We spent a fun day with our friends Tom and Sue Jones who were photographed while taking pictures of us. We enjoyed the happy hour menu at the 401 Grille in Ft Lauderdale but then went to one of the Jones' favorite restaurants Thai Spice for dinner and my Thai hot meal was excellent. Saturday came and we met up with an old friend and a former in-law of Linda's, Denise Bednarek. We did lunch at the Casablanca in FLL and then went back to the boat to enjoy the afternoon and catch-up. Meeting with and sharing time with old friends as been a great pleasure of this trip. Once we leave the US and go to other islands and countries we won't have that opportunity.
Downtown Fort Lauderdale at night.
We had been forewarned that Saturday night was the Lighted Boat Parade in FLL but we have seen other boat parades so what Well, this was the boat parade champion and we had ringside seats to it.
The parade reached our location by the Las Olas Bridge after 1900. We soon learned that there were over 100 boats in the parade and not just boats. The parade was led by a Coast Guard Buoy Tender that was covered in lights and then several large excursion boats covered in lights supported by large commercial sponsors. Many of the boats had sound systems playing contemporary or Christmas music to the throngs of people lining the canals and bridges.
The FLL rivers and bridges were lined with people. I'm sure there were hundreds of thousands if not a million people watching this parade. The ICW was closed from 1830-1900 and the bridges were all opened so getting on or off the island during the parade was difficult. We not only got to see the parade, but after it was over many of the boats had to come back past us and of course they were still lit up and playing music. Our parade went almost all day and night. I can imagine what a fun time the participants had with this as it had to be one of their greatest and most fun things to do for the year.
We may ever see it again but it's always great to see people having fun.
After the parade kept us up most of the night we rose early to head to Miami. Because there is a bridge in Miami that is 55' we had to go outside at Port Everglades inlet and back in at Miami Government Cut. We wanted to leave early because of a forecast for storms later in the day.
As we left our mooring another boat close to us asked if we were going south and we said yes. He asked if we were going inside or outside and we said outside. He was quite surprised to hear. The forecast was for 20-25 kts of wind out of the east with seas 6-9 ft which sounded like a perfect sailing day for us. With the winds and swells out of the east it would be close to or on our beam for most of the trip which is the best wind angle.
I knew that the hard part would be the mile or so getting out of the channel until we turned south and could use our sails. As it turned out we fought wind and current going out the channel but it lasted less than an hour before we could go to sail and sail we did. With the wind and seas we flew the staysail and a partially reefed main.
Even though we had reduced sail we were humming along between 7-9 kts and riding over the swells like a carousel pony. Our friend back in the mooring field probably knew his boat would not handle the seas like ours. Many boats on the market today with broad sterns, small keels and wide beams would be really uncomfortable in a seaway like we had. On the other hand, boats like ours designed for those conditions handle well and are fairly comfortable. Considering that we had about a third of our sail area up and were doing the speed we were is a feat. Many modern design boats with 2 big sails will find it difficult to handle their boats in heavy conditions because of the difficulty in managing reefed sails.
As we turned toward the channel a building squall came over us. Most of the winds durin our passage were 20-30 kts but the squall pushed them up to 40 kts. So we turned out toward sea to ride out the squall. There was a freighter heading in the channel who turned out as well until the squall passed and then we followed him in through the cut.
We motored through the narrow channel past the shipping docks and then under the Rickenbacker Causeway to Biscayne Bay where we anchored next to our old friend Dave Sikes and Second Wind. We had Dave over for dinner and a couple bottles of wine. Dave was staging for his morning departure for Nassau. After a dinner of grilled bison burgers, asparagus and wine we settled down for our week in Miami. At the end of the week we would be heading to Marathon to celebrate the shortest day and the beginning of winter. So here we are back in the warm weather getting ready to ride out the coldest part of the year. I hope I can swim every day.
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