Day 66 - Stuart to Chicago - One Last Art Fair

Our last day in Florida on this leg was another warm and sunny day.  Betsy fed us breakfast and then we spent a few hours cleaning the boat and packing up.  Below are pictures of Betsy's house and dock, and the view across the water.  We were very fortunate to be able to leave our boat in such good hands.

We had enough time before our flight to take in the Stuart Art Fair held downtown Stuart. We have seen several on this trip!  Stuart is a town of 17,000 that swells to 21,000 in the winter, is known as the “Sailfish Capital of the World.”  Downtown features a beautiful fountain with a sailfish sculpture, created by a local artisan. 

 

 

Stuart also has a rather unique music venue on its waterfront, with tiered seating facing a stage that sits over the water.  Free open air concerts happen here every Sunday afternoon from November through May.

 

Finally it was time to leave.  After one last check on Kristin Says, Betsy dropped us off at the West Palm Beach airport where we caught our flight home.  We have about 2 weeks at home until we resume our journey on March 7.

Day 65 - West Palm Beach to Stuart

Happy Birthday Captain Randy!  There is no better day to Randy than a day on the boat and he never gets to spend his birthday on our boat (unless he goes to the storage shed to work on it).  I walked to the laundry room with one more load and meet the owners of the boat Riverdance, also on our dock.  They brought the boat to West Palm Beach last November from Maryland and, like us, are going back and forth from home to the boat.  They are not Loopers, just snowbirds.  In fact we had not met any Loopers on this leg of our journey.  We’re not sure it they were avoiding the larger ports or just staying in different marinas.

Before getting underway to Stuart we took some pictures in the marina, then walked to the West Palm Beach Antique and Flea Market and the Farmer’s Market.  On the way, we saw our Irish friend again, this time in front of J. Flynn’s Irish Pub talking to a couple; I heard the word “beheaded” and wondered if he always greets people with morbid conversation topics.  We each had an egg croissant for breakfast from one of the booths, along with fresh cider donuts with dipping sauce.

 

We headed to the fuel dock at 11:30 am and left there at 11:5 am5.  The channel through Lake Worth is marked “Slow Speed” so it took us 20 minutes or so to reach Peanut Island and the Lake Worth Inlet to get back on the Atlantic.  It was a very warm day in the low 80s, starting clear with clouds building around noon.  It was much less windy than the day before.

We turned north, passing North Palm Beach which is more high-rise and mid-rise buildings, blending into single family homes on the outskirts.  Next was the Lighthouse at Jupiter Inlet and Jupiter Island.  There were now some bare stretches of beach mixed in with homes; no more tall buildings.  The beachfront homes are still quite large, but further apart.  The boat traffic was essentially gone.  Just south of the St. Lucie Inlet is a sand bar and there were lots of small fishing boats here.  Just inside the Inlet, the ICW and the St. Lucie River converge, and a short distance from there we turned down a channel leading to Port Salerno, near Stuart, where our friend Betsy Riley lives.  Betsy used to live in Chicago and we met her at Diversey Harbor, where she had a boat for many years before moving to Florida.  She has an open space at her dock behind her home and has so kindly offered it to us to leave the boat in while we travel back to Chicago for a couple of weeks.  We arrived at Betsy’s at 2:30 pm and she helped us tie up.

 

Betsy served us drinks and snacks which we ate by her pool in the large screened patio area off the rear of her house.  The house itself is a modern loft style and she has renovated the space to suit her needs.  Some passing rain showers fell around 5 pm.  This was the first rain we saw since we arrived in Miami on February 13^th. 

Later we went to Shrimper’s, a local waterfront seafood restaurant right across the channel from Betsy’s house and met an associate of Captain Randy’s, Ron Maglio, who Randy met through NACO (the National Association of Charterboat Operators). 

This was our last night in Florida before returning to Chicago again and it was good to be among friends.

Day 64 - West Palm Beach - A Return to the Cold War Era

We started the day with some housekeeping and laundry before climbing into the dinghy to tour Peanut Island.  The day is very warm but windy, and there is a light chop on Lake Worth.  The waves are following us on the ride over, but we know it will be rougher on the way back when we have to head into them. 

There is a nice little harbor with free dockage on the west side of the Peanut Island and we tied up there.  A paved walkway goes around the island and we followed it over to the Boathouse.  This is where the Coast Guard used to house their boats and is now a snack and gift shop.  It is also where the tour of the Coast Guard Station and JFK’s “Fall-Out Shelter” begins.  After the Coast Guard abandoned the station, the Secret Service used the island as a base when JFK was in town at his “Summer White House”.  During the 1960s, there was a fear of nuclear attack and bomb shelters were built throughout the US.  I remember having drills during middle school in case of nuclear attack. 

 
The Secret Service believed that it was unlikely that the Russians would aim their missiles in Cuba at Palm Beach because the radiation would travel to Cuba.  Therefore, they decided it was more likely that if a missile was aimed toward the east coast, it would ne more likely aimed at Washington, D.C.  If JFK was in Palm Beach and a bomb fell on Washington, D.C., he needed a place where he could be protected until he could safely be removed from the area.  Peanut Island seemed to be a good place to construct this shelter.  So the Navy Seabees, under the direction of the Secret Service built it in less than two weeks in December 1961.  (The Secret Service also built a second fall-out Shelter for JFK on Nantucket Island, but it is not open to the public.)  In 1974, the existence of the “Detachment Hotel” was declassified and public tours of the Fall-out Shelter began in 1999.

We toured the Coast Guard Station house, which is filled with JFK memorabilia and old radio and other equipment from the 1930s-1950s that was used by the Coast Guard.  Then we were led to the shelter, which was built into a hill and has walls made of steel and lead, and is buried under layers of concrete, sandbags and soil.  They could not put the shelter underground because they would quickly hit water since this was an island.  We walked through a corrugated tunnel that makes a 90 degree turn (designed to protect the rest of the shelter for the blast) into the “radiation check room”, where a Geiger counter would test people for radiation.  That room is followed by the ‘decontamination shower.”  There was also a ventilation room with an air handler that was designed to recycle the air in the shelter. 

 

The main room had a desk for JFK, a few bunks and more memorabilia.  There was a bathroom with 3 stalls and the toilets were buckets.  The shelter never had to be used, of course, and was completely cleaned out after JFK’s death.

 

After the tour, we walked around the other side of the island where there is a beach with an artificial reef for snorkeling, campground, and covered picnic areas.  Boats were anchored off shore for swimming and to enjoy the island.

 

As we headed back to Kristin Says in the dinghy, Captain Randy hugged the eastern shoreline, hoping it would not be too rough, but we still got wet.  As warm as it was, we didn’t really mind.  We had a close-up view of the magnificent homes on shore too.

The marina was hosting an “80s” party that night at Roxy’s Rooftop (a bar/restaurant on Clematis Street that has been there since 1936).  We didn’t have any 80s clothes handy but we went anyway.  The roof has a nice set-up for private parties, with 2 bars, booth seating, a dance floor, and “hanging-out” space near the Clematis Street side.  The party was very slow starting, so after a drink and a plate of appetizers, we went to look out over Clematis and met a boater who lives in Ireland but has a sailboat in Palm Harbor Marina.  He proceeded to tell us about a woman who had jumped over the railing to her death – not a topic usually brought up within the first few minutes of meeting someone, but there it was.  After an entertaining but short conversation with him, we excused ourselves and went out to look for the trolley.

 

We took the trolley to City Place for dinner and some live blues at B.B. King’s Blues Club.  I had shrimp with grits and the Captain had barbecued ribs.  City Place was rockin’ with live music in all the bars, a fun place!  No rooftop jumping here!!

 

Day 63 - Fort Lauderdale to West Palm Beach - A Day at Sea

It was another beautiful day, with more heat and humidity than we had had so far.  After breakfast we had to haul the dinghy up onto the swim platform and that had us both sweating.  We left the marina at 11:25am passing the cruise ship Ruby Princess and more mega-yachts such as Pegasus V and Cakewalk.

 

Rather than take the ICW, we decided to go back out on the Atlantic so as to not be held up by boat traffic and bridges.  As we were going out, a fishing boat with a bright pink hull was coming in; the name of this boat was Fox Sea.  Neither one of us had ever seen a boat with a pink hull before.

 

The ocean was rough with 3-4 foot waves.  This was doable for us, but there were some very small boats out and it had to be very turbulent for them.  We saw a Coast Guard helicopter hovering near one small boat for quite some time but it was not clear why.  I was not able to take many pictures on this run as Captain Randy had to slow down in order for it to be safe to move to the back deck and stand.

North of Fort Lauderdale is Pompano Beach, a big sport-fishing town, and then Boca Raton, known for high end shops and housing.  As it has been along the Atlantic coast so far, high and mid-rise buildings line the shore, with a “green space” break at Boca for Red Reef City Park.  The park had access to the beach via evenly spaced covered walkways – a nice change from all the tall buildings.

 

North of Boca Raton the buildings are smaller and large homes are mixed in with the condominiums and hotels.  At Delray and Boynton Beach, the homes dominate.  A few fishing piers extend out into the Atlantic.  The South Palm Beach area has larger buildings again, but not as tall (about 10 stories) and thus more boxy looking.  There is another stretch of large homes as we get close to the Lake Worth Inlet at Palm Beach. 

We left the Atlantic and headed back into the ICW at the Lake Worth Inlet.  Directly inside the inlet is Peanut Island, a small island that is now all recreational use.  Lake Worth used to be a freshwater lake just west of the shore.  A famous Florida industrialist and a founder of Standard Oil, Henry Flagler, wanted an inlet near Palm Beach to make it easier for ships to come in and load or off load their cargo to Flagger’s railroad.  So in 1918 he dredged a channel from the Atlantic to Lake Worth and dumped the sand and other dredged materials in one place – what is now known as Peanut Island.  It was first used as a dump for garbage and a repository for sand dredged out of the lake and the inlet.  Then in the 1930’s, the Coast Guard set up a station on the island.  After the Coast Guard moved to another location the Secret Service used the facilities for R&R when they were not on duty.  In the 1960’s, during the Cuba Missile Crisis, the Secret Service decided Peanut Island would be a good place for a Fall-Out Shelter for President Kennedy in case of nuclear attack when he was in residence at Palm Beach.  We planned to visit the island the next day.

 

It was about 2 miles to Palm Harbor Marina once we passed Peanut Island.  The east shoreline has the enormous homes of Palm Beach, and the west shoreline has marine service yards and a commercial port, then smaller marinas leading up to the town of West Palm Beach.  The famous and luxurious Breakers Palm Beach Resort loomed large to our port.  We arrived at Palm Harbor Marina at 3:10 pm.  This is a fairly new marina with floating docks (yay!) and excellent amenities. 

 

It is a short distance from the marina into town and its main street, Clematis Street.  Clematis Street is lined with restaurants, bars, and shops.  We had good Mexican fare at Rocco’s Tacos and then hopped the free trolley for a little tour around town.  The trolley goes as far as City Place, an outdoor shopping and entertainment mall.  We rode back to our original stop on Clematis and walked about a block to Centennial Square, a new waterfront park.  A country rock band was performing and a good crowd assembled to listen.  We listened to the band for a while to cap off our night.  We looked forward to spending another day in West Palm Beach.

A final note:  After our offer to buy Kristin Says was accepted, Captain Randy travelled to the Palm Beach area to do the sea trial of Kristin Says on Lake Worth in mid-February 2010.  After we closed on Kristin Says a few weeks later, we spent a few days cruising on Kristin Says in this area before we had Kristin Says loaded onto a truck and shipped to Chicago in March 2010.  Thus, in some sense, this completes the first "loop" for Kristin Says - although that loop includes more than 1300 miles over land.