oops one fender gone, but a good two days Fort Lauderdale to Fort Pierce

Saturday August 30th

We finally cast off lines from Las Olas Marina with the help of Tom and Joy saying good bye again to one of our favorite marinas.
 Just a note, Las Olas, is clean, well guarded, a quick walk to the beach and restaurants, safe place to park a rental, you meet interesting people from all over the world.... All in all a number 1 marina as far as we are concerned.
Nevertheless we needed to get moving. First goal get north of Jacksonville Fl for insurance purposes, second goal it our 1000 mile journey to Norfolk Va.  Tonight we are resting with in reach of Mile marker 966.5.
 When we made our first journey north the weather was never suitable to travel out side. When we left Fort Lauderdale there was a good wind and forecast reasonable seas. Well..... we did have a good wind until about 4 pm when it started to get switchy, die off, gust, switchy, peter off, .... you get the picture. We dropped the main in rolling seas and motored to Palm Beach. It was a dark dreary sunset, not enough light to attempt the channel so we spent a rolling night on the hook. We woke to bleak gray skies and a large storm cell that look to over take us.  If your going to get wet might as well try and be as comfortable as possible. Our canvas leaks like a sieve so we opted to go inside for the day.

I miss the ICW, but not the powered boats. You can see the most amazing, unusual, different things along the way. We crossed paths with an Ice Cream boat.... yep I wish we flagged it over. There are beautiful home, normal homes, people swimming in 92 degree water with sweaters on, dogs walking people, and then there are the lift bridges. Each tender is different and they all make your smile as the send us on our way.

We ended up not getting rained on, had a decent wind so stayed relatively cool, I got some small knitting projects done and took photos.
Tonight we are tied to a dock at the Fort Pierce City marina. We had a lovely dinner at the Original Tiki Bar, plugged into the AC and tomorrow we will go back out into the Big Blue Atlantic. Next stop Barge Canal by Coco Beach

Las Olas Bridge, on the water again

Tom Handing me a line

Ok I only zoomed in 5' do they really take a bath up there and
expect privacy 

there are normal looking houses 

We woke to washing machine seas and gloomy skies on
Saturday morning

coming into the Palm Beach inlet 

Looks like two black eyes 

This is just the hull of a boat being built 

Our view in the morning where we anchored in the Atlantic 

time to go inside

Our route on the ICW

neat fountain at our marina in Fort Pierce

A pina colada after a long day

Tom is tired

The original Tiki  Bar sells fish food to feed the fish
off the dock

Peanut Island

Jupiter Inlet Light house

Ice cream anyone

We have a taller mast now 62' + the bridges all have tide measures

got through but it looked scary