Sunday 18th January
Visit from Ira and Ann and a trip to the Mardi Gras flea market to acquire more stuff.

Monday 19th January
Ira and Ann take us shopping in Fort Lauderdale to ‘Sailorman’ used store and other marine related suppliers. We then went down to Hollywood Beach for pizza and beer by the sea.

We take a walk along the broadwalk (no I didn`t spell that wrong) along the front and I finally buy a body board.
Wow, this place is little Quebec with French spoken everywhere and signs in French. At that flea market there was a stall only selling books in French.

Tuesday 20th January
Ira helped me with some boat stuff and then more ferrying around courtesy of Ira and Ann, Home Depot, BJs (Costco-like), K-Mart & Wal-Mart – when you have the transportation you go crazy. Ira and Ann head back home to West Palm Beach.

Wednesday 21st January
We are picked up by Carol`s cousin and head to his place for Melanie`s (his wife`s) birthday party at their beautiful house on a lake, complete with tame geese.

Thursday 22nd January
A day on the boat doing various odd jobs.

Friday 23rd January
Over to Mike and Melanie’s for the last time to see their daughter who has just moved back to Florida.

Saturday 24th January
Time to leave Hollywood Beach. As we head out of the marina to transit the first bridge we meet up with Bill and Jo on Buckaroo who we haven’t seen since Georgia. We travel through the bridges in convoy and anchor in beautiful Sunset Lake, Miami Beach.


This is an area of manmade islands bisected by canals and connected by low bridges. Venice comes to mind.

Sunday 25th January
Buckaroo makes and earlier start than us with Jo on anchor retrieval duty.


A forlorn looking Buddy is waiting patiently for my return.


Eventually we head off and continue on south past the port of Miami and the phalanxes of cruise ships.
We head for Noname Harbour on Key Biscayne but it is packed with power boats and loud – really loud – disco music blasting out from several sources. Hurricane Harbour proves quieter and by nightfall we are the only boat left.

Monday 26th January
We are running short on some provisions so we head out across Biscayne Bay dodging the yacht races to Coconut Grove where there’s access to the universal Publix. That takes care of most of the day and we spend a bumpy night in the anchorage.

Tuesday 27th January
We have decided to hang around this area until the next front has passed through so we headed back across Biscayne Bay to Crandon Park Marina which according to Skipper Bob has $11 moorings. Well, not any more, they’re double that, but we signed up until Saturday anyway.
It’s a very pleasant spot with a view of the Miami skyline from our cockpit.

Vero Beach to Hollywood

Thursday 8th January
Finally we unstuck ourselves from Vero, cast of from Cgull Seeker and Bilbo and head south once more.

Peck Lake is our intended stop for at least one night.

Friday 9th January
We stay a day in Peck Lake. It’s a bit ‘wake’ prone and unfortunately you are no longer permitted to take pets ashore on the beach side of the lake but thanks to advice from another dog owner, Steve on ‘The Seeker’, we could dinghy to a park up a side tributary of the ICW. We saw our first anhinga there. This is a bird that might be mistaken for a cormorant but has a much more slender neck, travels solo, is much less common and swims with its body underwater and just its head sticking out above the surface.


Saturday 10th January
We are on our way again, heading for Lake Worth,

famous as a jumping off point for the Bahamas and North Palm Beach, Palm Beach and home of the ultra rich, West Palm Beach.

Sunday 11th January
West Palm Beach is also home to our good friends and ex-cruisers Ira and Ann Russianoff who live in a huge retirement community where we visited them.


Monday 12th January
Shopping at the nearby Publix Supermarket and tidying-up-the-boat day.

Tuesday 13th January
Another day of jobs around the boat.

Wednesday 14th January
A visit for lunch from Ira and Ann and discussions of upcoming destinations

Thursday 15th January
An unacustomed early start to the day as the journey south continues past West Palm beach and the famous Breakers Hotel, usually seen from the ocean side.We anchored for the night in Lake Boca Raton . Boca Raton is a big hi-tech centre, after the birth of the IBM PC there.

We found the waterfront properties in Boca to be probably the most attractive so far.


Friday 16th January
Another early start to avoid upcoming unpleasant weather and on down the 'Canyon', a part of the ICW lined with concrete walls that amplifies the effect of the wakes you get from numerous rather inconsiderate power boaters. They're not all idiots but many are.

On this stretch of the journey there are also a 'lot' of bridges that have restricted openings so you spend most of the time trying to arrive at the next one at their scheduled opening time. Some of them are quite whimsical.


Fort Lauderdale had many massive homes on the water accompanied by huge boats at their private docks. The following may not seem that impressive unless you are aware that the 'little' speedboat in front is actually over a hundred feet long.

Here's what appears to be an attempt to duplicate the White House.
South of Fort Lauderdale is Hollywood and a reasonably priced marina, fairly close to where Carol's cousin Mike and wife Melanie live in Pembroke Pines. So we had planned a stay over as there was a bit of a family gathering, organized for Mike and Melanie's granddaughter's third birthday.

Saturday 17th January
It was quite a party with about 50 guests with lots of food and Carol got to meet up with her other American cousin Victoria (shown here with her brother Mike) who she hadn't seen in 40 years.

Still stuck in Vero

26th December to 7th January
It was going to be a few days, maybe even a week, but we're still here in Velcro beach. You begin to see how apt the nickname is. Life is just too pleasant and easy here.

Don't know where the time really went over the last two weeks. We visited the malls a few times, went to the beach several times, had people for supper on the boat, went over to other boats, did some boat projects, did some boat cleaning, got Buddy groomed for which he is grateful as he was getting too hot. The weather has been great, sunny days with a constant breeze and cool nights.

Yesterday was Carol's birthday, so after getting her hair 'done' and doing some provisioning (as we intended to leave today) we went to a local restaurant with John and Rejeanne from 'Bilbo' and Mike and Cathy from 'C-Gull Seeker' who we've been rafted to for the last two weeks.

As we said, we did intend to leave today but the wind is strong from the direction we intend to travel in and tomorrow it promises not to be so we`ll wait another day.