It was an early morning departure for Makin Memories and her crew this Sunday from River Forest Yachting Service. River Forest is a quiet, clean, well-maintained place to moor before locking through St. Lucie. After a coffee and tea to wipe away the night’s sleep and with the preparation for departure routine completed, we were on our way to the last lock-through on the Okeechobee Waterway. The St. Lucie lock has a 13-foot drop from the Caloosahatchee to bring you back to sea level. The cruise across of the remaining Okeechobee Waterway was a quite one with wind and wind gusts steadily increasing. We made our way through the St. Lucie River and past Stuart, turning right and cruising through Hobe Sound. A beautiful stretch of the preserve on the ocean side and beautiful homes on the west side. Jean climbed out and up on the hard top and shot photos of the Jupiter lighthouse as we passed a very busy cross section of bridges, rivers, and boaters.

Our destination for the day was Palm Beach Gardens, and a marina stays for a couple of days while we dealt with the repair of our inverter. We rented a car and delivered our unit to a certified repair depot in Ft. Lauderdale was thinking that we could pick it up as we passed by on the way south but were pleasantly surprised that they had the necessary control board in stock and we brought the unit back with us the same day. A thank you to David Romero of eMarine Systems of Ft. Lauderdale and his great customer service. I would also like to thank Louie and Shane of Louie’s Marine Electrical, Holiday, Fl. (727-222-3932) for talking me through the systems test and reinstallation of the inverter. The two of them spent a lot of time on the phone over four days teaching me how to find a possible workaround till I could get the unit repaired.

Photo by Jerry Coleman

Leaving Loggerhead Marina at Palm Beach Gardens, we cruised through Lake Worth and tied up at Lighthouse Point Marina at Lighthouse Point, Fl. (just outside Delray, Fl.), for the evening. The next day’s cruise was sunny, but still very breezy, as we passed Boca Raton, Hillsboro Inlet, Ft. Lauderdale, and the amazing Port Everglades where the harbor was full of cruise ships, mega yachts, tugs, barges, and container ships. We were able to clear most of the bridges without having them stop car traffic, but there were several that we had to wait alongside sailboats for the scheduled opening. The wind was a challenge to stay on point, sometimes waiting 25 minutes.

Jean and I found a city marina in North Miami

Photo by Jerry Coleman

(Pelican Harbor Marina) that has reasonable, and we could wait out the 20 to 25 mph winds, gusting to 30/35 mph for a few days. The facilities are commensurate with the rates and the location not bad. We could walk to several restaurants, and Uber’d to The Miami Seaquarium and Little Havana.

Week three was a windy one, and it looks like week four will be much of the same as we enter the upper keys.