Vero Beach to Bimini

Friday, February 26, 2016.  Clear and cold this morning – 47 degrees.  Lisa has crocheted a baby blanket for Ruthie (Dean and Susan’s daughter due in April).  Susan is leaving to go to the baby showers ( 3 of them) and Lisa takes the blanket over to Autumn Borne before we leave.  We have never met Ruthie, but feel we know here.

10:45am we are finally off the mooring and headed south.  60 degrees, mostly sunny, wind NNW 10-15.  At 1:05pm, we see Yume headed south.  We were on a mooring next to them in Marathon 2 years ago.  They are headed north to help put on a golf tournament to help with providing service dogs for vets returning from Afghanistan.  They had left Marathon 4 days before and said there are 60 boats waiting for a mooring there.

4:10pm anchor down in Peck Lake, just south of the St. Lucie inlet.  6 other boats here.  40 SM, 32 NM today.  MM 992. 1 on-request bridge.  27°06.87’N  080°08.58’W

Benny made dinner on board.  Catfish (from the market in Brunswick), rice and vegies.  The catfist was baked in butter and Italian bread crumbs.  The pan drippings spread over the rice.  MMMMM good.

Saturday, February 27, 2016.  Anchor up at 11:30am.  Sunny and 60 degrees.  Wind N @ 15+.  We considered walking the beach before we left, but it is just too cold and windy.  12:05pm Hobe Sound Bridge.  We have a favorable wind and tide today, just wish it was warmer.  &)& Bridge at 12:50pm.  Jupiter Federal Bridge at 1:10pm and Indian Road Bridge at 1:30pm.  Sunny, wind NNE 8-10, clear, 65 degrees.  Donald Ross Bridge at 2pm, PGA bridge at 2:30pm, and Parker Bridge at 2:45pm.  Anchor down in North Lake Worth at 3:15pm.

Troika and Seeker are at Peck Lake tonight.  Kachina is at No Name Harbor with a broken throttle cable. 

22SM, 17NM today.  14 bridges.  MM 1014.  26°50.26’N  080°31.17’W

Dinner on board. Routy Canadians next door.  Lots of boats here tonight.

Sunday, February 28, 2016.  7:25am anchor up.  Partly cloudy, 65 degrees, wind N @ 5-10.  Flagler bridge at 9:15am.  They are building a new bridge, but it will not be a high one, so we will still have to deal with timed openings.  During construction, it only opens at 15 minutes past the hour.  We allowed an hour and 45 minutes to go 8 statute miles from the anchorage to the bridge, and are 20 minutes early.

Royal Park Bridge 9;30AM

Southern Blvd Bridge 9:45am Cloudy and the current is with us. 70 degrees.

Lake Ave. Bridge (on request) 10:20am

Lantana Bridge 10:30am

Ocean Ave. Bridge 11:00am

SE 15^th St. Bridge (on request) 11:20am

George Bush Blvd. Bridge (on request) 11:50am

Atlantic Ave. Bridge 12:15pm

Linton Blvd. Bridge 1:00pm

Spanish River Blvd. Bridge 1:30pm

Palmetto Park Bridge 2:00pm

We are on the dock at Lighthouse Point Yacht Club (Pompano Beach) at 3:00pm.  We meet Leslie, Jan and Bailey (a golden retriever) on the dock.  We are probably the smallest boat here.  The Club rents members slips to transients while the member is away.  Nice.  We get use of all the facilities (restaurant, pool, bar, tennis) for $1.50 a foot.  Best deal in this part of Florida. Field, the dockhand has a family place on Georgian Bay, which is where we purchased Rhiannon.

We give the boat a bath, ourselves showers and our friend Hazel comes by for dinner.  Lisa made spaghetti. She winters in Boca with her sister and brother.  We first met Hazel in Salem, MA, in 1988. Very nice visit.

38SM, 28NM today.  MM1052.  12 bridges today.  26°17.09’N  080°05.30’W

Monday, February 29, 2016.  Leap Day.  Off the dock @ 8:35am.  65 degrees, partly cloudy, no wind, dead low tide (although it is less than 2 feet here).  Even though it is President’s Day (a holiday) there are no boats out and about.

NE 14^th St. Bridge 9:15am

Atlantic Blvd. Bridge 9:30am  The sun is now fully out.  Beautiful day.

Commercial Blvd. Bridge 10:00am (We are now in Fort Lauderdale)

Oakland Park Bridge (10:15am)

Sunrise Blvd. Bridge (10:30am)

Las Olas Blvd. Bridge (10:45am).  There are empty slips and moorings at Las Olas Marina – a sure sign that many boats have moved farther south.

SE 17^th St. Bridge 11:00am and we are done with bridges for a while.

Into the Atlantic @ 11:15am.  Waves are 3 feet from the SE.  Wind NE 5-10.  Rolly. 

12:15pm Heard the Coast Guard talking to someone about a capsized boat, but never did get a location.  1:25pm saw large manta ray jumping out of the water twice.  Quite a sight.  2pm wind East @ 5-10.  Foresail out, but motorsailing.  2:40pm, entering Government Cut in Miami.  Lots of ship traffic.  4:40pm Crandon Park Marina on Key Biscayne for fuel – 17 gallons.

5:30pm anchor down in No Name Harbor.  18 boats are here and 7 more outside.  54SM, 43NM today. MM1096. 25°40.62’N  080°09.80’W  This is as far as we will go down the ICW.  The next move is eastward toward the Bahamas.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016.  Sunny and bright.  60 degrees.  Wind North 15+.  Changed the primary Racor fuel filter.  Just a precaution as we are heading across an ocean passage.  Even though it is only 50 miles to Bimini, it is four days (about 200 miles) Checked all the connections on the instruments. Even though we replaced the knot meter control head, it is still going bland intermittently, annoying.  We walked to the Winn-Dixie (about a mile away in Key Biscayne) and then took and Uber car back.  Our first time using Uber.  Pretty painless and the car was a new SUV and clean.

In the afternoon, Kintale (Deb and Tim) came in.  They are headed for Key West.  We last saw them in Vero and before that in Bimini last year.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016.  6am, anchor up.  It is just starting to show some light in the eastern sky.  Cool and very damp.  Everything is wet from the dew.  60 degrees, wind NW@5.  Listened to the Coast Guard talk to a boat 60 miles south, someone with a heart issue, they are sending a helicopter.  6:40 beautiful sunrise as Miami gets smaller off our stern.  3 other boats that we can see headed east. One mast just visible on the horizon.  8am wind NW@3, waves 1 foot, depth 1000 feet.  Motoring.  Feeling the sideways push of the Gulf Stream.  9am 20 miles out of Miami, really feeling the Gulf Stream now.  Water temp 85 degrees. We have been watching a lot of flying fish.  Saw a whale spouting at 10am, but then he sounded.  Large black flukes.  Looked like a Right Whale.

11am flat seas – no wind.  12:30pm beautiful, 80 degrees, puffy clouds.  Bimini on the horizon.  We are seeing a lot of Man-o-War floating.  1pm 2.5 miles out.  2:30pm on the dock at Bimini Bluewater Marina after a not to graceful landing.  The dock hands were not much help and the current bounced us off a couple of pilings – ugh.

Whisper is here (Vic and Marilyn from New Foundland).  We met them here last year.  By nightfall, the marina is full of boats who crossed today.  We met Bob and Wendy on Quescense (another Catalina 42) from Washington state, headed to the Abacos.  We walked to Customs and got our cruising permit (lots of repetitive paperwork and $300 later) and then to Immigration for Visas, then to BTC for a new sim card for the phone.  Nice to be legal and in communication again. 

50NM today.  25°43.50’N  079°17.85’W

Thursday, March 3, 2016.  Beautiful day in Bimini.  We got the wi-fi booster working, but the wifi itself is relatively slow and unreliable.  BTC’s cellular data service is much better.  Cost is $50 for 5GB. Not unreasonable.   We walked the beach and found a lot of shells.  We had a nice dinner on board, and there was a wine-down as well.  Showers and to bed.

Friday, March 4, 2016.  Our son James Birthday.  Walked to the laundry.  Here you can leave the laundry and it comes back all clean and folded.  Lisa visited the high school again this trip and today was “Vocation Day”.  They had some inspirational speakers as well as people from different vocations speak and demonstrate.  This is the first time something like this has been done and it was done very well.  We got to talk briefly with Mr. James Pinder, the principal.  Lisa met and talked to some of the speakers and teachers.  Shadine and Coleman came by the boat to visit after school.  We met them on our trip last year (they are both in the 11^th grade this year) and Lisa had a present for each of them. Nice visit.  Shadine want to go to nursing school and eventually become a doctor.

We walked the beach and collected more conch shells.  Many are small.  The larger ones have holes in them where the fishermen have removed the conch.  Lisa is looking for another Queen Conch.  She found one here last year and then gave it away.  We met a guy beach combing and he gave Lisa a Queen Conch shell.  Turns out he is Thomas Sanders, brother of Ashley Sanders, who built the Dolphin House and who Lisa met last year.  He invited us to come by his house (next door to the Dolphin House) tomorrow to see some of his art.  He is a house painter by trade and has painted houses for Richard Nixon, Joe Kennedy (Sr), Gerald Ford.  He does his edging freehand, and while working on Nixon’s house, the (then former) president came in and asked Thomas why he did not use tape to make a straight edge.  Thomas replied “Isn’t tape what got you into all that trouble?”

Met more boaters next to the pool and then dinner on board.

Click here for pictures from Vero to Bimini