April 9-13, 2010

Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Friday looked like a good day to travel according to our weather reports. However, again we found that it was a bit more challenging than expected. Wind and waves were from the southeast and hit Grateful at port side and stern. With our auto pilot still not working, Mark needed to drive all the way. I think he would have needed to drive anyway to try to control the rolling. He had it figured out when and how to steer to keep the rolling to a minimum. There was no way to walk a straight line and I could make record time from one side of the boat to the other.

Our route was about 48nm miles in deep water and 55nm overall. We were bound for Port Everglades, a large cut into the Florida port of Ft. Lauderdale. A large freighter entered the port before us and it was amazing to watch the tugboats intercept and then maneuver the freighter to its berth past the four cruise ships already at port.

We are staying at Bahia Mar Yachting Center, the home of the Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show. It is a huge marina with two basins, and then Ft. Lauderdale lays out another 5 miles of additional temporary docks to house the boat show. Getting to our slip was a quick introduction to Florida boating. We had started down the wrong channel and needed to back up about 50 ft to enter the correct channel. As Mark was trying to back up, two water taxis snuck by our stbd side and another small boat squeezed by on our port side. Fortunately, the boat behind us elected to stay in his slip until we were about and the commotion had died down. I think we were all sharing a width of 40-50 feet. Mark got us through it unscathed!

Saturday, while going to Customs and Border Protection to legally be back in the USA we saw the largest cruise ship in the world - we counted 9 stateroom levels. We also heard that it can carry 7000 passengers in addition to crew. We met with Geff and Mary Sue later and took the water taxi to Pier 66 and had lunch. People use the water taxis to get around Ft. Lauderdale – they are both efficient and informative. It was great to visit with Geff and Mary Sue again – they will be leaving Ft. Myers Beach in the next few days to go back to MI.

After Geff and Mary Sue left, Mark and I went back to the water taxi and rode to all the stops. The wealth represented in the homes and accompanying yachts was incomprehensible to us.

The home with all the pillars – “the Ft. Lauderdale Whitehouse” – is currently for sale for 28.5 million. The 11 million guest quarters would be thrown in for nothing. The commentary from the water taxi stated that the route covered three distinct areas from the extravagantly rich to multi-millionaires to working millionaires. Did you notice that only millionaires own homes on the canals? – the lots alone all sold for more than one million.

This mustard-colored home was the only home on the canal built as a ‘spec” home. When it didn’t sell for 10 million, the price was lowered and finally it went to auction and was purchased for 2.8 million – the best deal on the canal.

Many Hollywood stars, inventors and famous sports figures have homes here. The rather worn home with round windows has glass floors and at one time was owned by “Broadway Joe Namath”, NY Jets quarterback and rumored “playboy”. Nick Nolte used to own one of the homes on the canal, but moved away a number of years ago. Most taxi commentators were sad to see him go as his antics made for good tales.

This park was dedicated land from years ago that covers ¾ mile of canal property and now is worth 1.8 billion dollars. "Madsummer" is a mega yacht, 270 ft in length - the biggest one we have seen yet. It was purchased for $178,000,000.00, and eventually the buyer could not continue the payments. It is up for sale again......

It took three hours to cover the route, but what is better than traveling the waterways and letting somebody else do the driving. (Joe Willie's old home showed up again in here and I couldn't cut it out - so enjoy).

Sunday was a rather eventful day for Porter. We were out for our walk around the marina. As we were walking the boardwalk on the ICW channel, Porter got too close to the edge. Yep – he slipped off the walkway four feet down to the water. I still had him attached by the leash, so he swam along the wall as I searched for a ladder or a way to get him back up that four feet. I couldn’t find anything, but he found some footings to take a break. One crew member from the huge yacht, Copasetic, noticed our dilemma and yelled to another person to hold his feet as he leaned over the wall to the water. I urged Porter off the pilings and back to us. This young man literally lifted Porter out of the water and most of the way up so that I could then help lift Porter the rest of the way. I couldn’t thank him enough. He was definitely a hero. Porter, on the other hand, shook it off and continued sniffing his way around the rest of the property.

We had hoped to see our Afton neighbors, Bob and Jan, while we were in Ft. Lauderdale, but they had headed back to MN just the week before. However, we were pleased to find that Jim, Debbie, and daughter, Emily, (boat Emily E) were here in Ft. Lauderdale waiting to cross over to the Bahamas. We originally met these folks at the Minnetonka West Marine store just before our trip, and then again early on in our Great Loop Adventure in Alton, IL. We got together Sunday evening for dinner at the Bahia Cabana, and they talked us into staying at least another day. As it turned out it was a good decision because it rained hard all morning on Monday.

We are not sure when we will be moving on - in the next couple of days I suppose. Tuesday we have a fellow coming to look at the autopilot. I hope it can be fixed. More later!!