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| Lake Boca Raton at night |
On Monday February 6th, we left our quiet little anchorage at Golden Isles Lake and headed North up the ICW towards Lake Sylvia anchorage (a day’s journey). I was a bit sad to leave because we were just getting to know two other couples on sailboats who were quite friendly.
Leaving the anchorage, we planned to make a quick stop at the Hollywood Marina fuel dock to fill our water tanks and to pump out our holding tanks. But when we arrived and were attempting to line the boat up to the dock the wind was not working with us and would have blown us off the dock. So, we backed out and kept moving forward slowly up the ICW towards our destination.
When we got close to the Fort Lauderdale bridge we got a call from our friend, Tom who had taken our spare alternator to an alternator rebuild shop to get it checked out for us (since he had a car and had to go there as well). Well, he called to say that it was ready and that it checked out fine. He also said that he was nearby and could meet us at the Fort Lauderdale Marina fuel dock to deliver the alternator to us. Couldn’t have been better timing! So, on our way to the dock.. there was a lot of boat traffic, which along with the wind and current made for choppy water. Rick was driving (thankfully) dodging boats and channel markers fighting the current and wind. He had a bit of trouble maneuvering and came close to banging into one of the channel markers but fortunately just scathed the sign, which sat on the post, with our SUP boards. So lucky! Continuing on towards the fuel dock, docking did NOT look promising! Just as we thought about turning around and figuring out another place to meet Tom, we saw him standing at the end of the fuel dock waving holding our alternator in the other hand so we didn’t have much choice to change plans. Rick decided that we would just get the nose of the boat up to the dock and Tom could simply hand me the alternator. As we approached the dock where Tom was standing the wind was blowing us onto the dock and a handoff would have been impossible. So Rick got as close as he could without torpedoing the dock and we yelled at Tom to throw the alternator onto the tramp. He looked a little puzzled, like.. REALLY?? I stood at the bow and shook my head yes! He grinned and said, ‘OK’! So with the alternator wrapped in a cloth grocery bag, Tom flung, the approximately 8 pound alternator, and it landed on the tramp, then bounced up and onto the hard fiberglass area that divides the two tramps holding the anchor chain and skipped onto the seat cushions up front. Just after we all let out a loud ‘WOO HOO’ in delight and relief, Rick gassed the engines hard into reverse back into the waterway and we waved goodbye to Tom.
Thirteen bascule (moveable) bridges later, we found a decent place to anchor in Lake Boca Raton just before dark (we first attempted Lake Sylvia but it was way too crowded..no room). We thought we would be only a night or two here but it has now turned into almost a full week. And… we will probably be here a week or so longer. We do not have to go to Stuart, Florida where Mack Sails is located to pick up our stack pack (sail bag) for our sail after all. The installers said that they will come to US this Friday. This is great because going to Stuart would have put us just that much more out of our way from where we need to be to head over to the Bahamas. We need to be down South in the Florida Keys area to make a good crossing.
We still need to go to Deerfield Beach however to get our hard bimini installed, but that will be close to where we are now and on our way to the Florida Keys.
This has been a nice anchorage for the most part. Very busy on the weekends with party boats. Yesterday, which was Saturday, felt like spring break on steroids! Many large mega yachts and smaller power boats filled the anchorage…maybe 100 boats anchored compared to the normal range of around 20 boats. Some boats were side tied to one another. One grouping we counted had 7 boats total tied to one another. Most yachts/boats were full to the brim of fit, tan, lively young people in their early 20’s. Girls in string bikini’s seem to be the bathing suit of choice while posing for selfies and dancing at the bow. And guys oiled up showcasing their muscular torso’s. It was quite the scene! The music blared all day long into the early evening. Thump thump thump. Never could make out the words.
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| Lake Boca Raton during the week. Blue arrow is pointing at our boat. |
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| Lake Boca Raton on Saturday |
Other than yesterday it’s been great here. We are very close to a very nice park with a boat ramp and a dinghy dock where we can tie our dinghy up to for free (anything free in Florida, that we’ve experienced, is rare). We are also able to dispose of our trash and get water at the park.
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| Shark spotted at the dinghy dock |
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| Portuguese Man-O-War also seen at the dock |
Each day we take the dinghy for a little ride and then to the dinghy dock where we get off and go for a walk. If we walk to the left of the park, we walk down a very ritzy upscale commercial part of town…restaurants, shops, spa’s, private banks (whatever that means), and gated condominium communities. If we walk to the right of the park, we can walk straight to the beach which is only a few blocks away. We are very close to a Trader Joe’s which I’m looking forward to going to next week!
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| Downtown Boca |
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| One of the fancy 'private banks' |
When we take our dinghy rides, we putter down some of the channels off the ICW and our jaws drop looking at all of the extensive estates and mansions along the waterfront with sizeable yachts tied up out front. Each one seeming to try and outdo the next. And the odd thing is that hardly any of them look occupied.
We have met a nice couple from Canada who are anchored right next to us. And we met a couple of guys on two different sailboats that seem to live aboard full time here. Other than that, most of the other boats seem to keep to themselves. One interesting couple on a Lagoon Catamaran like ours came in the other night and anchored right next to us. Since it is a boat like ours we immediately had to check it out and compare. Had to make sure ours was better. Haha. The one thing we liked about their boat more than our own is that they already had the hard bimini over their flybridge which we are soon to have. One thing that we both thought was odd though, was the name of their boat. The boat name was Nude Attitudes with a Mermaid decal intertwined between words. Couldn’t really understand the meaning behind the name. NOT until last night anyway, when I saw them moving around inside the boat NAKED! All lights on, no curtains drawn….full view naked bodies! OK…now the name made sense! I had to run and tell Rick of course, but he wasn’t as excitable as I was. He had no interest in seeing what I had seen because he’d seen the couple earlier in the daylight with clothes ON which hadn’t impressed him then. I am not fond of these people, not because of their ‘naked attitudes’ but because of the way they treat their dog. The dog is a huge Mastiff and they have not taken it off the boat once. The poor thing just lies around while the couple jets off in their dinghy each day never bringing the dog to shore. Breaks my heart.
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| Nude Attitudes |
Unfortunately we had one small but expensive mishap a couple of days ago. I went to pull some salmon out of our portable freezer. A freezer which was stocked full of fish, chicken, meat, fruits and veggies to last us a couple of months. When I opened the freezer I about gagged from the smell. Somehow the cord got knocked loose and DC connector had come out of its socket. So all of the frozen food thawed out which apparently happened some time ago. It was a liquid smelly mess. Not good, especially with the cost of food right now! I will have to re-provision for frozen goods, again, just before we leave Florida.
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| Cleaning out the freezer |
Anyway….we are still patiently awaiting to get to the Bahamas. Thank you for continuing to follow along. Stay tuned.
