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| Bookish Wench |
Our journey from Lake Sylvia in the Fort Lauderdale area again took us past the extravagant mansions right at waterside. We still cannot believe the size of these places. The full scope of their properties just won't fit in a film frame. Imagine a very elaborate guest house for, say, the palace of Versailles. Got it? Now multiply that by two or three hundred similar places. We cruise along saying, "Look on the right! Can you believe the one on the left? Oh my gosh!"
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| This is one house! |
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| We can only imagine the elegance of this yacht. |
Our travel through the many bridges after Lake Sylvia was one of some consternation. We think that we wasted about two hours today waiting for bridge openings. The bridges have established times for opening so that boats can adjust their travel speed to make the opening of the next bridge. They open either on the quarter hour and three quarter hour or they open on the hour and the half hour. This day we just could not get our timing right due to the limits on wake size as posted on the ICW signage.
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These markers on the side of the bridge tell us if we can make it under. Our height is 17 1/2 feet.
We'll have to wait for this one |
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| Castle Bridge. |
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| A couple of handsome working tugboats |
We did have some heart stopping action in the Hillsboro Inlet area. As we crossed through the inlet basin Wayne decided that it was time to run on only one engine. Thirty seconds after shutting down the starboard engine, the port engine also shut down. The engine alarm was sounding and it would not restart. As things do in boating, the starboard engine also would not restart. No power! Fast current! High winds! Bridge coming up! We started deploying the anchor and had 20 feet of anchor chain out when the starboard engine restarted. We attempted to restart the port engine but were not successful. We were lucky in that there was a rare anchorage just east of us in the basin. Fighting the rapid flowing current and high winds we managed to get anchored. What happened when the starboard engine was shut down that caused the port engine to shut down? Nothing made sense. After some real thought processing and some elemental checks, it was determined that the port engine must have run out of fuel. But how? We had a range of 300 miles on the aft tanks from which the engines were drawing fuel. We had only traveled about 150 miles. The answer will probably come when we refuel those aft tanks. Anyhow, we switched to the forward fuel tanks and tried to restart the port engine. No luck. Wayne traced the fuel lines to the filters and to the engine. He found what looked to be a plunger that might be a primer for the injectors. After hand pumping about 20 times, pressure was felt and the engine started and then stopped and would not restart. With another 50 or so pumps the engine finally did start and ran perfectly all the rest of the day. When we got back into the ICW, the very next bridge had such high current that it would have been very problematic to have attempted a one engine passage.
Our Lake Worth anchorage that evening was a welcome calm after our exciting day. We traveled on to Vero Beach the next day in wonderful sunny balmy weather and arrived here on Friday. We anchored on a mooring buoy the first night but have now moved to a dock space. We had totaled up the number of consecutive days we'd been living at anchor. It was 46! Time to get our feet dry for a while. Vero Beach is known as Velcro Beach by many boaters we've met. It's easy to see why. It is a beautiful, relaxed, friendly community and it will be difficult to tear ourselves away from it.
Friday night we walked to the nearby U S Power Squadron clubhouse and attended a social with local Power Squadron members We went to the Saturday farmer's market downtown yesterday and stocked up on fresh fruit and vegetables. Last night we met Howard and Donna for a delicious meal at a restaurant that's rapidly becoming one of our favorites here - The Lemon Tree on A1A downtown Vero. This is one restaurant that we can recommend with confidence.
This morning we finally got the chance to take Howard and Donna for a boat ride. We went north on the ICW, stopping for lunch at anchor along the way. As we ate we spotted three manatees about ten feet from the boat. They surfaced; then sank down several times and we got a good glimpse of their enormous broad backs, wide tails and whiskery noses. We've seen quite a lot of manatees along the way but it's usually been just the surface of their backs as they moved away from the boat. This was a special event and we were so happy it happened while we had company to enjoy it with us.
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| Donna - I want a boat. This is divine. |
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| Captain Howard |
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