We made the excellent decision to go “outside” from Vero Beach down to Lake Worth.   It was Sunday and everyone and their brothers were out on their boats enjoying the beautiful day.   Lots of wake and activity and in this stretch there were SEVEN restricted bridges in ten miles.  Many of the old lifting bridges along the waterway have been replaced with high bridges that allow unlimited access.   But on this stretch, no.   The bridges open either on the hour, half hour, or sometimes on demand but you still have to call the bridge tender to open and wait your turn in all the traffic.   And if you just miss an hourly one, you have to wait that long for the next opening.  So we set off in a beautiful sunrise and motorsailed with Mel and Gary alongside – with beautiful sea and clouds as our view.   It got a bit choppy for a while, but that passed and it was a good day.

We had hoped to cross the gulf stream on Tuesday, but the forecast was a little rough with strong winds forecast on the Bahama side so we decided to wait.   It gave us a good opportunity to do some maintenance and get the boat ready.   We shared a hired car with the Tisdales and we hit Sam’s Club and a grocery store for final provisions.   I would kill for a bigger fridge!!!   We watched the super moon rise …

….after the sun set.    You can tell we are in Florida by all of the high rise buildings!

So we are at Lake Worth FL waiting to cross – we plan to go tomorrow even though the weather might not be absolutely perfect – if we waited for perfect it might never come!   We need to get there so that we can acclimatize, explore and get our boat situated for when we leave it to go home for Christmas.  We will get a sim card for our other phone and hopefully be able to send one or two blogs before we leave.  Otherwise I will do it from Annapolis when we get home.

So the waterway part of this adventure ends – it has been fascinating and a lot of fun.   But looking forward to what lies ahead.   Garth just headed off to the little French cafe we found for breakfast and the newspaper – his habits are hard to break!!  But I know he is not going to find one of those once we are in the Bahamas, so this is his last chance!!