Debi and Jack sailing on SV Iroquois

After three years and a little less than 14,000 nautical miles Iroquois is back in US waters. We arrived late last night in Palm Beach, looked around the anchorage but didn't find a spot we felt comfortable with in the dark so tied up on the fuel dock at Riviera Beach municipal marina. We will move into a slip at slack tide today at 14:00. They said we can stay three days, so we are considering options after that. We may get the boat hauled out of the water for some maintenance. Once we get moved into our slip we need to go to the airport to clear customs and Immigration because the local office isn't open on Sunday. We managed to call in and didn't need to present the boat, but both of us need to clear in in person. The rules have changed since the last time we cleared in,  and maybe it's just easier from Bahamas to Florida than from Canada to Maine or Michigan. There are probably a lot more boats here. Judging by the number of Canadian boats we've seen in the Caribbean there must not be any left in Canada... Jack is out exploring and finding an atm that dispenses US dollars and a grocery while I lounge around and try to get my bearings. Arriving in Florida was a big milestone in my mind. I had a goal of getting here by my birthday, April first, and we beat that by three weeks. I guess we should really try to slow down some.  We have grown accustomed to wearing shorts and tshirts so we shouldn't go north too fast! Wow, I forgot what humidity was. It's like the air is saturated here. I can't remember the last time it was hot and humid. Maybe summer in Wisconsin 2014? At first it felt stifling but now I am getting used to it and it's almost comforting, like an old sleeping bag that you forgot about. My skin appreciates it. My guess is I won't like it so much after I hike around a bit. Even though we've had a gradual re-entry through the Virgin Islands and Bahamas it's a little disorienting to be here. But we are happy with passing this milestone. Jack just returned with some excellent provisions from Florida, grapefruit, strawberries, and even sweet corn. He said it's the cheapest and most abundant food since Portugal. Happy to be "home". The area around the marina is a little under the weather, sort of harbor industrial, along with inexpensive housing that varies from well to unmatained. The people vary as well, white as in the kind of white I imagine Floridians to be, Black, Latino, Asian. There was even a woman about our age who might have even looked like our friends do, except for the sigh on her house "hippies use side door" I don't know if it was a joke or not. I wondered when the last hippy even rang the door bell.
Well, we went to the airport to clear customs as directed by the officer on the telephone, but it turns out that the customs office is not actually in the terminal. It's on the other side of the airport and not walkable. So after taking an Uber to the airport we took a cab to the customs office, a small concrete block building with a window of bulletproof glass. You push an intercom button and eventually someone will respond. It took at least an hour of waiting. He asked us a few questions, took our passports and after a while brought them back with stamps and that was it. Then we tried calling the numbers posted for a cab ride back. The first was disconnected. The second said 15 minutes. After waiting 30 we got an Uber in 7 minutes. The first two drivers were Haitian. The third was Cuban. We drove through some interesting neighborhoods on the way back to the marina where there was a small fair going on with a live band and a wide assortment of tents--everything from bbq ribs to painted fabrics to photo ops with snakes and alligators. I bought some fresh eggs and a bag of radishes and baby turnips. We are having a great dinner aboard tonight and a good long night's sleep.