We are really leaving!!! A little after 6, we eased out our slip having settled the bill the night before, and we’re off for Florida. The joke is "head west and you’ll run into Florida". As we were leaving 2 other boats were motoring through the channel, one headed north and the other south. A third boat followed us west, but they appeared to be heading to Port Everglades, and we were going to try for Lake Worth. When we arrived in Bimini we spoke with a Canadian who said that even motoring you can make Lake Worth in 9 to 10 hours as you will pick up an extra 2 to 3 knots in the Gulf Stream. He was right; about a mile or two off of Bimini, the GPS speed read 7.4+ while the speed through water was 6 knots. At times we were doing over 8 knots (it’s a sailboat with a 25 HP engine). There was hardly any wind and any attempt to launch the sails was rejected with a flogging sail. The good news was that the ocean was fairly flat with a small southeast following swell.
On our trip across, we saw several man-o-war jellyfish floating on the surface. We had our encounter with the flying fish also. About 1 pm, we ran into a pod of dolphins, which had a couple of adolescents (3 to 4 feet), who followed us for over a half an hour. Beth got some pix and a couple of videos of them racing with us across the ocean.
After the boat that followed us out of Bimini, we encountered little traffic until we hit the 40 to 50 mile mark (from the US). This appears to be the shipping lanes for freighters north and south bound. We had seen two “large” ships which passed in front of us. However, at the 40 mile mark, I noticed a freighter headed south, so I pushed the boat so that the freighter would cross at least two miles to our stern. With the exception of the freighters and an occasional sport fisher, the crossing was devoid of any boat traffic.
That would change once we approached Lake Worth inlet. It was Saturday, 4 pm, traffic everywhere; little runabouts to barges. Then it got crazier as we rounded Peanut Island, a boat party haven (although heavily patrolled). Boats, kayakers, paddle boarders, you name it are in the water. Welcome home; I almost wanted to reverse course and go back to the Bahamas. After we passed Peanut Island, things became semi-normal; we still dealt with the speed junkies and the sport fishers, although two large boats did give us a slow pass, which we were able to still surf down the wakes at 8+ knots.
We set up anchorage in Old Port Cove in North Palm Beach. And the fun never ends; we call customs to let them know we are here, thinking that this was all we had to do. But no, we never went and showed them our passports (something missing in the instructions we were given and read online), so tomorrow we are off to Palm Beach Airport to check, which we thought we had avoided.
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