Previous Port: Keys to Ft. Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale

May 12-18, 2005

Marina: N 26007.025, W080008.345

After 12-1/2 days of being on the water, we arrived in Fort Lauderdale. This was the closest we've come to a vacation feeling in a very long time. You begin your journey down the beautiful New River past homes that are beyond beautiful. These are not the nouveau-rich, sterile, mansions you see so many of these days; they are older homes with tons of warm, rich character and color.

Then you head to the New River Marina, which is actually just a marked-off bulkhead. What a bulkhead though! We tied between very expensive high-rise condos and under palm trees. During our ownership, Escapades has never known about shade from trees or about falling leaves.

It was so good to touch land again and especially nice to step off the boat onto grass. Even if we'd stayed on the boat though, there was tons of stuff to see just from that spot. There was plenty of foliage and beautiful flowers on both sides of the narrow river. The slip was only a few yards away from the 3rd Avenue bridge. So, there was lots of opportunity to see all sorts of activity and boats of every size and shape.

Of course, all good things must come to an end. Our original five-day-planned stay went into the eighth day and we grew tired of the tourist feeling. We missed one of the great things about staying in a marina and that was meeting other boaters. There were none around us. The marina laundry was at Coolie's Landing and that was about a mile away (I didn't want to hang our unmentionables in that neighborhood). Then it seemed that everyone in the condos walked their dogs along the grass walk leading to our boat. I must say they were always great about cleaning it up but still... Those thousands of condos were maybe 5% occupied and it seemed there were 3 dogs for every foot of grass. I wouldn't want to be there when the condos fill up.

We were able to maintain our close relationship with TowboatUS though. While cruising the New River, the outboard died and simply would not start again - seems dirt got into the jets. We were a long way from our slip and with the current flowing, it was hard rowing. Then we saw that little red boat coming around the bend and quickly flagged him down. Seriously, there are a lot of great guys doing that job.

We did manage to get some projects completed, including new batteries while in Ft. Lauderdale.  Of course, it was great to see friends from Waterford Harbor, Fred & Iris Scheibl, again. And we had our first Mexican food in a long time. It wasn't Tex-Mex but close and pretty good too. Fort Lauderdale was a much needed land break and now we will head back out to sea for a couple of over-nighters.

Next Port: Ft Lauderdale to Beauford, NC