We made it to Lauderdale. I had to change the Fuel lift Pump that was leaking before we left. It took 2 days to come in. It took me a while to do. The pump is on the side of the Yanmar, and difficult to get to. It was easy taking it off, but getting it back on was difficult. Eventually I got it back on. I had to drain some of the water and dirt in the Racor filter. It is very easy, you just unscrew the drain valve, loosen the lid, and hold a bottle under it to catch the water/fuel/dirt. Once you are done, you have to fill it back up with clean diesel. The problem was I didn’t have any clean diesel in our Jerry can, so I had to walk a mile and half each way to a gas station, to get less then half a gallon of diesel.

By the time I got all this done, and got a shower, it was around 2. We ended up leaving around 3, and we made it about 15 miles to Lake Boca Raton. This is a nice anchorage. There were 2 other boats there. The following day we left early, to do the last 20 miles or so up to Fort Lauderdale and the New River.

The new river has 4 bridges before we got to the marina. The New River is very narrow and snakes back and forth. You can’t see around the corners. We did a poor job dealing with the bridges. The first one, we called too early, because on the chart plotter it looked like it was right around the corner. The first and second bridge are very close, and a boat was coming outbound, so the two bridges tried to time it so that they would let us through both bridges in one shot. But since we called too early, the other boat made it through both before we got to the first. The bridge tender scolded us. He said, “don’t say you are right around the corner till you are right around the corner”. So Nadia told them, “My husband told me to say that.”  So we went through the first one, and the second one was starting to close as we got close, and we thought he knew we were going through, since we had talked to him at the previous bridge, but then he scolded us again, “Are you coming through the bridge”, “Yes”, “I don’t know if your husband knows, but Coast Guard requires vessels to always notify bridges”.  So two down, third one was no problem. Then we thought that was it for the bridges, so we turned off the radio. But we came around the corner and there is another bridge, and a boat just went through, and the bridge was closing. We radio him, and he was not happy. He told us we should be monitoring the radio, and should have told him… So he made us do circles for 15 minutes and finally let us through. So I was happy to be done with those bridges.

Another bridge right before the new river gave us some problems too. The bridge was suppose to open at 45 after the hour. We had to gun the engine from the previous bridge to make it in time. So around 40 after, I call, no response, I try again, no response. Wait a little, call again, no response. Eventually, I am right at the bridge, and no one is in the operator room, and there is no response on the radio. So eventually, Nadia calls on the phone. The lady answers and says the next opening is at quarter after, and it is 50 after right now. So Nadia wasn’t going for that, and told her, “No, we were here before 45 after and you didn’t respond.” So the lady said, “Okay, I will open it, I had an emergency”. And then some grumpy old guy on a little 20 foot, very manoeuvrable, motor boat, came up behind me and says “Get out of the navigable channel, the bridge doesn’t open for 10 minutes.” He had tons of room to go around me, but another boat was coming the other way, and he could not wait for 20 seconds, and didn’t know that the bridge was opening for us. I just told him, there is plenty of water to go around me. He got really mad, which I think is pretty funny.

Overall, it was a pretty easy trip. It was a lot nicer this time, going through all the bridges, because we broke it into two days. Last year we did the 23 bridges, 35 miles, all in one day, and it took 10 hours. We actually wanted to go outside, but the weather didn’t cooperate.

So we plan on being here for a week or two. We are starting to think, it might have been better to go North instead of South, because it is really hot here. We are hoping the Keys will be a little cooler.