While in the marina in Bimini and with our good weather window predicted to end soon, we gave up a day of rest and were up before dawn on March 1st to head back to the USA. Surprising how much difference two hours of sleep makes and even at 5a.m. We felt a lot better than the previous 3AM wake-ups!

We cast off the dock lines and headed out the channel from North Bimini Island in the dark following our inbound track in reverse keeping a close watch for the channel marker buoys. Once past the last buoy we set a course on the autopilot for slightly south of due west. While Fort Lauderdale is 50 nautical miles northwest of Bimini, the 3 knot gulf stream current carried us right to the Port Everglades channel entrance.

We had a light breeze from the E and made good time during the morning, even though with the wind directly on our stern, the head sail did not always want to stay on one side. We started seeing high rise condos in the Hollywood area about 25 miles out and were anxious to get to Florida. Around noon the wind started to die and we eventually furled the sail. Even so, we arrived at the marina around 3PM. As soon as we had cell phone service off shore, I started calling marinas and decided to stay at Bahia Mar on Fort Lauderdale Beach. Bahia Mar is a really nice marina with floating docks and home to a lot of mega-yachts. We might have been the smallest boat there. The second night we had a really nice sunset, but the view was partially blocked by the large boats behind us as you can see in the photo.

Our main purpose for being here was to get the water maker repaired. We hoped to get it fixed quickly and not spend a long time in the marina. However, the weather gods had different plans for us, because as previously forecast, the weather turned bad a day after our arrival and the wind howled for a week. We thanked our lucky stars that we made the run back to Florida when we did!

Instead of being stuck on the boat in the marina for a week, we rented a car and went out on the town. We had a short list of restaurants, some shopping, and church on our list. Our first stateside meal was Duffy’s. The next day we had lunch at Chik-Fil-A and passed a Krispy Kreame on the way, so a hot Krispy Kreame donut was dessert! Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza, Rustic Inn (blue crabs), and Islamarado Fish Company completed the list. On Sunday we attended church, had gyros lunch, and purchased some stone crab claws for dinner. In between meals we shopped at West Marine, Publix, Costco, and Total Wine for “essentials”.

The water maker was diagnosed, disassembled, and removed on Friday, repaired on Monday, and reinstalled on Tuesday. We were ready to leave pending decent weather. The wind was still blowing like crazy but was suppose to lay down on Wednesday. Since we were on Ft. Lauderdale Beach, we could see the ocean raging. The bad weather did not deter the spring-breakers from invading the beach, creating traffic jams and lots of police and emergency vehicle action. One afternoon we heard sirens blaring all afternoon and wondered if we were being invaded! We targeted our departure for Thursday to give the ocean a chance to settle down. We had to go outside from Ft. Lauderdale to Miami because of one low fixed bridge in Miami that we can not pass under with our 62 foot high mast. Otherwise we would have just gone down the intercostal waterway.

Finally on Wednesday the winds did stop blowing and we prepared to leave the marina for Miami.