Funny Kind Of Road Trip

OK, we’re kind of new to this cruising business.  We’re far more familiar with RVing or road trips in a car.  The last three days has felt kind of like a road trip: we’re basically getting up in the morning and hitting the road. Only on this trip, it’s the magenta line, a purplish line on our navigational charts and chart plotter marking the center of the Intracoastal Waterway. We’ll be following it for the next couple of months between here and Norfolk, Virginia, over 1,000 miles.

We cross bridges, except rather than going over them, we go under them, and often end up idling around for 1o or more minutes trying to stay in one place while the wind blows us around, waiting for a bridge opening.

Sometimes the bridges have interesting features which remind Bob of  his years managing the design of public infrastructure; countless hours were spent responding to people’s interest in making things “look good”. Worthwhile, but always challenging given the subjective nature of  what looks “good”.

We’re also taking this ICW “freeway” through cities, like Miami, except the cities sure look better from the water than they do from the paved freeways.

Like all road trips, we see examples of people’s egos getting a little out of control.

We have even experienced traffic jams.  Here are 10 boats ahead of us waiting for a 12-foot high bridge opening.  Not only is this the largest number of boats we’ve been behind, they’re also the largest.  The smallest boat was 90’ and the largest 150’. They were returning from the Miami Boat Show and we got caught up in their parade.

We only covered 30 miles today from Fort Lauderdale to Key Biscayne. We’re anchored out in Hurricane Harbor on the southwest side of Key Biscayne.  From here we have a view of downtown Miami.

We’re looking at the lights of downtown after dark right now, but the boat is swinging in the wind too much to get a photo.

Tomorrow we head into the Keys; two days to Marathon! It will be good to move on. While we’ve enjoyed seeing the wealth of urban Florida for the last three days, it’s time to “get out of town”.