Forbidden Fruit

The main problem with anchoring at South Lake is that Hollywood isn't particularly fond of cruisers. To discourage our spending money in their town they have gone out of their way to insure there is no good place to tie up a dink for a few hours. There is a very nice boat ramp / floating dock complex by the marina, but last fall we were (rather brusquely) informed that it was “illegal” to use without paying to park a car / trailer in their lot. My what a difference a few months of cruising will do to one's attitude toward that kind of thing.

Thunderbird Five is the gaff-rigged ketch in the middle

We have spent very little time off the boat since dropping the hook here. Dinner on Thunderbird 5, dinking in to pick up friends for dinner on Kintala, and a run for dropping trash and watching the last MotoGP race of the season about covers it. So last night, after an excellent dinner of stuffed pork chops, we decided a walk to the beach was in order. It gets dark early now, the marina is closed by the time the sun goes down, and the boat ramp / floating docks are empty. Works for me.

Curry dinner prepared by Ray on Thunderbird Five. Yum!

It is a bit of a hike across the Hollywood bridge and on to the ocean, but the walk worked a good stretch into unsteady land legs. Once there, we found that the ocean front Board Walk is actually made of bricks. It is also about the nicest Ocean Walk we have ever seen. Not only is it pretty, clean, and well lit, in the space of just a couple of blocks we found three ice creams stores … three! Still full from dinner we could only stop at one of them, and even then a small cone was more than enough. It was a treat, though, “more than enough” went for the price as well. Ten bucks for two single scoop sugar cones, really? 

Further along a free concert was in full swing on the Ocean Walk stage. The band was playing a mixture of Spanish hits, 50's bee-bop, 70's rock-n-roll, and Jimmy Buffet tunes. And they were doing a pretty good job of it. People were clapping, singing along, dancing; a regular street party that was a bit of a jolt after days of lying quietly, and mostly alone, to our anchor.

It looks like we will be spending just another day or two here. The weather looks good for a run to Miami before the weekend is over. By next week we hope to be back in Biscayne Bay and exploring some places we missed last fall. Some friends are there already and others are heading that way. We are full blown cruisers once again, living as easy on the water as the day's weather will permit, moving when we want, and stopping where we like. If that means a clandestine dink parking at a forbidden dock once is awhile, that's okay as well.

On the move again

Our last night in Middle River -Perfect!

Kintala unhooked from Middle River this morning and now sits in South Lake, about 11 nm … well … south. Including a stop to get diesel, gas, water, and a pump out at the Hollywood Marina, it took about eight hours to do the trip. And yes, that is an average speed of less than 1.5 nautical miles in a hour.

Kintala's happy engine speed is just wrong for making the staggered bridge timing along the ICW. We could flog the old WesterBeast, would still miss the next bridge opening by a couple of minutes, and end up doing circles while we wait. Or we could let the Beast rumble slow and easy and plod our way through. I trust not the Beast, so plodding is the choice when sailing is impossible.

We came down here because we are convinced we like this place. Not sure why. Three times we have been here in two different boats. Three times we have run aground hard enough to stop the hulls dead in the water. Today we were creeping along showing 20 feet under the keel and looking for a little less water in which to pitch the hook when “THUMP”, the boat twisted to starboard and stopped in its tracks. Off the starboard side of the boat I could not reach the bottom with our long boat hook. Off the port side we could see the bottom in about 5 feet worth of water. Clearly the powers-that-be dredged vertical cliffs in the bottom, underwater topography that is not reflected on the charts I updated just yesterday afternoon.

Worse, we picked a Friday afternoon to anchor a bare hundred yards or so off the ICW. Stupid power boater tricks have already started and some of the wake hits have been impressive. Even better the weekend is just getting started...yay! Still, the sunset is spectacular, the temperature perfect and, having run the engine most of the day, there was hot water for a long shower. Which I needed since this morning started with scrubbing about 50 feet of green snot out of the anchor chain. I smelled like a dead swamp thing.

I don't know that South Lake is still on my favorites list. Even if we don't come this way again I am glad to be here tonight because it means Kintala is back among the world of “boats that move”. Last night we worked well into the evening scraping barnacles off the bottom of the dink and this morning was the swamp snot. Even in a place as nice as Middle River sitting too long is bad for the constitution of boats, dinks and crews. We will not be tempted to stay that long in South Lake.

A Hollywood farewell

The latest cold front has departed Hollywood, FL – and so has Kintala. (I double checked to make sure it was Hollywood we were in, and not Hallandale. Since I am about to insult the place with gleeful abandon, getting the name right seemed only fair.) Before departing I seriously considered leaving my morning constitutional as a direct deposit, thanking the good people of Hollywood for their hospitality and generosity of spirit. This being a Deep Red State after all, chock full of the anti-government fever decrying the over regulation by Big Brother robbing us all of personal liberty and the right to live our lives as we please, surely the independent cruiser lifestyle is one they support. Hollywood expresses its Patriotic Chops by forbidding the docking of dinghies; preventing people like me (a retired Airline Captain and Corporate Flight Department Manager) from marring their beach with my footprints and feeling the warm ocean breeze ruffle my carefully trimmed beard. I am free, of course, to spend money at one of their marinas, paying for what I don't need in order to have access to a beach and ocean they didn't build. Given their clear appreciation for the righteousness of unfettered Capitalism, leaving a turd floating in South Lake struck me as a fair exchange.

Photo Courtesy of Mary Beth Seibert

Alas, I have grown fond of the manatees. At least one family of these gentle creatures grunted themselves to sleep beneath the keel of Kintala each night. One evening we heard the quiet squeak of a baby, checking with Mama before drifting off to manatee dream land. These kindhearted animals accepted our presence without complaint and did what they could to add a little magic to our visit. Clearly more evolved and intelligent than the cone-headed humans that have overrun the place, they deserved nothing worse than my parting smile and heartfelt thanks.

Kintala will not be passing this way again.

Note: To be perfectly fair, if one IS looking for a marina in the Hollywood area, the Hollywood Marina wouldn't be a bad choice. The price is reasonable, the facilities seem nice, and it is just a short walk across the bridge to the ocean.  You are not, however, allowed to park your dinghy there for the day, or even a couple of hours without paying full price for a slip to put it in.

On Watch...

When I lived on land I was an airplane driver. That put me in a closer relationship with the weather than most land dwellers. So when we decided to live on a boat I figured we had a leg up on the "getting along with the weather" front. I was only partially correct.

We are pretty comfortable with weather and float planning. Adding in tides and currents was a minor adjustment to my flight planning days. Speed over distance calculations work the same, it is just that the answers are so different. Twenty-six hours to go 110 miles is not a jet driver's answer. Flight planning means working the weather over a span of hours in distances of a thousand miles. Float planning means working weather over a span of days in distances of a hundred miles. Basically just a change of scale.

Living in the weather, on the other hand, has been a huge change of focus. For a land dweller the weather needs to get truly nasty before anyone really notices. (Except for TWC folks. They seem to get all giddy and breathless over a rain shower in TX.) Cold fronts, warm fronts, rain showers, light snow, even thunderstorms, all pass over the house or apartment building virtually unnoticed, particularly at night. I never gave that much thought until we moved onto the boat and headed out.

Back porch view

Front Porch View

We are anchored in Hollywood, FL. It is sunny and 67 degrees. All that the land dwellers will notice is that is isn't as warm as yesterday and the yard looks like it rained last night. It did rain last night. We had to jump out of the v-berth to close hatches and ports. As the wind ramped up we stayed up for a while to make sure all was secure. The wind shift marking the actual frontal passage swung our house 180°. What was the view out the front door is now the view out the back. It is past noon now. The pressure gradient is still passing through and the wind remains at and slightly above 20 kts. The boat is rocking and swinging and sailing around the anchor. We are completely aware of what the weather is doing. We are always completely aware of what the weather is doing.

As a pilot the weather was something I considered while making plans. On the boat the weather is pretty much my whole world. The metronome that sets the pace of my life clicks off the passing of cold fronts. Nearly everything we do is measured around the passing of the next one. When it is on us we don't much more than just sit and wait it out, hoping we are sitting in a good spot.

It is a total change of focus that was completely unexpected, one that I haven't quite made peace with yet. Every few days my world gets pushed around, rocked, rolled, and noisy. There is always some increase in possible problems. Sometimes that increase is minor, like today. Sometimes major, like Fishers Bay, Oriental, Charleston, and Vero Beach. (We just learned that the one that passed while we were in Vero Beach caught an experienced sailor in his 31 foot boat out in the Hawk channel. He was blown out to sea, battered by twelve foot waves, rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter, and lost his boat / home of ten years.)

For the life of me I don't remember anyone mentioning this relentless pounding of cold fronts as the primary background music for the cruiser life. Maybe it is just this time of the year? Maybe it is just this year? I don't know. But what I do know is this; people have been hurt, boats have been damaged and lost, and we have spent a lot of hours "on watch".

Hollywood Florida hits the bottom of the list

As far as anchorages go, this one has been pretty nice. It's big, it's protected, the wake from the ICW traffic is manageable, the night views are beautiful. We've been very pleased, pulling in two days ago and dropping the dink into the water for future use, and planning on staying awhile and exploring. We chose this anchorage because the ones in Ft. Lauderdale involved navigating a bridge under construction and we arrived at the wrong time to wait for it. So today we decide to go exploring, beginning with finding a place to tie said dink to. We knew we couldn't use the small grocery store dock because our friends had tried the day before with no luck. Active Captain shows a public boat ramp just inside North Lake less than 1/4 mile from where we are so we loaded up and headed over there. Beautiful ramps and a dock for each ramp. Voila! We headed over to the adjacent Hollywood Marina to be sure we could leave the dink there and were promptly informed that  "there is no dinghy docking in Hollywood", and that is a direct quote from the manager. Now mind you, there are 6 empty docks there, along with a parking lot and a self-pay your parking station which could be ever so easily utilized to collect a $5 daily dinghy landing fee, but hey, why do that and make some money and encourage tourism in a bad economy?  So Hollywood, FL has descended to the bottom of our anchorage list because, well, it basically sucks. So while we can highly recommend it as an overnight, if you want to leave your boat for any reason other than to eat at one of the restaurants, we recommend you try somewhere else.

Ports, Inlets and the Deep Blue Sea

Roughly three in the AM; slightly more than 15 hours into the jump from Vero Beech to Port Everglades (Ft. Lauderdale). There are no other boats around. Deb and I had agreed that there was a good enough weather window opening Sunday that should last until Tuesday late afternoon. That meant a 48 hour stretch to get rough 25 hours worth of "going" done. We were the only ones of the Vero Beech cruiser tribe who thought so, then again, they are all headed for the Islands while the Keys wait for us.

The roughly 22 nm from Vero to the Fort Pierce inlet gave some promise that this, our second outside jump, would be at least as good as the first. If nothing else it was warm, with another full moon and clear skies thrown in as parting gifts. As promised, the gusting wind was out of the north, and we fully expected it to fade as the cold front moved further out to sea. (As did the weather guessers.) When we turned the corner and headed out through the inlet a few hours later, the promise sort of faded. Outside the breakwater waves were 3 to 5 feet with some larger ones wanting to play as well, smacking Kintala hard on the beam and sending sheets of spray over the deck. Leaving the last buoy and turning south put the wind and waves behind her. With the Wester-Beast silent and the headsail carrying the load, Kintala settled into an easier gait.We were back on the open ocean and under sail, happy with the choice to do so. A little later the wind faded and we added a reefed mainsail to hold as much SOG as we could.

Back to 3 AM. I am trying to catch a little rest on the starboard side cockpit bench. Just a few inches from my head the ocean hisses by and I can tell from the motion that, instead of fading the winds have ramped back up and clocked to the east. Deb is working hard at the helm and calls me awake. Kintala has way too much canvas aloft and things are getting just a bit too interesting. I clipped in and shuffled out on deck. Getting the main down did the trick but, with the wind now mostly out of East, this new set of waves clashed with those from the passing fronts of the last few days, putting Kintala dead in the ditch. We tried a different angle with the waves but tacking off shore put us in the edge of the Gulf Stream, which was lying close in. That was a truly ugly ride (the Vero Beach tribe made the right call). Tacking west had us on the beach. Neither choice was a good one ... the ditch it was.

One of the many towns we passed Tuesday a.m. They all kind of blend in together along the coast.

We continued through the night, pitching hard, rolling from toe-rail to toe-rail, and fishtailing over the confused seas. I like sailing at night, but that didn't keep the smile off my face as the sunrise started to fill in. At least five hours of lumpy waves still stood between us and Ft. Lauderdale, hours that would pass the same for us as for every sailor in history. Working to get to the next port of call without breaking anything or getting hurt, tired, a bit hungry, we were also aware that this was a special place to be, an experience worth having. Sleep and food would come soon enough.

Freighters anchored offshore on commercial moorings.

The anchor is set in a place called "South Lake", a place with much deeper water than the charts suggest. This is also the prettiest "city scape" we have seen so far. ICW tag-team friends lie to anchor the next lake over, in a place with much less water than was suggested. The plan was to spend the night anchored near them but Kintala grounded hard trying to get where they were. (Notice how I suggest it was the boat's fault, and not that of the bearded, bald headed idiot at the helm?) The good news is a rising tide really does lift all the boats, even those stuck in the mud. Within an hour the winds twisted us off of the mound of mud squashed under our keel, so we moved under the Hollywood Blvd bridge and set in 25 feet of water, where the charts show 4. Local knowledge via Active Captain is a good thing.

For those who care the run took 26 hours and 40 minutes (I had planned on 21 but we couldn't hold the 5 knots in the plan, not bashing about at the edge of the Gulf Stream as we were.) We added 110 nm to the log. A couple of dolphins dropped by to check on us, but nothing like the party last time. Once settled in on the anchor a couple of manatees paddled by as well. As the sun faded a strange grunting sound started bouncing off our hull, joined by a high pitched whistle. Best we can tell, that is the sound of manatees getting ready for bed. Weird creatures. I kind of like them

Weather is headed this way again, there are friends to catch up with, and I really need to get a couple of smaller projects done. We made it to Florida and are far enough south as to not worry about how cold it will get. We still plan to get to the Keys, but there is no rush now. Each place we stop can be a place we spend several days just poking around. So for now, here we are.

NOTE: It is Tuesday. We got here Monday and I had every intention of posting this, but that whole "tired and hungry" thing caught up to me. I fell asleep at the keyboard, nearly dropped the computer on my toe, and decided the manatees had the right idea. Time for bed.
 

Photo ed: We saw this line of demarcation in the water as the tide was at slack water. We've never seen this before. Anyone know what causes it?

Goodbye Ft. Pierce

Hello Ft. Lauderdale

View out my galley window. Hollywood, FL