Hobie Sound to Lake Worth

Start: 9:20am under sunny skies. Temp: 38 degrees Winds nil
Peck Lake anchorage 27 06.881 x 80 08.555 Depth: 9.8 ft
End: 2:30 pm sunny skies
Lake Worth anchorage 26 45.501 x 80 02.603 Depth: 10 ft
Distance traveled 23.76 miles in 5 hours

It was a wonderfully calm night last night. The temperatures were still sub-freezing and it felt it without our little heater! There weren’t many boats in the anchorage with us – one sloop and 3 catamarans. I’m thinking that most that were here, skidaddled to Lake Worth. Listening to the weather forecast, sounds like Saturday will be a good day to cross with south winds forecast. It’s nice to sit and watch the white and black tipped seabirds fly and hit the water as they fish for breakfast. Some just dip into the water and come up with a fish! Pelicans sit on the water watching all this activity quite intently. Some of the little fishing birds are so white that when the sun lights them up, they almost hurt the eyes to watch them. Their white color is so blinding! It’s still briskly cold as we watch first one, then the next and next catamaran pull out of the anchorage - All of them heading south. We hoisted anchor at 9:20 am and headed south too. It feels like a migration pattern, just like the geese from home, we head further south, a great migration of snowbirds.

We had 7 bridges to open between Peck and Lake Worth. I’d forgotten how fun that is to time the bridges! We had one that we’d just missed so had to wait a half hour, then heading toward the next bridge we got hung up behind a barge and had to pour on the speed to a whopping 6.5 knots to get to the next bridge. We probably wouldn’t have made it but the bridge tender saw us and actually held it for us (holding up traffic 10 minutes). Normally timing is everything! I hope Santa is extra good to him this year. When we got to Lake Worth and dropped anchor (2:30pm), there were very few boats here. It must look like an armada heading across to the Bahamas! We’re going to see if the weather window holds out like the prediction says. Saturday still looks good so If Azaya is ready by then we’ll have some company if we cross. It’d be nice to see them again! It looks like 4:30pm is the time to leave today – three boats picked up anchor and headed out the inlet.

The learning curve starts anew. Windlass on, radio off, change batteries, instruments off, anchor alarm set, wind generator on and charge computer batteries on the way from place to place. Oh yes, don’t forget to turn on the anchor light!

Lucaya is roughly 81 miles from Lake Worth. If we travel at 5 knots an hour we should be there in a little over 16 hours, say 17 to be safe…