Debugged

We are anchored in Sunrise Bay in Fort Lauderdale (map) It's been three weeks since last I posted here, and a busy three weeks at that, so an update here is overdue. Apart from the very next two days after I posted, we have not had an open day at sea for me to type. I don't have that now, either, but we've had a couple of easy days at anchor and the chaos of the last couple of weeks has settled to a low simmer. It's long; grab a drink.

Vector in an uncharacteristically calm New River Sound, with the beach resorts behind here. Photo: Dorsey Beard

After we had the hook down off Knight Key I called TowBoatUS to ask about depth and conditions on the back side route. They were very noncommittal. Between that and the fact that our sounder was showing no additional water above the MLLW soundings on our charts, which showed 5' sections ahead, we opted to head back to the Hawk Channel in the morning, or whenever weather permitted. In hindsight, we could have anchored closer to Pigeon Key and had a shorter run both directions. We had a calm night, much more pleasant than any of our previous stays on the ocean side of the bridge, after a pleasant dinner of pasta e fagioli aboard.

This broken hose clamp sent gallons of seawater into the bilge, and made our watermaker look irreparably broken.

Tuesday morning's check of the weather showed marginally acceptable conditions, and we backtracked the four miles to the bridge. We used our track from the way in so we did not have to keep it to dead slow. We turned back eastward in the Hawk Channel, passing just a mile or so from where we anchored an hour and a half later. Conditions were good early on, but by mid-afternoon seas had built to two to three feet on four seconds, which is a bit of a bumpy ride.

Lights of Miami from our anchorage off Key Biscayne.

Louise took the helm for an hour while I participated in a Zoom meeting concerning Florida anchoring rights. Then in the afternoon, while going back over the paperwork for Friday's short haul for our survey, I learned the boatyard had cancelled our haulout because they were missing documents. After having signed what I thought was a firm contract, including supplying payment details, I was furious, but the yard had already given away the time slot. I had a few choice words for them before turning my attention to alternate solutions.

Weighing the fire bottle, hanging just a couple inches off the floor. Crane scale is just off-frame, top.

We had booked this for Friday because the surveyor was slated to leave for the UK on Monday, and we did not want to miss him. If that had not been the case, we would have stayed in Key West another week waiting on better sea conditions, rather than being out here bashing our way through the chop. I was determined to somehow save our survey appointment and I started calling other boatyards.

Approaching Miami from Key Biscayne. It looks different in the daylight.

I'll spare you all the gory details of the dozen or so calls I made. Suffice it to say that only two yards had a Friday slot for us; one was up the Miami River, and the other was Marine Max, just a short distance from our original choice on the Dania Cutoff. Marine Max was our first choice, but they told me they would not haul steel boats. We made the appointment in Miami, even though we were less than sanguine about making our way up an unfamiliar, busy river, rife with drawbridges, to an unknown yard. But I also asked Marine Max to run it up the chain to see if the powers-that-be would make an exception for a survey-only haul. They asked me to send photos of the boat and a copy of our insurance.

Courtesy dock at Publix, closed and nearly completely destroyed from wake action. We only ever got to use it once.

We ended the day anchored behind Rodriguez Key (map), after what turned out to be the whole day spent on the phone and the 'net. We were apprehensive with all the waves out of the east, but I worked my way back into the shallows much further than on our previous stops here, and it turned out to be not bad at all. We will remember this for the next time: a 2-3' easterly forecast in this zone is OK here. We had leftovers aboard; conditions were too rough to dinghy in to Key Largo.

Most of the zinc paint has worn off the prop, but it was in good shape. Pinkish color is minor surface dezincification.

The system I had put together in Key West to supply engine heat to the water heater is evidently working very well, because Louise reported that she could only turn the shower valve a tiny fraction into the hot side without the shower getting too hot. Of course it was cleaning out the crud from the tempering valve that caused this; I had cranked that valve up over time as the hot water had gotten progressively cooler. I adjusted the valve back down and we are back to a safe water temperature.

We wore a bit of paint off the keel plowing the bottom in seiche in Cape Haze.

Wednesday we got an early start for the final leg to Key Biscayne. At the first engine room check Louise found several gallons of water in the engine room bilge, and I had a bit of a scramble to make sure it was not actively coming in someplace. It turned out to be a broken hose clamp on the watermaker, which we had run Tuesday as a test. The test did not end well, as production had dropped to near zero and salinity through the roof shortly after starting it, so we had just turned it off, and I had figured to get back to it at anchor someplace when the ER was cooler. This broken clamp turned out to be the whole reason, and it's a great example of why seawater pumps should not be run while away from the boat.

Headed back to the water after a pressure wash and survey inspection.

The Miami yard called back to say they had made a mistake and that the available time slot was actually on Saturday, not Friday. Fortunately, Marine Max had deigned to grant us dispensation, and we waved off Miami and signed the contract at Marine Max. I emailed Paul, the surveyor, to let him know of the change of venue, and a short while later I got a call from Ben, his partner, to say Paul had gotten hung up in Melbourne and that Ben would do the survey instead. So the whole mad scramble to make a Friday appointment was more or less for naught anyway.

They rafted us up to this spendy Galeon 800 and we had to wear booties to cross it.

We ended the day at the anchorage off Nixon's helipad (map) and headed to the Key Biscayne Yacht Club for a much-needed beer and a nice casual dinner in the bar. We really like this club, even though they have never had room for us at the dock. Only after eating, wherein I had a burger and a beer from the regular menu, did we learn that Wednesday is $12 burger-and-beer night. Oh well, live and learn. The anchorage was the quietest we have ever seen it; usually there are a handful of day boats that arrive for sunset and then stay, sometimes to the wee hours, playing loud music. I wonder if KBPD has been cracking down.

As we were preparing to drop lines we found a stowaway.

Our decision to press on through Hawk Channel in marginal conditions put us into Key Biscayne a day early; I had expected to have to run the final leg to Dania on Friday morning. So Thursday morning I took the time to remediate some of the more obvious rust, and then service the engine room fire suppression system, all in preparation for the survey and hoping to have fewer issues for them to find. The fire bottle in the ER was still at full weight, but it will be due for hydro in just two more years.

Hollywood Beach now has a Senor Frogs. I guess it was inevitable after Margaritaville moved in.

We weighed anchor and made the slog through the Miami ICW bridges, which involves pushing right up against the speed limit for one stretch, and slow-rolling at our lowest speed for a different stretch to time openings more suitable for the boats from Miami Vice. The courtesy dock at the Intracoastal Mall in front of Duffys is still closed, as is the courtesy dock at Publix in Hollywood Beach, destroyed by wakes. We only ever got to use it once, and it was very convenient. The Diplomat's marina has also closed; I think that side of the property is scheduled for redevelopment.

The lifeguard shacks in Hollywood all sport this Googie architecture.

We dropped the hook in our usual spot in the "key slot" of South Hollywood Lake (map) and tendered to Capone's Flicker Lite for beer and decent pizza. In the morning I cleaned up the tender a bit before we decked it, just before it started raining, and spent the rest of the morning servicing the remaining fire extinguishers and straightening up the engine room before we had to weigh anchor for the survey haul-out.

Sunset over the Hollywood keyhole.

We ran the trio of closely spaced bridges and arrived to the lift slip, in the rain, exactly on time. Surveyor Ben was already waiting, and we chatted while the crew pressure-washed the bottom. He audio-gauged the hull, thankfully finding no issues, and inspected the running gear. While he did not make survey comments about it, we had abraded the paint down to bare metal in a few spots while plowing the bottom up in Cape Haze. I also noted one marginal hull anode. In any other yard I would have asked them to touch up the paint and change the anode while we were in the slings, but the "no steel boats" rule precluded that. We'll get hauled out further north, in a less expensive part of the coast, to get that done.

They trimmed some vegetation and our secret dinghy landing is again usable.

After just ten or 15 minutes of hull inspection we had the yard put us back in the water; the pressure-wash used up the lion's share of our allotted hour in the slings. The lift and wash crew was very professional. We moved over to our "slip," rafted to a $4M, 80' Galeon (map). The yard handed us a power cord that had been run across their swim step, and booties which we had to wear while crossing their aft deck to get ashore. There was nothing to walk to nearby, so we only did that once to stretch our legs, and again to fill our water tank.

Mamacita's Latin Grill on the Broadwalk has expanded to envelop what used to be a pirate-themed bar on the corner, left.

Ben spent about an hour or so on board going through all the visible interior portions and checking on important safety gear, and he made generally positive comments throughout, which made us optimistic about the final report. I just received that a couple of days ago and there were no adverse findings or action items beyond the usual "service the service items and keep the paint maintained."

The former Sapore di Mare, which had gone downhill, is now Ocean Grill.

The yard was closed Saturday and we lingered until 11, relaxing after what had been a mad scramble and a whirlwind boat prep. We would have stayed longer, but I had errands to run from the next stop, and the new solar makes it less necessary to hold on to the power pedestal until the last yawning instant. It took us an hour to get back through the three bridges and drop the hook in exactly the same spot we had left the previous morning.

Giorgio's bakery, which is also a sit-down restaurant on the ICW, is still going strong.

I immediately splashed the tender and headed down to my super-secret landing in Hallandale Beach, where I made the circuit of two different Amazon lockers, a UPS access point to pick up our mail, and Walmart. I had to fight with the Amazon app to get one of the lockers to open, at one point even switching to my backup cell carrier. When I got back to the dinghy I found I had a neighbor; I guess the secret is at least partly out. We tendered to Gigi's for a nice dinner on their deck. Because, you know, we don't get to see enough of Hollywood Lake.

Joe's Market just a couple doors down has folded, leaving no market convenient to the anchorage.

We spent four nights there (five if you count the one before the survey), and I belted out several projects that I was holding at bay until after survey. That including replacing three (out of six) engine fuel filters, making some adjustments on Louise's Juki sewing machine, re-balancing the house batteries (which had somehow developed a very weird imbalance), replacing broken snaps on the window covers, and diagnosing and replacing bad pressure sensors on the watermaker. In the midst of all this I discovered a can of FlexSeal had exploded in the plastic bin that I used to contain such things, for exactly this reason, but I still had a mess to clean up all over the other items in the bin.

I caught Esmeralde passing by while I was ashore, on her way to Fort Lauderdale.

I made another pilgrimage to Hallandale for another locker item, a UPS store drop-off, and more Walmart items. And I found time to stroll the Hollywood Broadwalk all the way up to the Marriott to the north and the shuttered Hollywood Resort to the south, noting the changes since our last visit. We dined at Nick's on the Broadwalk and Taverna Opa on the ICW, and we also made brats one rainy night in an effort to draw down the freezer stores a bit. Our old standby Sapore di Mare has closed, replaced by a similar Mediterranean joint, and the iconic Joe's Market on the ICW, always good for last-minute necessities, has shuttered.

Something to look forward to for our next visit.

In anticipation of having to run up the New River on Thursday for work at Lauderdale Marine Center, I had booked one night at the Lauderdale Yacht Club, which is on the way, for Wednesday. We need something close to high tide to get in and out of this club, and so we weighed anchor to make the 8:30 opening at the Hollywood bridge, putting us at LYC a little over an hour later, with plenty of water in the channel at a tide of +2.5'. We docked in a familiar spot (map) and I scurried over to the club office in drizzle to get signed in.

Vector in South Hollywood Lake, looking east.

I had plans to offload the scooters here, and we docked port-side-to for that, but it poured rain all day and I could not even get in a walk, let alone run planned errands on a scooter. In the evening we grabbed umbrellas and headed over to the Burgee Room for dinner, which turned out to be a poor choice, with noisy families seated right next to the bar. Next time we will sit in the adults-only Cypress Room, which on a rainy evening just seemed too dark and dreary.

My secret dinghy landing has been discovered. I returned to find another boat in front of me.

The club puts out coffee and pastries each morning in the Abenaki room, which is otherwise just a bar with no food service, and we grabbed muffins in the morning before a short walk to the end of the block and around the club grounds. We were off the dock at 10 to again take advantage of high tide, and we headed over to the New River just as the ebb was starting. Having a touch of current against makes navigating this tricky river, with its numerous drawbridges, a little easier.

These guys were working on the Publix dock when I passed. I asked if they were repairing it. Nope; putting up a tall fence to keep anyone from using it.

After negotiating with two sets of towboats moving large yachts and a brief delay while the railroad bridge got stuck in the down position, which had us tying up at a bulkhead rather than station-keeping in the river, we made it to our assigned berth at the boatyard (map). Long-time readers may remember we spent a bit of time here a few years back getting the bottom blasted and painted and having a few other things addressed, so it is very familiar to us.

Offloading yachts transported by ship.

And this brings me to the delicate subject of why we were here, to wit, to deal with a minor infestation of drywood termites. We've been dealing with this for well over a year, and it's been like playing Whac-a-Mole. We would find a small pile of frass, and I would inject termite poison into the minuscule, barely perceptible hole using a hypodermic needle leftover from hydrating the cats. Then we would not see them again for months, until we found another pile of frass in an entirely different location. Every now and then we would catch them in their winged, swarming state using our bug zapper.

Brightline train crossing the FEC rail bridge. After it passed the bridge announced it was stuck down. The Cape Ann towing guys seen here sounded the dock to the right for us and we pulled over to wait.

I'm sure my efforts were successful in keeping them from getting out of control and eating all our interior woodwork, but at some point it became clear that I was never going to vanquish them and they would need to be gassed. We feared the worst: that we would have to be hauled out onto the hard and tented, just like a house. I asked around in the superyacht community, who deal with this all the time (if you have a boat in Florida with enough wood in it, it will likely eventually get termites), and they nearly unanimously recommended a company called Dead Bug Edwards, who can often do it in the water by taping the boat up.

Failed pressure sensor and its replacement, which needed a reducing bushing due to the smaller threads.

Dead Bug Edwards asked me to send them pictures and dimensions of the boat, and then said that it could be done in the water, at which point I started calling boatyards that would allow it to be done. Edwards is on the approved vendor list at LMC, and when they gave us a decent price for the dockage (well, for Fort Lauderdale, anyway) we set it up for Friday morning. They told us we would need to be off the boat until Sunday sometime, and Louise booked us an AirBnB for the two nights.

Amazon sent two different sets of bushings that turned out to be nearly straight threads.

We offloaded the scooters after we were tied up, and then set to work bagging up all the unsealed food items on board. The Edwards rep had met me at the boat ramp in Hollywood to give me a supply of the special Nylafume bags that are required for the purpose. Louise bagged up most of the food, including what was in the fridge and freezer, while I went out on the scooter to run the errands that were rained out the day before. Those included the Amazon counter at the nearby Whole Foods, which was new for me this visit.

All our food secured in Nylafume bags on the counters. Giant fans on the floor belong to the exterminator.

At dinner time our friends Dorsey and Bruce, who were docked across town, picked us up in their rental car and drove us to dinner at Serafina, one of our favorites, which is, ironically, walking distance from where we are now. But all four of us love the place, and it appears to now be a tradition with us if we are all in town together. Dinner was great, as was the company, and we had a big greeting even though we just parted company a couple of weeks ago in Key West.

With Dorsey and Bruce at Serafina, showing off our decadent desserts.

Friday morning Bob Edwards showed up with a taping crew as we were finishing our coffee and gave us the rundown on how it all works. He set up fans throughout the boat to distribute the gas and ran a hose out to where the truck would be. The sulfuryl fluoride gas is colorless, odorless, and deadly, and the boat is first infused with tear gas to keep the curious (both humans and animals) away. They were mostly ready to go by 10:30 and booted us off the boat.

All taped up, signed, and ready to be gassed.

Check-in at our quarters was not until the afternoon, and so we traipsed over to the nice crew lounge, new since our last stay, with our laptops to kill time. It was raining again, so planned errands were again deferred. We had figured to have lunch while out and about; instead we rode the scooters over to the (also new) on-site restaurant, Yot. The food was good and it is a nice venue; like everything at LMC the prices are on the higher end. After lunch we stopped at one of the on-site chandleries, BOW Yacht, which had a good price on a fuel filter I needed.

Cheers from Yot, where the servers are dressed in yacht crew uniforms.

We spent another hour or so in the crew lounge until we got word our AirBnB was ready. We rode over and were settled in around 2. The place was comfortable enough, if a little over-the-top with Amazon LED lights. We spent a bit of time figuring out how to turn them all off. By dinner time things had dried up enough to walk to Tap 42 for dinner, a venue I remembered from when I took my captain's license course at nearby Maritime Professional Training. We swung by the nicely stocked deli/market on the way home to get milk for our morning coffee. The AirBnB provided the coffee in the form of K-cups.

LMC now has scooter parking. We parked under the gaze of our own cameras instead, as we had a scooter stolen here last tiime.

Saturday morning after coffee we did a canonical Fort Lauderdale thing by heading over to Lester's Diner for breakfast. The check-in sheet they put out here to manage the line has a column for "luggage"; while Lester's used to be mostly a local hangout, apparently word is out and now the cruise passengers are stopping here between the airport and their ships. After breakfast we set out on the errands we had deferred due to the rain. I needed parts from McDonald's Hardware and more items from Boat Owners Warehouse, and we both sorely needed haircuts.

Lester's Diner. Yes, I am day-drinking.

I had even more errands, including stops at Total Wine and Publix, so we parted company and Louise headed home. After my shopping and a quick spin around the shopping center to see what was new, I thought I would drive the beach road and loop back via Las Olas. Bad idea; spring break traffic had the road stopped dead after I crossed the 17th Street Bridge, and I made an about-face and went back the way I came. My original plan to maybe get this blog post hammered out at the AirBnB was, as they say, overtaken by events.

Our AirBnB, complete with LED palm tree, and LED strip lights above the cabinets.

We made plans to meet Bruce and Dorsey for dinner at upscale Vitolo in the Conrad, also on the beach, and we ended up slogging our way through the same quagmire later. Adding insult to injury, the Conrad would not let us park the scooters, and we had to hunt for on-street parking, where we paid the same amount for the two scooters as two full-size cars. Note to self: investigate motorcycle parking before heading to anything else on the beach. Dinner was quite good, and we even brought home leftovers.

In the course of trying to turn off the color-changing strip lights I looked above the cabinet and found this monstrosity. We eventually found the wireless control mounted to a wall.

Even though the exterminator had originally told us to expect to be off the boat until late Sunday, they adjusted that to Sunday morning at 9am, and so we packed up and checked out at 8:45 and arrived at the boat just as they were removing the last of the fans. The tape was already gone. We settled up and then turned our attention to re-stowing all the consumables and, ahem, other projects.

They provided these disposable toothbrushes (yes, black) and teensy tubes of "Toothpaste" patterned exactly after Colgate tubes.

The big "other project" unfortunately involved dealing with some misbehaving waste tanks. I will spare you the gory details (and any photos); suffice it to say that the crossover pipe that connects the two separate halves of our waste system had occluded, which we had discovered late Thursday night when the tank, which normally carries us for three-plus weeks, was full at just the two-week mark. There was little we could do about it with the exterminator coming first thing in the morning, apart from using the head connected to the still-empty forward tank.

Our proof of treatment.

Among the items I picked up at McDonald's and BOW were new fittings and a length of sanitation hose to replace the crossover altogether, the second time I have had to do so in a dozen years. The lone dockhand at the yard came out around 11 to pump us out, a prerequisite for making the repairs. I spent most of the day folded in half in the bilge, and there is really no way to do this project without letting the stink out into the boat. Though I am thankful that it happened while we were already at a boatyard with a pump-out and easy access to parts. After cleaning up both the project and myself we beat a hasty retreat from the now odiferous boat and rode over to long-time favorite Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza for dinner, while the boat remained opened up with fans running.

After they already left we found they left behind one of their laminated signs. The boss made the guy come back to get it.

We had only booked the yard/marina dock until Monday, and in the morning I rode over, settled the bill, and picked up the robot vacuum Louise had ordered from Amazon on my way back to the boat. (She has been experimenting with it ever since.) Amazon deliveries here are handled by Yacht Chandlers, who charge $2 for the privilege, but they are closed over the weekend. The box barely fit behind me on the scooter.

I caught this high-diver mid-flip halfway down from the highest platform at the International Swimming Hall of Fame high dive.

The yard gave us a late checkout, and I used the time to ride out to UPS for a return and to Walmart to see how much motor oil I could grab. Two attempts to have them deliver 5-gallon pails to us on Sunday had ended in failure, and at the store I discovered they only had a single pair of 2.5-gallon jugs, buried in the back behind another brand, so I grabbed those and four 1-gallon jugs to make up the nine I needed. The scooter was bristling with oil jugs on my ride home.

Cheers from the lounge at Ocean Prime.

We decked the scooters and were off the dock at 12:30, just at the tail end of the flood. I did end up having to make a pair of U-turns in the river at the notorious "little Florida" bend to let a pair of Cape Ann Towing towboats moving a 200' yacht upriver pass us. (If you're listening, Courtney, you owe me a beer.) We slid under the Las Olas bridge without an opening, which had us early for Sunrise Bridge, but as we passed Las Olas, we were stunned to see the anchorage at New River Sound had room.

These pontoon tour boats pushed up against the bulkhead at the end of Sebastian Street all day long, just a couple hundred feet from us. We could land one street down to stay out of their way.

We'd anchored here a time or two, but ever since the Middle River anchorage was outlawed, this one has been full, largely with derelicts and permanent liveaboards. But new legislation this year limits anchoring to 30 days, and FLPD has cleared the place out. We pulled over and grabbed a nice spot (map); We did have a courtesy visit from the marine patrol in the morning wanting to make sure we knew the limit and to take a name and phone number.

Vector at the dock at Coral Ridge Yacht Club, wearing her St. Pete Yacht Club burgee. We only put it out when docked at other clubs.

From this anchorage it is a slam-dunk to go to Coconuts, perhaps our all-time favorite waterfront restaurant, for dinner, and as soon as we had the hook down I texted Dorsey and Bruce to let them know our plan, as they were docked within walking distance. We met them at the back bar when it opened at 5, which is technically the G&B Oyster Bar even though it's all one big room. We had a great time, and afterward we had a long goodbye "for real this time." They were slated to spend Tuesday taking their dogs to the groomer out in Plantation and then depart for parts north Wednesday morning. We hope to see them again when we get up to New England this summer.

I'm not sure why the rest room signs disagree in number.

Tuesday morning I finally replaced the bad pressure sensor on the watermaker, after two rounds of ill-fitting Amazon parts that had to go back followed by getting a marginally serviceable one at McDonald's. One of the things I had scheduled for our time here in Fort Lauderdale was a service visit from the watermaker guy just to check my work and give the system a going-over, and I needed to get this done first.

Only in SEFL. Rolls SUV with custom paint and Dubai plates front and rear at the Galleria.

I took the dinghy out to fuel it up at the Bahia Mar fuel dock and then scope out our landing options, beyond the ones we already knew at Coconuts and a mile up the Middle River. I found no restrictive signs at the city dinghy dock near the minuscule mooring field of Las Olas, but not much in walking distance. And the new courtesy dock attached to the permanently moored Shorely ex-ferry at the newish Marina Village wanted $30 for two hours. The rebuilt Las Olas Marina has no dinghy dock and quoted me, I kid you not, $205 to tie up for a half day. I found it possible but somewhat challenging to land at one of the dead-end bulkheads on the island side.

The view from Ocean Prime. Vector is past the docked superyachts in the cheap seats.

When dinner time rolled around we decided to land at the dinghy dock and walk the three quarters of a mile over the Las Olas Bridge to the new Ocean Prime, adjacent to the marina. This is a very spendy place, but they have a more reasonable happy hour menu upstairs in the lounge. It was fine, and the space was pleasant enough, but we don't need to repeat the experience.

We were home just in time for sunset from New River Sound.

Wednesday we waved as Esmeralde passed us on their way north out of town, and we decked the tender and weighed anchor ourselves for the 11am opening at Sunrise. By ten after we were tying up to the face dock at the Coral Ridge Yacht Club (map) for our one free night, which we had deferred until Wednesday because the club facilities are dark Monday and Tuesday. I immediately set up the portable air conditioner in the engine room in anticipation of the watermaker appointment at 1pm, even though things did not get very hot in the fifteen minutes we were running.

Esmeralde passing us one final time in our anchorage.

Cameron from Halden Marine arrived at the appointed time and spent an hour aboard. We learned our production (flow) meter reads low and our salinity meter reads high, but otherwise he pronounced the system healthy. The recommendation, if we continue to see production drop during the course of a run, is to rebuild or replace the pump motor, and I will look into sourcing a spare. The good news on the watermaker meant I had time to swim in the very nice and very warm club pool before we headed to The Pointe, their casual patio venue, for dinner.

Sunset behind a storm over Naples or thereabouts, as seen from CRYC.

Louise was waiting on two Amazon deliveries to the locker in the nearby Galleria mall, which closes at 8. When one of the two still had not arrived by 7:15, I walked over anyway, picked up the one that was ready, and killed time by strolling the mall, which is all but dead now. I understand it is slated to be redeveloped into a mixed-used retail/residential complex. For now, at least, the four sit-down restaurants out front are still open. The final package was delivered right at closing time. I swung by Publix on the way home.

One way to re-purpose a vacant anchor store at a dying mall.

All our Fort Lauderdale errands thus complete, Thursday morning we were free to leave. But our next obligation is just one stop north, in Palm Beach, and we don't need to be there until this coming Wednesday, so after dropping lines after lunch and a short swim, we just came here. When I had checked in the yacht club wrote us a guest pass until tomorrow, and I've been back ashore to the dinghy dock a couple of times.

The Grill at the Grove. It was open mic night in the courtyard. Check out the giant draft list to the right.

We've also been to the dock at the Hugh Taylor Birch State Park, immediately across the ICW and recently reopened after a long closure, twice; once to eat at the park's own Grill at the Grove, which sports a surprisingly large selection of drafts, and once to walk to Primanti Brothers Pizza. This latter venue is actually an outpost of a pizza chain from Pittsburgh, where I once went to school, and carries Iron City beer in bottles. The pizza was decent. Landing at the park requires payment of a $2 per person entry fee; there is an honor box but we paid online. The gate attendant was baffled by our online passes when we came back from Primanti's.

Primanti's, a little slice of Pgh in Laudy. I like the Kennywood sign in the back, an amusement park I enjoyed there. Also, cash only, and open 24/7, for those spring break benders.

Tonight is our last in this spot, and we had dinner in the club bar before a quick stop at Publix and decking the tender. Tomorrow is forecast to be rainy all day, and there is no better time, really, for us to be underway. The usual weekend ICW traffic will be rained out, and we'd be trapped inside all day anyway. Tomorrow evening we should be in Lantana or Lake Worth Beach, a little early for the next item on the calendar, which is to put Louise on a plane to Puerto Vallarta for our niece's bachlorette party (long story). I will be holding down the fort at anchor.