We decide to leave Fort Lauderdale to West Palm Beach via the Inter Coastal Waterway (ICW) so that we could experience this amazing work of engineering by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Authorized by Congress in 1919 the ICW runs 3,000 miles along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. However, after waiting to cross 17 bridges and only going 40 miles in nearly 10 hours, we decided we had "gained" enough experience on the ICW - we could barely even eat as we had to pay constant attention to all the traffic and coordinate crossing the bridges with the bridge tenders. We were glad to have ventured out in the ICW with our buddy boat Beaudacious which draws 8 feet and had many concerns about the depths. All went well and we arrived to Palm Beach safely.
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The short 27-mile sail to Fort Lauderdale was uneventful. Again, because of the lack of wind we had to motor-sail. We decided to stay at the city marina, Las Olas, located in the middle of "Miracle Mile." This marina was great, with a good lounge, laundry room and helpful employees. We stayed in Fort Lauderdale for nearly 1 week, giving us the opportunity to see this city up close. A neat thing we recommend doing if you are in this city is riding the Water Taxi which allows you to get on and off as many times as you wish in a day and visit museums and places of interest. The Water Taxi takes you on a tour of "Miracle Mile" where the home owners are wealthy individuals (from large business owners to CEOs to Movie stars) that seemed to compete on which house is the most opulent.
We anchored in West Palm Beach for the night and navigated along the coast to Fort Pierce the next morning where we also anchored for just one night prior to making a 12 hours trip to Cape Canaveral before sunset. Nearly 400 miles long, the coast of Florida is about ½ the distance from Key West to our final destination in the Chesapeake Bay!
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After spending 3 days in Key West we did an overnight passage to Miami (about 157 miles). There are no good long term anchorages near the city so we decided to go into the city marina (Miamarina) on Bayside harbor. It was Memorial Day weekend and the harbor and adjacent mall had public events throughout the weekend featuring music bands that seemed to play day and night. Being in downtown Miami we had the opportunity to get an interesting view of the modern downtown while riding the public train cars above ground and in some cases through buildings.
We did not spend much time touring the city save for Sunday morning when we decided to take a bus to Miami Beach to walk around and eat lunch. The last time we had been to Miami Beach was on a return trip from Colombia in 1997 and we had good memories of this place. Unfortunately we were surprised at how Miami beach has turned into a noisy place, filled with a lot of people who were nearly naked, checking each other out. We had a difficult time finding a restaurant away from the honking and the whistling and where we would be comfortable.
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