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.