March 27- 29 -- Final Lay Day in Stuart, Passage to Fort Pierce and Three Lay Days There -- 26.2 Miles

Lene had business to transact by phone so I dinked in alone and took the free shuttle to Westmarine to get a new dinghy painter and a new anchor snubber -- and got neither.
As to the painter, we do not tow the dink so a sturdier painter that floats (so as to not get into the boat's propeller when we are in reverse) is not needed; we can simply use the one that came with the dink.
The need for a new snubber line arose because the old one was getting shorter and thinner. After being anchored for a long time during strong winds, it takes either patience with the marlinspike or just cutting off the last nine inches to undo the snubber where it is clove hitched to the anchor chain. This has happened several times and the line was getting progressively shorter. Also it was getting thinner, because of severe chafing. So time for a new one. You want this line to stretch so most of the lines we have aboard are not good for this purpose because they were made for other purposes, where you want the lines to NOT stretch. So I'm looking at Westmarine's selection of lines and -- wait a minute! I have an old soft stretchy nylon anchor rode. If I cut off a 25 foot length, this will work quite well with lots of line left for cutting off nine inches at a time over the next several years. But, I spent $100 on a good hardened stainless lock to prevent theft of the outboard from the dink.
Back at the dock, I installed the lock and hacked off another half foot of the tiller extender because it extended too far. The marina's bike took me the five minute ride to the local, less upscale Publix for two items Lene wanted.
Heading out back to ILENE, a terrible thing happened. In driving the dink at the dock, I bounced it off another dink into one of the concrete pilings, from which clam shells extended out like razors. WHOOSH! was the sound of the air escaping from a 1.5 inch gash, below the waterline in the port aft tube. Our almost brand new dink, wounded already! Are we destined to be cursed with dinghy problems? The dink can stay afloat with only one of its three tubes inflated, so is in no danger of sinking, but this was a most revolting development.
I hauled the dink up onto the Martina's dinghy dock and water that had entered the tube, which was quite flabby, poured out. The marina gave me a ride back to ILENE for the repair kit, sandpaper, and a pair of scissors to shape the patch into a diamond shape with rounded corners. You have to sandpaper both surfaces and mix a two part glue and apply it to the dink and the patch. I needed help in the form of tools from the marina office to open the two glue bottles. You have to use a metal or glass container to mix the two parts of the glue, hopefully in the correct nine to one proportions. the bottom of a beer can from a trash bin was the metal surface and its tab was the stirrer. I let the glue get tacky but not as long as the instructions called for, and slapped it into place as the first few drops of torrential rain hit. I let it cure for over two hours while reading in the Marina's clubhouse -- free popcorn!  Then I drove the dink back to the boat, without inflating the tube in question to full pressure. The instructions say to not pressure test the patch for 24 hours.  Well the patch did not fall off, but it has a fast "slow leak" requiring it to be pumped up each 24 hours. So we will try to have the job done by a professional in St. Augustine in a few days. My not so handy work:

The passage to Fort Pierce was not long. But with temperatures in the low 50's, a hard, cold 30 knots of apparent wind 20 degrees off the port bow made for quite a wind chill factor. (Yes, I know, I shouldn't be complaining to northern friends who have suffered a cruel winter.) But it makes us fear that we may have started north too soon. Anyway, hats, gloves and scarves were in order. Just a slog under grey skies. Not a peak sailing experience, in fact solely a motoring experience.

The Fort Pierce Municipal Marina has been redone since our charts were printed, after a hurricane took out much of the old marina. They spent a lot of money to build a series of barrier islands to prevent such damage. The new slips are almost ready for occupancy and we went to the remaining portion of the old, via a well marked but tricky new channel that is not on the charts yet. The tricky part is the current, which runs wicked strong N-S across the E-W channel. We had to go west but headed NW to "crab" through it diagonally. They put us starboard side to, on the outside "T" dock, opposite the fuel dock, so when we leave we make a "U" turn to port and our lines are set up for fueling.

The Marina is different from others in our experience in that a number of live-aboarders have cats rather than dogs. Playmates for our dynamic duo, but they grew up playing with each other, our pair get low grades in "playing well with others."

We arrived too late for the "biggest farmers market in Florida" but wandered through a large music festival on our way to the marina office: rock, blues, country, etc. Crowds were still arriving; we were serenaded that night. Normally, readers know, we explore a town and learn of its history, etc. But here we just hung out with friends. Janet and Mike, with whom we had dined on Greek food in Boca, invited us to their home for happy hour and took us to Publix on our way home the first evening there and to their home where Kathryn and Craig had come up from Boca to visit, the next. After this second happy hour we went out to the Second Street Cafe for dinner.

                          Kathryn, Craig, Lene, Roger, Mike and Janet

We hope to meet up with Janet and Mike in Oxford Maryland on our way home. Its amazing. We last saw them in Maryland in 2012 and Kathryn and Craig at her brother's wedding maybe six years ago. But put sailors together and the old bonds are re-cemented instantly-- a lot stronger than the two part glue fixing our Hypalon patch to the dink. Mike and Janet just moved into their new, large modern apartment facing east over the water on the fourth floor.

Rear view from entrance

We are amazed at how much home one can get here for such a reasonable price. If we were in the market for another home, we would be very tempted. We missed both of the distinguished visitors who were here with us: President Obama came to play golf and Jay Leno was in town for a performance with $85 and $115 tickets.

Front view, with Atlantic past the barrier island.

View to the left, with free anchoring where we will stay next time.

March 23 -26 -- North Palm Beach Marina to Sunset Bay Marina and Anchorage, Stuart, FL and Three Lay Days There -- 28.8 Miles

In my most recent post I described a traffic jam at the main bridge across the ICW in Palm Beach, Flagler Memorial, and the massing of huge mega yachts there, possibly because of the boat show.  In Stuart the local newspaper cameraman did what I could not do because I was too busy trying to not hit any other boat! The paper also said that there was $1.2 billion of boats for sale at the show.

Stuart is a six and a half mile detour, west of the ICW. En route to Stuart there were eleven bridges but only four, the first four, were on schedules and we made them all without delay after taking in the dock lines at 8:05 to make the 8:15 opening of the first. We had a bit of wind from our port side as we headed north and flew the small jib most of the way making good speed with its assist, while motoring all the way. But the wind was mostly a lot of puffs rather than a steady breeze and such puffs change the apparent wind direction so I was trimming very frequently. Here is the light at the Jupiter Inlet,

The wind grew stronger as we entered the St. Lucie River that leads west to Stuart. The river, via a canal (with fixed bridges less than 60 feet high), is the outlet from Lake Okeechobee to the Atlantic. The lake is about 20 miles in diameter but a third is way too shallow and the rest varies from six to twelve feet in depth. We had planned to go outside through the Atlantic from North Palm Beach through the Lake Worth inlet to the Fort Pierce Inlet. Fort Pierce is our next stop after Stuart. But a barge sank in that inlet and salvage operations made it impassable to boats with greater than five foot draft. Our friends, Bob and Brenda, on s/v Pandora made it through with a 5'10" draft, but just barely and it was a harrowing experience. Google: Sailpandora, their blog, for an account of that episode.

So we are here in Stuart for a few days waiting progress of the salvage and the passing of bad weather. Speaking of which, the wind really came up -- up to 30 knots -- as we went up the rather poorly marked channel in the wide but shallow St. Lucie River to Stuart. We had furled the small jib by then. After the first four bridges of the ICW, the other seven consisted of: four that open on request, two high bridges and one a RR bridge which is open except when a train comes.  But the last, was shown by my sources as being on a half hourly schedule so we slowed a bit, planning to make the 1:30 opening. When I called in advance to let the tender know we would be requesting that opening, he replied "Come right up and I'll give you an opening!" And it was a good thing too. We did not tarry and made fast on a mooring (only $25 per night in season) with two of our lines run through its eye and back, only about ten minutes before the heavens opened up with torrential rain that made my deck washing of the day before a complete waste of time, and strong gusty winds too. We still had our instruments on and I saw a gust of 49 knots (57 mph)!  Sure glad we had made it onto the mooring before that.

We used the marina's shuttle bus to provision at Publix and used their free bicycles to tour the town, visit the bank, etc. It is a small town at its historic center, which was originally located on the north side of the St. Lucie and called Pottsdam. But in the 1890's it was moved to the south bank and non-German settlers didn't like the name so they called it Stuart after an early landowner by that name, son of a prominent attorney in New York. The town is located where the St. Lucie becomes very narrow because of peninsulas sticking out from both the north and south shores. Three bridges cross it here, at its narrowest -- the last three of the eleven we crossed under. In the photo below, from right to left, the newest high one carries Route 1, without interruption for openings, followed by the RR bridge and the bascule bridge for the Dixie highway which as noted above, opens on request, both of which are "up".

We almost bought a condo unit here, as an investment -- just before the Florida real estate bubble burst. It is called the Harborage Condominium and Yacht Club, on the north shore, opposite the town, just east of the bridges. We got lucky and dodged a bullet: they couldn't build then and we got our money back!

There is a long boardwalk just off the water's edge, perhaps half a mile long with nice views of the river and this guy, you see his shadow, who is nonplused by humans or the roaring of the railroad. Amazing in this litigious age, there is only a toe rail to keep people from falling off the boardwalk.

The battle to stop All Aboard Florida is raging hotly in the newspapers here. Entrepreneurs want to run about twenty high speed passenger trains per day betweeen Miami and Orlando (in addition to the many long freight trains) on the existing tracks of the Florida East Coast RR. But the noise of the trains themselves and their whistles and the additional obstructions to boaters at bridges -- and to auto drivers, seem to have galvanized a fervid opposition in every town the tracks pass through, including Stuart.

The other current hot local issue is whether the State or municipalities should enact laws effectively preventing boaters from anchoring in the State of Florida by forbidding anchoring within "X" feet of private property. When you measure "X" feet from both shorelines, there is precious little water, if any, where one could anchor.

The first general store in Stuart was put out of business by the big box store of that era, A and P. It became a grain and feed store until the 1960's and is now the historical museum, free admission. They basically invited the townspeople to donate "stuff" and curated it into a museum about Stuart and its county. The same railroad that is now controversial is what made the state. In the 1890s pineapple was king here, shipped north via the Railroad. In the middle of the 20th century Stuart was the cut flower capital of America. Now it is tourists that fuel the economy, but they don't come by train.

We had lunch at the Marina's restaurant one day and breakfast at Maria's in town, another. When my nephew, David, a southern boy, was sailing with me in Long Island Sound those many years ago and we got to Northport, he asked for biscuits and gravy. Well you can't get that in Northport but at Maria's they were delicious.

We have had some weather here, thunderstorms with plenty of rain, but they came when we were aboard, safe and dry - though bailing out the dink becomes a small chore. The weatherman is telling us to stay one more day here.

March 21 -22 -- Lake Boca to the North Palm Beach Marina and Lay Day There-- 31 Miles, 12 Bridges

We hauled our anchor at 7:15 for the 7:30 opening of our first bridge and motored all the way, tying up port side to, at this lovely marina at 2 pm. More mega houses (but this is not a real estate blog) and in Palm Beach, we saw the largest aggregation of mega yachts in one place since St. Maarten. This is another of the places where very wealthy people congregate. There is a boat show next week and this may have attracted some of the BIG boats. The last of the bridges, the Flagler Memorial in Palm Beach, was the site of the most congestion I have ever seen at a bridge: about thirty boats, half going north and half south, were traffic jammed near the bridge before its opening, trying to get through, one at a time, in the ten minutes that the tender allowed for the scheduled opening. We spent most of the passage with s/v Elle & I, from Vermont, a 35 foot Beneteau or Jeaneau. Alas, we never exchanged contact information with her people.

We missed one opening which cost us half an hour, because of my confusion. I made a list of the bridges, in consecutive order, with their names (because they won't answer your call unless you call them by name). I also figured out the distance between the bridges and the times between their openings such as some on the hour and half while others at 15 and 45 minutes after the hour. Most of the bridges open at such fixed times but some open on request. But some tenders try to accommodate boaters by delaying the opening for a few minutes while fast boats cool their heels, in order to let slower boats catch up, so both can get through with one opening and less disruption of automobile traffic. We were the beneficiaries of this practice at one bridge and the victims of it at another. These delays make it almost impossible to plan your speed between bridges since the time is shortened, but the distance is not.
North Palm Beach Marina was dredged out of the west side of the ICW and enjoys decent wifi and the best restrooms we have seen on this trip -- large, marbled, each with a large shower stall that does not drain into the drying area, a bench, lots of hooks and plenty of flow of hot water.
We had dinner at the restaurant of the marina with Erwin.

He has been such a huge help to me ever since I joined the Harlem in 1990 --Wow, that 25 years ago! The list of favors is so long that I couldn't include it here. But we talked about several of the prominent ones over dinner, including the time he spent two days taking the head off the Atomic-4 gas engine of my first boat, machining the surface smooth again and reinstalling it with gasket, all just days before a two week Club Cruise. He said he would help me but in fact he did the work and I handed him tools. Erwin was Commodore of the Club for an unprecedented two terms, organizes fund raisers for the club and the annual week's charter in the BVIs, is an accomplished Bermuda racer and a master engineer, mechanic and designer of boating things and breweries. We had a lovely and lively dinner with him before he drove us back to ILENE.
Our lay day here was just that. We did a cursory washdown of the topsides and a shopping trip to Publix (with a stop at a discount hardware store - I would have spent a lot more there but most of the tools did not say "stainless"). We went via the marina's free taxi service. Other than that I didn't do much of anything but loll around.
On our way south we went outside from the Lake Worth Inlet at North Palm Beach to Fort Lauderdale, in a single day sail. But heading north we traversed a new part (for me) of the ICW with a stop at Lake Boca, and it took two passage days.

March 18 -20 -- Three Lay Days in Lake Boca -- Zero Miles

Lake Boca is a large rectangle of water cut into the west side of the beach strip of Boca Raton, from the Boca Inlet north for about  .4 miles, along the east side of the ICW, .2 miles wide. The center of it is very shallow with only the edges navigable for keel boats. Anchorage for sailboats is in the NE corner. Access to land is in a park with a boat ramp and dinghy dock on the west side of the ICW, just south of the Palmetto Park Boulevard Bridge, north of the lake (less than half a mile away). We will have to request an opening of that bridge when we leave to head north.

Craig had a better idea about where to go ashore, because the tide runs fast under the bridge and big boats go too fast and make wakes: his boat, Sangaris, pictured above, is docked in a canal at the back yard of a private home about a mile further north. He picked us up there and we got to see Sangaris again, after all her European adventures.

I've been saying that when I get too old to sail ILENE, a radio controlled sailing boat on a lake may be in my future. Well Kathy had to work, Lene did her phone work from Kathy and Craig's house, and Craig took me to another gated community a bit further north called Kings Point, which has a lake in which his club races such boats. Beauties, one meter long, high aspect ratio,with 3/4 of the weight in the keel. The control box is worn on a strap around one's neck and the right thumb controls the rudder by pushing its joy stick left of right, while the left thumb controls both sails with back to pull them closer hauled and forward letting them fly for the downwind legs of the course. Below is Craig, demonstrating and Erwin, also a Past Commodore of the Harlem and racer, to the right.

All I can say is that it is a lot harder than it looks and I lost every race; actually I did not finish them. When aboard a boat you can easily see if your bow is pointed to the right or left of a buoy; you feel the tension of the water on the rudder; you can see how close to the wind you are. But offset by 50 to 100 yards and at a strange angle, these critical facts are not readily apparent at least not yet, to me. And rudder control is maintained by constant pressure of perhaps a half inch on the "tiller". But these things can be learned and the fifteen guys had a good camraderie going. Kathy is one of the guys and quite competitive when she is not working. I raced her boat, number 3. Erwin brought some beer for the "after". We plan to see Erwin again before heading north.

And in the evening we had dinner with not just Craig and Kathy, but also Mike and Janet. The latter have a Florida home and we will see them again at their home in St. Michaels, off the Chesapeake on Maryland's Eastern Shore, on our way home. I forget to take their picture but they are pictured from when we visited them in the Chesapeake in 2012 if you want to take a look. A nice Greek restaurant.

We rented a car for one day for trips to cousin Naomi to pick up a late arriving bundle of mail from home, the pet food store, Publix, the automotive store for things for the dink, the post office, the bank and the beach.

On our last day we toured around Mizener Village, which is a ritzy shopping mall. I got some new shorts because none of my old ones are unstained. We had lunch out and saw The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which celebrates India and aging. Good but not as good as the first movie. The theater is called Ipic and does not really want to be in the movie business. Seats are very large and comfortable and $14 if you want to sit in the first two rows, or $24 if you want even more luxurious seats with free use of a pillow and blanket and free popcorn. And Ipic has a full service restaurant and bar that you can patronize before or after and provides delivery of food and drink to your seat during the movie. And no reduced rate for matinees or for seniors.  The staff said it is a "good place to impress your date on a special occasion". The film is apparently just a gimmick to get folks to come in and spend money on the "entertainment experience package". This hustle offends me and I hope it fails, though we were the only two in the sixteen "cheap" seats while perhaps ten people sat behind us. We have had nice warm dry calm weather while in Boca. Next stop: Palm Beach.

March 17 -- Fort Lauderdale to Boca Raton. -- 17 Miles

We got help from our neighbors in bringing in our dock lines, exactly at 9 am, the earliest opening of the New River bridges after the blocked-out morning rush hours. On the way down the New one large boat leapfrogged with us and later told us that he had stopped at a dock to let off a passenger. After the four bridges over the New, which open on request, we passed eight more that open only at fixed times, on request. We missed one, because we miscalculated the time/distance/speed relationship, and because Lene wanted to arrive "on time". But the bridge tenders want us to hurry up, arrive early and wait. So we had half an hour to kill, because of missing that opening.  We passed The Ocean Monarch, the one on the left, where my parents lived and my daughters enjoyed vacation days, its balconies looking north and over the sea.

We arranged to let Elissa know when we were passing her house so we could wave to each other. That's Lene standing on the port side, outside the cockpit, waving.

Lots of big houses along the way; I shot only a few. So much money down here. Nobody "needs" such a big house. Many are empty, maintained to impress one's friends and colleagues when one chooses to visit Florida.

We dropped the hook in Lake Boca at 1:30 pm and after lowering the dink, got to a dock on the west side of the ICW, just south of the Palmetto Park Bridge, by 3:15. There Kathryn met us by car, took us shopping and then to her and Craig's beautiful home in Boca Lago, another of those gated communities for those 55-and-over that abound in this region. A great home cooked meal, lots of sailing talk. Craig is so handy; he can fix anything on a boat and renovated their house by himself, carpentry, plastering, plumbing, electrical, tile work, electronics and painting. And they play a mean piano and are superb racers.
Another thing: we are so ungrateful; for months we were complaining about the weather, too cold, too rainy, too windy, etc. But having enjoyed several week of ideal weather with nothing but more of the same in the forecast for the next week, we forget to give thanks and express our gratitude. or even  to mention it.
And I have finally found a good home for "The Lighthouse Robinsons", reviewed in this blog, which was a gift from Judy. Kathy and Craig are not only sailors, but of Scottish ancestry, so I'm sure they will enjoy the book.
I would say we enjoyed a quiet night aboard and this is true as far as the wind was concerned, but false in that someone partied very loudly until 3:30 am, a drunken screaming woman disturbing the peace. The first episode of this on this trip.

March 11-16 -- Six More Lay Days in Fort Laud. -- Zero Miles

Well, we got the 9' dinghy changed to the 9' 6" model and Lene is much happier. An amazing number of small tasks were required for this but it is all done, except paying the taxes, getting a registration number and putting it on the boat.

The Doel-fin stabilizer fins are screwed onto the small horizontal fins of the outboard, under the water, extending their area several times. Without them, when we try to go fast, the stern of the dinghy just digs in lower and the bow higher, which uses a lot of fuel, inefficiently, for a slow ride. But the ones that we got first were a bit too big and would not safely fit onto the outboard. So when we had a rented car for a day we got the right ones and during Lene's HS reunion, Janet's husband, Ed, helped me install them. And I needed his help because my initial plan to stand the outboard up against a square garbage bin, with the engine's vertical downward fin between the boards of the boardwalk and a line holding the outboard to the receptacle failed. The holes that needed to be drilled through the aluminum fins could not be drilled from the top down because the other parts of the outboard interfered with a vertical hole from the drill and the "vise" I had created was too low to the ground to drill the holes from the bottom up. So plan B was to find a taller receptacle to hang the outboard from -- and it worked. They said it was a fifteen minute job; more like 75. And this was definitely a two man job, if only to lift the engine from the dink to the land. Thanks Ed, for your help and for lunch at the Riverside Market Cafe, after. What a jumping place that is! I was not only the oldest person in the joint, but probably at least twice the age of every other person except Ed. They have an interesting way of selling beer: huge cooler cases line a wall with racks of bottles of beer of very many brands. Take what you want, open your bottle with an opener that hangs from the ceiling on a string nearby, and bring your empties to the cash register with your food check to be charged for both.

I treated the dink's hypalon exterior surface with a rubbing with Aerospace Protectant 303, to keep it clean and supple. And we had a spare tiller extender (so one can control the throttle and steering from a position more forward in the dink) which only needed  me to remove the rubber liner so it was large enough to fit properly over the end of the tiller and hack off about a foot to shorten the extender.
I also rebedded the side opening port above my head in the Pullman berth. When it rained I was rewarded by a slow drip on my head (or pillow) of fresh rainwater that seeped in (until I put a pot under the drip to catch it; but living with pots in one's bed is no way to live). All I had to do was remove the six screws that fastened the stainless collar around the outside of the exterior of the port, scrape away all of the old bedding material (rubbery stuff) from the back of the collar and from the surface to which it attaches, squeeze out a bead of new caulking all the way around, place the collar back on, screw the six screws in tight, and then wipe away all the excess I could and, after waiting for it to set, scrape away the remainder of the excess.

We enjoyed a visit to the Art Museum with Lene's HS classmate, Elissa, who is a member. It featured a lecture by a PhD art historian on photography followed by a viewing of the Museum's three exhibits: photography, Frieda Kahlo + Diego Rivera, and William Glackens, who was a painter in his own right but is more famous for buying most of the art that is now in The Barnes Collection in Philadelphia for Mr. Barnes. Then Lene and Elissa had dinner with some Lincoln HS grads and I spent a quiet night at home.

Interesting things have been happening at our Marina. 1). A week before we got here an auto was pulled from the bottom of the river, having rolled down the boat ramp next to us. The person whose body was found inside was a crime victim, an accident victim or a suicide. 2) A burglar, running from the police, jumped aboard a sailboat two boats away from ours, and when the husband was awakened by his heavy breathing, jumped into the river and was arrested by the police, waiting on the other shore. Glad it was not our boat. And this is a very cute little strange watercraft, taken out at the boat ramp near us.

Wildlife too: 1). I was afraid, returning to ILENE one night, that one of the kitties was thrashing in the water with one of the big black Moscovy ducks that live in the marina and fear no man -- or cat.

But it was two ducks mating, a very violent squawking while thrashing, it seemed to me. 2). Lene screamed! She does this when insects appear. It is very unsettling. This time it was a gecko crawling on our galley stove. It took a few attempts before I grabbed him and he was happy to be placed back on the dock. The next one was brought to the boat by one of the cats and I put him back ashore but without a good part of his tail. I don't know if he can live without it.  

We were taken to the Wakodahatchee wetlands preserve by our friends, Dick and Elle where we saw a turtle,

lots of birds

and this somewhat larger waterborne gecko, tail first and then head.

 It is part of a water treatment plant and a two mile boardwalk has been erected above the water to give visitors access to the animals. I'm thinking it is misnamed because it is not part of a river and "hatchee" is the Native American word for River, as in Caloosahatchee. Dick and Elle showed us their lovely home in the gated 800 single family home community of Valencia Isles. A beautiful home with room for Dick's woodworking tools. They were in the community production of Fiddler On The Roof, Elle operating a camera to project the play onto large screens at each side of the stage in the auditorium or ballroom of the clubhouse and Dick was a stage hand and had used his woodworking skills to fashion a very realistic looking fiddle out of a block of wood. They had invited us for the performance.We had pizza with them before the show and played in the billiard room of their clubhouse while they got ready for the play. It was very well done with retirees playing all the roles including Tevya's five young daughters. An amateur production but not at all amateurish, with professional equipment and a director.

We had a good dinner with Cousin Naomi

and her sons, Alan and Jeff, at Foxy Brown's restaurant. It was within walking distance but had a free parking lot so we drove. Naomi still uses a walker after recovery from her broken bone. Rather interesting food and not too expensive.

Lene had a rather full scale course of beauty treatments in anticipation of the full reunion with her class of '67 schoolmates. Not since October, so she deserved it.

We rented a car for a day from Gold Coast Autos, a very efficient operation which picked us up and dropped us of in a timely fashion. Family run for several decades, exclusively from one Fort Lauderdale office. The only bad part relates to the easy pass system they have installed in the cars. If you take a toll road (and who knew it was a toll road) the device automatically pays your toll and you are billed $6.75 if you tell them, or $20 when they find out if you don't tell them.

While we had the car, on a Saturday, I tried to visit my father's grave. Many Jewish cemeteries are closed on Saturdays so I called the day before and was told that while the office was closed, visitors were allowed until 3 pm. But when we arrived, the gates were locked so all I could do was say my prayers and think my thoughts from inside the car outside the gates. A disappointment.

Having not filled the propane tank since the day of our first arrival in Marathon, we took it for refill at UHaul the day we had the car. The can was almost bone dry. The valve at the top would not open so UHaul could not put in propane. At Westmarine the salesman told us that they do not sell nor install such valves but Boye's Propane does, and they did, and refilled the tank. They also inspected the tank (looked for pitted surfaces indicating corrosion of the exterior surface) and certified the can for another five years. Luckily this happened when we had the car, though our boat, UHaul, Westmarine and Boye's were all within a couple of miles of each other.

Elissa and Len introduced us to their sailing friends, Ned and Carolyn,

who have a 42 foot Jeanneau in Maine and a 36 foot sailboat at Dinner Key down here. Ned is the brother of Gene, who is a member of the Harlem! It is a small world indeed. After some wine aboard the six of us went to dinner at Nico's where I had the largest stuffed artichoke I have ever seen. It may have been partly because of all the sea stories but I blame the fact that I was still eating artichoke after all the others had finished on the size of that choke.  A fun evening and we thank Elissa and Len, who are not sailors,  for enduring all of our sea stories. And we are invited to Ned and Carolyn's house in Rockport, Maine on our next trip up there in 2016.

My final afternoon in Fort Lauderdale was a visit to the Science Museum here on Riverwalk. Lene's business has picked up a bit so she was working. I regret to say that the place was somewhat lackluster.

March 5 - 10 -- Six Lay Days in Fort Lauderdale -- Zero Miles

Dinner at the Downtowner, across the river, under the Andrews Avenue Bridge, outdoors, ten feet from the River, after dark, with great atmosphere, twice. Here from the other side of the river, by day.

Once, just the two of us, and the second time with Craig and Kathy. Their 45' Amel Santorin ketch, "Sangaris", is now back in Florida after they have spent the last fifteen years living aboard, as far away as the Galapagos in the Pacific, and throughout the western Med. Craig is a Past Commodore of the Harlem, now an honorary member. They have more miles under their keel than all the rest of us Harlemites put together. I was pleased to tell him that ILENE is the second most sailed boat in the Club. I raced a few times with Craig and Kathy on their old boat "C-Jack" and learned a lot about how to do this thing. Yelling never helps when things go wrong, as they invariably will. Quick, calm instructions on how to fix the problem is what is needed. We enjoyed some wine etc. aboard before the Downtowner.

We also enjoyed mango-sweet potato pancakes with Lene's HS classmate, Elissa and her husband Len, This was the advance guard of Lene's Lincoln HS class of '67 reunion in Boca Raton next week.

Since we left New York I have been meaning to shorten the length of the strap at the tack of the Genoa, to pull that sail down

about an inch in order to be able to stretch out its luff (front edge) more fully. I think that the sail has simply gotten stretched out a bit during the many years of heavy use so that unless I lowered the bottom, the top would get stuck and interfere with furling. I took advantage of access to the tack of the sail from the dock on a windless morning to do this job, doubling the bottom of the strap back upon itself to create a new loop to shorten it. It was too difficult to force the needle through the tough doubled multi-layered strap, even with the palm. So I used fewer stitches than I had planned and other methods to attempt to achieve this job. Time will tell whether the sewing will be strong enough.

We contacted canvas shops to try to get what Lene has sought since those cold days on the way south -- a cockpit, fully enclosed by clear plastic, which will warm up without the cold wind blowing freely through it. The boat came with five panels of mosquito screening to keep out the prevalent pests in the hot summery months in the Chesapeake, where the original owner kept this boat, then called "La Vie." I put these panels up once, on a rainy day, about eight years ago. So I knew they fit. But they did not keep the rain out, nor the wind. The plan is to use the existing Sunbrella canvas "frames" or "hems" around the outside of the panels, but cut out the screen material and sew in sheets of clear strong plastic. I put the panels up and took measurements and photographs. We sent what we have back to Doyle Sails on City Island who will do the work and send them back to us. Best price plus friendly knowledgeable local work at home.

"La Vie" is a lovely name for a boat, by the way, "The Life". But it was not as good for us as ILENE. It is said to be bad luck to change a boat's name, but I have changed the name of each of the three boats I have had. The Pearson 28 went from "Y Knot" to "Just Cause".  The Tartan 34 went from "Alsterwasser" (the favorite beer of the late husband from whose widow we bought her) to "ILENE", as did "La Vie."

Carlos walked the dock, gave me his card and offered to clean and wax the exterior of the boat including the stainless, from the waterline up.  Cleaning is work that I can do, though in hindsight, not as well as Clarence. And though I can do it, I seem to not get around to doing it and  I have never gotten ILENE as clean and shining bright white as Carlos has. She had not been done since last spring. Carlos worked, with power polishers,  the better part of three days, and the money was well spent.

I learned a lot at the New River Hotel, now the history museum, located in the former small modest cinder block hotel beside the former Florida East Coast Railroad depot. The FEC still screams past, many times per day, over that RR bridge, right outside the hotel, but they are freight trains and do not stop at the former passenger depot. There are plans to run passenger trains from Miami to Disneyworld over these same tracks. But there is some opposition to the plan because it would require the RR bridge  to open an additional 30 times per day with the loud train whistle reverberating at one second intervals while the trains pass through the heart of the city.

The train runs near Cooleys Landing, because Flagler couldn't persuade the Brickell family, who owned Broward County, to sell him a right of way closer to the coast. And that is why Flagler did not build his typical Flagler pleasure palace hotel here and this one was built by others. There was indeed a fort here, three of them in fact, one after the other, named after the commander of the first fort, one a Mr. Lauderdale. Most of us think of this place as a beach town, which it certainly is ("Where The Boys Are"), but the town grew up by the New River, where we are, several miles west of the beach. The river got its name, according two two competing legends, either (A) because an earthquake caused an underground stream to rise to the surface, i.e., a new river, or (B) because the mouth of the river kept shifting, causing it appear as a new river each time it was charted. Neither story sounds true to me. Cooley, after whose landing our Marina is named, was a local merchant and Justice of the Peace. He also operated a large facility extracting arrowroot from the roots of a plant he grew. When some drunken settlers killed an Indian, he had the culprits arrested and brought to trial. But he lost the prosecution because his only witnesses were Indians, and they could not testify in 1835. The witnesses were upset and blamed Cooley. Some time later they killed Cooley and his family. Class dismissed.

We prayed on the sabbath with Lene's cousin, Jeff, at Temple Beth Am (house of the people) in Margate.. Jeff is an officer there. The service was in the Conservative tradition, in which I grew up and belonged for the first 30 years of my life. Many of the melodies were familiar to me. The Rabbi's sermon was timely and excellent, drawn from an essay whose author he credited.
The current spat between the Prime Minister of Israel and President Obama and Senator Boehner who invited Netanyahu to address Congress without asking Obama, was nothing but a bunch of politicians ALL behaving badly. They all agree that Iran cannot be permitted to get a bomb and that Israel's security must be assured.  He traced the history of the U.S. - Israel relationship and showed that it was not a warm one until the 1967 war; that the chief suppliers of arms to Israel until then were first the French and then The Soviets via Chechoslovakia.  But, having failed to pacify Afghanistan or Iran after almost 15 years of trying, the U.S., under Obama, has moved to a policy of requiring the four major powers of the region to buffer each other and balance each other out, with U.S. air strikes providing a bit of assistance, to assist ground troops of the local rivals. The four powers in this regional analysis are Turkey, Israel, Iran and the Saudis, none of which like each other, and all of which have cause to hate ISIS.  The spat between Israel and the U.S. comes from Israel's feeling of loss that that they were the favorite of the US.  Yet there are many hawkish right wing Jews in the US who hate our President for many reasons. Jeff's Rabbi is to be commended for not joining them.

 After services we had lunch with Jeff, his brother Alan and their Mom, Naomi, at a Chinese Buffet that Naomi craved. This was her first outing since our December visit, when she was in rehab for a broken pelvis. After eating too much we were driven back to Naomi's house to pick up about six packages which we had shipped there and then back home to ILENE, for the rest of the rainy day.

I walked to and on the beach one day, via Las Olas Boulevard. Well, a quarter of the round trip was a ride, from the Post office, where I had walked to send off the screens. to the beach. I passed the art gallery district including Pococks, whose owner, though British, like George Pocock, was not related to that famous builder of cedar rowing shells featured in "The Boys In the Boat." I told him that he would enjoy the book.  On the beach I walked north, past the most crowded spot, called "Beach Place," covered with young bikini clad women and men who desired them, then past a gay section of the beach and finally a much more sparsely blanketed section by the Westin Hotel, featuring older people and families. On the way back, along Las Olas ("The Waves"), I noticed the town's logo: a boat with a spinaker on the bow and a phoenix or rising sun as the main.

I walked past the ends of the many canals that were dredged to Las Olas Blvd. and visited an open house in this almost completed new 7488 square foot home. It can be yours for less than $7M. Nice spot to dock ILENE comes with it. But not for us.

We had wine and then dinner aboard with my only nephew, David, who this lousy under-lit photo does not do justice, sorry Dave. He lives with his lovely wife and two kids in Atlanta where he has a business, but is also a partner in a business in Boca Raton and works here three days (two night) per week. He had a weekend with his father aboard "Just Cause" back in 1996, from City Island to Northport and back, but had never seen ILENE. 
We have several more days here in Fort Lauderdale.

March 4 -- Belle Island Anchorage Miami Beach to Cooleys Landing Marina, Ft. Lauderdale -- 35.6 Miles

An interesting passage. We pulled up the anchor at 9:45. The tide was helping us on the way out of Miami. The main ship channel was free of  cruise liners (on Wednesday) so we were able to use that channel without the police directing us to turn back, and requiring the more circuitous industrial route We had only one tow and barge to avoid.

But the wind was in our face and once we got to Government Cut proper, big rollers from the sea were coming directly in. Built up by ten to twenty knots of wind from the east or south east, over a long time and distance, those waves confronted the tide flowing out and produced waves up to ten feet high which tossed ILENE about. Our bow dove under some waves with salt water bathing the deck. Good thing the hatches were not just closed but dogged down very tight. we closed the companionway hatch cover just in case, but no salt water came that far back to enter the cabin. And when our bow was lifted high up by other waves, a few gallons of seawater entered the cockpit through the stern swim platform but drained quickly back out. The sails, our strong engine, could not be deployed to get us through this bad patch faster because the wind was in our faces. We do not give the kitties big breakfasts on such days and their crying was not from nausea but caused by fear and discomfort.
Once clear of the Cut and its extending sea walls we turned north, and put out the small jib and things stabilized a bit. But we were still close to the wind and only making 4.5 knots; not enough to get to our destination in time. So we changed to the genoa and with the wind now on or near our beam we made seven knots, on a rolly ride with five foot waves pushing on our starboard quarter. But at seven knots we were now going too fast -- we would get there too early. We had to arrive at our destination, a few miles up the New River, at 4 pm, when it would be slack tide. If we were earlier or later, the strong tidal flows in that river would make it difficult to get into the slips which lie perpendicular to the tidal flow. So about an hour before the waypoint marking our turn west into the Port Everglades Cut to Fort Lauderdale, we switched back to the small jib and slowed  back down to four knots.  We were also happy to have the self tacking small jib out because the turn to the west would involve a jibe. We had planned for the 3:30 opening of the 17th Street Bridge across the ICW in Ft. Laud, but sailing with just the small jib until a few hundred yards from the bridge, we still got there too early, and made the 3;00 opening. Better too early, which can be solved by slowing down, that too late, because there is a limit on how fast we can speed up.

This is someone else's idea of beauty and is big and probably fast and unusual in design and color and parked near Steven Spielberg's mega yacht that is pictured in the post from our early spring 2012 visit to this city.

So we had to slow down and solved this by drifting north in the ICW in neutral and maintained steerage  with the wind and tide until we turned left into the New River. We had a scare when we heard on the radio from a friendly power boat of New Yorkers that the railroad bridge, one of the four we passed under, was down for maintenance; it is normally up and out of the way except when a train comes. That would completely screw up our timing issue. But it went up again, just in time, and we had an easy landing and were all tied up by 4:15, talked with our new neighbors, took showers, a delicious steak dinner aboard and tried, without success, to watch Downton Abbey via WiFi.

Cooleys Landing and Marathon are both municipal marinas in Florida but they have diametrically opposite pricing policies to influence the length of one's stay. At Marathon they give a bargain price to those who stay long term. One night on a mooring at the monthly rate is only ten dollars, which is less than the price of dinghy docking and restroom use on a daily rate for those on anchor. Here in Fort Lauderdale we pay only $1 per foot per day for dockage with the BoatUS discount, but only for ten calendar days per calendar year, after which 20% higher rates apply. Here they incent short term stays unlike Marathon which favors those who stay for the long haul. We are peripatetic nomads and have never stayed on our boat anywhere for a month.

Feb 25 - Mar 3 -- No Name Harbor, Key Biscayne to the Miami Beach Anchorage and Six Lay Days There -- Nine Miles

We actually sailed, genoa only, on a jibing course that took us first to the entrance to the Dinner Key Channel and then to the red buoy just south of the first high bridge, after which it was motoring again. A delay for about fifteen minutes just before the last bridge was caused by a huge cruise liner turning in her own length just north of that bridge in a turning basin; no way I want to get too close to her.

At Belle Island, we anchored even further out, far from anyone, still ten feet of water and 100 feet of snubbed chain. Our guests thought it best to stay in a hotel on their last night in Miami Beach so I took them and their luggage (appropriately very light) ashore to the Collins Canal where they called a cab. Two problems: The blocks holding the aft end of the dink were jammed against each other with a twist. No way to unsnarl that knot. And we had to lower the dink to disembark our guests. What to do? A stout line from a bowline through  the dink's lifting strap, over the davit bar and forward to a winch. Then cut the snarled line right at the inside of the knot (I only lost six inches of its length) and lower the dink with the stout line. Second problem: on the way in, the outboard died. But while scary, I just squeezed the black bulb in the fuel line and she started right up again and has run fine ever since. Pray let this continue.
Nothing fazes these guys; first a boxed set:

Back at ILENE, I picked up Lene, flashlight, picnic dinner and two folding chairs and we went to a free screening of the Oscar winning (for special effects) "Interstellar" projected on the outside wall of the New World Symphony where we met up with Jerry and Louise and others of their friends. It was much warmer than when we had viewed the Sinatra film during our southbound stay here. But the film was a mess of confusing plots and name brand actors who mumbled their lines -- and long. I had a nap during part of it; a good film is defined as one that keeps me awake.

We did laundry, shopped for replacement things for the new dink (strong coated wire with loops at both ends for locking it, nav lights, shammy, spare fuel tank, small mushroom anchor, hand powered bailing pump and trim tabs.
And during the boat cleaning, we couldn't get the shop vac to turn on. Finally Lene called over our friend Nick (with the two huskies) and we kept thinking. The problem was that when we had disconnected from shore power at Coconut Grove, we had not turned on the "Ships Power" switch.  Our lights, navigation equipment, engine, water pump etc. operated with this switch off, but for applications of 110 volts (the outlets that we use for some device charging and the vacuum cleaner) we needed to turn on the inverter and it wouldn't turn on until we turned "ships power" on. Nick asked where the toggle for the inverter was on the breaker panel, which caused me to realize that ships power had not been turned on yet. Nick came over the next morning for mango- peach-sweet potato pancakes. I whipped a lot of ends of lines: both the various pieces of "short stuff" the new, thinner diameter lifting strap lines of the dink and the new end of the line through the blocks at the aft end of the dink. And I assembled the oar locks onto the oars of the dink so it will be ready to be rowed if that is needed.

One evening Jerry and Louise picked us up and took us to the north Miami
Beach amphitheater which had a fascinating lecture about the history of Miami Beach by its official historian on the occasion of the city's 100th anniversary, followed by a concert by the big band of Cab Calloway's grandson. all free. Then dinner at a good Cuban restaurant next door. We were a party of seven with David, Ilana and Sam. Rain had threatened all night and there was a brief strong downpour for the five minutes that we were dinking home; but it was clean rain water and clothes do dry.

Another day it rained, pretty hard for long hours (lots of bailing from the dink in the evening) but we were high and dry at Jerry and Louse's with Sam, whose daughter, Rachel also joined us for a while.

A good home cooked dinner to which everyone contributed to the making of one or more dishes.

I read "The Gun Ketch" by Dewey Lambdin, about a naval officer before the Napoleonic wars. It is like Hornblower and the O'Brian books, but Lambdin is "R" rated and his characters curse like, well... sailors.  No this is not another book review, though I write such for all the books I read. I'll only add that this one was particularly pleasurable because it was set in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos, where we sailed in 2012 and had experience of the waters in question. I sent my review with thanks to Steve, a member of my Book Group who lent the book to me before our voyage. He sails a Hobie Cat style beach boat from Fire Island. His reply revealed that he and his wife, Belinda, who have sailed with us on our Tartan 34, were in South Beach. So we got together for dinner at Sardinia,

located a block from the dinghy dock. They invited us to join them for a ride on the power boat they had rented so we joined the dark side for two hours at speeds that ILENE cannot attain.

Another electrical problem was solved and fixed. I had turned off the Spectra Ventura water maker at its switch/breaker on the inside of the anchor locker following a series of alarms, and it would not turn back on.

The anchor locker is an uncomfortable place to work, made easier by Lene getting me the many tools and supplies needed for the job. Calls to Brian of Headsync, the vendor/ installer and to Dean of s/v Autumn Born confirmed that the problem was probably not in the water maker itself, but in the power leading to it. There is a switch and fuse above my left shoulder on the inside of the locker but they seemed OK. (Lene took this candid picture, not of me, but of my curious assistant, at my left elbow!) The problem was found at the junction box, mounted where my flashlight illuminated hands are.

An occasional drip from the deck port access through which the salt water anchor chain wash-down pump's hose is located was the cause. Though protected by a smear of Vaseline and a flimsy plastic cover, this salt water had turned the old block into a gooey green mass of corrosion. When that was cleaned off, I saw that one of the four wires had totally corroded away, and provided no electrical connection. I had to drill the old block out and the holes of the boxes I had as spares (lower right) were too small  in diameter for the heavy gauge wire involved.
A long dinghy ride to the marine store to get a new block but then I had to hack off the piece needed, and the remainder of the block, (the black rectangle in the upper right) is now a spare. The old block was installed in August 2010 so not many years had passed to turn it into junk, and the damp nature of the place cannot be eliminated. I mounted the block so the wires run into it horizontally, rather than vertically, and with a "U" shaped loop in the way the wire is wire-wrapped to the bulkhead from above. Thus water that drips from above, along the wire will hopefully drop off the bottom of that "U", rather than run to the terminals of the block itself. Also I attached a piece of heavy gauge Zip-lock bag material behind and over the top of the block to deflect water. It works for now, power being restored to the machine. Let's see how long this will last. I am not a handy or mechanically inclined person so I get a big thrill from being able to accomplish such a repair myself. Sailing presents a never ending series of such challenges your way, which will become more frequent as ILENE, now a sweet sixteen, ages further.
On our last day here we returned the rented SUP and saw "Leviathan' at the nearby cinema. A long thought provoking subtitled Russian film.
Our plan is for an Atlantic passage to Fort Lauderdale on March 4, when good wind (10 to 20 from behind us) is predicted, and about two weeks there at Cooley's Landing Marina for visits with friends, etc. followed by another Atlantic passage to the Lake Worth Inlet for more friends.