Monday morning we set of as the sun was rising and headed out the Lake Worth Inlet
The trip outside couldn't have been more pleasant. The wind wasn't quite strong enough to let us use the sails alone, but we motorsailed most of the way to the Port Everglades inlet and our next destination ... the New River Downtown Marina in Ft. Lauderdale.
We got to the wall a little before 4:30 and Dan began to feel really sick again, so after tying up and settling Dory down below, we took a cab to Broward Health Center ER and took up residence there until 3 AM. They did all sorts of tests including a CT scan and declared there was no sign of diverticulitis or a kidney stone. That left a semi-diagnosis of a muscle strain so we left with meds for pain and a muscle relaxant. We're still waiting to see...
We obviously slept in on Tuesday morning and decided to spend the next two days tied up in the center of Ft. Lauderdale. The picture above shows the view from the two bridges that sandwiched us there. We're hard to see because we were right behind a large catamaran and were dwarfed by the other large yachts.
The area all around the marina had been turned into a riverwalk and park and is quite lovely. Almost every second building had a large crane working on expanding the high rises. We really got a kick out of this one mirrored building that reflected several surrounding buildings.
We had a visit Tuesday afternoon from a very dear friend of Martha's. Flavio SaCarvalho had been an exchange student at her high school during her junior year and as her 50th is approaching this coming summer she had looked at the RFHRHS website and "found" him. He and his wife Elisabeth live in Surfside, just north of Miami Beach. We had a great time remembering old times and learning what had transpired during the last 50 years! Flavio was very excited to hear that we would be sailing right by their condo in a day or two and promised to shine a mirror to show us where he was watching from. Well- - - this afternoon we sailed in close to shore and sure enough we were able to spot the flashing mirror as Flavio sat on his balcony on the 11th floor. If you look closely, you can see a small flash on the center balcony on the 11th floor!
The trip down the coast was just as quiet as the trip from Lake Worth to Ft. Lauderdale had been and we arrived at the entrance a little after 1:30 pm. We had the main up most of the way until the wind (from the north) died. There were far fewer ships docked as we came in through Government Cut, but we stayed to the south side anyway and headed under the Rickenbacker Causeway bridge and turned right into the Dinner Key Channel to pick up one of their moorings.
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| Just a collection of sights from today... the high rises just keep coming,.. there was one cruise ship in port....the big "snow pile" was one of the largest spray plumes I've seen.... there was a lot of small boat activity off of Dinner Key...looking back at downtown Miami over the Rickenbacker Bridge. |
As the sun sunk low in the western sky, Dory took up her vigil.... watching for boarders, or maybe just looking for a piece of grass!
We plan to sign up for two nights here to give Dan more time to shake whatever this is.
We expect some strong North winds tomorrow and didn't want to head out into Hawk Channel until it calms down a bit. ~~~_/)~~~ M&D
