West Palm Beach, Florida (Lake Worth)

We arrived at Lake Worth in West Palm Beach on Saturday, May 12, 2007. We were right behind Two Pelicans but we had lost contact with Lindsay Christine who had taken a little different route. We had planned to go to a Marina so we could easily check in with customs and get some shopping done but the one we thought we had reservations with said we didn't.....we were tired and headed straight out to the anchorage and dropped the hook!! After getting our dinghy down we headed over to pick up Jeremy and Cliff on Two Pelicans so we could check back into the USA. We went to the Customs office right next to the docks, but being Saturday they were closed. We were told we could go to the Airport and check in, so we got a taxi. Once at the airport we knocked on the door to immigration and they said we had to call customs first and then

they could help us. Thank goodness there was a pay phone right there. So Kim calls and talks to one of the agents who is getting very frustrated because Kim can't hear him and keeps asking him to repeat himself. Finally Kim says, hey I'm sorry, but I am at the Airport and the noise from the airplanes is very loud. There was a very uncomfortable period of silence....then he says....WHY ARE YOU AT THE AIRPORT? Uh- oh...Kim tells him, because were supposed to check in as soon as we get here, the man was not a happy camper and proceeded to chastise Kim completely. It turns out that you are just supposed to go to the closest pay phone (on the dock) and call customs, then you can leave and go to immigration, well excuse us!! Anyway, he decided he would accept our apologies and check us in. As he was about to hang up, I mentioned that we had a friend with us who also needed to check in, and he was a Canadian Citizen...another long uncomfortable period of silence, but by that time Kim had handed Jeremy the phone and said good luck! :)...All went well with Jeremy, and we were soon on our way back to the docks to get some good ole American food.

I think we slept the rest of the day, and went to get some boat supplies the next day. We stayed a couple days, then said good-bye to Jeremy and Cliff who had to get Cliff back to an airport and home. We motored over to North Palm Beach and anchored out for a few days so we could stock up at groceries and go the West Marine store. We also needed to plan our strategy for getting up to coast. It looked like the weather was against us and we would be doing much of our travels up the ICW. These pictures show the anchorage around North Palm Beach.

We left North Palm Beach on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 heading for an overnight anchorage in Jensen Beach. We had to go through 10 bridges that day, the kind where you have to wait around and have them open them, while you wait with a bunch of other boats....Captain Mike had thought it a good time for First Mate Kim to work on here manuerving skills...It was a loooooonnng day. The trip was 30.2 nautical miles. The ICW was very beautiful. At times there would be houses lining the waterway and other times there were marshes and beautiful trees. It wasn't as relaxing as sailing in the ocean, you had to hand steer and constantly be on the look out for other boats, shallow spots and make certain you were within the marker range. If you went outside the navigational markers you would probable run aground. There were a lot of dolphins along the way, although they were not as friendly as when we see them in the ocean. They are basically just feeding and don't even bother coming near your boat. We also saw a few manatees and one water snake.

All in all we had a great travel day, and were glad to get through all those bridges. That is the most we would have to go through in one day. For the rest of the journey it would only be about one or two a day.

We arrived in Jensen Beach at about 2:24 PM and anchored in 7 feet of water. The anchorage was very shallow and we did touch bottom once, but found a nice little spot and spent the night. The next day we would head for Vero Beach.

Cheers and Ciao from Ka'imi, Mike and Kim