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West Palm to Miami

American Junque Vessel or Live Aboard? - Lake Worth

Our trip to West Palm Beach, aka Lake Worthless was uneventful, with 7 opening bridges. Our short stay however, was not.  This would be a third time here and the first time only staying one night. The saying is “third time’s a charm.” Our version is “third time’s a drag.” Ooohhh.  We arrive before 3pm and begin our anchoring routine. Selection, assessment, final selection, drop anchor, let out some chain, let out more, assess holding, attach bridle if all is good, acknowledge that it is 5 o’clock somewhere. The first attempt did not produce a good hold so we moved a bit and got a good hold on the second.

Opposing wind and current are tough on an anchor’s ability to reset itself; some types of anchors can reset better than others. Our over-sized 80lb Rocna loves mud; sand, not as much apparently. Around 1 a.m. I woke up when the wind picked up from a benign 7kts to a brisk 14kts, which was not quite the forecast.  I had this uncomfortable feeling and checked the weather on the iPhone to see if the wind was predicted to die down. Yes, no matter the frequency of error by the National Weather Service or NOAA we still check, as though repeated checking will give the desired result. Hope does spring eternal when it comes to the weather.

Within minutes the anchor drag alarm sounded and Russ jumped up to turn on the chartplotter and check things out. I’d felt an odd vibration right before the alarm, so as much as we wanted it to be that we’d simply swung around 150 ft worth, I knew in my heart that Mr. Rocna had moved. How am I supposed to trust him in the Bahamas where sand, wind and current abound? Looked around. A visual check told us we’d moved which the chartplotter confirmed. Suspect the pull of the current required the anchor to reset and for some reason it didn’t rise, or I should say, lower, to the occasion.  Faced with two options, three if you count leaving, we opted to raise Mr Rocna and re-deposit him. Even though it was the middle of the night, we could see just fine with all the land and ship lights. After that was done, we babysat Mr. Badboy for ½ hour then crashed for the night… until 6:15 when the alarm sounded… on the iPhone – time to wake up.

The forecast for Tues was WNW/NW 10-15, seas 2-4 ft. We’d chosen Tuesday several days earlier as being a good day for the downwind run to Miami and by golly if the forecast still looked good on Tuesday morning. On the plus side, the wavelets –  oh how I love that word – were easy to take and the wind direction was excellent. If only there was more of it. We motor-sailed for the first few hours until the wind woke up and gave us nearly 3 hours of good sailing before we went back to motor-sailing. We needed to arrive at the Miami channel around 4pm which would put the current against us- bad- but if we could use the main ship channel, then we’d be able to head to our desired spot with a pre-dusk arrival time.

Can you find the cruise ship amongst the buildings?

An 80 sm trip in daylight does not leave room for dawdling. A few hours out we began hearing the Coast Guard’s announcements that only one cruise ship was in and boats were therefore allowed to use the main channel. Yes! Our ETA was going would be just past 4pm- perfect. Dropped the main just before entering the channel and began the 75 minute trip to Belle Island.

The area was fairly quiet, the few usual small ferries between Fisher Island and the MacArthur Causeway and not much else to worry about. The cruise ship was small and cute.

One cruise ship allows passage in Miami

Dropped anchor at 5:15 with a prayer- more like an admonishment- that Mr. Rocna behave himself. Tomorrow was filled with promise- a brand new Fresh Market and a Publix only a block apart, a very short walk from the dinghy dock.

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Manatee Pocket: a new spot

Saturday we tossed off the mooring lines and jumped back on the ICW headed toward a nifty protected basin named Manatee Pocket in Port Salerno.  The appropriate name could be more along the lines of SportFish Haven. Tom and Chris on Polar Pacer told us of the spot, about ½ mile off the waterway just north of the St Lucie inlet. They were anchored when we arrived. On the way we turned our eyes north at 10:02 a.m. to catch the Mars Rover shooting across the sky.

The spot is nearly perfect as long your boat doesn’t draw more than 5 ft. The channels which lead in from the ICW are plenty deep but the two anchoring areas are what keep most away and those who fit are happy with the lack of competition. A short walk in took us to Green Apple Produce, an ethnic market with all kinds of fruit and veggies, including long stalks of sugar cane. Across the street we found a well stocked seafood market and with that completed our shopping; happily in lieu of contributing to Winn Dixie.  Please don’t cringe when I say we ate grilled Dolphin for dinner; it was the fish not the mammal. Mild and reminiscent of Grouper in texture, Russ gave it a thumbs up while I was more non-committal.

Colorful shops at Finz, Port Salerno

Funky FL style at Shrimpers

The waterfront, as you might expect, was filled with restaurants, outdoor patio and tiki bars as well as a few shops where looking is all you can afford. Sunday night we enjoyed a yummy shrimp dinner special at Shrimpers, with protected outdoor dining. Russ was happy that our table was in view of the dinghy. Before dinner we gathered with two other boats aboard Polar Pacer. I love these get-togethers; often spontaneous and a chance to meet and make new friends. This one went down thus: we’d planned to go to dinner by 5:30. At 4 Tom calls on the VHF to say they’d invited Sail Away and Unabated for happy hour and would we like to join?  You bet.

We met Christine and Ken of Sail Away. Christine, with a lovely French Canadian accent described Ken as “the Captain of the ship, not of my heart.” She is crew and hopes one day to own her own boat. First, she wants to learn how things work and see if the lifestyle is a good as she imagines. Way to go girl. Shortly past 5 o’clock we saw an awful sight; an osprey on top of our mast, perched on the Garmin wind indicator. Visions of summer ’10 when we lost our Davis wind instruments to a determined cormorant spurred us into action as we bid a hasty farewell and zoomed the 120 ft to dislodge “Mr. looking for dinner” from his lofty perch. I guess our tall mast offered a great water view as the osprey returned several times until finally as sunset loomed he stopped and allowed us to go eat.

Monday morning all of us except Sail Away planned to head off. We and Unabated to Lake Worthless near the inlet while Polar Pacer would stop at Peck Lake and Hobe Sound for a couple days before they too would end up in the north end of Lake Worth. We hadn’t been awake more than a few minutes when we heard a sound Russ described as “a comb falling off the shelf”. If only. Any guesses? How about the Garmin wind indicator; plastic and a foot long- you’d be right if you guessed that item. It didn’t look broken, so now we only had to get it back on. Lucky for Russ we knew that Tom was a mast climber. Up he went, easy as pie and pushed that silly thing back into place.  Crisis averted.  Wrong. Five minutes after Tom was back on Polar Pacer, the darn thing fell again. Big groan. Plan B is to order another- wait, make that two- ship to Marathon and we’ll find some other kind soul to install it.

UP THE MAST ... WITH A WIND PADDLE