News from Ft. Lauderdale's Lake Sylvia anchorage - Wednesday, Feb. 16th, 2011

After a very calm and restful night  we left Tarpon Basin this morning.  A thought was given to not departing for Ft. Lauderdale because of overcast skies but we set out anyway at 6:40.  What a wonderful day we had as the skies cleared.  About an hour into today's travel we heard a popping sound like some plastic item flapping loose.  A sound like that gets your attention quickly on a boat.  When we looked back we saw what we thought was the gray tube of our dinghy jump up and disappear under water.  Eeek, we've lost the dinghy!  We soon realized that the dinghy was still in its place on the swim platform and that what we saw was a glimpse of a dolphin as it reentered the water after a jump in our wake.  But we were not sure what we heard and saw.  Several hours later in Biscayne Bay as we watched dolphins repeatedly come to our bow and dive underneath the boat we got our answer.  We saw that they came up behind us in our wake and they were jumping in our stern waves within 10 feet of the boat and then they would belly flop with a loud pop as they entered the water.  We don't know how many times they had done this before and we had just not noticed.  But it seems that this is their playtime activity with bigger boats.  What a sight!  The dolphins were probably pretty disgusted with the humans who did not know how to appreciate their game.

The day became quite pleasant except for strong winds that met us nearly head on from the NE.  Both of us wore jackets most of the day. 



Wayne's $40 bike

  

Bridge that enters the Keys at the northeast side.  Our exit mark.




One of the passages between sounds


After traversing sound after sound, Buttonwood Sound, Blackwater Sound, Little Card Sound, and Card Sound, we finally made it into Biscayne Bay and could see the tall buildings of Miami.  Through the binoculars, the bay waters looked to be up to the 4th story due to the curvature of the earth.  It looked eery.  From the time that we saw the buildings from 20+ miles away it took almost three hours to finally get to Miami's inner harbor.  We had to wait almost 30 minutes for one of the bridges in Miami.  Otherwise we were not delayed further by the many bridges along the way to Ft. Lauderdale.  We were lucky in that several bridges that had delayed us in opening on the way south were passable today heading north due to it being low tide at the time we went under them.



This sailboat against the Miami skyline was really beautiful.



One of Miami's many bridges

 We arrived in Lk. Sylvia about 3:30 and anchored for the night.  We lowered the dinghy, installed the outboard motor and other paraphernalia and then motored to a close restaurant for a nice mediocre dinner.  But it was a treat to go to dinner by dinghy.  It has been raining off and on this evening since the minute that I finished storing the dinghy and motor.  Perfect timing.

We will be off to Lake Worth for tomorrow's anchorage.