"2000, December 18-20 ICW to Ft. Lauderdale" Fort Lauderdale Travelogue by grandmaR

Disaster day - we only have 5 more bridges to do --- except that I mistake the first bridge and we go out the Hillsborough Inlet bridge instead of the 14th St. bridge. Luckily the bridge tender put the bridge back up and let us back through. So we didn't get through the correct bridge, which was about 2 miles from us until 10:45, an hour after we started. Then at the next bridge a big sportsfishing boat passed us as we were waiting, and his wake nearly pushed us into the wall, and then he backed up almost into us.

Saw a house with a 3rd finger salute statue in the front yard. Also saw the big power boat CHANGING CHANNELS that we saw up in the Carolinas on the way down. It was backing up to a fuel dock

Our boat rafted on our friends boat

The last bridge opened on the hour and half hour, and we came up to the bridge slowly at 12:30, and she didn't open. We called, and she said we weren't close enough, and it was a minute after the hour, and we'd have to wait to the next opening.

We finally got to our friend's house at 1:20 after 12.7 miles at 4.9 mph and a total of 1088 nm.

We are rafted on their CSY and we enjoyed visiting with them and comparing boats. They lent Bob a car to go to Sailorman and a couple other places, but he was disappointed and hardly got anything on his list. Then we took them out to dinner.

Ft. Lauderdale from the water

The next day (December 19), Bob changed the oil. I talked to our son-in-law in Miami. He says the weather won't be good enough tomorrow to come down - we have to go outside into the ocean.

We have to go outside to get around the Julia Tuttle bridge in Miami which is a fixed bridge only 56 feet instead of 65 feet. We leave the dock, and go through the 17th street bridge (It is possible that we would fit with it down - it is quite a tall drawbridge, but we wait for it to be raised anyhow as we don't want to take the chance. Fortuntately another boat with a very much taller mast is coming through at the same time.),and out the channel.

We can see the Gulf Stream raging against the north wind about a mile from us

We have no difficulty with the offshore passage, but I am unable to get a marina to stay at.

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