Caribbean Soul: North Palm Beach to Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Our last day on shore in North Palm Beach was spent wandering around in the nearby malls. Here's a picture of Alan Flusser of Alan Flusser Men's Clothes designer at Stein Mart. He's sort of famous so we took his picture.

The next day we motored out through Lake Worth Inlet and into the ocean for an exciting day of sailing. There were 12 to 15 knots of wind and 3 to 5 foot seas. I had my sea-sick preventor patch behind my ear, so everything was fine.

As we prepared to exit the ocean and enter Ft. Lauderdale via Port Everglades Inlet, we saw lots of commercial vessels. Most were sitting at anchor off shore and posed no problem for us. One big cargo vessel, Corona, was heading for the inlet the same as we were--yikes! Capt. John got on the VHF to ask Corona if they were coming straight into the inlet or if they had to stay outside and wait for a pilot boat to bring them in. Happily, Corona informed us that they would have to wait. We figured the inlet was ours! WRONG! John keeps telling me keep a watchful eye on everything and not to over trust the information we get from the digital charts, etc. Well, wasn't that good advice. We looked back at Corona as we entered the sea channel leading to the inlet and Corona was no longer "parked" rather it was steaming to the inlet! Apparently it was not a long wait for the pilot boat. In no time at all the pilot boat had gotten out to Corona and was heading back in the inlet with Corona steaming full speed behind it. Just about the time we realized that we were going to be in the way, the pilot boat sort of herded us off to the side of the sea buoys--which was our escape plan too. Here's the mighty Corona steaming into Fort Lauderdale.

After Corona passed we followed right behind. Once inside, Corona turned left (er ah, I mean port) to the commercial ports and Caribbean Soul turned starboard (you know, right) to the canals and mansions and mega motor yachts of Ft. Lauderdale. We anchored for free in Lake Sylvia along with about 20 other sailboats. It was a very calm and protected anchorage. We tried to call the folks aboard Windward who sailed down from Lake Worth with us, but they must have turned off their VHF. We thought they'd like to come over and eat some of our huge tuna that John caught and cleaned earlier in the day. None of us sailing folks had enough energy to put our dinghys in the water (you do know that it's not a good idea to be hauling a rubber dinghy behind your boat if you're out in the ocean waves--we strap ours down on the foredeck and I think that Windward had theirs up on davits at the stern) Anyway, our plans to share this huge blackfin tuna just didn't work out so we grilled half of it for ourselves and will have the other half another time. This tuna, by-the-way, was larger than the first one John caught several weeks ago. This one was about 2 1/2 feet long and about 10 lbs. and absolutely delicious. Hauling them into the cockpit and cleaning them is always a mess--tunas are very bloody--but John gets better and better at cleaning them with a minimum of gore splashed about the cockpit.

Here is a picture of the Windward that we'd watched and talked to via VHF all day as they sailed right past us.