could get it (we did not need it). Thanks, Josh!

With the belts off I was able to wiggle the pulley. A lot.

The resort has its own restaurant, a beach-bar joint with a Greek flair called The Blu Bistro, and we ate poolside at the bar. We had the pizza, which was a mistake; I'd suggest one of the Greek options instead. The pool was inviting but I never got the chance to try it. After dinner I had a long walk around Sombrero Island, passing the Dockside bar and restaurant, which was packed and had live music I could hear from every point on the island.

On my walk around Sombrero I passed the entrance to the government's powerful transmitter sending propaganda to Cuba.

Yesterday morning after coffee I started right in on the pump. Having already done this once before, things moved along pretty well and I had the engine drained and the pump off in a little over two hours. Unlike last time, where the fiber gasket came off in one piece and we were able to trace it to make a new one, this time it was unusable, and we ended up setting the new pump on the gasket material to trace it out.

Draining the coolant. One gallon at a time.

Getting the 32-pound pump back up against the engine block with that gasket still aligned is the hardest part of the job, and it took me most of 20 minutes with a pry bar and a lot of swearing to get the first couple of bolts started. In the end the whole job took less than six hours start to finish, a couple of hours faster than the first time I did it. I'm not really finished, because the system is full of tap water right now, which I will replace with proper coolant in Key West. The belt guard is also still off while we continue to watch for leaks.

Old pump removed. This is the forward end of the engine block.

The project kicked my sorry butt, and I skipped my PT exercises yesterday for the first time since I started them. I was showered and cleaned up just in time for dinner, and we walked across the highway to the Marathon Grill and Ale House, which we remembered from a few years ago. Not only did they have one of my favorite porters on tap, but we also stumbled into prime rib night and we shared a piece. Far from the best, but it was decent and a nice end to a difficult day. We stopped into the nearby Publix on the way home.

On our way back from dinner, a reminder of the original Overseas Railway linking the Keys.

This morning we left the harbor at a foot lower tide level than when we arrived. We glided over a couple of shoals with just 3" under the keel, and I again had to cut through the mooring field. We've had a nice push out in the channel and are making good time, but it has been pot floats akimbo and I've had to do a lot of dodging and weaving. A pod of eight dolphins played in our bow wave for a good ten minutes, which I take to be a sign of good luck.

Replacement pump installed. My grubby handprints are all over the fresh paint.

We are looking forward to a couple of weeks of downtime here in Key West, and lifting a glass or two with old friends. Of course I will have my fair share of projects to tackle at the dock, including replacing the coolant. My next post will most likely be when we are again under way on our way out.

In the land of endless summer

We are under way southbound in the ICW headed for Fort Lauderdale from Palm Beach. We've been in Palm Beach nearly three weeks, and therein lies a tale. [Update: We are in Fort Lauderdale; I had to set the post aside yesterday.]

Vector peeking through the palms at the Coral Ridge Yacht Club.

When last I posted here we were at sea, headed for Lake Worth inlet. We arrived through the inlet and to our intended anchorage, adjacent to the Sailfish Club, so early that we opted to just keep going all the way to Palm Beach. We had to kill time to wait for the opening of the Flagler bridge, and we hovered in the unmarked "crossover" channel east of the Rybovich yard for ten minutes, making the 4:15 opening at Flagler.

The anchorage just south of the inlet seems to get more crowded every year, and this time through there was a boat anchored basically in the marked channel that runs along the east side of the lagoon. I'm sure at some point he was treated to the blast of a superyacht horn, as they need to use that channel instead of the ICW.

Vector anchored in the Lake Worth lagoon, as seen from the Royal Park bridge. We are anchored in Palm Beach, at right, but we go ashore in West Palm Beach at left.

It was a tight fit, but we had the anchor down near our usual spot (map) by 4:30, splashed the tender, and headed ashore to long-time favorite Lynora's on Clematis Street for dinner. Afterwards we took a nice stroll around town after being cooped up in the boat all day. It was a clear evening and I was hoping for a distant view of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket launch, but it was scrubbed and would eventually launch on a completely overcast night.

One tiny fraction of the exotic car show.

The dinghy was nearly out of fuel when we arrived, and normally I would have just run over to the fuel dock at the Palm Harbor Marina to gas it up. Yes, it's expensive, but the tank only holds three gallons. While they had diesel, the marina was either out of or no longer sells gasoline, I could not tell which, and so I grabbed a Jerry jug and headed ashore at Clematis for the long hike to the Marathon station and back. I tied up behind the two USCG patrol boats, with fully loaded machine guns mounted, and then ran smack into the closing day, open to the public, of the exotic car show.

These Coasties at the show are just awaiting orders, their armed patrol boats waiting at the dock. Later they zoomed past us on their way to close the ICW under the Southern Boulevard Bridge, which leads to Mar-a-Lago. I imagined these guys sprinting down the dock when the call came in.

Here in the Palm Beaches you see exotic cars every day, and you're more likely to be run over by a Bentley than a Toyota while crossing the street. But still this show was over the top, and off the cuff I would estimate well over $100M in cars at the show. Doc Brown even showed up from 1985 in his DeLorean time machine.

Outdoor ice skating! Not surprising in most of the country in January, but this is the Palm Beaches, in front of The Ben hotel.

After picking my way through the car show I eventually made it to the gas station, fetched a couple gallons of gas, then picked my way back through the show on my way home. I arrived back at Vector just at the turn of the tide, wherein we learned a nearby sailboat was on a very long scope and it looked like we might be overlapping. We weighed anchor and moved 30 yards closer to the channel (map).

Our new swing circle came close to this sign, which I had to mark on the chart.

The dinghy thus fueled up, we settled in for what we knew might be a long stay. We had arrived a full three days early, as we so often do in the boat when being late is not an option, for the real reason we were here: an orthopedist appointment I had set up for Wednesday, within walking distance of the dock.

Top-balancing the vacuum cleaner batteries, one of my many projects.

I've been having some pain in my neck (there's a joke in there somewhere) for a couple of years now, and, more recently, a back injury from decades ago has returned to haunt me. Sometime in the past year I decided I needed to do something about it once we got back to Florida, where our health insurance is based.

The minuscule ice rink was festive after dark.

I started looking for doctors when we were still north of Florida, and we considered Jacksonville, where we know things are convenient, and Key West, where we want to end up for at least part of the season. Ultimately we decided that Jacksonville was too cold, and there are just not enough in-network providers in the Keys with availability, so instead we settled on the middle ground of West Palm beach, where it is finally warm enough, there's a good anchorage with easy shore access, and there is no shortage of health care. Surprisingly it is also not overbooked, and it was easy to make appointments.

On my first walk through town I had to divert around a bomb scare, at the police parking garage.

In the couple of days leading up to my appointment I explored the town to see what was new. The convenient downtown Amazon locker is gone, a fact we learned en route, and that turned out to be due to the fact that the LA Fitness in which it was located has closed up shop. Lots of construction there at City Place (formerly Rosemary Square, formerly City Place -- apparently the new name did not stick), with the entirety of the centerpiece Harriet Himmel Theater, in the historic Methodist church, fenced off for renovations.

Restoration of the historic First United Methodist church, now a theater surrounded by City Place.

One of our favorite joints, Il Bellagio, was on the first floor of that structure and has been relocated across the courtyard to one of the more modern buildings. The entire wing of the complex across Hibiscus Street, which housed a multi-screen cinema, some restaurants, and other retail has been razed completely and will be the site of a new office tower. The colorful animated banyan tree is still there, along with the very popular splash fountain.

This "pop up" shopping center, all luxury brands, made of shipping containers occupied the empty lot where the move theaters stood; a few days after I snapped this it was gone altogether.

Also leading up to my appointment I made more than one dinghy trip a mile south to the El Cid dock, which is a three quarter mile walk to the nearest Amazon locker. Amazon also delivers to the UPS store in town, but with a longer lead time. I would make several trips to this dock over the course of our stay, including a couple with Louise wherein we also shopped at the Publix there, had lunch at Donte's Diner (very good) and dinner at Taqueria Guerrero, where the hand-written signs are in Spanish and the food was excellent.

Authentic and inexpensive Mexican food is to be had in the working class neighborhood just inland of El Cid.

A couple of those trips were necessitated by the project to replace the engine mounts on the generator, a project which also started before my ortho appointment I described this project in great detail in my last post, so no need to go over it again here.

Flux at the El Cid dock. We have to be here at high tide to get off and on.

When Wednesday rolled around I hiked up to the medical building, which is sandwiched between Good Samaritan Hospital, to which it is attached, and a different professional building where I had had my eye surgery a decade ago. It's all so familiar. As I had hoped, the clinic was well equipped and had its own digital x-ray machine, and so right off they took x-rays of my cervical and lumbar spine.

This "art park" called CityZen Garden is a public space on private property.

The doctor spent no more than five minutes with me, giving me the expected diagnosis: I'm old and creaky. Also as expected, I came away with scripts for some meds and a bunch of physical therapy (PT). A physician's assistant finished out the visit to explain the it all. I now also have a neck traction machine recommended by my physical therapist, and delivered by Amazon to the UPS store downtown, as well as a pillow she recommended, delivered the same way.

We passed by the free Clematis By Night concert, held every Thursday, three times. None of the artists moved us to stay more than a few minutes.

This particular orthopedic group has its own PT arm, and it was a short elevator ride back down to the third floor to set up an initial appointment, which they were able to set for Friday. At that appointment they did an initial evaluation and then jumped right in, and I was able to set up six more appointments over the following two weeks, expressing the hope that, by then, I would be far enough along to wrap up and get back underway.

These free outdoor exercise machines (mostly in shadow in the background; sorry) are in Jose Marti park and work by adjustable air cylinders.

And that, in a nutshell, is how we ended up in Palm Beach for nearly three weeks. In fact, my last appointment had been scheduled for today, with a MWF schedule each week. That would have had us here over the weekend for a southbound departure on Monday -- we try to avoid traveling the ICW in SE Florida on the weekends, at nearly all costs.

123 Datura Bar & Kitchen has the largest disco ball I have ever seen; it was easily 3' across.

That plan was foiled earlier in the week when we learned that the pump-out on the fuel dock at the lone marina here, Palm Harbor, is still down, even though it had been down when we called before leaving Fort Pierce. Apparently they had to remove the pump and send it out for repairs. As we were rapidly approaching the limit of our capacity -- we can go just about three weeks on a tank -- we had a mad scramble earlier this week to come up with an alternate plan.

This giant inflatable, umm, cat? was out in front of the convention center during an art exhibition.

One option was to motor an hour north to Riviera Beach where we could pump out for $15. Another was to motor out the Lake Worth Inlet and go three miles offshore. Either way it would be around a three-hour trip and burn from 5-9 gallons of diesel. It also meant possibly losing our good spot in the anchorage while we were gone.

Cleaning up the workshop I got around to failure analysis on a toilet controller. This relay had welded itself shut, causing the macerator to run continuously. You can see the scorched "weld" mark on the contact.

In the end, what made the most sense was just to move my final PT appointment up to tomorrow afternoon, and get underway this morning to Fort Lauderdale, where we knew there were multiple pump-out options. We did not have the weather to make the trip on the outside, so here we are, running the gauntlet of 15 drawbridge openings, most of which we have to time, on our way to Fort Lauderdale.

We sometimes heard events in the Meyer amphitheater all the way out in the anchorage, such as the Komen breast cancer event. I stumbled into some sort of youth dance competition. West Palm Beach runs an extensive civic event program.

In the course of our stay I tried to get out walking a few miles every day, including the two-plus mile round trip to PT three times a week. On two of those days I had to dodge raindrops both ways, but lucked out on the timing and missed the heaviest rain each time. The UPS Access Point is at the CVS across the street from PT, and I stopped there more than once to pick up our mail and some other items we had shipped.

Every festival event had the streets blocked off with heavy equipment, a precaution in the wake of numerous terror incidents involving vehicles driven into festivals, most recently in Germany.

One day I opted to make the circuit of the lagoon, which involves crossing from the upscale part of West Palm Beach into the stratospheric Palm Beach proper. Hand in hand with the large jump in income and property values on the east side of the lagoon, there is a noticeable shift in vibe. The little electric shuttles that ply downtown West Palm would bring us here for $5, opening up a vast array of additional restaurants, but, honestly, it just doesn't call us. Even for my birthday dinner I could not find a place in Palm Beach that I just had to try.

Vector against the West Palm skyline, from the lakefront walk on the Palm Beach side.

On one of my visits ashore I stumbled into the enormous Saturday GreenMarket, which spans from the waterfront all the way to Quadrille, four city blocks that are closed for the event. Lots of food stalls, a very little bit of farmers' market, and more tchotchkes and snake oil than you can count. I was tempted by the food and also the availability of bottomless mimosas, but resisted the urge. The junk-for-sale never calls us, and even the mimosas were aced out by the requirement to first buy the plastic stemware in which they are served.

On a warm Saturday the GreenMarket was packed.

When I was not walking or doing PT I tried to knock a few things off the project list. Besides the generator repairs I did a big clean-up and organization in the workshop. I repaired my small torque wrench that had quit mid-project while I was rebuilding the transfer switch, and rebuilt and replaced the original engine room fan, which broke well over a year ago and for which a lower-capacity (but also quieter) model has been standing in ever since.

It's cheaper to just buy a bottle of champagne than one of these bottomless Mimosa's

During our second week a sailboat came in and anchored in our swing circle; I was out on errands at the time and Louise had to bark at them, to no effect. When I got back I could see on my approach that they were too close, and after chatting with Louise about it I went over in the tender to see them about it. I, too, was brushed off.

I thought this an appropriate choice to block off the end of the festival.

We spent the next 36 hours being nervous about it and watching them studiously during every tide change. But it's impossible to be up and available for every turn of the tide, and at 4am on Martin Luther King day the inevitable happened and they ran into us, taking a chunk of our new paint off the swim step, clear down to bare aluminum. We were both up in a flash, and I now regret stopping to put pants on before running up the stairs. They got an earful from both of us, promising to come by in the morning to sort it out before weighing anchor and moving.

Collision at anchor.

In the morning they came over with insurance and contact information, and I have every reason to believe they will cover the damage, but this is going to be a giant pain in the butt for us. We can find someone to take care of it in Fort Lauderdale, but that would have us there for days or weeks and we really just want to be passing through. We'll see if we can find a mobile repair in Key West, or else we'll try to deal with it on the way north. If it will be a while, I will slap something on it to keep it from spreading in the interim.

There is a coffee stand in the public library, against conventional wisdom.

This can be a chaotic anchorage, and we did see boats drag during the couple of days of high winds. At least one boat ended up in the middle of the channel, and the parade of tug boats that's been moving gravel from Peanut Island to our north down to the Bonefish Cove environmental mitigation project to the south has been mighty annoyed. At one point the Coast Guard hailed us to ask us about one of the boats in the channel -- they can see us on AIS and we looked to be close.

I had to go to the top floor in search of a copier and found this very pleasant seating space and workstations with power outlets.

One of the bright spots of our enforced downtime was a visit from good friends Erin and Chris on Barefeet, whom we had left behind in Jacksonville. They passed through en route to Fort Lauderdale for their departure to the Bahamas, and long time readers may remember that this time last year we and they were on similar schedules and kept intersecting at many points along the way. A weather delay had them here for two nights, anchored just a stone's throw from us, and we had two nice evenings with them. At this writing they are already in the Exumas.

Barefeet, with the blue hull, is our neighbor. At left is some kind of live-aboard made from two lashed-together pontoon boats and plywood, making its way through the anchorage with a tiny outboard.

We managed to get out for dinner every night of our stay. Many evenings it was shirtsleeve weather and we were able to dine al fresco, but on the flip side we had a couple of nights of making our way through drizzle to get ashore. We ate at many of our old standbys including Lynora's, Kabuki Sushi & Thai, Grease, Batch, Il Bellagio, and O'Shea's. We also returned for one more try to Rocco's Tacos; the third time is the charm and on this visit the food and service were fine. I picked up bagels a few times from Makeb's, an old favorite now in a new location, and we even went in together once for breakfast sandwiches.

At CVS. How you know you are near the beach in Florida.

We also tried some new venues for us. Elisabetta's Ristorante turned out to be quite good and less expensive than I had imagined, but next time we'll skip the canolli, which were weird. Felice, an upscale Italian place in the new-ish complex across from Publix was not worth the higher price, with few salad options and no drafts, even though the food itself was fine. Leila was a tasty option for Mediterranean cuisine in a nice setting. Rivales was decent on Taco Tuesday but is courting a more boisterous crowd. Hot Pie was excellent for coal-fired pizza. And 123 Datura surprised us with half off the entire check at happy hour, with good food and drink if a bit of a limited menu.

Zoom in to see the SpaceX Falcon-9 launching the SpainSat mission.

On my birthday we went to another old standby, City Cellar overlooking the light-up banyan at City Place. It was wine-down Wednesday and I ended up finishing most of a bottle of pinot noir by myself, to go with an excellent filet. I sometimes forget this is a fine dining establishment masquerading as a pub.

The top of the animated banyan "Wishing Tree" from our table at City Cellar. I have posted video of this tree previously.

On one of my many walks I stopped into the RH Rooftop restaurant, atop RH (formerly Restoration Hardware) as well as the Treetop restaurant atop the Canopy By Hilton, judging neither to be really worthy of a dinner-time stop. And I also stopped in to the pour-it-yourself Garden District Taproom, finding it very overpriced, and with no food at all save for the occasional food truck.

Someone at RH has to rake the gravel all over the outside spaces. It looks like a full-time job.

Update: We are docked at the Coral Ridge Yacht Club (map), where we get a free reciprocal night. It is now Saturday, as the aforementioned gauntlet of timed bridges precluded me from finishing the blog post yesterday. I somehow messed up the timing of the one bridge that opens on the 20s rather than the quarter or half hour, adding a full hour to the trip and landing us here after 5pm.

Vector and the anchorage as see from Treetop atop the Canopy by Hilton. The Breakers Palm Beach is at left.

We went right to the casual poolside dining at the club and had a nice dinner. The temperature here is in the 80s, a stark contrast considering I wore my parka to PT one day. The pool bar is a happening place, going well into the evening last night, and as I type the place is buzzing for lunch and the pool deck is packed. Between that and a post-prandial walk, including a stop at the Publix to pick up milk, I was too whooped to finish last night.

We passed USCGC Hudson doing ATON maintenance.

There is a section of this trip where the bridges are tightly spaced but with timing that is completely wrong for Vector's speeds. I have to work hard to station-keep in the heavy current, complicated yesterday by 20mph winds, and it takes a lot out of both of us.

New islands under construction for the Bonefish Cove project. Tugs Aunt Donna, Captain Morgan, and Wiley passed us both ways every day.

This morning I dragged the pump-out cart over to the boat and took care of business, so we are set for the rest of the trip to the Keys. We've decided to just spring for a second night here (only the first is free) so Louise can get all the laundry done without unnatural acts, and tonight we will stroll the mile to what I consider the best Italian place in all of Fort Lauderdale, Serafina. Most likely we will move to an anchorage in the morning; I was happy to find the annoying and illegal "no anchoring" buoys in the anchorage right next door have finally been removed, two years after I filed a complaint with the marine police.

We were passed by several new-build boats on delivery, fresh off the ship in Riviera Beach and headed to commissioning. Even the top and rails are still strapped down and if you zoom in you can see the delivery crew out in the open in the little helm stand on top.

We were able to score reservations at the municipal marina in Key West starting on the 8th, which gives us a comfortable schedule from here, down to Key Biscayne on the inside and then out to Hawk Channel by way of Cape Florida. My next post will most likely be under way to Key West. Now if you will excuse me, I need to go exercise with my rubber bands. The full set would take me an hour and a half, so I am doing a third to half of them every day to mix it up.