April 2

April 2. Well we forgot to set the alarm for this mornings departure. So I didn’t get into the dinghy with the dogs until 0715. I hate oversleeping, it feels as if I’m running behind for the rest of the day. Luckily the dogs felt my pain and did their best to make it a quick trip to shore.

When I got back to the boat Christy had everything ready to go as always. I checked the fluids and started the engine. Pulling the anchor turned into a bit of a scavenger hunt as we pulled up an 8 foot piece of copper tubing tangled in the anchor chain. Once I got it cleared the anchor was stowed and we were underway.

The main course out of Miami goes through a channel called Government Cut. Its here that all the cruise ships are docked. If there are 2 or more ships tied up then the Cut is closed to pleasure craft. The weekend is the usual time for the ships to be leaving port. We could see them leaving from our anchorage. Saturday we watched 5 huge cruise ships leave and then on Sunday, 4 more. When we woke up on Monday there were 2 ships parked there. Oh no! As we were just getting underway we called the Coast Guard and asked if the Cut was open and were informed that it was not. Shit.

We could have traveled a couple of miles out of the way to the south to get out into the ocean but we elected to head north in a more direct fashion along the ICW. This section is just one bridge after another.

We were getting a knot and a half push for most of the trip so it worked out better than I thought that it would. The bridges here are all on a schedule but if you can maintain about seven knots you can hit almost every bridge just right as they open. Things were going real well until we reached a bridge that was being repaired. It was 10 minutes late coming up and when it did only one side of the bridge went up. Getting through made us late for the next bridge and we were forced to circle for 20 minutes. All in all not to shabby for over a dozen bridges in a 30 mile trip.

We were able to grab a mooring ball in a small marina in Fort Lauderdale. There’s only 10 moorings and we were lucky to get there in time to grab one of the two available. We sat and watched the boats go past until dinner time. Then we went into town and had dinner with a couple we had met in passing back in Marathon. Tomorrow its out into the Atlantic and north to Lake Worth.