Our daughter said, "It's sounds like the anchor chain!" The Admiral went running up, and sure enough the anchor chain was dumping itself overboard. The Admiral quickly ran in and shut off the breaker. The Captain immediately dropped to idle and pulled the boat over towards the side. Fortunately, the Admiral had remembered the safety line on the anchor, so the anchor had stayed put, but a good 50 ft of chain was hanging under the boat. The windlass would not work properly, so the Captain and Admiral quickly pulled the chain up by hand. With the crisis temporarily averted, we continued on. We realized that this would make anchoring at the next location difficult, so we got a spot in Titusville Marina to tie up. The Captain immediately went up to fix the windlass issue, only for there to not be an issue. That's right folks, the windlass was working flawlessly (and has been ever since). We decided that apparently New Smyrna does not like us (considering this event and the prior event going north) and vowed to avoid the area from now on. The weather was turning colder, and the marina was costly, so we decided to bail on the rocket launch and head to warmer weather in Melbourne.
We spent five days in Melbourne through the nasty cold front that came through. Fortunately it was warmer than it would have been further north, and it gave us the opportunity to get groceries. We left Melbourne in time to have Thanksgiving in Ft. Pierce:
It was not the lavish affair we were used to, but we did manage to whip together something decent. We had intended to remain in Ft. Pierce only long enough to get a window to go outside into the Atlantic to continue south. After spending a week there, with no window in sight, we decided to continue south inside on the Intracoastal.
We spent a midge filled night in Peck Lake before arriving in Palm Beach. Palm Beach turned out to be a very interesting place. You encounter interesting things while traveling. We anchored right near a city park that was decorated for Christmas. They deck out the park and have a nightly show for the city all through December (completely free to the public). We got to experience Sandi, a 600 ton sand castle decorated as a Christmas tree:
There were also other sandcastles, a mini golf course, an area where you could make your own snowman (out of sand), etc.
The whole park lights up at night and plays music for four hours every evening.
We knew we would have to remain in Palm Beach until a window to the outside opened up, as the trip south on the inside was very unpalatable. There were dozens of draw bridges and a 40 mile stretch of rough waters. Not that Palm Beach was devoid of it's own rough waters. On our second day there, while we were playing tourist on shore, our boat had a bit of a mishap.
We knew something must have gone wrong, when we arrived back at the boat, since the interior looked like the boat had been massively thrown around. We had a few broken items, and stuff that typically never moves had been misplaced. Confusion ensued until we got a message from the boat that had been anchored near us (and were gone when we returned). Apparently in the wind and wakes, our boats had collided. They immediately pulled up anchor and left after the mishap, having only gotten a minor scratch on their bow. We, however, had a nasty gouge in our bow that would have to be repaired prior to going outside. So, we contemplated looking for a fiberglass repair shop. Unfortunately, it was a Friday, and the next pretty window for going outside was the following Tuesday. So, if we waited to have the repair done, we would lose the window. The Captain and Admiral decided it was time to try and tackle a fiberglass repair themselves. So the Admiral set out patching the hole:
With the hole filled, solid, and strong we knew we could head on with our own schedule. The Admiral put gel coat over everything, to blend it in with the rest of the deck, prior to departure. She wasn't pleased with the final result of the gel coat (hence no pic of it), but it wasn't too bad considering it was our first time attempting such a thing. She intends to redo the gel coat after she's had a bit more practice making it look nice.
The following Monday we decided to pull up anchor and move north of the draw bridge we were anchored near, so we would have easy access to the inlet on Tuesday. The draw bridge only opens once an hour, so we aimed for the 2pm opening in the event anything went wrong. It was a good thing too, since when we pulled up anchor, we pulled this up instead:
Our anchor chain was wrapped six different ways around the bike. So we had to slowly motor over to the city dock, tie up, and spend an hour (and lots of bruises) untangling the chain and retrieving our anchor. We left the offending item resting on the public city dock figuring they could dispose of it for us as payment for the small amount of dredging we unwillingly did in their waters. We then made the 3pm drawbridge opening and anchored to await the morning.
We headed out Tuesday morning into the Atlantic Ocean to head south to Ft. Lauderdale. It was a perfect trip. The water was incredibly calm. The kids couldn't believe we were actually 'outside'. The Intracoastal had been rougher on us for the past few weeks. We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale in a timely manner and anchored north of the Los Olas bridge. Again, the things you stumble on while traveling are interesting. Anchored where we were, right on the edge of the Intracoastal, we had front row seats to the Winterfest parade. There were over 50 boats, decked out with signs and lights, all passing in a parade right next to us. Pitbull was actually on the 3rd boat that went by! The kids were so excited! Here are just a few of the pics we got:
We were originally going to stay in Ft. Lauderdale until we got a good window to go outside (a necessity since it wasn't possible to take the inside route down) to Key Biscayne, and provision for our eventual trip to the Bahamas. However, Ft. Lauderdale proved frustrating to attempt to provision. All of the marinas and moorings were full, so we had no way to get mail, rent a car (nowhere to park one overnight), or have access to a dinghy dock past 4pm. A window for going south was opening up, and rumor had it that it would be the last window to head south until after Christmas. So, we decided to throw caution to the wind. We made a quick trip (via Uber) to the nearest Wal-Mart and got a few supplies. Then on December 14th, we headed back out into the Atlantic for a 28 hour trip to Nassau. Here is a pic of the water just as we left cell phone range outside Ft. Lauderdale:
The trip over was incredibly calm. The only mishap that occurred was our port side navigation light went out on us as we were leaving Ft. Lauderdale. The Admiral came to the rescue. She hung out on the bow of the boat, going 7 knots underway, with 1000s of feet of water beneath us, and rewired the whole light on the go so that it was working properly before nightfall. Even our cat Tiger found the whole trip uneventful. He's finally acclimated to it all:
We stopped in the middle of nowhere for a few hours overnight to sleep. Then, at around 2pm on Thursday, Nassau was in sight:
So, we've done it. We've finally made it out of Florida, and are enjoying the beautiful blue clear waters of the Bahamas. We are going to stay for awhile. However, we aren't making any real plans. Or rather, the plans we do make are in the sand at low tide ;-)
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