It's been a long while since the last update and so much has changed!
We left Miami Beach Marina for Fort Lauderdale on February 27 taking the four and a half hour no-wake route up the intracoastal waterway (ICW). We hugged the the Miami Beach Island side of the ICW and passed the Venetian East Bridge and then past Sunset Harbor - the up and coming Miami Beach neighborhood with a state of the art marina.
Leaving Miami with Venetian Islands in the foreground
Venetian East Bridge
Sunset Harbor Marina in Miami Beach
We actually looked at a dockominium at Sunset Harbor Marina - a great facility with brand new floating docks, pool, meeting rooms, in-slip pumpout, and immediate access to Miami Beach - but then decided to hold off serious consideration until we settled down in Florida permanently.
The channel followed the irregular shore of the Miami Beach island, past the 79th Street Bridge, Normandy Shores, Indian Creek and Bal Harbour up to Bakers Haulover Inlet with its sandbars perfect for anchoring and partying.
Waterfront estates in Miami Beach
Waterfront estates in Indian Creek, Miami Beach
Haulover Inlet where boaters anchor on the sand bars.
The route then narrowed and passed through the millionaires canyon of Sunny Isles Beach - with its many high rise condos and waterfront estates lining the waterway - clear evidence of tremendous prosperity in sunny southeast Florida.
Sunny Isles Beach
The ICW then passes by Golden Beach, Hollywood/Hollywood Beach and Dania Beach before reaching Port Everglades, where the leviathan cruise ships dock - although there were none there as we passed. Passing the Port Everglades Inlet we proceeded up to Fort Lauderdale proper passing under the 17th Street Bridge.
17th Street Bridge
Our goal was to reach Cable Marine East located in the canal immediately past the bridge on the port side. The canal is in the heart of the yachting district and the canal was lined with 'garages' for high end yachts that dwarfed our little Salty. Upon reaching Cable Marine, we prepared to stay for a couple of nights rafted up to other boats awaiting repair. Among the things we had to have done were to refit the lost starboard skeg, ensure the props were not injured by our Biscayne Bay nylon bag incident, mount some lost zinc anodes, fix the heat-exchanger on the generator and have the aftercoolers pulled and serviced (and unfortunately replaced as corroded and pitted). Cable Marine also has a top-notch shop for cabin repair, so we had them remount a sink in the head (which coincidentally had fallen out during our stay), repair molding and woodwork in the midship stateroom and rewire the CO detector in one of the staterooms which for some mysterious reason had lost 12V power. An able crew of four amazingly got everything done in the day and a half we had there, although at considerable boat dollars. We had a great dinner at the very popular Boatyard Restaurant next door.
Boatyard Restaurant