Bellatrix

Fort Lauderdale, FL

8 November 2014

Well we made Fort Lauderdale. This will be our jumping off point to the Bahamas. We are making final preparations, getting cash, having our mail sent to us, and getting Bella’s health certificate. Those are all supposed to happen on Monday. After that we will be looking for the “weather window”. Because the Gulf Stream flows from south to north it gets unpleasant with any kind of north wind. Ideally you wait till the wind has moved from a southerly direction for 2 days before crossing. When we leave we will leave at around 3 AM that should put us in West End in the early afternoon. We are told you want the sun high so you can read the water depths.

We left Stuart and stayed a night in West Palm Beach in a marina. Skip visited the VA Hospital and got a checkup and flu shot. We went to “Boat Owners Warehouse”, a mega boat stuff store. Those of you with boats might want to check them out on-line, their prices were good and they had the stuff you need, not clothes and cutesy stuff like West Marine.

The next night we anchored out in a very shallow but well protected little nook. It’s amazing that shallow water hardly bothers us anymore just like 65’ bridges. The dreaded no see ums got us again though.

The last 30 miles on the ICW were beautiful. Very expensive houses, huge yachts and lots of bascule bridges. The bridge schedules barely give us enough time to get to the next one without having to idle for 30 minutes. There was a stretch before Lauderdale that we had 7 draw bridges in 14 miles.

The homes here are beautiful, the mega yachts are plentiful. I had no idea there were that many extremely rich people in the country.

There are many pictures today, good internet.

Not a home, just the boat house

A nice house

Clear water

More derelict boats, a real problem in Florida

A private vessel

with it's own sub

Just another pretty house

and another

and another

OK, I don't know either but there where a bunch of these on mooring balls, pontoon boats with tiki huts

A huge catamaran, neat place to store the dink

Mega yacht boatyard

Mega yacht

and another

and another

Me and him waiting for a bridge opening

Very nice hedges

Even the bridges are pretty

There are many canals with beautiful homes

I started to complain about the crab pots being in the channel,  i realized they were coconuts

A stainless steel marlin sculpture 

Another nice guy waving to the passing boats

Peace 

The swimming pool area

Dragon fly

Does the house come with the yacht or vice versa