A Day of Too Many Bridges
11 January 2013 | Bingham Island, West Palm Beach, FL
Donna
We ended up spending an entire week in Stuart. We got so many of our projects done, even projects we were supposed to finish before we left Annapolis in November. It was a difficult and stressful week because we had the inside of the boat completely torn apart to be able to get to the places we needed to get to. The work we had to do was messy too – I am very glad that week is over.
We had some good parts to the week too. Mike, our host from the SSCA cruising club, invited us to have dinner at his yacht club. We enjoyed meeting all the people and spending more time with Mike. Almost everyone at the club is a power boater, although a few had been sailors before converting. Mike also spent another day driving us around so we could finish our list of things that needed to be done before we leave for the Bahamas. We really were lucky to have him – Stuart is not an easy place to get around if you don’t have a car. We really appreciated all he did for us. Bill also spent a good part of the week learning about weather and figuring out how to use our single side band radio to get and send email, weather reports, and blog entries without having the Internet. He has done a great job and I feel confident that he will get us through the Bahamas safely.
This morning we finally left Manatee Pocket. We’ve noticed the changes in the water color depending on how close to the ocean you are. Sometimes the water is a spectacular blue-green. The picture above does not do it justice but you can see the water color, and the wind!
I’ve mentioned that people don’t like the ICW in Florida because of the number of bridges you have to get to open for you before you can proceed. Today we had ten opening bridges. Only two of them were by request, the others were all on a schedule that is timed so that power boaters can easily make it through without many issues. When we got to the first bridge that had an opening schedule we had almost a half hour to wait so we anchored and had lunch. After that bridge we tried to go really slow, or really fast so we could be at the next bridge when it was time for it to open. It was windy and I decided I would prefer to let Bill do all the jockeying around waiting for the openings. Tomorrow there are sixteen bridges to go through. I don’t think I will get away with Bill driving through all of them. We were really lucky today. One of the first bridges broke after we went through it and could not open for a couple of hours. This is not the first time we have had that luck on the ICW.
Tomorrow we will be in Ft. Lauderdale. That is our planned last stop before we head off to the Bahamas. We have really enjoyed this experience but are ready for the next step!