Rick and Susan Go Sailing on Promise: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year: Mile Marker 1063

It's hard believe Christmas has past and we are awaiting the New Year in a familiar place. One can't complain, but one can admit how it just isn't the same without family around you.

We pulled into Soveral Harbor in Palm Beach Gardens on the 22 of December, fully planning to stay until the end of the week. The calender was set by the need to provision, schedule routine maintenance, and the fact those things are not readily available on the 25th. Some marinas even close, but Soveral is in a private setting so we enjoyed five days of meals at Carmine's and surrounding restaurants that don't serve "boat food" from the fryer! We even rented a car to do the beaches and some sightseeing. This trip we spent a day at White Hall, the Palm Beach museum/home that Henry Flagler built for his third wife, a younger woman not readily accepted by society at that time. They served High Tea, so when in Rome . . . Les Mis opened on Christmas so we rounded the week out with a movie, just to keep busy on Christmas. The weather was fabulous while in our slip, it figures.

But when we left the slip to begin days of tedious bridge openings through the Palm Beaches, Boca Raton and Ft. Lauderdale, winds began to pick up and all the fronts affecting the north whipped us with undesirable weather, though not quite the same. Tall bridges are behind us and the real estate we motored past is beautiful at all price points. It is necessary to travel at almost idle speed because the area is so residential, yet we have to adjust speed to "make" the next bridge efficiently. There were 22 bascule bridges for us to negotiate in two days! Dec. 28 we anchored in Boca Rotan Lake and early in the morning, before the winds picked up, we made the four hour run to Bahia Mar Resort in Ft. Lauderdale. We are SOOO the small boat here! (Photos later.)

Unfortunately, the winds are NOT favorable for our run to Miami for several days. The vessel next to us, Sabi, returned from a four hour run in the ocean, having to cancel their New Years plans due to rough seas. (My canary on the ocean.) Have beach chairs, will travel, and the beach here is fabulous, just crowded for the holiday. I'm sure we will find the fireworks and provisions easily as Lauderdale offers a for-fee water taxi to locations on both sides of the waterway. Today we had a long walk to people watch and enjoy the beach before the weather turned again, which it did during lunch. Sometimes its really nice not to have a sheadule or a destination; then we can catch up on things like the blog, and just relaxing.