Northbound ’19 – Travel Day 3: Miami, Fl to Fort Lauderdale, Fl

Distance traveled: 25.1 nautical miles

Time underway: 4 hours 40 minutes

Average Speed: 5.4 kts*

Max Speed: 16.3 kts

We were up before the sun – separate from the few times we awoke overnight to check our position at anchor – and Tim ran Jasper ashore at around 6:50am as rowing crews who had probably been on the water for an hour were busy practicing.  Once they were back, the tender was hoisted and secured, engines fired up and anchor retrieved.  While the anchor came up easily, it and the chain had remnants of the seabed’s muddy bottom and got a fresh-water rinse as it returned to the anchor locker.  We definitely have a better understanding of why our friend Steve fabricated a high-pressure washdown system at his bow pulpit to mitigate these messy situations.  It’s something we’re going to explore and suggestions are always welcome.

It was again dead calm as we departed the anchorage at 7:40am leaving more than enough time to make our first bridge opeing at the Venetian Causeway.  Despite the lack of wind, we had decided to motor up the ICW to Fort Lauderdale rather than go offshore.  The ocean run is a bit longer but the ICW has a handful of bridges we need to open so we were expecting the timing would be pretty much a wash and the scenery inside would be more interesting.  Well, we were right about the scenery.  We have done this stretch a couple of times and anticipated it would go more smoothly than it did based on our prior experience.  But with the numerous wake-free manatee zones and our need to open more bridges than usual due to high tide we were unable to time out the travel to avoid some lengthy waits.  The bridges along this stretch of the ICW alternately open at :15/:45 and :00/:30.  You miss an opening by one minute and you’re for waiting twenty-nine.  We went slowly enough so that never happened but we probably added about an hour onto our travel*.  It was still a beautiful ride and traffic on the ICW was light.

We pulled into the Bahia Mar Yachting Center at around 12:20 just as the wind had started to kick up which always adds unwanted excitement to the docking experience.  But we slid OLOH into her slip without issue and will hang in Fort Lauderdale for a couple of days to make some last preps before continuing the adventure north. [Cruiser’s Note: This was our first time pulling into Bahia Mar’s north basin. The south basin entrance is wide open with terrific visibility.  If there are boats on the T-heads as you enter the north basin, it is relatively narrow and visibility can be very limited so extreme caution should be taken].

See you out there…

Please be sure to subscribe to our blog on the top right of this page to get notified when new content is posted.  And please leave any comments or questions below – we love to hear from you & know that you’re along for the ride!  For the very latest on what we’re up to, be sure to like us & follow us on the M/Y OLOH Facebook Page. You can also follow us on Twitter at @MYOLOH and for plenty more pictures and video find us on Instagram and YouTube.