West Palm Beach to Miami.

January 22, 2016

West Palm Beach to Miami...  Who WAS Art Deco anyway?

Yay!  Our friends Jim and Mimi from the boat Perfect Balance came to visit!!  Looking back through this blog, Jim and Mimi feature frequently as we traveled with them quite a bit last winter.  Unlike us, Jim and Mimi finished their loop trip and are back home in the real world in Hamilton, Ontario, working, with their lovely boat up for sale.  They came down for week and "slept around" with various boating friends.  We were lucky to have them on Gran Vida for three nights, one of which was Mimi's birthday.

We took a slip in Miami so it would be easier to get around.  Venturing into the South Beach area we took in the sites: Lincoln Street (an upscale pedestrian mall), the famous Miami Beach, and the Art Deco district of Miami.  Joe and Connie on Chesapeake were alongside and the six of us had a great visit.

Lincoln Pedestrian Mall

Tourists at Miami Beach
Left to Right:  Susan, Jeff, Jim, Mimi, Connie, Joe

Miami Beach.  Note the Art Deco beach structures

The start of the Art Deco District of South Miami Beach

After Jim and Mimi moved on to visit with other friends we moved to an anchorage at Oleta State Park.  This is a beautiful spot with clear green water and if you didn't look up and see all the tall buildings surrounding it you'd swear you were in the tropical wilderness.  We spent several days here, swimming, hanging out and just plain relaxing on the nice days.  We also had a couple more "wind event" days where it was incredibly windy and stormy out, with occasional tornado watches/warnings issued. For the first time ever our anchor dragged a bit as the strong winds rotated from north through east and then all the way around to northwest, a rotation of about 270 degrees in twenty-four hours with wind speeds up to forty miles an hour. Hang on to your hat!! We reset the anchor just to feel secure and it held like a charm.

Dinghy 'sploring through the mangroves.

Yup, we went through that culvert,
 Hope the tide is not on the way up or we might not get back through it!

Swimming off the boat.
 Jeff was diving in off the flybridge but I couldn't catch it on camera

My knight in shining armour coming to pick me up on shore after a walk.

Vero Beach to West Palm Beach

We've had a minor tragedy here on Gran Vida. We left our beloved Mac laptop under an open window and it got caught in an unexpected rainfall (Que in somber funeral music). We had a small service for it last week outside the Apple store in Miami.  So sad.  As a result we are now the owners of a new cheapo PC.  Let's see if I can remember how windows works....  Oh dear. It's quite different than I remember.

Our plan for the next month is to cruise around and explore all the great anchorages on the southeast coast of Florida as we travel to the keys.  One would think there wouldn't be many in this very populated area but we're being pleasantly surprised.

The first one was Peck Lake where we joined our friends Grant and Cindy on As the Crow Flies for a couple of days. There, safely anchored, we held on tight as what the weather stations were calling a "wind event" blew through.  It was a bouncy night but our anchor held tight.  What's cool about Peck Lake is that you can pull your dinghy up on shore and with just a little walk over a sandy path you are at an absolutely beautiful, almost deserted beach.  Very nice.

Next, Joe and Connie on Chesapeske caught up with us and we traveled together to West Palm Beach.  What a great anchorage that is!  We anchored beside the Flagler Museum and had just a short dinghy ride to the free docks right downtown Palm Beach.  Palm Beach is one of those upscale communities with stuff going on all the time and a free trolley to get you around.  We spent about four days there and took in:

• a free boogie-woogie concert (Jeff even danced with me!!). What fun!
• a great farmers' market.
• a "personal" concert with a fantastic band at Flagler Museum, enjoyed from our flybridge as we were anchored beside the museum.  We had no idea who they were as we were just eavesdropping but I do believe the announcer called them the "Miami Sound Machine".  I'm not sure if I misheard that or if they were THE Miami Sound Machine but they were awfully good.  What a treat!
• a car show of exotic, very expensive cars.
• and what was supposed to be an art tour but turned into more of a happy hour extravaganza.  We're distractable.