Hopefully winter will be this good

We left Palm Beach as expected yesterday 10 December and motored down the ICW to Fort Lauderdale. The trip of about 40 miles went better than expected with no rain during the sojourn and lots of wonderful scenery. Now we are hanging on a mooring in downtown FLL enjoying what we hope the next few months will be.

We hauled our anchor about 0645 on Thursday morning with some fog hanging in the air but headed for the Royal Palm Bridge to make it's 0700 opening. We did and continued to make the bridges on schedule moving through light fog that finally burned off in mid-morning. The bridge schedule along the ICW is timed perfectly if you can maintain a speed of about 7.5-8 kts as we did. A few times when we hit current we were slowed down as in the case of the Commercial Blvd bridge. We cleared the bridge before it but were running against current so we thought we could not make the 5 miles in 30 mins to make the bridge so we just slowed down and cruised making lunch on the way. As it turned out we would have made the bridge because the current abated shortly after the bridge so we lost a half hour waiting for a later opening.

In spite of our delay we made it to the FLL Las Olas Mooring field by 1400 and secured an open mooring for the few nights we plan to stay. We made the 42 mile trip through 19 bridges in 7 hours. We have 1 more to go to make the Port Everglades channel where we have to go outside to Miami because one of the fixed bridges is too low.

Today, Friday, we spent with friends Tom and Sue Jones going to the beach, happy hour and dinner. We always enjoy spending days with our friends playing with what's available.

Tonight I'm sitting here in the cockpit enjoying the warm breezes. For many of our journeys over the past few weeks we have had the enclosures rolled up and the past few nights we have had ports and hatches open to enjoy the fresh air. I really enjoy sitting here at night watching the white puffy clouds in the dark blue sky. The clouds reflecting the lights from the south Florida metropolis.

Tomorrow visiting with some more friends and then prepping for our travel down to Miami on Sunday. Winds look good, seas will be high but it will be nice to finally be back in Miami. Our last stop before the Keys.

Hard to believe it is now the middle of December but right now it is wonderful and hopefully the rest of the winter will b this good.