Thwarted.

We are underway northbound in the ICW, having left the Titusville Municipal Marina this morning, where we docked for a full week so that we could fly to the wedding of our friends Tim and Crisálida in the Dominican Republic. I am sad to report that we missed the wedding, and therein lies a tale. The last time I felt this way was 2008, when we traveled to DC to attend an historic presidential inauguration, tickets in hand, but were stopped cold by the Purple Tunnel of Doom (Google it; our own story is here).

There we are, at Table 2. Well, me and my husband Louis, maybe. Fortunately this and many other photos and videos were posted online afterwards, and we even got to watch the ceremony as it was livestreamed. Congratulations, Crisálida and Tim. Photo: Tim Boehmer

Today's run is mostly a long, straight slog through the Mosquito Lagoon, which affords me the opportunity to write sporadically. I have much to report, so I will start at the beginning, two weeks ago when we were still anchored in Palm Beach.

Dinner on the deck at Chucks, where Vector dominates the view. We were disappointed happy hour ended at 5, even though the web site said 6.

Tuesday morning I had hoped to run ashore in West Palm for bagels at the new shop that has opened since our last visit. But I was still feeling pretty crummy with the remains of a head cold, and instead we just decked the tender. We weighed anchor at the end of the ebb for a fair tide part of the way to Hobe Sound. The ICW at Jupiter Inlet was recently dredged and we had an easy run all the way to Conch Bar, where we dropped the hook (map) so we could dinghy to Tiki 52 for dinner, which was pretty good. They seated us out of the line of fire of the live music, which was pretty mellow anyway.

These two sailboats were anchored near us. Fellow mariners will recognize that neither is legally lit. We see this kind of thing all the time in Florida.

Wednesday I woke up feeling crummy yet again, and we made the five-hour run to Fort Pierce with mostly fair tide. We dropped the hook on the north side of Causeway Island, just off the ship channel. Our first attempt had us in a weird eddy and we moved to our usual spot (map). We tendered over to Chuck's, at their very shallow and somewhat beat-up dock, for dinner. We found the food overpriced and just OK, buy hey, they have a dock. We stretched our legs a bit after dinner.

Eau Gallie Yacht Clubs was replanting their seasonal flower bed while we were there.

In the morning we weighed anchor to make the 0900 opening of the Fort Pierce North Bridge. The replacement high bridge is very nearly complete and I expect this was our last ever opening for this drawbridge. Today was a long day's run to the Eau Gallie Yacht Club in Indian Harbour Beach, where we were tied up by 4:30 (map). We would have loved to have stopped in Vero Beach to connect with our friends there, but with a lingering head cold that was not a good idea.

Cheers from Pub Americana, Cocoa Village.

We really like this club and their casual poolside bistro, but we really needed a walk, and a quick stop at Publix, and so on this occasion we went instead to long-time favorite PizzaVola. After dinner we strolled over to the nearby massage joint and got a half hour each of much-needed back and neck work before swinging by Publix on our way back. One might question the wisdom of schlepping a backpack full of beer and groceries a half mile right after a massage, but such is the nature of cruising errands.

Vector in Cocoa. We're a lot closer this time, just outside the cable area.

The yacht club is just a day's run from Titusville, and we were now two days early, which is how we like it. A good thing, because I was still coughing and congested Friday morning, marking an unusual full week since I had come down with this crud. We made it a leisurely morning, and I walked down to Ross to see if I could find better shoes for the wedding (no dice), and then spent a half hour in the pool before we dropped lines.

I ran into this classic car rally strolling around town.

We made it a very short day to Cocoa, where we dropped the hook in a familiar spot (map). At dinner time we tendered ashore, tied to the seawall (it seems clear they will never rebuild the dinghy dock), and walked over to Pub Americana for dinner. The town was pretty quiet, unlike our last visit during the holiday boat parade.

It was quite warm, and this nice waterfront splash park was very popular.

Just three hours from Titusville, and with nothing in between, we opted to just spend a second night right there in Cocoa. I felt mostly recovered from my cold, albeit with a lingering cough, but I was grateful for a full day off. In hindsight, I should maybe have taken some time to post here, but instead I puttered around the house in the morning, and went for my longest walk since coming down with the crud in the afternoon. We had dinner at Bugnutty Brewing, a small-batch craft house where the house beers were quite good.

Bugnutty Brewing. Uno at every table.

Sunday was the start of our marina reservation, and with a very calm day, we stopped the dinghy mid-lift so I could scrape some barnacles we had accumulated in the Lake Worth Lagoon before setting it on deck. As I was making my log entry and starting the engine to get underway, we noted that we had not run the generator since arriving, for the first time ever for a two-night stay. I'll need to gather some figures and do a post here on how our new solar is working out, now that we have some actual experience.

Also at Bugnutty. I decided that pee is fungible; I left some that I bought elsewhere, but took some of what I bought with me.

Adverse current made it a full three hour cruise to Titusville, but it was nearly dead calm when we arrived at 2pm, making it easy to back into our slip (map). The short finger pier had a weird arrangement of fat pilings with vertical cleats, and while leaning over the gunwale to catch the midships piling and cleat, Louise let out a yelp. Evidently she pulled a muscle or maybe even bruised a rib, and now a full week later she is still in a great deal of pain and with some limited mobility.

This matching railing section welded in place where the dinghy dock ramp used to be speaks volumes about the future of the dinghy dock.

The main engine oil was due for change, which is best done with the engine still warm, and the marina had an oil recycling station. So after giving the engine room an hour or so to cool down to something less hellish, I went down and changed the oil and filter. I cleaned things up just enough to be able to start up in an emergency, leaving most of the cleanup for the next day.

Ol' cap'n Ed is spinning in his grave. His transient dock has now been closed longer than it was open.

The calm had it excessively hot outside, and we opted to leave the scooters on deck until the cool of the evening. The closest joint in walking distance, ironically, is Pier 220 out on the causeway, where we dine pretty much every time we anchor here. But the food is good and they always have a few beers on tap. After dinner we offloaded the scooters, tricky with a very narrow finger pier encroached upon by big pilings. We knew it would be way too windy to want to offload them Monday.

Sunrise over Cocoa Beach and Merritt Island. I was up before dawn to catch the Blue Origin New Glenn launch.

A week at this marina was less expensive than the five days we actually needed, and we were very glad to have a full extra day to settle in and get things done before our flight Tuesday morning. With a full week booked, we had our mail forwarded here and we both had numerous Amazon and other orders en route to the marina, a good address for deliveries. Monday was mail call, and I also cleaned up the engine room and recycled the used oil and filters. I deployed our mylar bird deterrents for our absence, and we rode out to Walgreens, where I needed to pick up a script before we left. We ate at Kelsey's Pizzeria right next door, which was quite good. We had our bags packed and the boat all secured before we turned in early for an early morning flight.

I only saw the actual rocket, with its distinctive methane exhaust, for a couple of seconds in binoculars. This trail was the best photo I could capture. The launch was a success but a downstream failure left the payload in the wrong orbit and it will be destroyed.

Tuesday was the big day, and we were up early enough to have a full cup of coffee in us before our pre-scheduled Uber pickup. I opened the Uber app ten minutes before pickup, and was relieved to see it predicting arrival at the Orlando airport seven minutes ahead of schedule, although with no driver yet assigned. We buttoned everything up, I put on my sport coat, and we started walking down the dock toward the pickup point at the marina office.

Vector tucked in at Titusville Marina.

We were almost to the end of the dock when my phone buzzed, just two minutes from the scheduled pickup time. It was Uber, telling me our ride was canceled. The screen said "we're sorry to have let you down" or something like that; in hindsight I am sorry I did not take a screen shot, but frankly, I was just stunned. We kept walking toward the office.

This unloved aluminum 100-footer at the end of our dock was rocking and rolling all Monday in the 25kt winds. That explains the 16 huge fenders, and even so we could see dents in the hull matching the dock pilings.

I immediately pulled up Lyft, which tried valiantly for about 12 minutes to find us a ride (stand by, we're working on it). Louise, meanwhile, pulled Uber up on her phone, but all the options they were giving her were 40 minutes out. After Lyft finally gave up and declined, I went back to Uber on my phone, and this time they said we could have a driver in 15 minutes. For $250, vs. the $80 I had pre-booked. With no other options I clicked through; there are no taxi or limo services in Titusville open at 4:30am.

Space Shuttle monument, Space View Park.

The arrival time kept getting later, and as the minutes ticked away we did the math: The TSA line at 5:30, our planned arrival, is about ten minutes, but by 6:15 it's a half hour, and even doing the OJ Simpson (if it's even politically correct to still say that, or if any of our readers remember it), there was no way we were going to make the gate before they closed the aircraft door. I clicked "cancel" on the $250 Uber ride just two minutes before his arrival. Dejected and frustrated, we walked back to the boat.

Apollo Monument.

I spent the next fifteen minutes on the phone with American Airlines. Our tickets were non-refundable, but fully changeable, and with the wedding not until Wednesday evening I held out a glimmer of hope. However, there is only one daily flight from Miami to Santiago de los Caballeros, and Wednesday's flight was already sold out. The agent at the American call center went out of her way to explore all the options, but there was just no way to get there by Wednesday evening. Reluctantly, I asked her to cancel our reservations, and each of us now has a flight credit that we have to use within a year.

Gemini Monument, Gemini Park.

I broke the news to our friends, who were very understanding and supportive. And then I went and ranted about it on social media. There's really nothing else I could do; Uber's TOS does not allow any remedy. Call it a hard lesson learned: the kinds of places that are far enough from major metro areas to have decent marina rates may also be far enough that the gig economy does not function well. We've pre-booked Uber rides for early morning flights maybe a dozen times with no issues, most recently in Lantana and Lake Worth beach, and we'd become complacent. For this occasion, with no backup flight options and a 45-minute ride from the boonies, I should have booked an actual limo service.

Mercury Monument.

And there we were, at 5:30am, looking at another five nights in Titusville. We likely could have converted our stay to the two nights we'd already spent, and continued moving along. But it would not have saved a lot of money, and we still had packages scheduled to arrive throughout the week from Amazon and other vendors. We just chalked it up to first-world yacht problems and girded ourselves for a week at the Titusville Marina. At least we already had the scooters on the ground.

Hardware Store Brewing.

We did made good use of the next five days, at least. I went and visited with friends Bob and Ann on their sailboat. And one of my Amazon deliveries contained the parts I needed to replace the failed check valve in the fuel transfer system, and having them in hand let me see they were inadequate (Amazon plumbing parts are always a crap shoot) in plenty of time to re-order what I needed from McMaster-Carr. The check valve is now replaced, and I managed to do it with a minimal amount of diesel spilled.

New check valve in place.

Another Amazon purchase was a new vacuum gauge for the generator fuel filter, but after I got the old one out I was able to get it working again and so I just re-installed it. The new one is on its way back. A new battery arrived for the crane scale and that's now working again (I had to jury-rig it to weigh our fire bottle); this was an item that Amazon would not deliver to a locker and so we needed a marina or similar address.

Breakfast of champions. We were using the box for storage but it outlived its usefulness and I had to snap this photo on its way to recycling.

I replaced all the mild steel screws on our otherwise weatherproof aluminum deck chairs with stainless items, and in a last-minute scramble, the cheap junk we've been using for a monitor on the chart computer quit entirely two days before our planned departure, and I was able to get a replacement overnight and installed it yesterday. It was a different "brand" but turned out to be entirely identical to the one it replaced. At least I can read it with my polarized glasses on.

There's not much to this monitor, and certainly nothing repairable inside.

I ordered a travel router so that we can use our Starlink, which right now is integrated into the very chatty boat-wide network, on the pay-per-GB offshore plan without every device in the boat sending traffic over it and running up the bill. This was on my "next offshore trip" shopping list, but it moved up due to the chaos in the router market caused by the current administration's ban on foreign-made routers. I spent some time setting that up and testing it with our gear.

Playalinda Beach with Launch Complex 39B in the background. One of the least crowded but nicest beaches in the state.

Lots of minor projects and general boat maintenance rounded out the list. I also rode over to the urgent care one morning, when my persistent cough had cross the two-week mark. While it had seemed to me to be an endless follow-on from the crud I got on the plane ride to Newark, the clinic felt it was likely allergies, and they prescribed some meds to get me back on course.

"I didn't bring a suit" is no excuse. Kudos to the NPS.

On the dining front we had our post-cancellation consolation dinner at long-time favorite El Leoncito, and we tried the Hardware Store Brewery, with lots of nice drafts but basically just cold sandwiches on the dinner menu, located in a former hardware store right downtown. We also tried upscale Italian venue Vine & Olive, which was decent, although next time we will sit in the more pleasant bar area, and last night we ended up right back at Pier 220 when friends Erin & Chris aboard Barefeet, fresh from the Bahamas, came through town and dropped the hook. We all had a mad scramble to beat some incoming rain after dinner.

All the parking areas have these nice access boardwalks. It's inside a national park so you need a pass or to pay the entrance fee.

I tried to walk a little each day, and yesterday, with all the projects behind me and feeling a little better, I rode my scooter out past the Kennedy Space Center to Playalinda Beach within the Canaveral National Seashore. On my way back I stopped off at Hardware Store Brewery to fill my growler before returning home to board the scooters.

The brew pub is a real locals hangout, and locals here are in the rocket business. This model of the Space Launch System (new moon rocket) is prominent.

Yesterday we also had a visit from the pump-out boat, and I recommissioned the fuel transfer system after having given the pipe dope plenty of time to cure. By the end of the evening we had the boat in seaworthy trim and we were all set to get underway this morning.

I snapped this so I could have a look at the rebuilt dock in New Smyrna Beach later when I was not driving. I inadvertently captured the incoming storm that was about to unleash on the weekend crowd.

Update: We are anchored in a familiar spot in Inlet Harbor, near the Ponce de Leon inlet (map). I had to stop typing as we got closer to New Smyrna Beach and the associated weekend traffic. We had a fair current for the last third of the Mosquito Lagoon, and by pushing a little we were able to make the 2pm opening of the George Musson Bridge, just as the heavens opened and the wind picked up to 25 knots. The sudden (but not unexpected) storm had dozens of small boats racing past us for cover, having been out enjoying the sandbars or maybe the offshore fishing. When we passed the boat ramp a short time later there were a dozen boats waiting for the ramp.

These die-hards were still on the sand bar when we dropped the hook. They're the smart ones, who knew if they bailed that they would not make it back before the storm passed.

We arrived to find Barefeet already here, and we made plans to meet Erin and Chris ashore for dinner at Off The Hook, which has a courtesy dock. Dinner was very good, as was the company, and while they will leave us in the dust tomorrow, we will see them again in Jacksonville in about a week. Tomorrow we should be at the Halifax River Yacht Club in Daytona.

Sunset from our anchorage, mostly obscured by a storm over Sanford. That's Barefeet off to the right.

The universe sometimes has a way of forcing you to put things in perspective. While I was typing this post we got word that one of our friends lost the tip of his finger to a freak accident while docking their boat. Fortunately they were mostly docked and so he was rushed to the hospital where they've sewed it back on, and I understand the prognosis is good. It makes all of our first-world yacht problems seem insignificant by comparison and reminds us that good health is our biggest blessing. Our hearts are with him as he recovers.

The jet set

We are anchored in a familiar spot in Palm Beach, across the channel from the nice free West Palm Beach docks (map). This is our first stop here since Palm Beach has started enforcing a new ordinance that limits anchoring to 30 days in any six months, and we've already had a courtesy visit from PBPB to make sure we knew the limit, and presumably to record our stay to start the clock. It's been over two weeks since last I posted here, which was not really my intent, but I've not really had a block of time to write until now.

Our current anchorage, center frame between the bridges, as seen from my flight. Empty here because the boat show is still being dismantled.

Sunday morning we weighed anchor as planned for the northbound slog through the gantlet of drawbridges between Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach. It was raining and windy, so as we predicted there was almost no traffic despite it being the weekend. One of the three boats we passed in the other direction was a trimaran who clearly did not understand passing arrangements and decided to take his half out of the middle at the Palmetto Park bridge, but apart from that it was a blissfully quiet cruise, and we now have the bridge timing down to a science and hardly had to station-keep at all.

My cheat sheet for timing the 17 bridges we need opened between Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach.

The tide cycle unfortunately had us at the shallowest part of the route, across from Boynton Inlet, right at low tide. As it happened, that was also during some of the strongest winds of the day, with our anemometer reading 35 knots on the starboard beam, which meant I had to keep moving at a decent clip rather than slow down to pick my way through. As we approached the area we could see a TowboatUS boat in the channel, and I hailed him on the radio just to ask what depths he had seen; he flipped around and led us through, which was very kind. We stayed right on our known deep-water line and had no trouble.

The contacts on this pressure switch for our domestic water pump were "bouncing" and I had to clean them with an emery board. I can only see this side of the switch with a mirror, or with a camera like this.

We arrived to the Lantana anchorage to find it a bit more full than on our last visit, unsurprising with the West Palm anchorage that we are in now closed for the Palm Beach Boat Show. The boat that had drifted aground on our last visit was anchored in the spot we used that time. We ended up dropping the hook some 700' or so further south (map), but with plenty of room on all sides for the wind, forecast to remain high. It was still blowing 35kt when we dropped, so we just ate on board, even though the rain had stopped.

Boat show being torn down. It's a giant puzzle; the boats closest to shore can't be moved until they take away the dock sections pinning them in.

Sunday was the last day of the boat show, and Monday was a non-stop conga line of show boats passing us on their way back down to Fort Lauderdale. It was too rough outside even for the big girls. At least one show skipper seemed astonished that the bridge lockdown schedule was still in force "even with the boat show" and ended up station-keeping a 120-footer between two bridges. Our anchorage was outside the no-wake zone and we had a rough couple of days with all the zippy big boats going by.

Conga line of yachts leaving the show and passing us at anchor.

All told we were at the Lantana anchorage for eight nights. I did a fair amount of running around on the county bus system for a buck a ride; it got me up to West Palm Beach and back to check on the dismantling of the show, and to Lake Worth Beach to scope out the town and the anchorage there, and also out to Costco and Publix.

Not something you see every day. Being moved in the boat show area.

Together we dined at the Station House Restaurant, Thaikyo across the bridge in tony Manalapan, and the nearby Old Key Lime House, all decent. Stag I tried the Lantern Local Tavern, which has a limited menu, and Art Basil, also in Manalapan, where happy hour seated at the bar was a great deal. I also ended up at AJ's American Grill when I made a bus run out to Walmart Neighborhood Market, alone at the "Sky deck" at Old Key Lime, and a nice brunch at the Kona Bay Cafe, which is right next to the dinghy dock.

The PalmTran buses were pretty good. But this one's onboard display was ... uninformative.

Thursday morning we were up early to get Louise ashore for a 5am Uber to the airport. We had girded ourselves for a very wet ride ashore but lucked out. Louise reported that she breezed through security; Palm Beach was definitely the right choice for her flight, even with the West Palm anchorage closed. No sooner was she in the air, and me inexorably committed to spending the next four nights right there in Lantana supervising Vector, than my phone rang with a call from the hospital in my parents' home town of Brick, NJ: my dad had been brought in to the emergency room after fainting and was being admitted.

The free day docks in Lake Worth Beach, on my scoping visit. The big Hatt spent a lot of time there.

This normally would have had me looking for ways to get myself to NJ to check up on him and help out any way I could, but with the boat at anchor and Louise on her way to Mexico, that was not in the cards unless I got someone else to take over boat duties in my absence. Instead, I enlisted help from other family members much closer to Brick. Ultimately, the cardiovascular issues were not serious, they kept him for observation, and no one had to go to the hospital.

We've passed this bridge 20 times but this is the first time I saw the mural, which is not visible from the channel.

I had grandiose plans in Louise's absence to get some projects done around the boat, do a lot of walking, and maybe find a massage someplace. But between uncooperative weather and spending tons of time on the phone with NJ, as well as needing to be available for incoming calls, I ended up settling for local walks from the dinghy dock and going to dinner. I did enjoy seeing the Eau resort in Manalapan (massage: $275 — no thanks), Lantana's tiny section of Atlantic coast, just long enough for a city park, and strolling the Lantana Nature Reserve.

Vector in the Lantana anchorage, as seen from the bridge.

Louise had a late flight back on Sunday and I picked her up at the dock at 11:30 pm. She crashed pretty hard, but we had nothing on the schedule for Monday. That was fortuitous, because as it turned out, one of my hearing aids (yeah the warranty on the ears ran out right at 60) broke a speaker wire Sunday afternoon, and I hopped on a bus Monday morning to be out at Costco shortly after they opened at 10. I got lucky: they had a spare speaker in stock, and I just had to kill 20 minutes in the store while they changed it.

Lantana Nature Reserve.

I'm not going to get into too many details here, but by this time the hospital was working on releasing my dad to an inpatient rehab facility, and I had spent a bunch of time on the phone working on exactly which one. With Louise now back, and us still being in easy distance of the very convenient Palm Beach airport, I spent part of the morning making arrangements for a one-day overnight trip to NJ on Wednesday. Our next commitment in the boat is to be in Titusville on the 19th, so we had about a week of slop in the schedule, and flying was just going to get harder as we move north.

Having had our fill of Lantana, we weighed anchor for the 2:30 bridge opening, in the hope that we could make this anchorage before the bridge lockdowns, and that it would be open after the show. When I went to transfer fuel into the day tank for the trip I found the transfer pump to have lost prime, and, not wanting to miss the bridges, we opted to make the trip on what was left in the tank, which should be a little more than enough.

The fuel in the filter housing has dropped below the filter (removed) to the level of the inlet.

We had to push hard against the current to make the bridge schedules, arriving here just before 4. The plan had been to tie up at the Palm Harbor Marina to pump out our waste tank before dropping the hook, but the hard run had us very concerned about fuel remaining, and attempting to dock in a marina full of eight-figure boats is absolutely the wrong time to have the engine quit. Instead we pulled off to drop a lunch hook so that I could fix the fuel transfer.

This vertical check valve below the sole is the likely culprit. I have a new one on order.

Of course, the anchorage was not yet open, and they were still hostling the last of the docks around. I knew it before we started dropping, but we had little choice, and I had to explain the fuel situation to the PBPD who came over to give us the bad news. I reprimed the system and transferred a bunch of fuel, and then I was ready to head over to the pumpout as planned, except that Louise had a pre-scheduled Zoom meeting regarding yet different family medical issues. We had missed our window to pump out, and now we needed to head back south to a different anchorage. I had to station-keep for a half hour during the bridge lock down while Louise took her call.

Our new robot vacuum doing the hoovering. We named her Dora.

With the West Palm Beach anchorage just south of the bridge full up with all the boats relocated for the closure, we ended up going all the way back to Lake Worth Beach, dropping the hook on the Palm Beach side across from the Lake Worth day docks (map). We were all alone on this side of the channel, and we set out storm scope for forecast gale force winds during my absence. We had the hook down at 6 and we just caught the last of happy hour at The Irish Brigade pub in town.

The spendy Eau Resort in Manalapan. A short walk from Lantana but worlds apart.

Lake Worth Beach is a more vibrant place than Lantana, with a decent-size downtown that is about a half mile from the dock. A Dollar General is close to the dock and is well stocked with all but fresh produce, including a selection of beer and wine. Tuesday night we again walked into town, this time settling on Dave's Last Resort.

Lantana's tiny bit of coastline is contained in this one park.

The wind and rain moved in on Tuesday night, and Louise took me to the dock at 5:30 Wednesday morning with both of us in full rain gear. I sent my rain pants back with her. I, too, breezed through security at the airport and changed from shorts into dry slacks for the flight. It was in the 70s on our dinghy ride, but just 38° when I landed in Newark.

I had to wait for my Uber in this little shelter. I was concerned when I saw this lake in the parking lot but I found a dry way in.

I had a nice visit with my dad in rehab, then stopped for a while at their house to help my mom with paperwork and other things around the house. I ended my day at a hotel in Neptune across the street from a decent pub. I had taken the manager's special at the rental counter, which turned out to be a Tesla Model 3, which cost me less with a full prepaid charge than the cheapest gas-powered car before even filling it up. These things have neck-snapping acceleration and are a lot of fun to drive. I made my way back to the airport in the morning on local highways, saving myself the tolls but also giving me a little more feel for the Tesla.

My view from the bar at Art Basil.

Meanwhile, Louise was basically pinned down on the boat the entire time, with winds quickly ratcheting up to 35 knots and staying there overnight and nearly to my return. She reported that boats were dragging in both the Lantana and West Palm Beach anchorages, and even one downwind of us in Lake Worth, so we were wise to choose this wide-open spot.

This free, unrestricted day dinghy dock makes Lantana a great stop.

We once again got lucky when it was time for her to pick me up at the dock, and we made it back to the boat in moderate chop and almost no rain. But it was still too zesty to want to go ashore for dinner and we just ate on board. Starting at dinner time and getting worse into the evening I had a scratchy throat, which I attributed to all the talking I had done in NJ and the dry air on the flight.

This Bentley in front of Palm Beach Bakery is painted in a Hot Wheels color. Only in Palm Beach.

When I awoke Friday morning, though, I knew I was getting sick. Most likely something I picked up on the outbound flight. We had to go ashore in the morning to land a tray table I had sold on Facebook Marketplace, with Louise doing all the personal contact, and I tested for COVID later in the morning, with negative results.

This trendy restaurant in Lantana lost its lease. When they vacated they left the place wide open.

We wanted to move the boat up here before the weekend, and also before I got any sicker, and we weighed anchor in the afternoon in time to make the bridges before lockdown. Well, we tried to weigh anchor. The first clue that something was not right was that Louise could not open the carabiner that connects the snubber to the chain. I went out on deck, and I couldn't do it, either. I ended up bringing the carabiner up through the roller and onto the deck, where I finally opened the gate by hitting it with a hammer. Two full days of gale force winds had elongated the carabiner to the point where the keylock no longer slid together.

I was able to force this back into shape with my vise and a torch.

After getting the snubber off we brought the chain up until it was bar tight, but nothing we did would free the anchor. Powering against it with the engine just made horrible noises and bent the roller, and after maybe a half hour of working on it from all angles I conceded defeat and we called Towboat. It felt like we were caught on a rock, wreck, or cable, even though we were well outside the cable area.

TowboatUS Boynton. His tow line is actually attached to our anchor.

Towboat, who turned out to be the same guy who had so kindly led us through Boynton a week earlier, slid a shackle down the chain until it was at the anchor shank and tried to haul it up in the other direction, but after a half hour of pulling in all directions, he called for a diver in a second boat. The diver went down with a 1,500-lb lift bag, and came up reporting the anchor was buried at least two feet into the bottom. There was nothing obvious that it might be caught on.

Diver descending the anchor chain with a 1,500-lb lift bag.

To make a long story just a tad shorter, the towboat guys spent nearly three hours and finally managed to wiggle it free with a combination of the lift bag, the towboat pulling at full throttle for over 40 minutes, and pressure from our own windlass. The anchor finally came up at 5pm, and was evidently nothing more than deeply buried in the bottom, the result of days of heavy wind. The Towboat guys said they had never seen anything like it. Freeing a stuck anchor is not covered by our Towboat policy; it cost us $1,500 to get our anchor out of the seabed.

This artificial putting green fills the front yard of a single-family home in Lake Worth.

After getting unstuck and paying the bill, we slow-rolled north to wait out the bridge lockdowns, and dropped the hook here just as soon as we cleared through the 6:30 opening. We headed ashore to Grease for dinner and a well-deserved beer. Between having the crud, growing worse throughout the day, and dealing with Towboat all afternoon, I crashed as soon as we got home and slept for 12 hours straight.

This whimsical piano was open to all players at Newark Airport.

Our original plan had been to spend one or maybe two nights here at the most before moving on, but each morning thus far I have not felt up to running a full day in the boat, and we have stayed put. The weather has been gorgeous and normally I would be out and about around town here, but I have not had the energy. Yesterday we did make a mid-afternoon outing to Publix to restock provisions. I've made it off the boat each evening long enough for dinner and a short walk; so far we have revisited Lynora's, Batch, and Elisabetta's.

Apple cobbler bread pudding a la mode, at Batch. Hand for scale. The two of us could not finish it.

I was hoping to move along today but I still felt crummy, and with things lingering I tested again. This test was negative for COVID and also for flu and RSV. And while we have enough buffer days left in the schedule to linger here for another night or two, we could wait no longer to pump out the tanks, so today at slack water we weighed anchor, steamed over to Palm Harbor Marina, pumped out and took on water, and then came right back here. At least I felt good enough to crank out this post.

Louise had these unexpired test kits leftover from a research study. I'm clear on all four lines.

Perhaps tomorrow we can get underway. From here we will proceed with all due haste to Titusville, where we have a week at a marina booked so we can make our flights to the Dominican Republic to attend the wedding of our friends Tim and Crisálida.