Exploring West Palm Beach

On a partially rainy day last week, we got off the boat to look around, and discovered the City Docks at West Palm Beach. Madelyn was especially thrilled to find that the city has a free trolley which runs every 15 min or so, stopping along a main shopping street and going to CityPlace, an outdoor mall nearby. There is also a stop at Publix, the major grocery store, which may come in handy. There are lots of outdoor restaurant patios, pedestrians with small dogs, storefronts and palm trees.


We also stopped at the Maritime Museum again. We had been invited to their monthly outdoor party with music and a "Bounce House" for the kids.

****************************************************

Someone recently asked me "how do you get on and off the boat when you are not at a dock?"

When we return to our anchored boat, typically Brian is steering with the outboard engine, and I am at the bow of the inflatable boat, reaching towards "Estella" until I can hold onto the railing. Then Brian turns off the engine, and I tie off the line (aka rope) onto a cleat. I also need to lower the swim ladder you see at the right of this photo, so we can all get on.

Tying a "figure 8" knot to the cleat...

You can see the swim ladder is down in this next picture. Brian and the girls have now climbed onto the boat. I am still on the dinghy. I have let it drift away from "Estella" so I can take a picture. After I pull the dinghy back to the larger boat, I will climb aboard and raise the swim ladder again. On average, we do this about 2 times per day.

Madelyn and Katja are so used to it by now, they can climb up quickly on their own, or they love it when Brian swings them up using the shackle on the back of their life jackets. They always say to me "Mommy! Do it like Daddy does! We like to fly!", but I'm too out of shape, so I make them climb up the ladder.


As you can imagine, this is more challenging with loads of laundry/groceries or in rainy/rocky weather. Look at all of this laundry!!!! The rest of us had to pile on top of these bags for the ride to town...

Watching the clock

Last week we were on the boat in the evening, casually and intermittently watching "Casablanca" on DVD while also playing with the girls after dinner. At some point, after the girls were in bed, and around the same time that Viktor Laslo and Ilsa walk into Rick's nightclub, our boat began to bump the sandy bottom of the lake.

We had been watching the tides, and we knew that the tide would be considerably low that night. The night before, we were in only 1 foot of water below our keel, and we were fine. But we reviewed the tides again tonight, and realized it was still going out another 8 inches or more.

The bumping became more frequent and would have been described as lurching more accurately.

*Have you ever been in a situation when you knew for a fact that something was going to get worse before it was going to get better?

Well, we had another 3 hours to just sit and wait it out. It was going to be about 90 minutes until the lowest tide, then another 90 minutes until the rising tide came up to where we were now.

I tried not to let my anxiety take over. Would the boat heel over drastically? Would our boat sustain damage? Brian and Randy had been in a situation much worse than this in September around Virginia, and things were okay.

In the end, I knew that Brian and I need to remain calm for each other. At least the bottom was soft sand, and not hard rock or coral. There was nothing we could do. We couldn't turn on the engine and move the boat, because then we might move an even worse position, and may jeopardize our secure anchor.

We had to wait. The minutes crawled.



We finished the movie, tried to think of other things to talk about, Brian called Erik, and I read a little bit of my novel...meanwhile the boat continued to bump randomly up and down, sometimes softly, sometimes with a loud "BAM" if moved by a larger wave. We could see that other nearby boats had already swung around to a different position in response to the wind direction. They were in slightly deeper water. Even a few inches makes a big difference.

Then, much later, and as predicted exactly by our navigation equipment, we could feel the boat being lifted and then swing into position based on the wind. What a great feeling!

The next day, we moved the boat to a different anchor spot in Lake Worth.

Snorkeling, Etc.

We went back to Peanut Island last week, on an afternoon we wanted to salvage from the frustrations of a morning filled with unsuccessful projects (such as a car rental that was reserved but not possible for several reasons, unmanageable laundry thanks to a rambunctious two-year-old who has decided she is ready for potty-training, and some boat maintanence problems)...

We had a great time! The weather was gorgeous, in the mid 80's and humid! Who cares if our "to do lists" didn't get done and that we were running out of clean clothes to wear!

Here is a photo of Brian tying our dinghy to the base of a palm tree on the south side of the island.


Here is a part of the Maritime Museum. Behind this is a JFK Bunker, built during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which would have housed the President and his family and VIPs if needed. In the 1960's, Palm Beach was home to a Kennedy compound for vacations.



Excited, adventerous little boys who were snorkeling and exploring the rocks on the beach all afternoon.


Brian snorkeling. He and I took turns with the snorkel mask and adjustable flippers. The water was so warm! One time, Brian identified 17 different types of fish. We saw a few jellyfish, from a distance.

I love this picture. Brian and Madelyn were together for about 1 hour in the water. Madelyn walked out hesitantly with him, with a nervous laugh I could hear from the shore. Gradually, she became more and more comfortable in the water. I have a video of Brian teaching her to float on her back and swim the "dog paddle". Here he is pointing out a fish to her under the water. Later he swam with her on his back, and by this time she was yelling out confidently to me "Mama! Look at ME! I'm REALLY SWIMMING!".

It was such a tender and meaningful time for me as I listened to them talking to each other, watching them enjoy this special time together, and then look down beside me to watch Katja collecting shells. My novel remained buried in my bag under the towels. That could wait. I wanted to savor this moment. Later, Brian told me that his dad taught him to float on his back in the ocean when he was little. It was a memorable day.

Docked on the island was the tall ship "Bounty." It was built in the 1950s or 60s for the Hollywood movie of the same name, and then used again for another film "Pirates of the Caribbean II", which was more familiar to me.

Our beaming Katja, yes, in her birthday suit (a cropped photo :), enjoying a carefree moment after we got back to the boat. (....if we weren't able to do laundry soon, I think all 4 of us would have possibly been in similar attire for the rest of the week!....)

Peanut Island

Last week (before the days and days of rain came), we enjoyed a few visits to Peanut Island. It is a park on a tiny island in the middle of Lake Worth, along the Intracoastal Waterway here in West Palm Beach. Our boat is anchored just south of this island, and West Palm Beach is southwest from here. In the photo you can see the inlet from the Atlantic Ocean at the top right corner. Our boat is to the right bottom of the photo, off the map.



Here is some information on a website link, more about the island itself...
"http://www.floridamarineguide.com/peanut_island.html"

There are campgrounds, trails, a Maritime Museum, and a bunker built in the 1960's for President JFK and his cabinet during the Cuban Missle Crisis. There are also small beaches and a snorkeling lagoon (which we visited on a different day). We tied our dinghy to the free docks this time. For people without a boat, there is a Water Taxi available.



Views of Riviera Beach, a town to the northeast.


Palm trees and coconuts!




Here you can see the girls wading on the beach, looking at a "floating restaurant" which is open on weekends.



On this day, just the girls visited, while Brian got some work done on the boat in some peace and quiet. :) I was proud of myself for going exploring in the dinghy without his help. It seems that by now I should be more comfortable with the outboard engine and maneuvering the inflatable boat, but I get anxious when I'm in unfamiliar waters and I'm not sure where to leave the boat. Again, the city docks were available, and pretty easy to get in and out of. Here is a photo I took of myself, finally relaxing once we got there and found a fun place to rest.







Here are 2 photos that Madelyn took all by herself! The second one is a little bit more centered! Good job, Madelyn!

Uh Oh...

OK, so when we first arrived at Palm Beach's Lake Worth (on the ICW, just inside the inlet from the ocean), we stopped at a fuel dock to fill our fuel and water tanks. Here is a photo of Madelyn helping to top off the water tanks. Both girls are starting to help out more with "chores". In a few years, we will have great crew!


We have tied fenders on so that our boat is protected from the dock itself, and so that our fiberglass and paint do not get scratched. We throw dock lines to one of us who hops off the boat in time to tie them off on the cleats and this stops the boat. When we are finished, then we have to maneuver off the dock. Sometimes this is straightforward, but not this time.

We had gusts of wind up to 24 knots on this day, unfortunately coming from our starboard side, pushing us onto the dock. So Brian figured out a way to tie the dock lines a certain way so that we could untie them in a particular order and "spring" the bow out using the engine, hopefully to overcome the wind. Powerboats and some bigger sailboats have strong "bow thrusters" up front, which can be very helpful in this situation, but we don't have these.


A few minutes after this picture was taken, we left the dock. In a matter of seconds, we were able to swing the bow outward and quickly try to retreive our docklines. It is hard to remember exactly what happened. At one point, one of the spring lines briefly got hung up on the cleat and I remember thinking in a panic "what if it doesn't let go? We'll come crashing back onto the fuel dock!", but I was able to wiggle it quickly, then pull the rest of it on with relief....

Just then we heard a crunch. Our man-overboard safety module, installed on the stern railing, hit the piling you can see in this picture, which was sticking out a foot from the rest of the dock. The box opened, and we could hear the whooshing sound of air inflating the module. The neon yellow one-man liferaft inflated and floated by the dock as we left, free at last. My heart sunk. Oh no!

Here is a photo of the white box installed on someone else's boat from a YachtWorld magazine. You can see it is on the outside of the railing, and the piling just knocked the lid right off the white box.

Here is a stock photo of the module from the company's website:

One of the bystanders on the dock ran over to pick up the safety module, and then offered to bring it to us on his boat. This was difficult in a busy fuel dock channel with lots of wind, but we got it back, and deflated it so we could pack it away and deal with it later.

We have spent a week now finding someone here in W. Palm Beach who can re-certify and re-pack this module. This high-end safety device is made in the UK. Our representative here sent it to Miami for servicing, and then we found out it is defective. It apparently leaks at the seams. Now we are dealing with the UK manufacturer (thankfully requiring only 1 international call, the rest is done by email), to get a new module. We purchased the module only 4 months ago, so it is still under warranty. We need it to go to the Bahamas.

So now, we wait for repair of this safety man-overboard module, as well as our davits which were damaged when we tried to leave Fort Pierce.

Leaving Ft Pierce, ("Act Two")

OK.


So I guess that rough night left me with little appetite for this blog over the past week, until now.

We left Ft Pierce last week, choosing to go on the "inside" down the Intracoastal Waterway towards Palm Beach. It took about 10 hours. The real estate along the water was incredible. There were mansions and estates, each with a large dock for their fishing yacht or large power boat on a power lift, and most with a gorgeous outdoor pool and patio. The ICW is pretty narrow here, so we could see land close on either side.



We motored the entire way. The wind was blowing about 25 knots, which would have made life more uncomfortable offshore, especially since it was coming from the south. I was very happy to have this choice, even though we had to wait for about 9 bridges to open. Other bridges were high enough for us to pass underneath. Our mast is our limiting factor, about 60 ft up.

It was tricky to be at the helm when we had to wait for a bridge to open. More than once, I chickened out and insisted that Brian take over. Some bridges opened "on request", but others were on the hour or half-hour. If we arrived early, we had to slow down to coast, or circle while we were waiting. This would have been fine if we were alone, but it was much more challenging when other boats are doing the same thing. We had to watch our depth-sounder to make sure we didn't run aground, as well as nearby docks and the other boats. We were much more fortunate than one very large powerboat behind us that lost its engine in the ICW, and was drifting closer and closer to a private dock and yacht. We heard them on the VHF radio calling for a tow, but in the meantime, they had to try to anchor in a busy channel. I was so anxious about it, I couldn't even listen on the radio when it was going on, but the captain sounded calm and professional. I guess I chose the right profession... somehow taking care of patients in the ICU on ventilators seems so much more controlled and manageable to me than that... but then again, I had years of daily intense preparation.

As we went further south, we enjoyed warmer sunshine and greener water. The girls wore their swimsuits all day.

Here is a photo of our dinghy, which we towed behind us on the ICW since our davits were damaged in the rough weather (see "Act One"). You can see the arms of the davits in this photo, which should have a bar between them, but the bar is what snapped off. Since we couldn't lift the dinghy, we took the outboard engine off and put it on the aft deck of our sailboat, and towed the dinghy. It worked out fine, for now. But we plan to have the davits repaired in West Palm Beach.


We arrived around 4:30pm to Lake Worth in Palm Beach Florida. More at the next post about our excitement immediately upon arrival at a local fuel dock!

Random thoughts

Some random photos that I didn't know where else to put....

Here is a photo of me checking the oil dipstick. I'm learning more about our boat systems (plumbing, electrical, engine, etc.). I admit that I am reluctant, but I realize this is a necessity. Brian has spent an incredible amount of time over the past four years learning these things all on his own. Without this knowledge, we could never have had these experiences. Thanks, Brian!


Here you can see that we use every imaginable space to store things. This is the "hallway" in our galley between our sink and stove. Madelyn is standing on the lid to this compartment, which slides over when we are done using it. Here we store gallon jugs of drinking water. By the way, she is wearing her favorite shirt from Grandma. It is a tye-dyed "groovy" shirt that says "Peace and Love". She has a habit of stealing it from the laundry bag because she wants to wear it every day. :)


Here is Madelyn, creating a home for her little people and animals.


Sweet photo of our little Katja sleeping.
I wonder, "what is she dreaming about?"