Embedded Files
We were woken up quite early this morning at 4:30am. It had started to rain quite hard so we needed to close the hatches and then the skies lit up with a pretty violent thunderstorm. With the storm came high winds, which made me nervous enough to start the engines just incase the anchor dragged. I was very thankful that our anchorage was so well protected with excellent holding and I was thinking of the boats anchored outside of No Name harbor. They must have been very nervous since Key Biscayne had become a lee shore for them with the winds fetching all the way across Biscayne Bay. Looking over the mangroves I could see the anchor lights of some sailboats in No Name harbor and even saw one get struck by lightning.
Leaving Key Biscayne we had a different sort of cruising day than what we are used to. We spent the entire time going to Ft Lauderdale on the Intracoastal Waterway, usually referred to as the ICW. A lot of it was like cruising in a canal.
Jackie did a screen grab of her phone at 5:30am. She had a weather app that had a live lightning strike monitor. We were anchored where that pin , which is nearly completely hidden by all the lightning strike indications, is located.
Cruising through downtown Miami.
It was very calm on the ICW, allowing dry bow riding.
Who knew that Miami has a ferris wheel?
This is the only bridge we had to request an opening for. It was the Venetian Causeway bridge, which connects Miami with the man made Venetian Islands and Miami Beach.
Good examples of the "canal" cruising that you can experience on the ICW.
We saw this sailboat that had sunk while tied to the dock. Judging by the growth we could see on the mast it must have been there for a while. It did surprise us that it hadn't been removed.
Pelicans hanging out on one of the ICW daymarks.
In the background you can see one of the many "speed limit" signs that we had to pay close attention to. Florida has many different speed designations. The three main ones are "Idle speed, no wake" which is, as it says, as slow as you can go while maintaining control, "Slow speed, minimal wake", which is a bit nebulous and left open for interpretation. I tended to limit to about 8 knots for these areas. Finally there are high speed areas. Additionally these are broken up into various Manatee zones that are in effect on different periods through the year. Then there were the ones that were Idle Speed, No Wake when within a certain distance from the shore but no limit outside of that. All in all it meant that we were spending as much time looking for the speed limit signs as we were navigational marks.
Port Everglades commercial shipping control tower is very colorfully painted.
Welcome to Ft Lauderdale. This picture was taken from the Seventeenth Street Causeway Bridge. The number of mega yachts here was staggering. What this picture isn't showing is the other side of the ICW, which has even more.
We had dinner at the 15th Street Fisheries, which was quite good. The marina that the restaurant is associated with has underwater lighting mounted to their docks, which allowed us to see the Tarpon that show up to be fed. Picture credit for this photo to my daughter Jackie Bianculli.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse