Fridgeapalooza

We are tied up at the New Port Cove marina in Riviera Beach, Florida (map), a short distance from Lake Worth inlet.  I am recovering this morning from another kitchen appliance project that kicked my butt, one which necessitated this marina stay.

We had a nice two-day cruise here, if a bit different than we had planned.  Rather than push all the way to Lake Worth in one day, I had picked out a couple of nice anchorages around the Delray Beach area, and, even though we already had the tender loaded and all secured, we spent a very leisurely morning in Fort Lauderdale Wednesday, taking advantage of fast free WiFi, weighing anchor around noon for what was planned to be a four hour or so cruise.

As we approached our first bridge opening, just a mile or two from our anchorage, at the Sunrise Boulevard bridge, we heard a tug behind us with a 130' yacht in tow calling the bridge.  Bridges, like Sunrise, that open only on a schedule, are nevertheless required to open on demand for commercial tugs towing or pushing anything.  So even though we had a few minutes till the scheduled opening, we got to take advantage of the demand opening for the tug.  I did call him on the radio to see if he needed us to clear the channel or if we should just precede him; as he was doing just 3.5 knots to our 6, he suggested we just go ahead.

That gave us plenty of time to make the next bridge, Oakland Park, which also opens on a schedule.  Before the scheduled opening, the tug called to say he'd need an opening, too, and the bridge tender wanted to delay the opening to accommodate both of us in one shot.  From his perspective, that would delay us by a few minutes, but it would cause us to miss the next bridge, and we'd be waiting a half hour.  When the bridge did not open on schedule, I had to call the tender and get a bit insistent; he does not really have the discretion to impede navigation at a scheduled opening except in an emergency (for example, an emergency vehicle needing to cross the bridge).

Fortunately he opened up just in time for us to make the schedule for the following bridge, and he was able to hold it for the tug as well, who by this time was fairly close behind us.  That was the last we saw of the tug and it's 130' charge, Private Lives, for the rest of the day's cruise.  We knew they would pass us at some point, because they were headed to Rybovich Shipyards in Palm Beach.

Just like the old joke about "uphill, both ways," we managed to have the current against us nearly the whole day, and making some of the closely-timed bridge openings was a mad scramble, having me wick it up to 1800-2000 RPM (when not in the numerous no-wake zones) to avoid missing an opening.  Unfortunately, the net effect of a late start, head current, and bridge timing put us in the Delray area at a low tide of negative 0.3'.  At that level, neither of the anchorages I had looked at was accessible to us.  (On the plus side, we squeaked through a couple of bridges that would otherwise have had to open for us.)

We ended up pushing on all the way to the first usable anchorage, in Lake Worth just south of the Southern Boulevard bridge (map).  That made it nearly a seven hour cruise and we dropped the hook just before 7pm.  We ended up having leftovers on deck over a cold beer, but on the plus side it was one of the most peaceful anchorages we've experienced in a long time.  Traffic was minimal, but I did enjoy seeing the tug Jr pulling Private Lives past us around 11:30pm.  Behind the yacht was another small tug facing backwards -- the "brakes" if you will.

On a lark I tuned the VHF, which we normally leave on at all times on channel 16 (the official Hailing and Distress channel), to channel 9, which is used to communicate with bridge tenders here in Florida.  I heard Jr call the Southern Boulevard Bridge for an opening, and the tender asked if he was a tug with a barge.  When the tug responded that, no, he was towing a yacht, the bridge tender told him he'd have to wait until the next scheduled opening, at midnight (this was about 11:45) unless he was "declaring an emergency with the Coast Guard."

The tug skipper was understandably annoyed -- the rules are quite clear that bridges must open for "tugs with tows," irrespective of what is "in tow."  After reminding the tender that he was a commercial tug in tow, the tender finally relented, backpedaling by saying "that's what I meant by a barge."  The entire lash-up did have to slow considerably for the still-closed bridge, with the end result that the bridge had to stay open a lot longer while they got back up to speed.  Considering there was almost no auto traffic at that hour anyway, I'm not sure why the tender got all testy in the first place.  Palm Beach County is the absolute worst when it comes to drawbridges.

We had our own little miscue with this same bridge yesterday morning.  I wanted to arrive here at slack, around 10am.  Given that the Royal Park bridge, about two miles north of Southern Boulevard, only opens once an hour, at quarter past, we decided to try for an 8:30 opening at Southern to make the 9:15 at Royal Park, which would put us here right around 10.  So we were up early and weighed anchor by 8:15 for the five minute run to the bridge.

When I checked the schedules for all these bridges on Active Captain, which is normally up to date with the Local Notices to Mariners, I saw that Southern was restricted from 4pm to 6pm, but saw no morning restriction.  Nevertheless, when I called the bridge to ask for an 8:30 opening, they informed me that they were restricted and the next opening would be at 9:30.  Oops.  We pulled off the channel and dropped the hook to wait it out over a second cup of coffee.  The restriction was right there in my copy of the Notices, but it somehow did not make it to Active Captain (I have since submitted an update).  Lesson learned -- check the Notices anyway.

We made it here by 11am without further incident, in more current than I'd have liked but not enough to keep me from backing Vector into the slip, with a bit of line help from a dockhand.  We were secured alongside and shut down by 11:30, and after I paid the $94 for our slip and power, I called the buyer of our NovaKool refrigerator and Heart inverter, a description of which I posted here on the blog a couple of weeks ago.

In case you missed it, the reason for selling the refrigerator, as fond as I am of the NovaKool products, is that it was just too small for full-time living on a cruising boat.  At 6.8 cubic feet capacity, it was ten percent smaller than the NovaKool we had aboard Odyssey, yet the logistics of getting groceries fairly often in the bus were far simpler than aboard Vector.  As tough as it has been here in the U.S., this problem will only get worse when we finally get offshore, where fresh grocery options are much fewer and further between.

The previous owner had solved this problem by putting a very nice chest fridge on the aft deck, but we wanted to reclaim that space for a table and chairs.  We sold the chest unit, getting mere pennies on the dollar for it, and, in hindsight, we probably should have just relocated it to the boat deck.  Recently, we've been noodling on how to add some capacity, and we've looked at, for example, the slightly larger NovaKool 8 cubic foot unit, which would fit in more or less the same space with just some slight modifications of the opening.  They are spendy, with the AC/DC model in that size setting us back nearly $2,000.

I was strolling through Lowe's in Stuart a couple of months ago when I happened to notice an "apartment size" fridge with 10.3 cubic foot capacity that looked like it might just fit our cabinet with a bit of aggressive modification (think Sawzall).  Better yet, it was under $400.  People who have attended my popular seminars at bus conversion rallies know that I am not normally a fan of household refrigerators for this application, but the combination of 50% more capacity, frost-free operation, and a ridiculously low price gave me pause to reconsider.

This would really not have been an option with our old modified sine wave (MSW) inverter.  Refrigerators need true sine wave power; without it, the both the fridge and the inverter waste additional power (as heat), and it's hard on the compressor, shortening its lifespan.  But when we upgraded the inverter to a 24-volt model (so we could get a bigger engine alternator), we changed to true sine wave output, which will have no trouble powering a household fridge.

The price we will pay is an energy penalty of about 10% when the fridge is running from the batteries, plus whatever power the "frost free" cycle uses.  I might get around eventually to installing a switch to turn off the auto-defrost when we are on batteries, letting it run instead only when the generator (or shore power) is running.  Frankly, we're looking forward to it; living at anchor (where we don't run the air conditioning) in the Florida humidity, the NovaKool was frosting up in just a week or two, and the efficiency and effectiveness drop off precipitously if you don't keep after it.  Since we did not manually defrost nearly as much as we should have, it's possible the auto defrost might even be more efficient.

In any case, I knew we could not even buy such a new fridge until we had a way to dispose of the old one.  Since it was in great condition and working well, within the limitations of its design, I wanted to pass it along to another boater or RVer and get at least a few bucks for it; the equivalent model, new, today sells for around $1,400.  In addition to the "for sale" write-up I did here on the blog, I also posted it on the trawler mailing list and the bus conversion forum.

Last week I got a call from a buyer in Palm Beach who was interested in not only the fridge, but also the Heart inverter we had removed during the upgrade.  We were going right past Palm Beach anyway, so we made plans to stop there and complete the transaction.  The buyer had a van to make the pickup, and I agreed to pay for dockage if the buyer would help me pick up the replacement fridge at the nearby Lowe's.

This dock was the least expensive option that was not too far off our route, and while not, by any means, a resort marina, the docks are adequate, and the staff was pleasant and helpful. They also have a loading zone convenient for making the exchange.  I asked the buyer to come by at 1:30, giving me enough time to get the NovaKool out of the cabinet.


The NovaKool, out of the cabinet and sitting on the galley floor.

We stuffed all the frozen food into our standalone ice maker, and packed what few fresh items we had left into a cooler.  Between undoing the hardwired electrical connections, removing the add-on insulation we had added, and getting a support jack underneath the unit, it took the two of us about a half hour to dismount the old unit and get it on the galley floor.  They buyer brought two strapping young men along who carted it to the back deck where four of us lifted it over the rail and onto the dock.  After they loaded the fridge and inverter into the van we made a round trip to Lowe's to pick up the new one, and the young men helped me get it on the aft deck before they left.


The old fridge on the way to its new home.

By  this time it was past 3pm, and there we were, with a fridge on the back deck.  We moved it into the salon, in place of my chair, and briefly considered the option of just strapping it to the wall somehow for the passage to Stuart.  I figured that by the time we came up with a way to safely strap it in place, I could mostly have the rough opening enlarged in the cabinet enough to at least slide the fridge into place, making securing it for travel much easier.  And so I set to work tearing into the joinery with the oscillating saw and the reciprocating saw.


The cabinet after removal.  I had to remove the face on the right of the opening all the way to the wall (easy), and cut another half inch from the left side (much harder), as well as remove the bottom panel all the way to the floor.  The space underneath the old fridge was formerly inaccessible and wasted anyway.

Unfortunately, given the tight quarters, I could not get either the circular saw or the jig saw to work here, which is too bad, as both of those tools have edge guides that would let me cut a straight line.  Neither was there room to affix a jig or guide.  So I ended up cutting the left edge with the recip saw freehand, using a line scribed on painter's tape.  The recip saw is more of a demolition tool than a cabinetry tool, but I got a somewhat finer cut by using a fine-tooth metal blade rather than the typical wood blade.  Still, the line was a bit wavy and rough, and the fridge did not slide right in on the first try.

By then we were getting hungry, and even though I had deliberately backed the boat in port-side-to so that we could unload a scooter, we ended up walking to the closest joint for dinner rather than taking the time to do that.  It was a mostly-delivery pizza joint, Romana's, but they have four tables and the food was surprisingly good.  They let us bring our own bottle of wine, and we toasted the new fridge.

I'm not sure a half bottle of wine did any wonders for my ability to re-saw a straight line, but after another hour or so of chipping away at the high spots with the oscillating tool we were finally able to slide the unit into the cabinet, and call it good enough.  Tomorrow in Stuart I will add some height to the subfloor (the galley floor ends just inside the cabinet, and the 1/2" drop-off has the fridge leaning backwards quite a bit), secure the back of the unit to the floor so it can't roll back out, and reverse the door hinges.  While we are in town we will shop around for some trim to surround the cabinet opening for a more finished look.


New fridge mostly in position.  Leveling the floor behind it will bring the doors flush with the divider on the right that separates it from the wet bar.  Some trim along the left side and across the top will finish the job.  Sorry about the poor lighting -- it was very bright today when Louise snapped this photo.

We are already loving the new fridge -- half again as much capacity as the old one makes a huge difference.  I'm glad to have found a good home for the old one, and I am equally happy to have the old inverter out of the engine room, where it has been taking up space for months snug in the shipping box from the new unit (I was expecting to have to ship it someplace).

Today we will shove off at high slack for the six hour cruise to Stuart, where we will anchor close by our old digs so we can visit with our friends for the next week.  It would be nice to have a dock where we can offload a scooter for the week, but it's cheaper to rent a car if we need it than pay for dockage.  We'll tie the dinghy up to our friends' boat when we need to get ashore.

Turrets on the Ocean Ave. Bridge

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down the bridge.

Festive along the ICW

Cheerful chairs and bright paint on a gloomy day.

Northbound

We are anchored at our old favorite spot in the Middle River, Fort Lauderdale, Florida (map).  We arrived here after an, umm, "interesting" cruise from Biscayne Bay Sunday, and anchored at the end of a very long day a few hundred yards east of here, a bit further downriver and closer to the ICW (map).  There is a "hump" between the ICW and here, and we thought we'd have better luck in a bit shallower water.

That said, on our first attempt to set the hook, we dragged considerably when I powered astern, and we brought the anchor up for another attempt.  It quickly became obvious why we did not set, as there was a large rock or maybe even old concrete firmly entrenched in the anchor's flukes (Louise already posted a photo).  I had to maneuver the boat to a wide spot in the river and heave to (or maybe that's lie ahull) while we scratched our heads about it.  The anchor could neither be brought into the roller nor successfully deployed with the big rock stuck in it.

We thought about hooking a fluke with a spare grab hook, cleating that off on deck, and then paying out chain to essentially invert the anchor and see if we could dump the rock out that way.  Ultimately what worked was to loop a U of line under a jagged edge of the rock, each of us working from opposite sides of the foredeck, and then hauling upwards to dislodge and tip the rock out.  It landed back in the water with a mighty splash, thankfully missing the paint on the way down.  Fortunately, there was not much current or wind to push us around while we were both on the foredeck, and we were able to finish the task without my having to run back to the helm to jockey the boat.

On the second try we got a good set, shut everything down, and enjoyed a well-deserved cold beer before a dinner of leftovers -- the rock episode put the kibosh on plans to splash the tender and run down to Coconuts.  Once we were all settled in, though, we were disappointed that the WiFi signal that had worked so well where we are now was unusable at that spot, even though it is closer to the signal's origin.  By this time we were done, and certainly not going to move just to get Internet, so we settled for using my cell phone.

Monday morning we splashed the tender and I ran the new-to-us used scuba regulator up to the dive shop to be serviced, with the request that they finish it before tomorrow morning so we can get under way.  Getting the reg serviced was one of the reasons to get here Sunday night. In the evening we made a quick run up to the Publix for much-needed provisions, stopping at Serafina Bistro for a nice dinner along the way.  It was a lovely and pleasant end to the holiday weekend.

The cruise up from Elliott Key was, for the most part, extremely pleasant, with excellent weather, fairly calm seas, and azure water in the ocean.  At one point we were in 500' of water when the depth sounder started squawking that we only had seven feet; I went on the starboard deck to find a pod of dolphins swimming along with us, playing in the bow wave, and, yes, swimming under the depth transducer.  They were easy to see in the crystal clear water, even at that depth, and they swim so gracefully.  Vector, frankly, is not fast enough to keep them entertained very long, though.  Louise managed to capture one of them on a short video.


Getting under way, however, was a bit of a challenge.  After bringing in most of the anchor chain and getting the anchor off the bottom and out of the water (a process which we could actually see from start to finish for the very first time), we noticed that one of the bolts on the anchor roller had worked its way out, and there was no way to bring the anchor all the way into the roller without damage.  I managed to retrieve the loose bolt from where it had lodged in the roller carriage, and we dropped the anchor back to the bottom to work the problem.

Try as I might, I could not get the bolt back in place from inside the boat -- I needed one arm on either side of the roller, with an Allen key in each hand.  We don't have a bosun's chair (or, if you prefer, boatswain's chair) aboard Vector, but we have the next best thing, a "sit harness" designed for mountain climbing.  Ultimately I had to hang over the forward bulwarks in the sit harness to do the work, but, once in position, it was an easy fix.  We spent an extra 45 minutes in the anchorage, with the engine running the whole time in case maneuvering was required (we could not really set the anchor with the roller in that condition, either).

Once under way we had a lovely cruise north through Biscayne Bay, marveling at the sheer number of boats anchored near the sand bars around Elliott and Sand Keys.  We turned east at Stiltsville (also part of Biscayne National park), heading through the Biscayne Channel at slack but very low tide.  There were a couple of spots where the depth sounder registered less than eight feet of water, and in rougher conditions the danger of slamming the keel into the bottom in the surf would have us heading north to the Miami ship channel instead.  We made it through without incident, however, and really enjoyed passing so close to the historic stilt structures.

Once in the ocean we set a course for a point just outside the three-mile limit about halfway between Miami and Fort Lauderdale to macerate our waste, another reason for the Sunday morning departure.  That process went fine, and that should have been the end of it.  That said, we'd noticed the aft head had not been flushing properly, which is common when the aft tank is full to the top; we expected the problem to go away once the tanks were empty, but it did not.  Rather than immediately set course for Port Everglades inlet, we opted to continue another mile or two parallel to the three-mile line, to work on it.

After running quite a bit of clean water through it with the help of a plunger, to no avail, we got out the "big guns," an inflatable bladder affair with a water jet at the end which is Headhunter's recommended method for clearing any problems with these heads.  Not wanting to use any more of our precious fresh water, we connected the hose to the salt water washdown pump, knowing we were just going to empty the tank again anyway.

All well and good, except that rather than clearing the problem, the bladder, which came with the boat and, in hindsight, was probably seven or eight years old, exploded, sending salt water everywhere.  And, of course, since it was in contact with the head, it has to be considered contaminated water, too.  Louise ended up spending a half hour cleaning the bathroom with antiseptic wipes while I minded the helm.  And now, in addition to whatever was causing the problem originally (I am suspecting a sticking check valve), we also have numerous rubber bits from the device stuck in there.  I need to extract those before they find their way into the tank, where they can damage the macerator.

At least we still have one working head on the boat, so I can deal with this as time presents itself.  I am thinking that, as long as I have to take it all out and apart anyway (yuck), now might be the time to replace the head with a more reliable model.  So between the anchor roller bolt, the exploding head-cleaner, and the rock-in-anchor experience, what ought to have been a very relaxing and wonderfully scenic cruise was, shall we say, somewhat more stressful than we'd like.  With dolphins, which made up for a lot.

Lest it seem like we have more than our fair share of problems, monitoring the VHF over the holiday weekend puts it all in perspective for us.  We heard two sinkings, several groundings, a collision, a fire, and numerous medical emergencies, including one offshore that was so serious the Coast Guard had to establish radio silence on Channel 16 for the duration, leaving hundreds of boaters with no easy way to contact marinas, fuel docks, and other resources until the silence was lifted.  We also heard the USCG rebuke a number of boaters for filing false distress reports, and, as usual, we personally heard a number of skippers who clearly don't understand how to properly use their radios.

On another positive note, I was very glad to have some familiarity with the local waters here when we came back through the inlet.  Sunday afternoon was a zoo here, as we expected, and, to a great extent, it was amateur hour.  If I had been coming in this inlet for the first time I would have been much less relaxed, and I might even have believed that some of the locals were heading certain directions based on local knowledge, rather than bad seamanship.  I only ended up giving the five-blast whistle signal once all day (approaching Stiltsville), after having to chop the throttle aggressively to avoid a go-fast on full plane (we were the stand-on vessel).  Their response?  They gave us a thumbs-up as they blew by.  Better than a different finger, I suppose.

Yesterday was a bright spot, with one of the best service experiences I have ever had on the boat or, for that matter, on any other vehicle.  That would be the stabilizer repair that Louise captured on camera in an earlier post.

I met Vic, the global manager of service for Naiad, at the Miami Boat Show in February, staffing the Naiad booth along with a couple of his regional managers (and, of course, the sales team).  We had a good conversation about our stabilizers, wherein I learned, for example, that we could increase from 7.5 square foot to 9 square foot fins (the manual says 7.5 is the largest allowed for our system), and that consequences of many actions are far less dire than we've been warned, such as moving the boat with the system disengaged.

I described a noise that our starboard actuator was making that was troubling us, and Vic suggested that, since he had a tech traveling to Stuart often anyway, that he'd have them drop by and look at it.  I'm sure Vic talked to no fewer than several hundred customers or prospects during the course of that show, so I was not too surprised that no tech ever showed up.  Neither did I follow up, as we had our hands full with other projects.

I ran into Vic again in April at the Palm Beach show and reminded him, and he agreed to get someone over, but we left Stuart before that could happen.  The noise persisted through our cruise to Miami, and, knowing Naiad HQ is right here in Fort Lauderdale, I called Vic last week to see if he could send someone out on a service call.  He asked me to call him when we arrived here.

Yesterday morning I gave him a call and he agreed to meet us at the dock at Las Olas Marina, where I knew we could dock on a "day rate."  That rate is 64 cents a foot and is good till 4pm, so for $35 we had a nice dock for the day.  I was expecting to have to get under way for a "sea trial" of sorts, as we only hear the noise under way, but Vic fiddled with the position sensor and knew immediately what the issue was.  Moving a pair of jumpers in the control box (reducing the gain in the feedback loop) was the ultimate solution, and he showed me how to move the jumpers again if need be.  They are on the second of three possible settings, so I have one more notch before some other component needs to be replaced, likely the feedback pot.

All told, Vic was aboard for about an hour, plus travel, and he would not even let me buy him lunch.  On a seven-year-old product, purchased by someone else and passed along to me, this was service above and beyond expectations, and I am adding Naiad to my very short list of vendors whom I trust to stand behind their products.

As long as we had the dock till 4pm (we tied up at 11:30), we decided to stay and take advantage of the good WiFi.  We also put water in and used the pumpout, in the hopes that the vacuum could do what the pressure device did not (it couldn't), and also to ensure that any rubber bits from the exploded bladder that already made it into the tank were extracted rather than left to go through the macerator.  After shoving off right at 4, we came back here, where we once again have at least a usable WiFi signal.

Tonight we'll have dinner with local friends Steve and Harriett, and possibly pick up the scuba regulator if it is ready.  In the morning we will weigh anchor and continue north along the ICW, hoping to anchor for the night somewhere near Boynton Beach on the two-day run to West Palm.  We've booked a slip for Friday in West Palm Beach, as there is someone local to there interested in buying our old inverter and fridge.

Las Olas bridge

Clearance is 24 to 30 feet, depending on tide and whether you're right in the center of the channel or out on the sides.

Big Hatteras needs the bridge open. We can just squeak under with our tallest antennas folded down.

Troubleshooting the stabilizers

Fixing anything requires crawling over, under, or through something else.

The Naiad guy says Vector isn't too bad in this regard.

Photos from Elliott Key and Biscayne Bay

As I promised in my last post, here are some photos from our two-night stay off Elliott Key in Biscayne Bay.  Ironically I have better connectivity here in the Atlantic a couple miles offshore than we did in the bay.

The top photo is a shot of Vector at anchor.  If you look closely you can actually see the vegetation on the bay floor, some ten feet down.  In this photo, taken from the tender, you can see the davit (crane) in its deployed position, with the scooters on deck just forward of it.  Our sun shades are deployed on the aft deck.  And the blue "lump" on the side of the boat, at the aftmost port light (more or less amidships) is an air scoop that helps keep our stateroom cool at anchor.

Here's the campground and "marina" on Elliott Key, taken from the deck of the visitor center:



One enterprising camper, about mid-photo, has set up his tent right in front of his boat and run an extension cord from his generator to run a couple of fans.

This is what's left of "the spite highway":



Developers in the 50's, in an effort to stave off acquisition and protection of the island from environmentalists, bulldozed a right-of-way for a six lane highway the length of the island, and dredged the cuts north and south of the island from the bay to the ocean.  Their hope was to develop a causeway connecting all the upper keys to Key Biscayne to the north, and thus the mainland, as well as Key Largo to the south and thus the rest of the Keys.  They incorporated the northern keys as the city of Islandia.

Plans were halted when the area was purchased by the federal government as part of Biscayne National Monument (now Park).  The path above is all that remains of the highway, and even that would be fully overgrown by now if not for the fact that the park service uses it as a patrol and service road.

Here's the only place on Elliott Key where it is legal to have a ground fire -- the fire ring at the group camp site.  That happens to be on the eastern shore and this is the Atlantic Ocean in the background.  The ocean beach on the Key is unappealing, however; covered in seaweed and with a fair amount of washed-up flotsam.  Beyond the beach is a tidal flat, and you can see some fishermen poling their boat along, motor raised:



Finally, here is a shot of Vector from the visitor center.  We sure look tiny from 3/4 mile away!

Heavy Burden

Anchor won't hold if it's full of rock.

Feeling hot hot hot

Ambient temperature in engine room.

Stiltsville

Florida Keys

We are anchored off Elliott Key, in Biscayne Bay (map), the northernmost of the true Florida Keys (Key Biscayne and Virginia Key, north of here, were formed differently, and Virginia Key was actually part of the barrier island that extended north to Hillsboro before they were separated by a hurricane).  While this is as far south as we will get on this pass, we can at least say now that we made it to the Keys.  Elliott Key is part of Biscayne National Park.

It truly is different here.  For one thing, the water is so clear we can now clearly see the bottom.  We've seen our anchor in use for the first time ever, and we can see it right from the boat along with all 75' or so of chain we have out (we are anchored in 7'-9').  We actually went snorkeling right off our swim step, and used the opportunity to clean off some of the incredible amount of marine growth we accumulated over three weeks in Fort Lauderdale.  Unfortunately, my lungs are not up to the task of cleaning the barnacles off the prop without a supply of compressed air, which we do not yet have.  Despite the growth, the hull looks to be in pretty good shape.

We arrived here after a very pleasant but fairly brief cruise from Key Biscayne yesterday afternoon.  By the time we left, the sand bar west of Hurricane Harbor, famous for crowds of party-loving boaters, was starting to fill up with small boats.  Even a Nordhavn came in to our anchorage with a speedboat in tow, possibly to join the holiday weekend festivities.  We did a quick loop of the anchorage, past the old helipad, before heading out into the bay.

The bay from there to here is mostly wide-open area of 8'-12' depths, plenty of room to engage the autopilot, relax, and take in the scenery.  That included the famed Stiltsville, but mostly involved watching other boats, which is always amusing on a holiday weekend.  Holidays weekends in these latitudes carry the added bonus of many boats adorned with eye candy, but the antics of the skippers often steals the show.  Listening to the accompanying rants on the VHF radio is equally entertaining.

There is one short section of narrow, marked channel north of here, part of the ICW, that crosses Featherbed Bank, and with the clear water I opted to drive from the flybridge for this transit to get a better view of the bottom.  Of course, that's when I discovered that the flybridge autopilot control head is still acting up, and I had to have Louise disengage it from the pilothouse helm so that I could steer manually upstairs.  Looks like I will have to rebuild that head a second time, although we are actively looking for a replacement, since this one is iffy after the water damage.

As we passed the north end of the Key, boats were already congregating on the sandbar there, another party hotspot.  I'm pretty sure this sandbar was featured on a Girls Gone Wild video.  Elliot Key is seven miles long, though, so we knew we'd be very distant from any noise (or bad seamanship) associated with the revelry there.  We opted instead to anchor near mid-island, where the little harbor sits to serve the National Park Service visitor center and the campground.

I say "near," but the harbor itself carries depths of only 2'-3' of water, and water deep enough for Vector does not start until a good half mile from shore.  We stopped about 3/4 of a mile away, dropping the hook in charted 8' depths.  At today's low tide we were just a mere foot off the bottom, which is interesting to look at under water.  Our keel was brushing over the sea growth.

Knowing it was buggy ashore, Louise opted to remain aboard while I took the tender in to the park this morning.  By the time I arrived the campground was half full, and I expect it will be completely so by this evening.  The "marina" just reopened last month, having been destroyed by Hurricane Sandy.  The visitor center on the island is still under re-construction.  The restroom and shower facility was working, though.

When we anchored yesterday afternoon, we were a half mile from the nearest boat, but today is a different story.  There are boats in both directions as far as the eye can see.  Our little camera can not do justice to the scale of it from here.  Last night, however, was extremely quiet, dark, and peaceful, and we tried to take advantage of clear, dark skies to view the first-ever Camelopardalids.  I only managed to spot one meteor the whole night, however, which apparently was a common complaint.

Our schedule would permit us to remain here the rest of the weekend, however, our waste tanks are nearly full, and thus we will weigh anchor tomorrow and head back north.  At least we can look forward to slightly less water traffic tomorrow than there was today or will be on Monday, as many of these holiday-weekend boaters will remain anchored, rafted, or moored throughout the weekend.  The radio has been cackling all day with the Coast Guard and the towboat companies responding to numerous emergencies of one sort or another.

I have several photos I took around the boat and ashore at Elliott Key, but our cell-phone Internet connection here is too tenuous to upload them.  I will try to get them posted in the next few days.

"... I am not a crook ..."

We are anchored off Key Biscayne, Florida, just south of the yacht club and just north of what was once the "winter White House," a private residence owned by Richard M. Nixon when he was President (map).  That unassuming house has long since been razed, replaced, like so many of its neighbors, with an 11,000 square foot mansion.  However, the enormous helicopter pad that the Department of Defense built out into Biscayne Bay to land Army One and Marine One on Nixon's 50-some visits to the property remains, now the private dock of another mansion.  Tied up to the dock is the 125' Dorothy Ann, whose tender alone has more than three times the horsepower of Vector.

Once again, we have the same view across the bay as do these $20M+ homes.  They do, however, have better access to services, which, ironically, is why we opted to drop the hook here just four nautical miles from our last spot at Marine Stadium.  We were hoping to go ashore for some essentials and then dinner at the nearby Yacht Club.

Notwithstanding that we are members of a reciprocal club, and several comments on this anchorage and the marina itself said the club allows reciprocal members to use their dinghy dock, we were unable to land there.  Somewhere between 2013 and 2014 the Key Biscayne Yacht Club dropped off our list of reciprocal clubs, and I called the dockmaster to check.  He sounded like he would be more than happy to sell us a slip, but when I asked to used the dinghy dock he literally said "no, we want to make some money."

We were hoping to have dinner at the club, but we wanted to go ashore first, and find out what the dress code and billing procedure would entail.  I'm sure dinner at the club would have been a nice bit of revenue for them, but after the static about the dinghy dock, I hung up the phone and did not even ask to speak to the dining room.  At some point I will update the anchorage and marina listings to warn folks that use of the dinghy dock is not a reciprocal benefit that this club offers.

The thing we really needed to pick up in town was some salad -- our fridge managed to freeze one of our bags and we had to throw it out.  We'll just make do with no fresh veggies for the next few days, so it will be just like cruising the Bahamas.

In a short while we will weigh anchor and head south, with no particular destination in mind.  I'd like to see Elliott Key, but the holiday weekend may make that a bad choice.  It's a really big bay, though, and I'm sure we'll find a beautiful spot for tonight.

A plan emerges

We are anchored at the Miami Marine Stadium, on Virginia Key (map).  We've anchored here before, on our first training cruise, so it is somewhat familiar territory.  We would not otherwise have stopped here, being only a few miles from where we started yesterday in Miami Beach, but we needed to get gasoline for our tender at the nearby Rickenbacker Marina (named for the causeway connecting Virginia Key to the mainland, in turn named after the famous aviator).  There were no fuel docks anywhere near our last digs, and we won't come across any for the next several days, either.

Speaking of our last digs, we went to the Lido restaurant at The Standard hotel on Belle Isle for dinner Tuesday night.  We shared four appetizers between us (no entrees) and had one drink apiece and the tab was nearly a C-note.  The food was OK but definitely not worth that kind of money -- typical for Miami Beach.  We went there simply because they had their own dock.  Only after tying up did we learn that it's $1.50 per foot to dock just to eat at the restaurant (although, apparently, pool passes are also available).  We told them our tender was ten feet, but no charge showed up on the bill and we were not inclined to point out the oversight.  I remember eating at the rooftop pool bar at The Standard in downtown LA years ago and things were similarly spendy.

Yesterday we weighed anchor for the short cruise here, which involved one bridge opening (at the Venetian Causeway), crossing the main ship channel, and transiting the south ship channel almost to the mouth of the Miami River.  Traversing a major port like this is always interesting to us, and we enjoyed seeing the bustling port operations as we glided over the gorgeous blue waters.  We did have to thread our way around a dredge that was working the main channel.

After we dropped the hook here we splashed the tender for the aforementioned gas run.  While we were out and about, we actually had to dodge out of the way as a seaplane came in for a landing -- it landed perhaps a hundred yards from us.  We also scoped out the two restaurants ashore that we can reach from here, the Rusty Pelican and Whiskey Joe's.  Neither called to us strongly enough to keep us here another night.


That same seaplane taking off, as seen from our aft deck this morning.

As Louise has already mentioned, the view of the Miami skyline is spectacular from here, and the city lights at night are a particular attraction.  Being here only a short time, we anchored close to the western end of the lagoon, just east of the little palm-covered island at the entrance, and right at sunset two other boats came and anchored right next to us just for the evening view.  One was quite large, a 60-something Hampton with seven or eight folks aboard.  Both boats left later in the evening, and we again had this end of the stadium to ourselves.

Shortly after those boats anchored, a group of three teens or early 20-somethings left the palm island, where they had spent a couple of hours, in a ratty canoe.  They were horsing around and managed to capsize the canoe halfway between us and the shore.  They asked for help, but our tender was on deck by this time, and before I could get it in the water they had managed to swim ashore dragging the flooded canoe with them.

This place is actually part of the city of Miami, but it might as well be a hundred miles away.  There are no services here except for the aforementioned marina and pair of restaurants, with the bulk of Virginia Key being covered in mangrove forest.  The biggest thing on the island is the wastewater treatment plant, but there is also the Miami Seaquarium and both a university outpost as well as a marine vocational high school.  A public beach fronts the ocean, once the only beach in the county accessible to people of color. The marine stadium itself has been condemned for years, with the lagoon now serving mostly as a popular anchorage as well as a practice ground for rowing, sailing, and water skiing.

Until this morning we had been ruminating about exactly where we would head next.  Having ruled out the Bahamas for the short term, on account of our ailing cat George, we'd been thinking about heading further south, perhaps to the Keys.  In the interim, however, the calendar has caught up to us.

We want to be in New York in August, and that's a trip from here of at least two months.  If we are not headed north by mid-June, we won't make it.  We want to start sooner rather than later, so that we are not feeling schedule pressure along the way.  A good stake in the sand is to plan to actually have the boat in Palm Beach for my next eye doctor appointment there, scheduled for June 3rd.

That still gives us ten days to cruise south, but even the accessible parts of Key Largo are a hundred miles from here, a two day run each way down the Hawk Channel with only one reasonable anchorage in the middle.  Blasting 200 miles round trip (and burning 125 gallons of diesel at $3.50 per gallon) just to spend five days in Key Largo does not appeal to us, and so we've decided instead to just cruise Biscayne Bay for a few more days before heading back north.

Once we are ready will will head outside via the Biscayne Channel and make our first hop back to Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale), where we should arrive just at the end of the holiday weekend.  We'll take care of a couple of errands there before continuing north up the ICW, a two-day or so run to Palm Beach along a section we have not yet done.  We'll spend a day or two there while I take care of what I hope is my last eye appointment for several more months.

From Palm Beach we will hop back up to Stuart and spend a few days with our friends, who are still there working on commissioning their new boat.  We'll take care of some more errands and get some provisioning done for the trip north.

From Stuart we will hustle back up the east coast, mostly on the outside.  We've done most of the passable inlets along this route already, so we will have a bit more confidence this time.  When we arrive at Hampton Roads we will make a decision about taking the inside route up Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, or continuing outside in the North Atlantic to New Jersey.  The New Jersey ICW is too shallow for us, but I expect we can make stops in Atlantic City and Manasquan before heading to New York Harbor.

Depending on when we arrive there, we'll cruise up the Hudson as far as time permits before heading east through New York City and into Long Island Sound.  From there the picture gets fuzzy, but we will work our way back south into the Chesapeake in September, perhaps visiting Washington, DC befor stopping back at the yard in Deltaville for some follow-up work.

At least, that's the plan right now.  Boats have a way of making their own plans, though, so we shall remain flexible.

Big city views

Miami is so close and so urban yet we are in calm, quiet waters surrounded by empty land. We could never have had this experience in the bus.

Miami ship channel

Cruising past the big boys. I love to watch the container ships loading and unloading. Fascinating!

Boating glamour

Scraping barnacles.

Fleet of Resentment

This home owner didn't want any $#%& cruisers anchored in his line of sight so he purchased 20 ratty little dismasted sail boats to block the space.

Glad I don't have to live inside his angry, angry brain.

Jet feet!

Hard to capture on video because he was just learning and crashed quite a bit.  Looks difficult and fun! http://youtu.be/P2ap5GLx1CE

Miami Beach, baby

We are anchored in Biscayne Bay, just west of the southernmost "Sunset" island, north of the Venetian Causeway (map).  This part of Biscayne Bay seems hardly part of the bay at all, hemmed in on three sides by man-made "dredge spoil" islands.  The large, skinny island to our north supports only the Julia Tuttle (I-195) causeway, whereas the Venetian Islands to our south and the Sunset Islands to our east are chock-full of very expensive homes, condos, and resorts. "Inside" (no water frontage) properties start around $2M, and waterfront homes at $10M or so, with the sky as the limit.

We have the same multi-million-dollar view for free, with pale green water and the glimmering lights of the Miami skyline in the evening.  There are also a fair number of spots to land the dinghy nearby, so we also have access to the same restaurants and shopping opportunities.  The Sunset Harbor Yacht Club is nearby, should we need a dock at $4 per foot, plus electricity.  I'm pretty sure I can run the generator and water-maker full-time, if need be, and still not spend $225 a day.  Of course, that rate includes access to the pool...

We arrived yesterday afternoon, after a very pleasant cruise from Hollywood.  Our plan, however, had actually been to come down Sunday, local water traffic notwithstanding (we often stay put on the weekends just to avoid it).  Sunday morning I transferred fuel to the day tank, fired up all the electronics, and walked through most of the pre-departure checklist before a Coast Guard radio announcement stopped us in our tracks.  It seems the Broad Causeway bascule bridge was stuck in the closed position, with no prognosis for repair.

It took us a while to dig up an actual phone number for the bridge tender, and a call revealed in somewhat broken English that the bridge had suffered some kind of electrical failure around 2:30 in the morning, and that they were working on it and hoped to have it operational sometime later in the day.  I called back roughly every hour and a half or so, but the bridge was not operational until nearly 3pm, by which time we decided it was really too late to get under way.  We had talked throughout the day about weighing anchor and moving a few miles south, closer to the stuck bridge, but decided it was really not worth it and we just stayed put another night.

While we were in Hollywood we ended up trying two of the waterfront restaurants across the ICW:  GG's, a white tablecloth affair, and Capone's Flicker Lite, a local dive with decent grub.  Both establishments had dockage more suitable for vessels much larger than our tender, and in each case we had to pull up to the lone ladder extending down to the waterline; at high tide we could well have tied Vector up.  We used the opportunity to walk along the beach boardwalk and check out the local convenience store which also fronts the ICW.

Saturday we took a somewhat longer dinghy ride to Walmart in Hallandale Beach.  Long-time readers may remember that we once parked the bus at this store, before the city put a stop to that practice.  We ended up landing the dinghy west of the store, in a canal that now mostly houses a brand new city marina.  The nearly empty marina would not let us tie up, even for a fee, so we tied to a fence next to an empty lot.  In hindsight it would have been quicker and easier to tie to the ICW wall just east of the store.  We also used the opportunity to sound out the narrow canal entrance to Golden Isles Lake.  That was a much more protected anchorage, with just one boat when we looked, but we did not want to risk transiting the unknown canal depths when we arrived Thursday.  It turned out to be no problem for Vector, and we'll keep this nice anchorage in mind for our next visit.

Yesterday morning we weighed anchor around 10am for the four hour cruise to Miami Beach.  We left on a rising tide, which put the current against us most of the way to Haulover Inlet.  That put us at the tenuous Broad Causeway bridge too late for one opening, and too early for the next.  Now with considerable current behind me, I had to circle several times in the narrow fairway while we waited, and then squeak the boat through a very narrow opening, as the east bascule span remained closed for maintenance.  We made it without further drama.  This area, by the way, had the clearest water we've seen in quite some time, an aqua blue with a view of the shallower underwater features.

South of Broad Causeway there is a choice of routes.  The ICW runs down the western side of the bay, but there is also a route down the eastern edge, along the north Miami Beach shoreline.  We opted to stay on the ICW, but, in hindsight, the eastern route would have been more interesting.  We had planned to cut back across north of the Tuttle Causeway, in the 20'+ depths of the dredge line that was used to form it.  But there was some sort of barge operation with hundreds of yards of what looked like spill booms out, and we were concerned we could not get through, so instead we proceeded past the causeway and turned west just north of the Venetian Islands.  Fortunately it was high tide at this point, so the 7' depths at points along this route were much less of a concern.

I had my sights set on an anchorage just south of here, protected nearly all the way around, but it was chock-a-block full of sailboats.  Several sported no mast at all, and it would appear that many of these boats are full-time residents.  A handful might fit the category of "unsightly," which might explain why a resident in a high-end home along Sunset Lake, just east of here, has anchored his own fleet of three dozen plastic day-sailers across the entire lake in front of his home, effectively preventing anyone else from anchoring there.

We tied up last night at the spiffy new dinghy dock on the Collins canal across from the Publix store, had a nice dinner at the casual Masters Italian Restaurant, and stocked up on some much-need fresh food at the Publix.  Tonight we will dinghy over to the Standard Hotel on Belle Isle for dinner, and I expect tomorrow we will continue south, across the ship channel into even more beautiful water in the more southern portion of the bay.

Miami skyline

Green

Some of the beautiful water colors in Biscayne Bay.

Today's repair project

Simrad AP22 auto pilot failed this morning. Plastic pins inside that hold the buttons in place are breaking due to age and letting water leak in. This unit from the fly bridge was full of water but seems to be working fine now that Sean disassembled it and dried it out.

For Sale: marine/RV fridge and marine/RV inverter/charger

Regular readers looking for status updates can simply skip this post.  If, on the other hand, you are in the market for a refrigerator/freezer or an inverter/charger for your boat or RV, please read on.

Fridge

This is a NovaKool RFU-8000 two-door refrigerator/freezer.  It came to us with the boat, and is the same age, new in 2003.  It has been working fine, and, at 6.8 cubic feet total capacity, it has been just right for us to go about two weeks between major provisioning stops.  That said, it is just a tad too small for extended trips such as we are contemplating to the Bahamas and beyond, and we'd like something larger.  We have room in the same cabinet for a ten cubic foot model.  (Long-time readers will remember that we removed a deck-mounted refrigerator/freezer from our aft deck, to make more room there, which had served this purpose for the previous owner.)

Manufacturer's stock photo.

These NovaKool units use the high-efficiency low-voltage (12 or 24 volts) DC compressor made by Danfoss.  We have one of these systems on the bus as well, and they simply can not be beat for efficient, long-term living on batteries alone.  This particular unit has a built-in AC/DC converter, so that it runs from the AC system instead when on shore or generator power, thus leaving more charger capacity available to recharge the batteries.

The fridge and bottom-mounted freezer have separate doors with latching handles, reversible hinges, and an impact-resistant black finish.  The unit is flange-mounted and intended for mounting in cabinetry, rather than free-standing.  I have added an LED to the flange that will blink if there is any kind of problem with the compressor (such as low battery voltage).  Dimensions and specifications can be found here on NovaKool's web site.

These sold for over $2,000 new (this model is discontinued, but the new, identically-sized RFU6800 is selling, discounted, around $1,400 now).  I'd like to get $299 for it, but will entertain all offers.  Due to the size and construction, I can not ship this, so I am selling it as "local pickup only" -- for now, that means the Miami, FL area where we are currently cruising.  You are welcome to have a third-party company such as U-Ship pick it up on your behalf.

Ours, as installed.

The fridge is still in service.  The logistics of living on a boat mean that I can't purchase and board the replacement until this one is sold and off the boat.  Once I have cash in hand I will remove it, dock the boat someplace convenient, and off-load it.  We'll live with an ice chest for a few days until we have the replacement unit aboard and I can enlarge the cabinet for it.

Inverter/charger

This is a working Heart (now Xantrex) Freedom Marine 30 inverter/charger, recently removed from service as part of an electrical system upgrade.

Boxed and ready to go.

This is a 3000-watt, 12-volt, MSW inverter with 140-amp, 12-volt (nominal) battery charger and two "Echo-charge" outputs for charging starting or other auxiliary batteries.  Full specifications can be found here:

http://www.xantrex.com/documents/Discontinued-Products/DataSheet/DS20080725_Freedom%20Marine.pdf

The inverter and charger are both operational, however the charging circuit occasionally quits, a well-known issue with this model which involves a sticking relay on the charge board.  If I were going to keep this unit, I would replace that relay, but since I was planning an upgrade from 12 volts to 24 volts anyway, I simply tapped on the charge board to unstick the relay whenever it quit.

Included with the unit is a battery temperature sensor and instruction manual.

Used examples of this model in good condition typically sell for $800-$1000.  In consideration of the sticky relay, I'd like to get $400 for it, which leaves plenty to have the relay replace professionally if need be, but again I will entertain all offers.  That's FOB wherever I am, currently Miami, FL. The unit weighs 50 lbs or so, but I am happy to hand it to UPS at buyer's expense.

Remote in operation during bench test.

I also have the remote control panel, a separate accessory, for this model, asking an additional $50.

If you are interested in either of these, call, text, or email me, or leave a comment here.  Our contact information is on the "Who We Are" page linked in the sidebar.

And those Hollywood nights...

We are anchored in South Lake, one of the "Hollywood Lakes" in Hollywood, Florida (map).  We dropped the hook here around 2pm yesterday, after a pleasant cruise from the New River docks.  We have had the entire lake to ourselves since we arrived.

This location is vaguely familiar to us, because we spent the first night of our very first trawler training cruise at the twin North Lake back in 2009.  We passed North Lake on our way here, and there were three boats anchored there; unfortunately, that lake is too shallow for Vector.  That cruise departed from (and returned to) the Dania Beach marina, which we also passed on our way here, and so we will be retracing our steps for this next stretch of the waterway, all the way down to Biscayne Bay.  I expect we will be in some of the same anchorages, as well, although Vector will not fit in as many places as that 40' sundeck trawler could (including its home marina, due to an 18' fixed bridge).

After leaving Port Everglades (the majority of which is actually in Hollywood, not Fort Lauderdale), we had to transit three drawbridges in succession to arrive here.  Each operates on a fixed schedule, and with several knots of current against us, I had to run at a much higher RPM than normal to make the openings.  Missing an opening by a few minutes means needing to station-keep for nearly half an hour waiting for the next one.  At one point I had it cranked up to 2,200 rpm, which is as fast as we ever go, just to make a little over five knots.

We took on 300 gallons of fuel yesterday, moving over to the designated fueling slip at the 10am slack.  The Anchor Petroleum truck pulled up just as we did, and the whole process took about a half hour or so, with me down in the engine room most of the time, flipping valves.  We ended up putting 80 gallons or so in each wing tank with the remainder topping up the belly tank, which means we have about 950 gallons on board.  That should be plenty for the remainder of our cruising here in Florida and will likely get us all the way back to Virginia, which is the last place we fueled, a full six months ago.

We'll stay right here at least another night.  It's a very nice anchorage -- quiet, and far enough away from the ICW proper that we can't feel the wakes.  The "keyhole" portion of the lake itself, including where we are anchored, is a no-wake zone.  The only traffic we've seen here is a trio of eight-woman skulls accompanied by a pair of tiny skiffs with anemic outboards, I would guess a university or club crew team who routinely practices here.

There are a handful of waterfront restaurants across the ICW from North Lake.  At least one has music late into the evening, we remember from our training cruise -- another reason why this anchorage is more pleasant than North Lake.  We'll probably splash the tender and head over to one of them for dinner this evening.

Incidentally, Hollywood is named after the more famous city in California, and these lakes were dredged by the founder of the city back in the 20s, using the spoils to make dry land for the surrounding homes.  It's had its ups and downs, but has enjoyed a great resurgence in the last quarter-century.  Thus we find ourselves again surrounded by million-dollar waterfront homes.  These, too, have docks, but there are no megayachts in this lake as there were in the canals of Fort Lauderdale.  The chart says the square part of the lake is only four feet deep, but we had reliable information that this is wildly inaccurate, and, in fact, it was 20'-30' deep until we reached the slot of the keyhole, where 13' depths allowed us to anchor on just 100' of chain.

We have weather moving in -- last night we had a gullywasher that cleaned all the salt off the parts of the boat we could not rinse while we were at the dock.  While things don't get all that rough in the ICW, we'll probably stay right here until it has passed completely, then continue south, hitting at least one more anchorage before Biscayne Bay and Miami itself.  Now that Fort Lauderdale, with its host of errands there, is behind us, I will use the time at anchor to get a few things done around the boat and on-line.

Riding our bow wave

Three dolphins joined us for several minutes, having a lazy ride up front. It's really a treat to be so close to these beautiful animals.

Just like downtown

We are safely tied up at the Fort Lauderdale Downtown City Docks (map).  The docks line both sides of the river for several blocks and across three bascule bridges; I requested a spot east of the first bridge so we would not have to contend with any openings.  We're on the north bank, a short walk from the shops and restaurants of Las Olas street.  I spun the boat around for a port-side tie and we put a scooter on the ground shortly after arriving.  Louise has already posted a few photos of our new digs.

En route from the anchorage yesterday we first stopped at our old friend, the Las Olas Marina, to use their pumpout.  All the T-heads were taken so I had to actually maneuver back into an inside slip first, but we went bow-in so it was fairly straightforward.  As a city facility, the pumpout is actually available free of charge to the public, but they don't have an easy-access dock for it.  The pumpouts here at the Downtown Docks are on the south bank, and there was not enough depth for us there when we arrived at low tide.

This is a great spot, with easy access to downtown, a Publix grocery store, and several transit options.  The price is right, too (for Fort Lauderdale, anyway), at about $1.40 a foot after discounts, including power, for a boat our size.  Next time we come through we might spend a few nights here and take in some of the local flavor.

On this visit our real objective was to get fuel and water, charge our batteries, and get me to Palm Beach for my eye doctor appointment today.  As I type, I am sitting on the Tri-Rail train heading north, after a free shuttle ride from downtown, just a block from our slip.  Louise will be joining me in Palm Beach on a later train, and Martin and Steph are driving down from Stuart to meet us for dinner.

We took two nights at the dock, and tomorrow morning we will move the boat a few hundred feet downriver to the designated fueling area on the south bank.  The fuel truck will meet us there to supply us with 300 gallons of diesel.  The price when I spoke to them yesterday was $3.45 per gallon, plus 6% sales tax -- the best I found anywhere from Fort Lauderdale to Miami.  We still have about 500 gallons aboard, but finding a place to get a truck to the boat is challenging so we're fueling now while we have the opportunity.

Last night we walked across the river to the Downtowner Saloon and ate outside, right on the water.  It's a real casual joint popular with the locals, a far cry from the uber-trendy places along Las Olas.  We both had burgers almost too large to finish.  We walked along the south bank for a ways on our way back -- lots of 90-130' yachts tied up along that stretch.

This morning we took advantage of having wheels to pick up a new BCD for Louise along with some dive weights, and once we get the regulator I just bought serviced, we'll have everything we need to go diving except the tanks.  We'll try to get in an instructional refresher dive in the next few weeks, so we will be ready to dive with our friends when they get underway (they have extra tanks and a compressor to fill them).  Louise is doing the grocery shopping now while the scooter is still on the ground.

After we fuel up tomorrow we will head south from Fort Lauderdale along the ICW.  I'm not sure how far we will get, which will depend in part on how long fueling takes.  We will most likely be anchored at one of the handful of spots on the way to Miami.

An odd angle

View of Vector from the 3rd Avenue bridge. In order to get the dinghy to sit flat with room to squeeze by to access the scooters, the chocks have to be slightly skewed. I guess if it's only noticeable from above like this, a bit of catty wampus is acceptable.

Storm clouds

Pink sky at night...

New digs on the New River

Kind of a different vibe.

Final morning in anchorage

This has been a great spot and we'll be back.

Cleaning the dinghy

Sean scrapes the hull.

Quiet anchorage

Before the weekend water skiing crowd arrives.

Sunday morning

Coffee and cat.

I'm experimenting with sending photos directly to the blog from my phone. Hopefully this will increase the picture to word ratio here.

- Louise