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-hour 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 and Cape Canaveral was about 1/3 of the way. We were amazed at how long it would take us to get back home. But at the same time we wanted to see some places in the East coast of the US by water.
Our anchorages in West Palm Beach and Fort Pierce where just off the ICW and near entrances to the ocean. There were homes nearby but no dingy dock or way to hop on shore. Anchoring in the US is not as available as it is abroad so we have had to go into marinas, something we had hoped to avoid.
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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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